Katharine Hepburn ... lessons for the Samoan media. Photo: Legacy

Pacific.Scoop
Opinion – By Tupuola Terry Tavita in Apia

Screen legend and Hollywood socialite Katharine Hepburn was once asked by a reporter if she felt she was more famous for her acting abilities than her, well, eccentric personality.

She replied: “Show me an actress who isn’t a personality and you’ll show me a woman who isn’t a star.”

In a quirky way, it’s one of the main problems facing media coverage in Samoa today – and possibly everywhere else.

This is that the real issues end up taking a backseat to personalities.

It’s a media that is largely personality-driven and not by the issues.

We’ve seen it with the road switch, recently with the tsunami recovery and to a lesser extent, the Land Titles Registration Act.

Precious little space is committed to analysing the actual issues involved while an acreage of newsprint is dedicated to bad-mouthing leaders whose job it is to bring about positive changes to those they govern.

Caught in crossfire
Public servants who take their instructions from cabinet – and those who see rationale in government decisions – are often caught in the crossfire.

Like Hepburn, newspapers also are actresses in that reality show called Everyday Life. They also have to have personalities – cantankerous, probing, stirring and at times, outright ruthless.

So when they seek Hepburn stardom, which ithey constantly pursue if they want to remain relevant – never mind the issues – somebody has to be the villain.

And as is always the case, the Prime Minister and government are made to look the bad guys.

Because government not only plays such a key role in the running of this country but a critical one in how people live their lives every day. It’s also an institution everybody feels they know best how to run.

After all, every taxpayer has a stake in it, newspapers constantly remind us.

And many people who are not part of government and do not understand how government does things – love to hate the government for whatever reason. Many see government as the source of whatever misery they face, self-inflicted or not.

And don’t expect the independent media to help explain any of government’s functions to the public. They feed off of it.

Media council
Before the issue of a national media council has even been presented before media representatives in the country, it has already been shot at.

The president of the Journalists Association of (Western) Samoa, JAWS, has copped a stinging attack from the local daily’s editor-in-chief, questioning his impartiality.

For the record, the president did not appoint himself to the position but was elected by its members – which included representatives of the local daily – for now the third consecutive term.

But whatever decision JAWS makes on a media council will be neither that of the president nor what the local daily wants. It will be what the collective body agrees to.

Because there are a lot of issues involved, a lot of questions that have to be mulled through, such a:

What should be the structure of the media council?

Who should sit on it?

Would it have any teeth?

Will it be legally binding?

How can we enforce its decisions?

If we are going to follow New Zealand and Australia, then should it have to be an Act of Parliament such as the New Zealand Broadcasting Standards Authority (NZBSA) and the Australia Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) respectively?

If we are going to ask government to repeal the two current publications acts, what are we going to suggest they replace it with? After all, there must be an avenue where members of the public – rich or poor, politician or not – can seek recourse if they feel they’ve been unfairly hard-done by media reports?

Riding roughshod
Like everything else, we cannot allow our industry to run roughshod over people’s rights unchecked and without accountability.

But it’s not an insurmountable task and many smaller countries in the region, like Palau and the Cook Islands – even Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji- have such entities. This newspaper will not relay its position on the pages of Savali but we look forward to discussing these issues with our colleagues at the JAWS forum on Monday.

Paramount in all this is that we come up with an institution that best caters to the welfare of our profession, our industry and most important of all, to those we serve.

Tupuola Terry Tavita is editor of the Samoan government newspaper Savali.