Agence France-Presse: 6 October 1998
MEDIA: FROM TIN CANS TO INTERNET AS PACIFIC MEDIA DISCOVERS CYBERSPACE
From news
delivered in tin cans and the legendary "coconut wireless", media has come a long way in the South Pacific. These days news is flooding into atolls and islands by the Internet.
By MICHAEL FIELD in Auckland
SOMETIMES Pacific Islanders got their news
delivered in tin cans and "coconut wireless" had a legendary inaccurate
quality but these days the world is flooding into atolls and islands by the
Internet.
From being accessible only to the most persistent of reporters, Pacific
news floods in now.
The most dramatic illustration came last November when a cyclone swept
over the remote Cook Island atoll of Manihiki. One Henry Williams raced to
his boat with his disposable camera and caught a picture of a wave sweeping
over his home. Within two days that picture was around the world, thanks to
the Internet.
A couple of decades back was the other extreme, at Niuafo'ou in Tonga,
and known as "Tin Can Island" for the way mail and newspapers were suffered
into big biscuit tins and tossed over board where swimmers from the island
could recover them.
The changes are bringing complaints and recently the Samoa Observer
defended itself over claims it ran more overseas news than local news.
It said the Internet was bursting with news while local reporters were
not easy to come by.
"Bear in mind that this country is not so isolated from the rest of the
world as it was 10 years ago."
The growing popularity of the Internet is despite the very high cost of
the service, provided in most Pacific states by the monopoly state-owned
telecommunications companies.
At the South Pacific Forum summit this year leaders agreed to promote "competitive telecommuncations markets" while their economic ministers talked of encouraging the "development of the information economy".
It is happening anyway.
In just a year Pacific Islands Report
has become a key regional news source with around 15 stories a day.
A collaborative project of the Hawaii's East-West Center's Pacific
Islands Development Program and the Center for Pacific Islands Studies at
the University of Hawaii it aims, according to editor Al Hulsen, to
increase public knowledge and understanding of the Pacific.
"Increasingly we hear that the Internet service is a primary source of
Pacific Islands news, used by governments, businesses, academic
institutions and other entities," he says.
"The Internet is putting more and more people worldwide in touch with
the Pacific's daily events and issues. It is making the Pacific real,
rather than a romantic fantasy."
The University of the South Pacific, Suva, journalism programme
provides an email news service and World Wide Web page focussing mainly on
Pacific politics, development, environment and media freedom issues.
Pasifik Nius was begun by journalism coordinator David Robie three years ago while he was at the University of
Papua New Guinea and was originally an extension of the journalism
programme there.
"The demand grew and even though several newspapers in the Pacific
established websites, Pasifik Nius was still sought after and it expanded
after moving to Fiji in March," he says.
The free email service has 250 subscribers and has a UNESCO grant.
Robie notes that the two daily newspapers in PNG are on-line and they
had enormously raised the news profile of the South Pacific, particularly
during the Sandline mercenary crisis in Bougainville last year.
Pasifik Nius is contributing to diversifying news sources and
improving the balance.
"Many stories that might not have been told in the past now make it into
the mainstream media because there is a greater variety of sources and
perspectives to draw on," Robie says.
One of the more curious sources of Pacific news is the German city of
Braunschweig where computer scientist Norbert Braumann runs an email
service on news about Papua New Guinea, its civil war torn Bougainville
Island and its Indonesian neighbour Irian Jaya.
Although biased towards the freedom movements of Bougainville and Irian
Jaya, his information sent out free to subscribers is regarded as a useful
source.
"I'm pretty sure that the information I send out has an impact," he says
in an email, "but I do not have the chance to assess it."
Michael Field is the New Zealand-based South Pacific correspondent for Agence France-Presse news agency.
Norbert Braumann comments: "I am not at all biased towards the Bougainville Freedom Movement. In fact, I was a member in 1993/94 when I was studying in
Brisbane. I'm also supporting the work of West Papuan, East Timorese,
and 'pro-democracy' Indonesian activists."
