Fiji Accuses News Ltd Of 'Hostile Campaign'

Fiji Accuses News Ltd Of 'Hostile Campaign'

http://www.fijilive.com/news/2010/08/24/27726.Fijilive

SUVA (Fijilive.com/Pacific Media Watch): The Fiji government has accused Australian media giant News Limited of continuing a “hostile media campaign against Fiji”.

Permanent Secretary for Information Sharon Smith-Johns said recent articles on Fiji published in News Ltd-owned newspapers directly targeted Fiji’s tourism industry and economy.

“In recent weeks, News Ltd newspapers have published numerous articles on Fiji, all of which perpetrate negativity about Fiji,” said Smith-Johns.

“It begs the question that most in Fiji are asking. Is the Australian government using News Limited as a tool to punish Fiji and cripple our economy? These stories are so unbalanced it boils down to nothing but propaganda.”

Sharon-Smith said her ministry had written formal letters of complaint about the reports and copied them to the relevant bodies for necessary action.

She listed several articles, one of which was titled "Australian tourists turn a blind eye as Fiji’s best people are persecuted", in the Courier-Mail, which reported that “it should be a source of profound shame to our country that Australians are going on holidays to Fiji in record numbers”.

Australian-born Smith-Johns said the article was written by Rory Gibson, a former editor-in-chief of the Fiji Times, which is owned by News Ltd, and which has one more month to become 90 percent locally owned under Fiji’s new media decree or close down.

Quoting another article published in The Independent (UK) newspaper titled "Pirate radio tries to beat repression in paradise", Smith-Johns said the writer, Roger Maynard, reports: "In recent years, faced with eviction from their Fijian-owned farms after their leases expired, thousands of Indians have sought refuge overseas while many of those unable to leave have ended up in squatter camps and that many thousands of Fijians are forced to live in the squatter camps around the capital, Suva”.

Said Smith-Johns: “I have little doubt Roger Maynard has never been to Suva or Fiji as his perception of events is divorced from the realities on the ground.”

She also challenged the Courier-Mail to provide evidence that what is currently happening in Fiji is comparable to “South Africa’s dark ages”, as written in the Rory Gibson article.

Smith-Johns pointed out that more than 45,000 Australians visited Fiji in May alone and that over the last 12 months an average 10,000 Australians have been visiting Fiji.

ENDS