Launch of Fiji Media Charter

The relationship between media freedom and media responsibility is a very live topic in Fiji, both because of the continuing unease about the future following the 2000 coup and what the current Prime Minister, the Hon Laisenia Quarase, calls the onslaught of '... westernisation, materialism, consumerism and individualism'.

There were reports of the possibility of the former Police Commissioner being charged and of the processes that led to the recent re-appointment the Head of the armed forces at the time of the coup, two examples of continuing undercurrents, in the very week that the Fiji Media Council, which embraces press, radio and TV, launched its Charter of Media Freedom at a well-attended evening function in Suva. Apart from the sensitivity of reportage of current events in a post-coup situation, the Prime Minister and other Fiji leaders proclaim the need for the media to broadcast and publish more content supportive of retention of the 'old values' of Fiji.

The Charter, designed to assist in protecting free and independent media in Fiji, and closely resembling the Australian Press Council's own Charter, was launched by the Chairman of the Australian Press Council, Professor Ken McKinnon.

While the Constitution of Fiji specifies (Article 30 [1]) that '... every person has the right to freedom of speech and expression, including (a) the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas, and (b) freedom of the press and other media', that is not the whole story.

The rub comes in Article 30 (2) which allows laws to be passed to limit those freedoms. The Prime Minister in recently railing against the predominance of sex and violence and other similar foreign matters said that something had to be done. The Minister for Information has been preparing a new Media Policy that could include government action to ensure a better balance, notwithstanding the possibility that external influences cannot be prevented or even that the public are getting the balance they want. As in Australia, the problem is to distinguish between necessary media concerns about local culture, responsibility and standards, and potential political proposals cloaked in national rhetoric but very quite possibly antithetical to the public's right to know and stemming essentially from political self-interest.

Subsequent to the launch, there has been continuing lively Fiji media debate about freedom and responsibility, not much different in essence from Australian debates. The Pacific situation, however, demands a special alertness. There is more danger of precipitate, ill-advised, restrictive government media action because of less settled institutional frameworks and less well mobilised public support for freedom of expression and citizens' right to know.

That said, the Charter launch and the lively exchanges that followed must have carried the message to the Fiji public that these are essential freedoms, too important to relinquish or even allow to be limited if democracy is to be sustained.

Professor Ken McKinnon

see also
Australian Press Council's Charter of Press Freedom

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