FIJI'S PRESS ON TOP OF COUP COVERAGE

By: Wayne Robins Online, Print Media Complement the 'Coconut Wireless'



Martial law is decreed by press release. A TV station is trashed by rioters.
Reporters protect colleagues from roving mobs. A coup leader holding hostages
treats journalists to dinner. A wire-service reporter is wounded by gunfire. An
online student paper operates around the clock.



During the recent uprising that began May 19 in the remote South Pacific island
nation of Fiji, the battle for control of the hearts and minds of the people has
been fought the same way it is in the West: through the media.



'All the Fiji Islands news media are reporting freely (and very well) on the
crisis,' Nina Ratulele, director of the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA:
http:// www.pinanius.org), told E&P in a May 23 e-mail message from the
capital city of Suva.



But that was before the imposition of martial law, as declared in press releases
on the official Fiji government Web site (http://www.fiji.gov.fj). An interim
military government suspended Fiji's 1997 constitution May 30 following a tense
week during which the elected prime minister, Mahendra Chaudhry, continued to be
held hostage with some 30 legislators at the nation's Parliament complex.



On May 27, a British journalist working for AP Television News was shot in the
wrist during a gun battle. The next day, a mob trashed the studios and offices
of Fiji One TV, forcing the station off the air, in retaliation for a broadcast
critical of coup leader George Speight.



PINA implored authorities to ensure the safety of the country's news media to
keep the nation's 800,000 citizens accurately informed, rather than allowing
rumors to be spread via 'coconut wireless.'



The crisis was started by Speight, a businessman who blamed the government for
his financial setbacks. Speight was able to aggravate nagging ethnic hostilities
in Fiji. Indigenous Fijians make up about 44% of the population; 48% is made up
of Fijians whose families, like Chaudhry's, came from India. 'We will not have
an Indian as our prime minister,' Speight has said.



The powerful Great Council of Chiefs apparently agreed, and the Fijian president
dismissed Chaudhry's government May 28.



Two of Fiji's three daily English-language newspapers as well as the electronic
edition of the University of South Pacific's journalism school newspaper
Wansolwara, reported without interruption. They are the locally owned
Fiji Sun and Rupert Murdoch's Fiji Times. A third English paper,
the Daily Post, resumed publication May 24 after a four-day shutdown.
'Its offices are in a part of Suva that was badly hit by the arson and looting
of May 19,' Ratulele said. 'Shops right next to [the paper] were looted and
burned.'



The indigenous Fijian journalists on the staff of the Daily Post formed a
human chain outside their offices during the anti-Indian riots to protect their
Indian colleagues, Ratulele said.



David Robie, journalism coordinator at the University of the South Pacific, said
there are only about 3,000 Internet users in Fiji. Yet despite minimal
resources, his students at the Pacific Journalism Online Web site have been on
the front line of the story. (Access to the site at http://www.usp.ac.fj/journ
has been erratic since May 30.)



'Reporters use three digital cameras, one cellular phone,' and get around by
taxi or foot,' Robie said in an e-mail dispatch to E&P. Two student
interns at Radio Fiji were among the first to arrive at the Parliament building
when it was taken by the rebels. 'We were told, 'Get the hell out of here!'' one
told Robie. 'So we hid in the cassava bushes and watched what was going on.'
Using their cell phone, they called the radio station with the bulletin that
announced the takeover in paradise.