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LoginFiji expert takes Fairfax and Radio NZ to task over inflated Fiji typhoid reports
Professor Crosbie Walsh has taken New Zealand media to task over inflating the facts while reporting a typhoid outbreak in Fiji.
Pacific Scoop:
Report – By PMC newsdesk.
Crosbie Walsh, a emeritus professor of the University of the South Pacific, and prominent commentator on Fiji affairs has again critiqued reports emerging from New Zealand media that, he says, inflate the seriousness of a typhoid outbreak in Fiji.
Professor Walsh argued that Fairfax media’s Stuff.co.nz news-site reported the the typhoid risk exists for tourists traveling to Fiji as a whole. This he said was an over-statement of the facts, that the outbreak was specific to “excursions (to villages) up the Sigatoka River. It was not a nation-wide warning”.
Radio New Zealand has also reported that tourists intending to visit Fiji face a danger from the typhoid outbreak. Professor Walsh has written to Radio New Zealand urging it to broadcast a correction. The effect of inflated reporting on this issue, he said, will affect Fiji’s fragile tourist industry.
Click here to read the full item on Professor Crosbie Walsh’s blog, Fiji: The Way it Was, Is and Can Be.
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The fact that the censored news from the Fiji Broadcasting Limited reports that the Ministry of Health has imposed a state of public health emergency throughout all of Fiji due to the typhoid outbreak suggests that tourists should take care if visiting Fiji. All reports from Fiji are censored and must be read as the Governments view, The Government has a vested interest in keeping tourist comming to Fiji irrespective of the dangers.
Crosbie Walsh a Fiji expert? Next you will be telling us Jim Anthony and John samy are ‘Fiji experts’. Where is the credibility of coup apologists and thosewho support removal of governments by force? Or turn the heads away from serious human rights abuse and murder by this military regime? Get real!
What you have to realise is that the media will almost inevitably inflate any story they can. Also, I think that people in the Pacific and especially Fiji should realise that, in general, stories like these will go completely under the radar of %99 of the population of New Zealand and Australia. Get some perspective. They don’t actually care as much as you think they do.