Fiji news editors say journalists have a responsibility to advocate

The interviews and research for this story were conducted collaboratively with other QUT journalism students on a study tour in Suva in February 2024. The trip was sponsored by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade via the New Colombo Plan Mobility Grant. However, students' reporting during the trip remains completely independent.

Content warning: the following story includes accounts of violence and other content readers may find distressing.

For over a decade, Fiji’s journalists faced constant risk of being arrested, beaten, and killed for reporting on government affairs.

This was because of laws enacted under the Media Industry Development Act in 2010 by the military government that had seized power of Fiji four years earlier, when military commander Frank Bainamarama ousted Prime Minister Laisenia Qarese in the nation’s fourth coup d'état in 20 years and plunged Fiji into 16 years of repressive rule.

The media censorship laws enforced by the Bainamarama government were the most prohibitive in the Pacific until the new Rabuka government voted to repeal them in 2023.

But Fijian journalists are no strangers to advocacy for positive change, a striking difference to how journalism is taught and practiced in the Western world.

Fiji TV Director of News, Current Affairs and Sports Felix Chaudhary experienced the frightening reality of being a reporter under military rule when he worked for The Fiji Times, and he lived to tell the tale.

“Initially, I was verbally warned to stop. And not only warned, but threatened as well. I think I was a bit gung-ho at the time and I kind of took it lightly until the day I was taken to a particular site and beaten up. I was told that my mother would identify me at a mortuary, and that I would be in a body bag. That’s when I knew that this was now serious, and that I couldn’t be so blasé and think that I’m immune.”

Chaudhary chose to continue reporting, despite the persisting threats, arrests, and beatings.

“If you stop, then who becomes the voice of the people that are affected?” he says.

One of the most pressing issues globally is the looming threat of climate change, and the Pacific islands are among the most vulnerable despite being responsible for less than one per cent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

Rapidly rising sea levels, increasingly intense tropical storms, coral bleaching, and ocean acidification are just some of the effects of climate change that Fiji and other Pacific nations are facing.

Editor of the regional Islands Business magazine Samantha Magick says journalists have a responsibility to advocate for change.

“The climate change issue is a good example of that. Our position from the start was, climate change is real. We need to be talking about this, we need to be holding these discussions in our space.

“As long as you declare that this is our position and where we stand on it, why would I give a climate denier space? Because it’s going to sell more magazines or create more of a stir online? That’s not something that we believe in.”

Looking back on his time at The Fiji Times during military rule, Chaudhary says he isn’t sure whether he would do things differently.

“Sometimes you have to make a stand for what is right, no matter what the consequences are. And people think that’s bravery. It’s not really. It’s just doing what is right."