A logging company that owns a national newspaper, the Pacific's 'best' newspaper renamed and revamped, and now an inquiry into media accountability -- Papua New Guinea's media is going through interesting times.
By DAVID ROBIE in Port Moresby
Papua New Guinea's latest newspaper venture, the Independent, made an embarrassing debut in May last year. Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan was guest of honour at the gala launching. But when time came to cutting the ribbon on the first bundle off the press, the papers were not to be seen.
The flustered management of the publishers, Word Publishing Company Pty Ltd, admitted that press problems had delayed the paper. When the new paper finally left the press, some distributors complained of missing out on the 24-page main news section.
This was an unfortunate start for a new national paper that has replaced The Times of Papua New Guinea -- a major influence in the country's publishing industry. The Times was a South Pacific benchmark for investigative journalism in the 1980s, leading to the Barnett commission of inquiry into the logging industry, the Pelair and Placer Pacific inquiries.
Closure of The Times and the launch of the Independent is a recent development in a dynamic news media industry in Papua New Guinea. In November 1993, a new daily, the National, launched by the Malaysian logging group Rimbunan Hijau, took on the South Pacific's biggest circulation daily, Post-Courier (then 43,000), a Murdoch-owned stablemate of the Fiji Times.
In November 1994, NauFM (20 per cent owned and managed by William Parkinson's Communications Fiji Ltd) made a trail-blazing start in commercial broadcasting. Using the latest all computer driven technology so far adopted by just two other global radio stations (New York and Sydney), NauFM has already made a dramatic impact.
In June last year, the Pacific Islands News Association, a regional media publishers' and owners' organisation, staged its convention in Papua New Guinea for the first time since PINA was founded two decades ago.
Word Publishing, wholly owned by Media Holdings Pty Ltd (shareholders being the mainstream churches: Roman Catholic, 60 per cent; Evangelical Lutheran, 20 per cent; United, 10 per cent; Anglican, 10 per cent), has taken on a big challenge trying to tackle PNG's uncertain weekend newspaper market.
Both the Post-Courier and the National have shied away from using a six-day week publishing formula because of doubt that there is sufficient market at weekends. At the time of The Times suspension -- it may possibly be revamped as a magazine in the future -- it was selling about 9,000 copies a week, about 6,000 less than its Tok Pisin stablemate Wantok, and considerably less than the two dailies.
Media critics lament that the new newspaper looks little different from the Times -- apart from a change in masthead design and colours. Editorial staff were divided about the new paper. Word publisher and editor-in-chief Anna Solomon, who has been with the publishing group for 15 years, was critical about the closure of the Times.
Solomon is acknowledged as the leading woman journalist in the Pacific and is a strong advocate for more in-depth, investigative and independent journalism in PNG. She was selected as 'Pacific Woman of the Year' in 1993 by Pacific Islands Business magazine for her contribution to the media and press freedom.
According to Independent general manager Ian Fry: 'This move into the mass-circulation newspaper market represents a major expansion for Word Publishing which celebrates this year as the 25th anniversary of the publication of its first newspaper, Wantok. '
Launching the new paper, Prime Minister Chan said it was a bitter-sweet occasion: The birth of The Independent marked the death of the Times. He challenged the Independent to ensure that the investigative journalism of the Times which in the past 15 years had often shaken the PNG political and business establishment, survived.
'It is important that the media confronts corruption and slackness in the public sector as well as dishonest businessmen and individuals,' Chan said.
While insisting that his government supported freedom of the press as enshrined in the Constitution, he said such freedom carried 'responsibility and accountability' which had too often been lacking.
Elected leaders were made to answer for their behaviour at the polls and under the Leadership Code; yet journalists did not face the same sort of accountability.
'Journalists also have a lot of power, but are rarely, if ever, made to answer for abusing it, ' Chan said. 'If I do something corrupt or wrong, I will be slammed hard. That is the way it should be. Let the same apply to journalists. ' The Prime Minister said he wanted to see news media pay a greater penalty for abuses.
'There is nothing quite like a hefty lawsuit to work wonders for journalistic accuracy and responsibility. There is a more simple term for it here in PNG -- compensation, ' he said.
A Word Publishing director, retired Bishop David Hand, condemned corruption within PNG's national leadership and said the new paper should also strive to change the spiritual and social life of the nation which had been so corrupted.
The irony of both Chan's and Hand's comments about corruption was that a Australian SBS Dateline television documentary had just alleged 'systemic and systematic' corruption in the PNG leadership. The investigative report detailed several controversial business dealings involving Malaysian companies and claimed a system of 'bribenomics' had taken over.
A challenging time for The Independent's debut. Media critics believe it needs to achieve the authority its predecessor Times managed in the mid-1980s, for the new paper to gain the advertising and market share it needs.
The Independent has been wasting no time pursuing the challenge vigorously. In recent months it has run a series of probing reports on logging, housing, political corruption and national development policies.
In 1993 a subsidiary of the Malaysian-owned logging company, Rimbunan Hijau, launched a national newspaper in PNG, the National.
Then Prime Minister Paias Wingti launched the paper at its converted South Pacific Machinery warehouse headquarters in Port Moresby on 10 November 1993, proclaiming the occasion 'historic'. The K8 million enterprise was a bold move as part of the prime minister's 'look North' policy and immediately stirred controversy.
Malaysia's Datuk Tiong, chairman of Pacific Star, said he could not help admiring Papua New Guinea's vitality and potential: 'PNG can be likened to a glittering diamond that has become a new focal point in the Asia-Pacific region.' He added that he hoped the National would serve the people of PNG well by being 'truthful and impartial' and by 'serving as a bridge between the Government and the people'.
But this is precisely where the controversy came in. The owners of the new paper were seen by some media critics and Opposition politicians as too close to the Wingti Government of the time and to the powerful timber industry lobby, dominated by Malaysian and Japanese companies, to be considered genuinely independent.
Sir Frederick Reiher, PNG's High Commissioner in Canberra, was among outspoken critics. In his weekly column in the influential Times of PNG (now Independent), he warned about the newspaper's probable conflict of interest. This arose, he said, out of the need, on the one hand, to maintain media impartiality and, on the other to defend its commercial interests.
Reiher said: 'The policy makers must be wary of the other interests that the new media promoters have in the country. Companies are self-interested and profit-seeking in the first place.
'Their prime and foremost concern is the protection and enhancement of their economic gains, to which end their media interests will certainly be exploited to the full. This eventuality will be so much accentuated if the media investor is also a major player in the development of the nation's natural resources.
'The media will become a powerful tool to influence popular support in favour of the foreign investor against all opposition, be they in the form of government policies or landowners' benefits.'
In this case, the new media investor was the single largest forestry development company in Papua New Guinea. One could imagine the outcry if one of the country's largest mining developers, such as Placer or CRA, decided to establish a daily newspaper -- not that they would ever consider doing so.
Four Malaysians, two Papua New Guineans (business and political associates of the then prime minister) and a New Zealand lawyer were on the board of directors at the time the paper made its debut. Majority stockholders (51 per cent) were from Monarch Investments (a Rimbunan Hijau group company) and the minority PNG shareholding was expected to be increased over a three-year period.
Rimbunan Hijau executive officer George Yong said the newspaper venture was consistent with RH's long-term thinking about Papua New Guinea: 'We have been invited to this country by successive governments. Timber is our mainstream business, but we are also good at publishing.' In Sarawak alone, the RH group employs 15,000 people. The group is involved in copper, gold, plantations, shipping, insurance, heavy machinery, banking, and it owns a Chinese-language newspaper in Kuala Lumpur, Sin Chew Jit Poh, with a circulation of about 150,000.
In PNG, the Rimbunan Hijau (PNG) Pty Ltd group dominates the export log trade, although while the Forests Ministry insists it has an 86 per share, RH says it is considerably less than that.
It directly employs 3,000 people and its activities in 1992 reportedly earned an after tax profit of K350 million. It has one of the world's largest timber concessions at Makapa, Western province, with timber rights over 7 million cubic metres of exportable log. In February, 1993, the RH group's chairman, Datuk Tiong, announced that the local company would build a K150 million integrated wood processing complex near Port Moresby.
Since then there has been little word about the project. This prompted the Post-Courier to remark recently in an editorial: 'The question that is begging is whether [landholders] should believe any of the big announcements about downstream processing projects? ' The National's owners tried to downplay the controversy over the paper.
Even the title was kept secret -- until a week before the launch date -- and this was said to be because of sensitivity over such a name for a foreign-owned paper. A 'national' denotes an indigenous PNG citizen. Until then the paper had been known as the Pacific Star.
The present editor-in-chief and executive editor are Papua New Guinean, however virtually all the subeditors are Malaysian or Filipino. Editor, Frank Senge Kolma, one of PNG's best-known journalists is Wingti's former press secretary.
Rival Post-Courier editor Oseah Philemon has been undisturbed by the new challenge. 'It is a good thing for us to have competition,' he says. 'It isn't good for a democracy to have a media monopoly. We have a good team to face the challenge. And now I think people realise how independent we are.'
Meanwhile moves are afoot to check the independence that PNG's press has been able to exhibit. As part of a constitutional review, expected to steer Papua New Guinea towards eventually becoming a republic, Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan's government is seeking to introduce legislation which could fetter a traditionally free press.
A hastily constituted Media Council, representing the country's leading news organisations, staged a two-day public seminar in March involving leading politicians, judges, academics, an archbishop, journalists and grassroots activists in an attempt to defend press freedom.
The Constitutional Review Commission has been given a directive to produce a draft law by June 1996. Commission chairman Ben Micah recently led a fact-finding delegation to five Asian countries -- including China -- regarded as having an authoritarian view of the news media or practising censorship.
'Is there a real justification for such a move? ' asked The Independent. 'Any attempt to tamper with the freedom of the media must be viewed cautiously.' Micah was asked to cite three examples of alleged abuse by the news media as evidence of a need for legislation. Micah listed two instances, both involving himself.
The Media Council argues that regulating the media is not a substitute for good government. Both the commission and the Prime Minister have pledged that the basic, constitutionally guaranteed, freedom of the media will be upheld, but that greater 'accountability' will be sought.
But community leaders and editors are sceptical. They say laws of defamation and an existing process of self-regulation based on a press council are adequate safeguards.
The arrest of the Tongan journalist increased concern in the region, including the media in Port Moresby, because Tonga's constitution -- like Papua New Guinea's -- guarantees freedom of speech.
Although Papua New Guinea has rarely figured on international lists of transgressing nations over violations of press freedom -- two gaggings of the National Broadcasting Commission in the past two years have been cited -- editors believe they are waging their toughest fight.
Professor David Flint, chairman of the Australian Press Council, told the Media Council seminar that United States constitutional protection for the press was an example the Pacific could follow. In effect, he said, the US First Amendment prohibited laws abridging freedom of the press.
Flint also highlighted safeguards within Papua New Guinea's own constitution. Under Section 46, every person in Papua New Guinea has the right to freedom of expression and freedom of the press.
Opposition Member of Parliament John Momis, one of the fathers of the constitution, said the objective of Section 46 was to be a 'formal guarantee' and a 'formal protection of the citizens' innate rights and freedoms'.
He recalled that the provision was founded on 'one of the great principles on which democracy rests [that] is the right to differ on any topic of discussion, be it social, economic, political, cultural or religious'.
If the government were to truly honour this constitutional provision, he said, a Freedom of Information Act would be passed.
A leading PNG journalist, Neville Togarewa, branded the constitutional media review as 'rash, ill-conceived and without justification'.
He said the review had been forced by the government's 'failure to financially support its own information and communication services to better serve government and the public'.
Copyright © 1996 David Robie and Asia-Pacific Network
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