Friday, March 21, 2014 at 7:43 AM UNITECH STUDENTS MOTIVATED BY CONSTANT ERRORS AND ONE SIDED REPORTING IN POST COURIER AND NATIONAL NEWSPAPERS By: Former PNG Journalist PNG’s standard of journalism as practiced by our national newspapers has been on serious decline for at least the last 10 years. Probably their lowest point came in 2012 during the national election campaign when both newspapers investigated nothing and ran press releases by competing candidates creating confusion when opposing candidates were promoted in back-to-back stories that started out with “_____ ______ has become the hot candidate in the ________ electorate” (fill in the blanks with candidate name and place). This is pathetic and shows how sadly things have sunk since the heydays of PNG journalism in the 1980’s and 1990’s and the inspiring journalism programme at UPNG headed by Mr David Robie or the editorial leadership of Oseah Philemon at the Post Courier. The concept of “investigative journalism” today has become nothing but a dream at the two newspapers. The UPNG and Divine Word journalism departments fail to inspire and infect their students deeply enough that they will promote and push for doing proper journalism at our daily newspapers once they get jobs there. The result has been a serious decline in the truthfulness of newspaper content in PNG. Only for the most important, national interest issues is there any attempt these days to carry out investigative journalism or present both sides of a story. Everything else is nothing more than some or now rewording of press releases received by lazy reporters. PNG newspapers are not a source of information or truths, but sources of competing propagandas. It also appears that the mainstream media generally ignores what is reported on the social media and thus takes no interest in presenting both sides of any story. Because of this situation, the government has mostly controlled the messages the newspapers publish about Uni-tech Saga. The student’s underlying theme - that this has been a struggle for truth and justice and fight against corruption - has never come out clearly in either newspaper, which why the newspapers have never been able to get out of the rut of complaining about boycotts and how it will affect the students’ schooling. It is very clear that reporters never bothered to talk to a range of student leaders and get their perspective before they published the government propaganda. It also appears that they never read PNGBLOGS! (lol). The result is that the newspapers have mostly published the government line that the students are bad, bad, bad and selfish, selfish, selfish and must go back to class. Bigger truths are never reported. The students and their struggle end up looking bad. Worse, the students themselves are not writing letters to either newspaper with rare exceptions and thus don’t even seem to try to control the story line. Does the student movement have anyone who is going public relations with the newspapers? Now the newspapers are attacking the SRC president himself as being selfish, etc. Again, they seem to overlook what the whole purpose of the student movement is. Is it selfish to fight to reverse the 30 year decline in our universities, or to fight the corruption and mismanagement that has led to today’s decrepit institutions? Fortunately there is a very bright lining to this cloud of journalistic inaccuracy and I am learning that it is growing stronger by the day on the Uni-tech campus. The students have become well aware of the journalistic bias against them and many are now furious at the newspapers, particularly The National. Last week the National themselves reported that their staff were chased out when they tried to enter the university. This student anger is the silver lining in the cloud of biased reporting: it is creating motivation within the students to show the country and the world that they mean business. And thus we have seen the multi-province awareness effort and overall, an increase in the volume of the protest in recent days. Stories about Unitech are now a daily event in both papers. Thank you PNG newspapers, especially The National, for motivating the students to a degree that would not otherwise have been possible. Injustice takes many forms, including inaccurate reporting and plain old misinformation. The more cases of injustice they see, hopefully the greater will be the student persistence. And by the way National and Post Courier, stop being so sloppy on the facts. The Unitech boycott has not gone on since the beginning of the year but only since 2 March. Schram was never sacked from his job by those who had the power to terminate his employment. Quite the opposite; his contract was reinstated following the efforts of the interim council (whom The National listened to much too much). Obviously you people don’t care about the facts. Just make up something and hope the public believes it. What you’re overlooking is that the internet is now here to hold you accountable.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 22:35:00 +0000
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