Written for UCLA's AsiaMedia

Michael Field says news media needs to look beyond a simplistic view of media freedom and think more about the dramatically burdensome responsibility of what to do when everybody else in a society is falling apart

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

By Michael Field
AsiaMedia Contributing Writer

As a gang of special forces soldiers and an odd collection of failed politicians and civilians seized Fiji's parliament in 2000 one vital aspect of the Dummies’ Guide to Staging Coups was missing: They did not occupy radio stations.

Perhaps it was an oversight on the part of the plotters, led by George Speight, but it turned out their oversight did not cost them anyway. In a free and uncensored market, particularly the market of broadcasting in Fiji, messages from traitors-to-be were rating winners guaranteed airtime without coercion.

Five years on from the Speight coup the role of the media in Fiji's crisis has only been casually explored, despite the real dangers lurking within a free media in such a setting. In many ways, an unrestrained and at times downright undisciplined media helped create the atmosphere which engendered a coup and then sustained it.

As a reporter intimately involved before, during and after the coup, I've found the lack of debate disturbing. Journalists like to believe "media freedom" is an unfettered, unquestioned right. When such freedom cuts away at the core of democracy itself, such devotion to freedom looks, at best, indulgent, and at worst, suicidal.

The month of May is rich in anniversaries for Fiji: May 14, 1897 marked the arrival of the first Indian workers; May 14, 1987, Sitiveni Rabuka's first military coup; May 19, 1999, the election of the first Indo-Fijian prime minister, Mahendra Chaudhry; and on  May 19, 2000 Speight's coup took place. In considering the media freedom issue, Chaudhry's election is a useful starting point, but the kernel of the problems existed earlier than that.

Chaudhry's Fiji Labour Party won the 1999 elections by a landslide. The party took 37 seats in the 71 member house and when it linked up with other parties to form the "People's Coalition" it controlled 58 seats. Undoubtedly the people had spoken; it was a completely unambiguous result.

For reasons not yet fully explained, Chaudhry however had no honeymoon in office and quickly found himself ensnared in a bitter media war. Part of the problem was, plainly, his own behaviour; he was startlingly arrogant and when confronted with genuine issues of concern (such as hiring his own son to a lucrative post) he responded with all the hostility useful in his former profession as a trade unionist. Chaudhry's relationship with a female journalist was christened by the media as the "Tea Lady scandal." Most of the prominent stories exposing Chaudhry's relationship were, however, written by another female journalist who was involved in what later became a high profile affair and paternity dispute with defeated Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka.

Hard fought media freedoms were being used in what became known as "skirt journalism" by reporters who had vested interests in the various romances. So it was hardly surprising that civil rights advocate Jone Dakuvula told journalism lecturer David Robie that the Fiji Times agenda "was to de-legitimise the elected government by creating a climate of scandal, loathing and fear so the Fiji Labour Party, at least, would not be able to effectively implement its manifesto" (Asia-Pacific Network, December 6, 2000).

Chaudhry himself claimed in a 1999 speech to the Fijian Media Council that the media had its personal agendas: "It makes one wonder whether there is not a conspiracy at work here between [a particular reporter] and these anti-government elements.”

It was a moot point because shortly after, Chaudhry and his government were Speight's hostages.

Speight seized Parliament on the morning of Friday May 19, 2000 and, with an armed gang, supplemented by hundreds of indigenous villagers seduced into town by radio reports, held the Chaudhry government hostage for 56 days. During the hostage period the then President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara sacked Chaudhry and was in turn deposed by the military who declared martial law. By the time Chaudhry was freed, he was never allowed to back into the
premier's office.

It cannot be argued that the media was to blame for the coup; other forces were at work behind the scenes, not least of which were the base ambitions of a group of failed politicians who had been severely mauled in the 1999 elections. But in an odd way the media, particularly radio, accidentally ensured that Speight and the gang won the tactical advantage
on that day in 2000.

Speight had few resources the morning he seized Parliament. Even the involvement of soldiers from the Counter Revolutionary Warfare unit in the seizure was not enough. Speight needed supporters around him to prevent any action by pro-government police and military units. The second arm of the coup was a march by indigenous nationalists led by failed politician Iliesa Duvuloco. Once Parliament was seized, Duvuloco's marchers were supposed to flood into Parliament and provide human shields for what quickly became labeled "The Cause." There was a problem though: Most of the marchers went off into the Suva business district and ransacked the place, looting shops.

Three reporters were in Parliament when Speight seized it and radio was carrying the proceedings live. Others reporters quickly arrived and Fiji's highly competitive radio market was suddenly pumping out various and often unverified accounts in three languages of what was going on. Short order commercial radio was giving free rein to the plotters' voices; the plotters had no reason to seize control of radio broadcasts -- they were with Speight already. Even before the police could organise some kind of reaction, Speight was on the nation's airwaves appealing for support. The Speight coup may not have succeeded to the extent it did without radio broadcasting the calls from Parliament. What was news and what was incitement was lost in those early days and an unrestrained media showed itself to have deadly consequences in a situation slipping into anarchy.

For a moment, the President Mara tried to impose some control on the situation and promulgated an order prohibiting television cameras inside Parliament. His order was ignored and within 48 hours Mara himself was out of a job and the military had taken over.

One of the seminal media moments of the coup belonged to Fiji TV's Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum who hosted a weekly current affairs show, Close-up. Nine days into the crisis he hosted a live discussion with commercial radio station owner William Parkinson and Dakuvula. Parkinson was under some pressure as it had become quickly evident that commercial radio was fanning the crisis.

"The media has been at fault in allowing some of the spokesmen for these people to speak, particularly on radio," Dakuvula said.

But the main element of the programme was a trenchant attack on the coup plotters themselves.

"They've just mobilised poor Fijians who really don't understand what they're going for," Dakuvula said. "They're genuine and they are feeling -- well, this is really a cause for Fijians, we must support this. But they don't know the agenda of these people who have actually manipulated them to support the coup."

Dozens of men supporting Speight flooded out of Parliament after the programme and physically attacked Fiji TV, wrecking equipment and completely trashing the newsroom.

One aspect that puzzled many during the coup was the way in which the media camped inside Parliament. Although the media had no access to the hostages, Speight had unfettered access to them, through which he carried his message across Fiji and to the outside world.

This relationship raised real questions over whether this media behaviour had crossed the line from observer to participant. Some reporters simply lost their sense of purpose in the operation.

"Some of the behaviour of the foreign press was disgraceful," says Television New Zealand's Barbara Dreaver who covered the coup. She says that members of the press were joking and playing around with some of the rebels. "It made me sick to the stomach because these guys were terrorists and this wasn't meant to be an exciting adventure."

At one point in the drama Speight decided to take some journalists hostages for a short time, primarily to demonstrate that he could and to find out how authorities would respond.

Unlike Rabuka's 1978 coup, there was no formal effort to censor the media and for much of the time the news media found themselves operating in a no-rules environment where the only restraints on what they could do were those they imposed on themselves. It was not always a useful experience, and certainly not helpful for justice and democracy.

Many of the reporters, however, got past the novelty effect and saw through Speight. It was important for reporters to be in Parliament to witness history. As it turned out, they were legal witnesses and their accounts helped sent people to jail. Fiji TV's coverage of an illegal swearing-in of a rebel government was a damning piece of evidence in treason trials. Without it, justice would have been harder to achieve. In a sense, too, the journalists were helping to restrain the situation; Speight loved having the media close to him but that also meant he had to surrender some of the control he desired. He could hardly kill or beat up people with the media always around.

At the time of the coup and hostage crisis few journalists had the luxury to think beyond that day's story; if it was anarchy at Parliament, it was raw competition in the headlines. Thus little long-term thought went into understanding the effects of journalism on the situation.

The Fiji military appear to be giving some thought to it though and the country's army spokesman, Captain Neumi Leweni, told an April 24 media workshop in Suva that the media has the power to intensify or help resolve conflict.

According to the Fiji Times, Leweni saw the media as "an instrument of conflict resolution, when the information it represents is reliable, respects human rights and represents diverse views.”

He said journalism was the most important channel of communication between sides in a conflict. "Good journalism explores the difficulties faced by conflicting parties," he said, adding that it builds confidence between sides and encourages opponents to revise their views.

Leweni's conciliatory comments towards the media hide the very pressing need in the South Pacific for the news media to look beyond a simplistic view of media freedom, and toward a more dramatically burdensome responsibility of what to do when everybody else in a society is falling apart. It might sound like a rare situation, but one that threatens to become commonplace -- as Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea have adequately demonstrated in recent years.

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Michael Field has been a journalist for over thirty years and is the author of several books. His most recent book, Speight of Violence: Inside Fiji's 2000 coup, was co-authored by Tupeni Baba and Unaisi Nabobo-Baba and will be published May 13 by Reeds Publishing in New Zealand and Pandanus Books, Australia.

The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily shared by AsiaMedia or the UCLA Asia Institute.

Date Posted: 4/26/2005

Copyright: Michael Field