Information for Empowerment and Development Why the Media is Failing the People of Papua New Guinea

8/14/2019 Information for Empowerment and Development Why the Media is Failing the People of Papua New Guinea.

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Information for empowerment second draft REVISED 1

Information for Empowerment and Development:Why the Media is Failing the People of Papua New Guinea.

Paper presented at the World Media Freedom Day Conference,Divine Word University, Madang, 30 April 2004.

Dr Dick Rooney

IntroductionThe media in Papua New Guinea have failed as agencies of information and debate.

The media can facilitate greater access to people lacking a voice. But media outputneeds to be of high quality, relevant and useful to the audience. It needs to allow theexpression of a full range of opinions and matters of public concern. Access toinformation is the first requirement of engaged, participative democracy.

This paper explores media ownership in PNG and argues that the vast majority of thepopulation the poor, the uneducated and the geographically isolated have little or noaccess to the media. In this regard the media are failing to provide support to thedemocratic structures of the nation.

The paper identifies the present media market as dominated by foreign-ownedconglomerates. Using content analysis of the news content of the countrys two nationaldaily newspapers and news bulletins on the only television station it identifies howmembers of elite groups dominate the news agenda to the exclusion of all other groups.

The paper critiques the free market model and identifies its weaknesses and suggestsways how tertiary educational institutions and community-based interventions might

provide presently disadvantaged populations with platforms for a diversity of voices andopinions through openness to participation.

Background to PNGPNG, an Australian protectorate until 1975, has an extremely fragmented society withmore than 800 distinct cultural groups, each with their own language. About 85 per centof PNGs population, estimated at 5 million, live in isolated scattered rural settlements,dependent on subsistence agriculture for their survival and organised around groups ofextended families living in their own little villages. Although people do move betweendifferent places, each community has developed its own specific hierarchies, myths,rituals and languages. Because these lives unfolded within limited geographical areas,people directly communicated with one another through words. Historically. PNG

cultures were predominantly oral and so a mass media was unnecessary.

In these oral cultures, the recording of events was hardly known. The experience of pastgenerations was passed on directly to young people through working alongside orlistening to their elders. Within these enclosed little worlds, politics was carried out at thelevel of the tribe, village or town with societies controlled by hierarchies derived from theextended family.

Ownership of PNG Media


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Foreign ownership dominates the media in PNG. Conglomerates own both the two dailynewspapers and the countrys only television station.

The Press can trace its origins to 1911 when the first newspaper the Papua Times andTropical Advertiser published for the benefit of the ex-patriate white community. Today,the rationale for newspaper production is still dominated by the needs of ex-pats.

The Post-Courier is the oldest daily newspaper in PNG, established in 1969. AlliedPress, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdochs News Corp, holds the majority shareholding.The National, launched in 1993, is PNGs newest daily newspaper and is ownedMalaysian-based Rimbunan Hijau Group, a multinational conglomerate built on timber,plantations, media and IT operations. (Robie, 1994). The National was launched by thethen Prime Minister Paias Wingti and attracted controversy for its foreign ownership andthe papers association with the major commercial player in PNGs timber industry.(Robie, 1995, p.28).

The two daily newspapers are based in the PNG capital, Port Moresby, and share ametropolitan bias. Combined they have a circulation of less than 60,000, serving a

population of more than 5 million. These newspapers rarely circulate outside of urbanareas so the vast majority of Papua New Guineans are excluded from information. Thenewspapers charge a fifty per cent and thirty per cent surcharge respectively on theircover prices to purchasers outside of the capital to cover the cost of distribution, therebymaking the newspapers unattractive to people with low incomes. PNG media generallyprivileges urban dwellers and those with the ability to consume, as generally speakingrural populations are unprofitable markets.

In addition, 72 per cent of adults in PNG are illiterate and have no need for newspapers(United Nations Development Program, 1999, p.110). It follows that newspaper readersare likely to be leaders and opinion makers and this gives newspapers an influence inthe country that far outweighs their circulation penetrations.

There is one weekly newspaper, the Wantok, published in the Tok Pisin language (thelingua franca of PNG) owned by Word Publishing through Media Holdings Ltd. Itsshareholders are the mainstream churches in PNG: Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran,Anglican, and Uniting Church. It has an approximate circulation of 10,000.

The Eastern Star, established in 1991, is PNGs only provincial newspaper and has acirculation estimated at 2,500. It is published fortnightly around Alota, Milne Bay.

Em-TV, owned by the Nine Network of Australia and the one television station in PNG,generates only a small proportion of its coverage locally. Broadcasting started in 1987(Foster, 1998, p.54) and is available in almost every urban centre in the country with

rural and remote areas serviced by more than 500 privately-owned satellite dishes, butin 2004, 17 years after launch, the channel is still not available across the whole country.

Publicly funded radio in PNG is in the hands of a bureaucracy, the National BroadcastingCommission, which as the only radio broadcasting authority in the country is the nationspublic service provider. (Nash, 1995, pp. 42-43). At its peak it was able to reach aboutfour million people in about 60 different languages as well as English, but it has beenundermined in recent years by financial and technical difficulties.


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Privately owned commercial radio has grown since the first station, Nau FM, waslaunched in 1994, by Fiji-based Communications Fiji Ltd. Yumi FM joined it in 1997.PNG FM, a 100 per cent owned subsidiary of Communications Fiji, now owns bothstations and there are now a growing number of commercial stations, playing mostlymusic, based in and around PNGs urban centres.

The media in PNG is not regulated so, in theory, any person can start a company that isaimed at dissemination of information (Mellan and Aloi, 2003, p.36). But in reality thecost of launching a media outlet is a barrier to entry and there is little advertisingavailable in the country to support media ventures. (Pamba, 2004, p.15)

Of course, advertisers are not interested in audiences or readers as such. Rather, theyare interested in the ability of those people to purchase goods or services. Thepredominant influence on spending is income: the rich buy more of most things than thepoor, so advertisers are willing to pay higher rates for readers with big spending power.

Those media which can attract an audience or readership which is fairly small, butextremely attractive to those who wish to sell to them, can set high advertising rates

relative to their circulations.

Introduction to the researchThe purpose of the research was to examine the content of news stories and inparticular the sources of information used and what this told us about the relationshipbetween journalism, the audience, and democracy in the context of whether everyonehas equal access to the news media.

The research was conducted in the context of the debate around relations between themedia and the exercise of political and ideological power especially, but not exclusively,by central social institutions that seek to define and manage the flow of information incontested fields of discourse.

Stuart Hall et al in their thesis on primary definers argue that people in powerful andprivileged positions are able to over-access the media, because journalists nervous ofaccusations of bias attempt to find ways of injecting impartiality, balance and objectivityinto their reports.

They do this by a heavy reliance on accredited representatives of the people andorganised interest groups and experts who are considered to be disinterested pursuersof knowledge and therefore impartial in the debate in question. (Hall et al, 1978, pp. 58-59).

In this thesis, the media become primary definers of the news because the media tend to

reproduce faithfully what they say and thus reproduce symbolically the existing structureof power in society's institutional order. It is likely that those in powerful positions insociety who offer opinions about controversial topics will have their definitions accepted.Such spokesmen are understood to have access to more accurate or more specialisedinformation on particular topics than the majority of the population.

This, Hall et al argue, permits the primary definers to set the agenda and those witharguments against a primary interpretation have to insert themselves into its definition ofwhat is at issue. Once established this definition is difficult to alter fundamentally.


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Hall's analysis is not without its critics. Philip Schlesinger and Howard Tumbler acceptthat there are powerful sources that can sometimes organise news agendas to their ownadvantage, but the emphasis is on the word sometimes. (Schlesinger and Tumbler,1994, pp. 17-21). Journalists can choose to accept the sources, but they can also decideto find alternative sources. But, as Herbert J. Gans has observed, journalists are

restrained by deadlines and often feel obliged to rely on sources that are able to fit inwith the logistical requirements of busy news organizations. (Gans, 1979, p. 121).

Although it is true that official sources do not have to be believed or taken seriously byjournalists, the research intended to discover whether PNG journalists were doing justthat. The journalists may not necessarily be biased towards the government or otherelites, but one suspects their bureaucratic organisation and cultural assumptions makethem conduits of that presentation. As Brian McNair points out, journalists tend toreproduce preferred accounts and interpretations of social reality by internalizing thedominant value structure of their society. (McNair, 1996, p. 48).

Content Analysis: Em-TV

The research investigates PNGs only television station Em-TV which broadcasts onenews programme per day called Em-TV National News which runs for 30 minutes (lesstime taken for commercials) each night. It is originally broadcast at 6pm seven days perweek with a repeat each night, usually at 10.30pm or 11pm. The programme is typicallysubdivided into three segments: news from PNG, overseas news and sports. Thebroadcasts also include stock market and currency prices from Australia, the US, Europeand Japan. Although the news is read in English, many of the speakers who appearedon news items speak in Tok Pisin or other vernacular languages.

The research investigated 15 editions of Em-TV National News from 15 29 February2004 inclusive. The main news sources for each of the first six stories broadcast peredition were counted.

Table 1.Main source of news item Frequency

(n = 90)Percentage oftotal

Parliament or Government 43 47.7

Media Conferences 10 11.1

Emergency Services 10 11.1

Law Courts 2 2.2

Public Event 2 2.2

Foreign Stories 11 12.2

Others 12 13.3

Source: Author

Table 1 shows that newsgathering relies on official sources such as the government,police and emergency services for their stories as well as organised events, pressstatements, public conferences and conventions and events put on especially for themedia.


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By far the biggest single source of stories was Parliament and Government, even thoughParliament itself did not sit at any time during the research period. The next largestsource was media conferences accounting for 11.1 per cent of the total.

Government dominates the news agenda and there is little opportunity for anyone else

within PNG to communicate through the news media. In the case of Em-TV and thenewspapers, the value of the news depends mainly on the importance of the speaker,not on what they have to say, and in that respect it is not unlike the media in manydeveloping countries (Williams, 1994, p.9). Sparks has observed that the people who runthe media are very remote from the lives of the masses and are not controlled in anyway by the masses. (Sparks, 2000, p.27)

For a more detailed understanding of the news bulletins two bulletins were picked atrandom and the first six items of each scrutinized to identify more precisely the sourcesused. The results are presented in Table 2

Table 2Detailed examination of two bulletins: Tuesday 16 February 2004 and Wednesday25 February 2004.

Tuesday 16 February 2004Running

OrderDescription of item Sources used Comments

1 The Acting PNG Governor General,Speaker of the House of Parliamentand local MP (all one person), BillSkate, calls on the government to lookinto the circumstances of a roadaccident that killed 19 people.

Bill Skate was the onlysource

The item was based onSkates visit to the crashsite. The visit was onSkates own initiativeand appears to havebeen made for publicity

purposes.

2 Up to 700 retrenched PNG DefenceForce personnel will get financial payoffs paid for by the AustralianGovernment.

PNG Defence Ministerannouncement at amedia conference. Hewas the only source.

Em-TV has been takinga positive stance toregular stories aboutAustralias involvementin PNGs governmentalaffairs.

3 National Capital District Commission(NCDC) has a new head that will act asCity Manager. The appointment comesamid controversy over the allegedmisuse of funds at City Hall.

Story based on anannouncement fromChair of NCDC at apress conference. BillSkate, the local MP, isalso interviewed at thesame conference.

This is the secondappearance of Bill Skatein this bulletin. Heregularly supplies newsto Em-TV.

4 Riots in Sydney, Australia. NA This is a supplied newspackage from ChannelNine, Australia. All Em-TVs foreign news duringthe whole researchperiod was suppliedfrom this source.


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5 Dame Elisabeth Murdoch opens thegarden of her house in Langwarm,Victoria, Australia to raise funds for alocal (to her home) art gallery.

NA Channel Nine report. MsMurdoch is described inthe report as thematriarch of a mediafamily. It is not said thatshe is the mother ofRupert.

6 Central Province Government (PNG)wants the national government to payfor the cost of having a local riverdiverted to avoid repeat of recentfloods.

Story based on aninterview with theCentral ProvinceGovernor Alphonse Moriwho is the only source.

The first PNG story intodays bulletin tooriginate outside of thecapital, Port Moresby.

Wednesday 25 February 2004.Running

OrderDescription of item Sources used Comments

1 Australian Opposition leader MarkLatham visits PNG to meet governmentleaders

Story is based on officialgovernmentannouncement andfootage of people getting

on and off planes.

This report does notinclude interviews withany of the storysparticipants. On previous

days Em-TV hadreported that Mr Lathamwas going to visit.Todays report addedvery little to newspreviously given.

2 Two policemen in Port Moresby (PNGcapital) charged with armed robbery ofbeer from a shop. The report also gavea round up of seven other robberiesthat took place in the capital at theweekend.

Story is based on apolice statement.

The entire story wasread by the newsreader.No interviews or visualmaterial was used in thereport.

3 Members of Fijis legal fraternity are in

Port Moresby to learn about PNGsLeadership Code, which is an anti-corruption initiative.

Story is based on a

statement from PNGsChief Ombudsman, IlaGeno.

In the report the

newsreader makes thepoint that PNG hasmany problems withleadership corruption,nonetheless othercountries (as well as Fiji)look to us to findsolutions.

4 The Judicial and Legal ServicesCommission (JLSC) has shortlisted foursenior lawyers to become judges. Alsofour judges will be appointed fromAustralia.

Statement from JLSC isonly source ofinformation.

The entire story wasread by the newsreader.No interviews or visualmaterial was used in thereport.

5 A group of experts from AustralianNational University (ANU) are studyinga rare PNG Highlands tradition knownas chanting its legends.

Source is a two dayworkshop run by ANU.

This is the first story intodays bulletin that hasnot originated from thePNG capital, PortMoresby. This ratio ofcapital to non-capital istypical.

6 Earthquake in Morocco. NA A report from ChannelNine, Australia.


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Source: Author

The bulletins demonstrate that Em-TV excludes the vast majority of people in thecountry from its bulletins and it rarely includes stories about ordinary people. The closest

the bulletins came was in the story about the aftermath of the road accident and even inthis case the story centred on an elite persons involvement (Item one, 16 February).Generally, PNG media do not feature ordinary people unless they have been victims ofmisfortune or have appeared in court.

The stories that were broadcast centred on Port Moresby. In the two bulletins featuredthere were only two PNG stories that originated from outside the nations capital. Duringthe research period 73 per cent of the stories originating within PNG came from thecapital Port Moresby and only 27 per cent from elsewhere in the nation. About 85 percent of PNG people live in rural area and they are not being represented by the newsmedia. In these circumstances it is impossible to know what kinds of stories originatingfrom outside Port Moresby are being missed and exactly how much rural people are at a

disadvantage in terms of having their voices heard. There are no official viewing figuresavailable, but it is a reasonable assumption to make that the viewers are generally urbanand educated elites.

Tetty, using the example of Africa, has argued that the reason why most televisionprogrames and publications use the colonial language (in PNGs case, English), evenwhere local languages exist, is that they have to do so to survive economically. (Tetley,2003, p.25). Private media rely on advertising for economic prosperity and elite groupswho tend to use the colonial language are the most attractive to advertisers.

Content analysis: National and Post CourierThis survey examined journalists and their sources of information (Rooney, 2003a). A

survey of ten issues of the National and Post-Courier was undertaken over two separateweeks in August 2002 (Monday-Friday 12-16 August 2002 and Monday-Friday 26-30August 2002). Both papers only published Mondays to Fridays and two full weeks worthof publications was examined. The survey was made of the lead news stories on each ofthe main news pages (front, three and five).

During the research period the pagination of the National was between 32 and 64 pages.Two editions reached 64 pages but both of these were on Fridays when the newspaperincluded its Weekend magazine supplement. The Nationals 32 page editions included12-page supplements carrying Em-TV and satellite television listings.

Pagination for the Post-Courier varied between 24 pages and 52 pages. The 52-page

editions were also on Fridays when the Post-Courier published its magazinesupplement, Weekend Extra. During the 10-day period the National published a total of432 pages and the Post-Courier, 376.

Both newspapers placed their editorial in clearly defined compartments. Running fromthe front of the newspaper, these typically were home (or national) news, regional(Pacific) news, world news, business news and sport. There was other materialinterspersed among these compartments on some days, for example news from specificregions within PNG and supplements sponsored by advertisers or organisations.


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Home or national news accounted for six to eight pages per day in the National andbetween five and nine pages in the Post-Courier. The home news agenda will bediscussed in more detail below.

Sports and business were important to both newspapers editorial mix. Sports news in

the National ran from four to ten pages per day. The Post-Courier ran sport on three tonine pages per day. Both titles ran an Australian racing form guide each day and eachhad a racing guide supplement once a week. The sports pages were dominated byoverseas news, but a PNG sports event or story was always the main story on the mainsports page (the back). Sports likely to interest expatriates were important to both titles,with Australian rugby league dominant in this category. Both papers cast their sportingnets wide and included English soccer and US sports. The National ran a weekly rugbyleague lift out which gave more space to the game overseas (Australia and NewZealand) than to within PNG. The Post-Courier included a two-page colour poster of anAustralian rugby league team in one of its editions.

The business section, which in the National ran from four to eight pages per day, was

bigger by far then the Post-Courier, which typically ran three pages per day. Bothnewspapers ran a full page of Australian stock market prices each day. The Nationalincluded shipping and property supplements once a week. In both titles the businesseditorial was heavily dominated by overseas news, mostly Australian. In neither casewere advertising supplements counted in the research, although both titles managed tosecure advertising using this method. Typically, such supplements were localsupplements, which appeared to be run in conjunction with chambers of trade or similarorganisations representing the interest of business.

Overseas news (defined as news from outside PNG) was sub-divided by thenewspapers into region (or Pacific) and world. The world section was always larger thanthe regional by a ratio of two or three to one. Both newspapers seemed to define the

region as the Pacific and Australia. Regional and world categories combined accountedfor between three and six pages per day in the National and slightly less, two to fivepages, in the Post-Courier. Both newspapers seemed to rely on news agency material tofill these pages (sometimes carrying identical stories, as was also the case in thebusiness sections), but the Post-Courier also seemed to use material from News Ltd.Newspapers in Australia.

Out of the 30 stories counted, 25 in the National and 22 in the Post-Courier camestraight from primary definers. Stories in this category included statements fromGovernment ministers on why there was a need to cut public spending and reducesalaries of government employees, a financial crisis in the copra growing industry andthe board meeting of a large petroleum company. My observation as a regular reader of

these newspapers is that these story types were entirely typical of the items that usuallymade up the news agendas of the two newspapers.

Both newspapers shared the same agenda, but the Post-Courier was a little more likelyto give prominence to dramatic human interest stories. For example, it led one edition ona story of a woman being hacked to death inside a bus in the capital, Port Moresby,while the National chose to lead that day on the Australian Prime Ministers call for PNGto continue with its financial reforms. (Gerawa, 2002, p.1. Senge-Kolma, 2002, p.1).


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The study examined the sources of news stories. This task was simple as most storiessurveyed had only one or two sources of information and were from public events suchas sittings of Parliament, conferences and conventions, and events constructedspecifically for the media. As Table 3 shows, by far the biggest single source of storiesfor both newspapers was Parliament, accounting for 63 per cent of stories in theNational and 50 per cent in the Post-Courier. These stories were reports of proceedings

on the floor of Parliament, with the overwhelming amount of coverage dominated bygovernment members. The next largest source was press conferences and statementsaccounting for 10 per cent of the National coverage and 20 per cent of the Post-Courier.In the survey period these conferences and statements came from the Prime MinistersOffice or other government officials.

Table 3: Sources of stories on prominent news pages of The National and Post-Courier newspapers, August 12-16 2002 and August 26-30 2002.

Nationaln =30

Post-Couriern = 30

Parliament / Government 19 15

Press Conference/ statement 3 6

Court case 3 1Speech 3 1

Crime 0 4

Others 2 3

(Rooney, 2003a, p.125)

A survey was also undertaken to identify the number of sources that journalists use intheir stories. Table 4 shows that the majority of stories in both the National and the Post-Courier came from a single source: 57 per cent in the National and 73 per cent in thePost-Courier. The percentage of stories relying on two or fewer sources was 93 per centin both newspapers.

Table 4 Number of sources quoted in stories on prominent news pages, August12-16 2002 and August 26-30 2002.

Nationaln =30

Post-Couriern = 30

One source 17 22

Two sources 11 6

Three sources 2 2

(Rooney, 2003a, p.125).

The table needs some explanation. Although in some cases more than one source is

quoted this does not necessarily mean that high levels of journalistic endeavour areused. Journalists tend only to quote more than one source when these sources arereadily provided for them. The stories in which three sources were quotes were courtcases and news conferences.

In the cases where two sources were quoted the journalist has not sought to collect analternative view to the main speaker, instead two sources supporting the same argumentare used, for example from stories originating from sittings of Parliament.


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The reluctance to find alternative voices, even within the mainstream political partiesmeans that readers are given a one sided view on matters of controversy. During thesurvey period the recently-elected PNG government handed down its first budget. Boththe National and Post Courier had prominent stories the day of the budget, previewingwhat was likely to be said and the day after giving details of the main speech inParliament. The reporting was uncritical of the government. The day of the budget the

National and the Post Courier produced similar stories supportive of the government.They were based on a press preview of the contents of the budget. The National lead itspaper with this paragraph:

The Government will change the course of Papua New Guinea through an export-driveneconomic recovery strategy, according to the Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare.(Taimbari, C. 2002a, p.1).

The National quoted the prime minister as promising to stabilise and unite the country toimprove living standards. The prime minister was the only person quoted in the story.

The Post Courier had a similar story highlighting an export-driven recovery and

development plan based on the same press conference given by the prime minister.(Niesi, 2002a, p.1).

On the day after the budget was handed down the Post Courier led its front page withthis opening paragraph:

The Government yesterday moved to clean up the financial mess of the 2002 Budget bycutting MPs allowances, Government departments and agency allocations. (Niesi,2002b, p.1). The report used only one source, the finance minister Bart Philemon.

The National also uncritically reproduced the finance ministers assertion that thecountrys economic ills were due entirely to the previous governments mismanagement

of the economy. It quoted Philemon to the effect that the previous governments lastbudget was

a political budget and as such sound economic management was crushed under theweight of political expediency at the expense of the future wellbeing of Papua NewGuinea. (Taimbari, 2002b, p.1).

Nowhere in either story was the past prime minister, now leader of the Opposition, giventhe chance to react to the assertions

A further issue involves the simplicity of the political analysis offered by the government.The finance minister and the newspapers make no effort to explain the complex nature

of the PNG economy which has a public debt to GDP ratio over 70% with interest costsabsorbing more than half the development budget. There have been persistent budgetdeficits. (Windybank and Manning, 2003, pp.4-5).

DiscussionThe PNG constitution provides for free speech, including freedom of the media, and thegovernment generally respects these freedoms in practice. Press laws in PNG tend tobe based on the English model and although there is a guarantee of freedom of speech


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there are laws suppressing defamation and indecency and maintaining secrecy.(Narokobi, 1999, p.154).

A cynic might say that the government could afford to have a free press since journalistsshow no inclination to call politicians to account. Newsgathering in PNG tends to bepassive and the media rely on official sources such as the government, police and

emergency services for their stories. The value of the news depends mainly on theimportance of the speaker, not on what they have to say, and in that respect it is notunlike the media in many developing countries. (Williams, 1994, p.9).

The research supports the view that journalists over rely on powerful elites as sourcesand that journalists do not pro-actively find alternative sources to provide balance tostories. Reporters receive information from a single source and re-present itunquestioningly in reports. It may be an over simplification to say that journalists have todo this in order to fit in with the logistical requirements of a busy news organisation.Surely, one feels, within the confines of the political establishment in PNG which isbased within a single district of the nations capital, journalists are able to get opposingviews, especially in matters that are controversial.

Journalists in PNG tend not to give background information to the stories, even thoserunning from day to day. One of the traits of PNG journalism is its unwillingness toproduce stories that contain a balance of views within them. Instead, journalists opt forrevisiting stories over a period of time, introducing new elements and different views ineach new episode. In this way committed viewers might be able to piece together thedisparate elements of the story into a comprehensible whole. But each new episodetends to include only one source, thus there is no balance of views or attempt atinterrogation of the powerful. This demonstrates a lack of capacity among PNG

journalists to perform one of their vital roles within a democracy which is to examinewhat government is and is not doing and to provide the public with information,comment, analysis, criticism and alternative views. (Roth, 2001, p.10).

In this respect journalists have trouble overcoming the traditional norms of theirsocieties: PNG people tend to have uncritical acceptance of traditional knowledge andprocedures, with deference given to elders and those in positions of authority, which isoften at odds with the values of modern societies. Critical thinking and problem solvingare not generally taught in schools and the indigenous languages, including Tok Pisin,do not include vocabulary that facilitates questioning and critical thinking. (McLaughlin,1996, McLaughlin, 1997).

Journalists in PNG seem to have no institutional memory and seem unable to draw oninformation from their own archives to put stories into context. For example, in 2002 BillSkate was elected as Speaker of the National Parliament but no media profiled him and

reminded readers that he had been Prime Minister for two years until 1999 and hadresigned in controversial circumstances.

News stories are presented at face value. Reporters tend not to ask questions thatrequire people in positions of power to justify their statements or actions.

Media and the free market


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There is a wide geopolitical consensus that political systems should exist to provideopportunities for all the people to influence government and practice (DFID 2001) andthat the media reinforce or foster this kind of democracy. (Price and Krug, 2002, p.3).

Ojo (2003) has observed that mass media perform five specific functions: reporting thenews, interpreting the news, influencing citizens opinions, setting the agenda for

government action, and socializing citizens about politics encouraging a political cultureto evolve. (Ojo, 2003, p.828).

To engage effectively there is an assumption that access to information is the firstrequirement for an engaged, participative democracy. (Roth, 2001, p.13). An activecitizenry will help prevent governmental excesses and breed trust in the democraticsystem, thereby enabling the private media to perform their functions. (Tetty, 2003, p.28)and the media are the major mechanisms by which citizens are informed about theworld. (Sparks, 1991). There are specific public interest political goals which the mediacan be used to serve, including the following: informing the public, public enlightenment,social criticism and exposing government arbitrariness, national integration and politicaleducation. But the more the media serve the narrow self interest of elite groups the less

able they are to serve the other group of public interests. (Ojo, 2003, pp.829-830).

In a free market, media are an agency of information and debate which facilitates thefunctions of democracy. For Habermas (1989) the free market allows anyone to publishan opinion and ensures all points of view are aired. But, as Curran summarises, thereare restrictions to this model which are the by-product of treating information as acommodity: i) the high costs of entry into the market, ii) the free market restrictsparticipation in public debate. It generates an information rich media for elites andinformation poor media for the general public. iii) it undermines rational debate bygenerating information that is simplified, personified and decontextualised. (Curran,2002, p.226). These restrictions are evident in the PNG market.

The influence of the consumer in PNG is severely limited. Both national newspapersshare a similar agenda and identify with the concerns of the elites. The one televisionstation follows a broadly similar agenda. The privately owned media in PNG do notrepresent the public. Instead, they represent the configuration of power to which they arelinked. In PNG power is maintained through a system of patronage that binds togetherdifferent clans (wantoks) within the structure of a party political coalition in Parliament. Apower network extends to include the economic power exercised by shareholders andmanagers. The media in PNG are themselves part of the economic power structure. TheNational is owned by timber interests and the Post-Courier by a multinationalconglomerate.

The consensus in society tends to be defined by major players and to be echoed by the

media. In PNG the major players are political parties, business, external aid agenciesand representatives of global capitalism and civil society such as international banks, theAsia Development Bank, AusAID, and the International Monetary Fund.

Ma makes the case that in order to secure the support of the state and advertisers themedia tend to protect and promote the interests of the big companies and sponsoringgovernment units. (Ma, 2000, p.22). As long as they are organized around capitalistprinciples the media constitute obstacles to rather than conduits of democracy. Theadvancement of ruling economic and political interests and the suppression of alternate


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views lie at the heart of media operations interested in profit-making rather than publicinformation. (Waisbard, 2000, pp.52-53).

Education and trainingPart of the aim of todays World Media Freedom Day event is to begin to create a pathfor the journalism industry in PNG. There seems to be a consensus emerging within

PNG that its journalists need better education and training, but it is less clear whatexactly is needed. (Skate, 1999, Narokobi, 1999, Philemon, 1999). Bill Skate, whenPrime Minister of PNG, lamented the failure of overseas media companies to train

journalists in PNG. His reasoning owed more to his desire to get PNG a good pressabroad PNG in order to attract investment and tourist dollars than for any need to informthe ordinary people of PNG. (Skate, 1999, pp.44-45).

The leader of the opposition at the time disagreed. Bernard Narokobi wanted a mediathat was development oriented, giving focus to the peoples initiatives in development,with a dedication to science, technology, arts and culture. He also felt poor pay for

journalists contributed to the problem of low quality media, encouraging journalists toaccept government contracts or even bribes to supplement their income.

(Narokobi,1999, pp.154-158).

Training journalists in PNG is not easy. Many people who want to work in the mediahave grown up with little exposure to the range and variety of newspapers, magazines,radio and television programs that people elsewhere in the world would. Aspiringstudents have little understanding of the media and often only slight knowledge of theoutside world or how PNG itself works. (Weber, 1999, pp. 10-12).

Journalists are not well served by the education institutions in PNG. The journalismbachelor degree programme at University of Papua New Guinea effectively closed in1999 leaving Divine Word University (DWU) as the only tertiary institution offering aprogramme in journalism. The DWU programme has been predicated on the belief that

journalism is essentially a craft skill i.e. vocational rather than academic. (Jefferson,1998, p. 1) and therefore it places emphasis on writing, page layout and technicalbroadcasting skills. A new review of the curriculum is underway at DWU and this maychange in the future.

Roth has identified how the media can facilitate greater access to people lacking a voice.Media output needs to be of high quality, relevant and useful to the audience whileallowing the expression of a full range of opinions and matters of public concern. Accessto information is the first requirement of engaged, participative democracy. (Roth, 2001pp.22-23).

To meet these obligations journalism students need craft skills, but the curriculum needs

to move away from the trade school approach to include critical evaluation (rather thandescription), political science, philosophy, jurisprudence and PNG cultural issues.(Rooney, 2003b, pp.85-88).

A student should be able to tackle a range of topics in these courses including theprocedures of legal institutions, constraints on freedom of expression, political, economicand social theories and perspectives, political governance and professional ideologies.


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There need to be opportunities to examine specific social issues including HIV/AIDS,gender inequality, drug and alcohol misuse and corruption. The challenge is to movelearning beyond the acquisition of knowledge to include intellectual skills, analysis,synthesis, evaluation and problem solving. Historically these have been underdevelopedareas in students learning in Papua New Guinea, even at tertiary level.

Academics in developing countries have for a long time recognised the need for theiruniversities to raise their game in journalism and mass communications education. Theysee a dearth of self-criticism and critical appreciation of the media. (Dalal, 1997, p. 102),and a need for MPhil and Ph.D courses to attract the brightest students alongside arequirement for faculty members to possess research-based qualifications. (Behera,1994, p. 140). At university level journalism education should encompass liberal arts andan interdisciplinary approach allowing students to develop the ability to analyse newsituations and come to reasonable conclusions for action. (Hukill, 1994, p.201.)

PNG needs educated journalists who can check government power. This education cancome through university but also from industry supported activities. The universitiesneed to extend their programmes to embrace media law, including specialist training for

media lawyers, not just journalists. Students should develop a capacity to provideanalysis, giving the public information about policies and events. Craft skills shouldextend beyond day to day news coverage to include instruction in investigative

journalism.

This education should extend beyond the university into the workplace such as theworkshops organised by the PNG Media Council which give journalists access tointernational trainers. We should be mindful, however, of Morgans analysis of shortcourse industry training programmes worldwide. He found them generally bereft of newideas, bound by custom and replicating old knowledge. Academic programs ofcommunication and media education were by and large irrelevant and unhelpful to eitherthe maintenance or the improvement of professional practice as they were unduly

atheroetical. (Morgan, 1999, p.74).

ConclusionThe free market for media in PNG has failed as an agency of information and debatewhich facilitates the functions of democracy. The press does not provide the bestplatform for public dialogue. At present the combined circulations of the two daily papersin PNG are less than 60,000 which means that newspapers are bought by about 1 in600 people. Even allowing that each copy of a newspaper may be read by many morepeople than the purchaser, newspaper are still failing to reach the mass of the people.Newspapers are difficult to obtain outside of urban areas, they publish in the elitelanguage, English, and 72 per cent of adults are illiterate and are unable to read themanyway.

Journalists must embrace the villages. Most of the important stories are taking placeoutside of the urban areas, missed by journalists because they have a narrow definitionof interest. Journalism should reflect the concerns and activities of the society it serves,what happened, why it happened and whether it is likely to happen again. It shouldmirror society as a whole and not just that part of society which has gained political officeor come to the attention of the police. (McParland, n.d, p.5). About 85 per cent of PNGpeople live in rural areas and because such a large proportion of the population live inrural areas they are likely to be where trends and events that will have major impact on


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cities later on. Rural areas are where environmental changes are first felt. Socialchanges such as land use, people having to abandon the rural areas for towns, creatingshanty towns settlements. (McParland, n.d, p.6)

There must be other ways to empower the people in rural areas by communicating otherthan through the media and relying on top down mediation (Pamba, 2002, p.13).

Television has the advantage that it can reach, through satellite, remote areas of thepopulation, but news programmes are centred on the capital, Port Moresby, and ruralissues are generally ignored by PNGs only television station, Em-TV. Broadcasts arealmost exclusively in the English language so non-English language viewers areexcluded. Undoubtedly more people understand spoken English than can read it so inthat respect television has an advantage over the printed press, but poor people areexcluded from television as the costs of sets can be prohibitive.

Radio fits in most closely with PNGs oral traditions and has the greatest chance ofproviding the presently disadvantaged population with a platform for the public dialoguethrough which people can define who they are and what they want and how to get it.

(Fraser and Restrepro, 2002, p.70). Nash identifies the advantages of radio in PNG asits ability to reach audiences quickly, especially in the countrys remote rural areas. Setsare cheap to own and there are fewer literacy problems. (Nash, 1995, p.36).

At present commercial radio in PNG has not adopted an informational role and there areno signs that it intends to in the future. It depends on advertising revenue and thereforefaces the same economic imperatives as the press: to deliver audiences that areattractive to advertisers. The countrys publicly funded radio, NBC, which had the remitto provide locally relevant programming has all but collapsed under the weight of underfunding and poor management.

Community radio provides the best way forward for PNG. Fraser and Restrepro-Esrada

(2002) define community radio as a non-profit service that is owned and managed by aparticular community. (Fraser and Restrepro-Esrada, 2002, p.70). The operations ofsuch radio stations rely on the community and the communitys own resources and arecomparatively cheap to set up and to operate. Its programmes are based on audienceaccess and participation and reflect the special interest and needs of the community asthey deal with local issues in local languages and cultural context. (Fraser andRestrepro-Esrada, 2002, p.70).

Community radio can improve on the present media landscape in PNG by creating adiversity of voices and opinions through its openness to participation from all sectors. Itcan provide a platform for the interactive discussion about matters and decisions ofimportance to the community. As Fraser and Restrepro-Esrada put it, the core of

democratic process is in the ability of people to hear and to make themselves heard.Community radio succeeds when it grows out of the communitys sense of internalcohesion and consciousness. (Fraser and Restrepro-Esrada, 2002, pp.70-71).

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Documents

Information for Empowerment and Development Why the Media is Failing the People of Papua New Guinea