The state of Fiji’s media landscape over the past decade created a very confrontational industry pitting journalists and newsrooms against each other.
This was the view of Lice Movono, the Fiji correspondent of Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) while speaking during a panel discussion organised at the University of the South Pacific (USP) to commemorate World Press Freedom Day on Wednesday.
Ms Movono spoke on the importance of working across newsrooms, a sentiment she stressed heavily on, especially to budding regional journalists.
“As a result of restrictive leadership we’ve had and the draconian legislation we’ve come out of, our newsrooms don’t work with each other,” she said. ”
Well, I think they’re working with each other now, to some extent but for eight years, they didn’t. For eight years we were forced into confrontational styles of working against each other. For eight years, we saw each other as competitors instead of comrades and the fight to provide impartial news to our people, so they can make well-informed decisions.”
She highlighted there were benefits of working with journalists from different organisations.
“If you work across newsrooms, you get the benefit of other people’s brains. You need to work together because the challenges we face as journalists are unprecedented and complicated.”
Ms Movono said those challenges centered around social media, disinformation and misinformation.
