Unraveling Fiji’s social cohesion puzzle
The role of media and responsible reporting
IT'S such honor to speak at the launch of the Conflict-Sensitive Reporting Manual for Fijian Journalists.
Conflict and insufficient social cohesion are the biggest challenges in our beloved nation, and all and any efforts to mitigate and address this situation are laudable.
The research literature posits that while news media can exacerbate social and political conflicts through their reporting styles and focus, they also have the potential to alleviate tense situations by adopting the proper approaches.
The Conflict-Sensitive Reporting Manual for Fijian Journalists includes guidelines for reporting conflicts in a responsible manner by, among other things, doing the requisite research, and avoiding unnecessarily inflammatory tones.
The manual is part of Dialogue Fiji's work in "social cohesion". Dialogue Fiji also published the proceedings of its first symposium on social cohesion in 2017 entitled Ethnic relations in Fiji: Threats and opportunities.
The book, which I co-edited with Dialogue Fiji Executive Director Nilesh Lal, not only highlighted the challenges of social cohesion in Fiji, but also the reservoir of goodwill in our communities, despite everything that we have been through together.
I warmly welcome this manual and support Dialogue Fiji's work because in my opinion, social cohesion is Fiji's biggest challenge.
More than 50 years after independence we are still struggling with social cohesion, not the least because it is a complex problem given our context, with no overnight solutions.
The problem requires commitment from every sector of our nation, the media being no exception.
In this regard, conflict-sensitive reporting can be seen as the national media's contribution to social cohesion and nation building.
To understand how conflict-sensitive reporting can contribute positively, we first need to look at the media-conflict dynamic, that is, how media conventionally report conflicts.
According to critics, most violent conflicts are "rooted in resource or land disputes, but fought with strong references to ethnic, cultural, and religious identities".
The news media tend to focus on the manifestations of conflict, such as the tensions, violence, and damage, rather than the root causes. This lopsided approach risks feeding prejudices and fueling misconceptions.
Conflict sensitive reporting, on the other hand, takes a nuanced approach to the coverage of conflicts, in that it does not regard conflict as run-of-the mill, daily news reporting, but something that needs extra care and attention.
Conflict-sensitive reporting is an informed and considered approach, based on a commitment to understanding the roots of a conflict and reporting in an in-depth and circumspect manner.
The idea is to not only "not do any harm" but report stories with the aim of facilitating solutions to conflict.
It should be pointed that conflictsensitive reporting is an idea that is not fully accepted in the news media fraternity, which has traditionally espoused reporting the "facts" in a fair and balance manner.
But what is "fair and balanced" is in itself heavily debated and contested in the news media sector.
As a university journalism program, we at The University of the South Pacific are open to experimenting with new and innovative concepts like conflict-sensitive reporting.
The framework has been designed for developing countries with multiethnic communities at greater risk of conflict, than societies with greater ethnic homogeneity.
Such countries are highly susceptible to movement towards civil conflict and/or repressive rule. If this sounds familiar, it is because "civil conflict and repressive rule" have been very much part of our Fiji existence.
Fiji, mired in ethnic tensions and political differences culminating in four coups fits the description of "fragile" or "vulnerable societies".
Media have described Fiji's coups as "bloodless", "short-lived", "clean-up-campaign" or "coup-to-end all coups."
This terminology is regrettable because it grossly underestimates the lingering, sustained, pervasive, long-term damage of our coup culture.
For example, research published by Professors Biman Prasad and Paresh Narayan in 2008 indicates a 20-year infrastructure deficit of $3.4 billion partly due to instability.
Likewise, Professor Wadan Narsey, in his 2013 article, estimates that by 2011, Fiji had lost $1,700 million because of the 2006 coup alone.
This included $400 million in government revenue, which could have been used in education, health, infrastructure and public debt repayments.
Because of there have been only a few deaths related to the four coups in Fiji, the coups are often described as "bloodless".
However, the coups have caused a social and economic bloodbath—if the figures I have just cited are anything to go by.
The expression "death by a thousand cuts" comes to mind. We do not feel the pain immediately because after the initial shock, there are smaller aftershocks that we feel and absorb over the course of years and decades.
In time, these repeated blows add up to inflict deeper wounds that are more difficult to heal, but we adjust to the pain, normalise it, and learn to live with our situation, especially the poor and disadvantaged, who face the brunt of it.
In Fiji these wounds are manifest in the lack of services, dilapidated infrastructure, low life expectancy, lack of opportunities, low employment, high crime, brain drain, and so forth.
Fiji gives meaning to renowned author Paul Collier's words: "wars and coups are not tea parties: they are development in reverse".
Some of the key underlying causes of our lack of progress are the lack of social cohesion and national unity, which equal unrealised potential.
Since the 1980s there has been idle talk of turning Fiji into a Singapore, and more recently, political chatter about Fiji surpassing Australia and New Zealand
This is a pipe dream unless we get social cohesion right by learning to resolve our differences without guns, and move together as a united force.
This requires leadership and vision from the government, support and selflessness from citizens and responsibility from the news media, with regards to taking it on themselves to understand the national context, and tailor their coverage accordingly.
In this regard, I applaud DF for the Conflict Sensitive Reporting Manual for Fijian Journalists.