John Pilger’s latest film, Utopia, recently aired on SBS television. New Matilda owner/editor Chris Graham worked as an associate producer on the film. In this special feature, he provides an inside look at the making of Utopia.

Pacific Scoop:
Special Report – By Chris Graham of New Matilda

Sometimes in life, you can feel pretty helpless. That said, I’m a privileged white guy in a privileged white society. So for me at least, it doesn’t happen very often.

It happened last year.

At the time, I was the managing editor of Tracker magazine. The NSW Aboriginal Land Council, owner of Tracker, was generous enough to give me time to fulfill a childhood dream. Read more »

Professor Biman Prasad … “Our people are still afraid. Our youths are afraid.” Image: Republika

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By the Pacific Media Centre news desk

The leader of Fiji’s new National Federation Party, economist Professor Biman Prasad, has pledged to review the controversial media decree and pass a freedom of information law if it gains power in the September general election.

He has also called on Fijians to shed their fear and become involved in the election process.

“Our people are still afraid. Our youths are afraid. Our civil servants are afraid, our farmers are afraid, our women are afraid,” professor Prasad said in a speech at a party working meeting at Tamavua the weekend. Read more »

Australia Network – funded by the government yet producing high quality Fourth Estate journalism. Image: ABC/PMC

Pacific Scoop:
Analysis – By Professor Mark Pearson

One of the saddest aspects of last week’s budget cuts to the ABC and SBS and the axing of the $220 million Australia Network contract is the impact on media freedom in the Asia-Pacific region.

Among the Australian values the Australia Network has advocated to neighbouring countries has been the effective operation of a genuinely independent national broadcaster – funded by the government yet producing high quality Fourth Estate journalism exposing corruption and questioning policy in the public interest.

Its current affairs schedule has included top shelf news and current affairs programmes like 7.30, Dateline, Lateline, Foreign Correspondent, Q&A, The World This Week and of course ABC News Breakfast. Add to that the online curation via the Australian News Network website and you have a showcase of the media playing a watchdog role in a functioning democracy. Read more »

Pacific Scoop:
Editorial – By Tevita Vuibau, editor of Wansolwara

A student editor from the regional University of the South Pacific has appealed for a return to “fearless, fair and determined” journalism as Fijians prepare for the first general election in September since the military coup of 2006.

“Journalists will to have to work themselves to the bone to overcome their own lack of experience and transcend a timid media environment borne in part of coups, censorship, restrictions and harassment,” wrote Tevita Vuibau in the latest edition of Wansolwara.

The newspaper also “vowed to do our bit” to help “usher in a new era of democracy for Fiji”.

The award-winning journalism programme newspaper Wansolwara is published as a liftout in the daily newspaper Fiji Sun. Tevita Vuibau’s editorial said: Read more »

Indonesian presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto … implicated in human rights atrocities in Timor-Leste. Image:globalindonesianvoices.com

Pacific Scoop:
Analysis – By Maj Nygaard Christensen and Angie Bexley

In December 2013, in a letter to the editor of The Jakarta Post, Indonesian presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto attempted to set the record straight.

His letter was written in response to Aboeprijadii Santoso’s article, ‘Whatever happened in Kraras, Timor-Leste, Pak Prabowo?’ In the article, Santoso asks Prabowo about allegations during his tour of duty in then Indonesian East Timor.

Prabowo has been implicated in the death of Timorese independence leader Nicolau dos Reis Lobato in December 1978. He’s also connected to the 1983 massacre in Kraras, known as the village of widows, which left an estimated 300 people killed by Indonesian troops. Read more »

Bula Fiji – one of the Kris Fox videos.

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Isabella Bernal

Kiwi social media sensation Kris Fox, known for his comedic videos, has inspired Fiji kids at a school in Nadi.

Fox has more than 95,000 likes on his Facebook page and more than 7000 subscribers to his YouTube account.

Fiji-born Fox, 21, was invited to present at TA Learning Centre and Professional Tuition Services, to talk to local kids about his experience and how to work hard for success. Read more »

Filipinos protesting over the “cyber martial law” legislation. Image: cultureinasia

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By David Robie

A controversial law in the Philippines billed by critics as an “electronic martial law” that criminalises e-libel may now be mimicked in the Pacific.

The Supreme Court in Manila ruled in December 2012 to temporarily suspend this law and then extended it until further notice in February 2013. However, in February this year, the Supreme Court ruled that the law was indeed constitutional, “effectively expanding the country’s 80-year-old libel law into the digital domain”.

Now in Papua New Guinea the Peter O’Neill government has signaled an impending onslaught against stridently critical social media with a draft new cyber-crime law. Read more »

David Robie talks to Te Waha Nui’s Monique McKenzie about the new book.

Pacific Scoop:
News review – By Patrick Craddock in Suva

Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific is being published today while Fiji is voicing the mantra of the “free press” at the same time as it continues to ban experienced Pacific reporters such as Barbara Dreaver and Michael Field from New Zealand and Sean Dorney of the ABC.

Ashwin Raj, chairman of the new Media Industry Development Authority (MIDA) is haranguing journalists at public media meetings using expressions such as “…the complicity of select Fijian journalists and media either wittingly or those that remain oblivious to the laws of Fiji…”

The same MIDA that is so upset with Sean Dorney’s mild comment that “there was a feeling in the room anyway that the situation in Fiji wasn’t as free and open for the media as it should be” is also asking for “an ethos of robust debate”. Read more »

The Act of Killing trailer.

Pacific Scoop:
Commentary – By Mette Bjerregaard

The Act of Killing may have lost out on this year’s Oscar for best documentary, but it has instigated a spectacular change within Indonesian society.

The documentary, in which director Joshua Oppenheimer encourages the perpetrators of mass killings of the 1960s to re-enact their crimes for the camera, has been well received at film festivals around the world. But it is the reaction of the domestic Indonesian audience that is the most remarkable.

To understand how Oppenheimer’s film challenges the Indonesian national narrative and the public discourse, it is essential to explore how the film is received and understood by an Indonesian audience. Read more »