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------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date:          Fri, 09 Oct 1998 08:38:34 +0000
From:          David Robie <robie_d@usp.ac.fj>
Subject:       1753 MEDIA: Internet makes waves in Pacific
To:            Pacmedia <pacmedia@pactok.net.au>
Reply-to:      robie_d@usp.ac.fj
Organization:  Journalism, University of the South Pacific

Title -- 1753 MEDIA: Internet makes waves in Pacific
Date -- 9 October 1998
Byline --  Michael Field
Origin -- <A HREF="mailto:niusedita@pactok.net.au">Pacific Media
Watch</A>
Source -- Agence France-Presse, afp.nz@clear.net.nz, 6/10/98
Copyright -- AFP
Status -- Unabridged
--------------------

FROM TIN CANS TO INTERNET AS PACIFIC MEDIA DISCOVERS INTERNET

by Michael Field

   AUCKLAND, Oct 6 (AFP) - 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 pushed into big biscuit tins and tossed overboard 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"
http//pidp.ewc.hawaii.edu/pireport
 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 and media freedom issues.
http://www.usp.ac.fj/journ/nius/index.html

   "Pasifik Nius" was begun three years ago by journalism coordinator
David Robie 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."

+++niuswire

PACIFIC MEDIA WATCH is an independent, non-profit, non-government
organisation comprising journalists, lawyers, editors and other media
workers, dedicated to examining issues of ethics, accountability,
censorship, media freedom and media ownership in the Pacific region.
Launched in October 1996, it has links with the Journalism Program at
the University of the South Pacific, Bushfire Media, Journalism Studies
at the University of PNG, the Australian Centre for Independent
Journalism, and Pactok Communications, in Sydney and Port Moresby.

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