Today is a very special day for the Fiji Times company.
We celebrate 152 years of existence. Yesterday, it rained in the Capital City, Suva.
As the rain fell, and the skies above darkened, with a wreath at his grave in Suva, we remembered the man who started it all. George Littleton Griffiths was a man with a vision.
Born on July 29, 1844 in London, he was the eldest of six children. He obviously was a man who was willing to accept challenges.
Given the times he grew up in, he would have had to rely on hope if he planned to move out of his comfort zone, and he obviously knew hard work would have to be factored in.
He travelled to Port Chalmers in Dunedin, New Zealand with his father, where he worked as a compositor for Mills, Dick & Co.
When you consider London and New Zealand were worlds away from the little sleepy town of Levuka, you’d probably expect him to remain in NZ. He could have opted to, but he did not! He looked to the South Pacific, specifi
cally to a little town on an island in Fiji to start a life. He had big plans and a vision. Mr Griffi ths left Port Lyttelton in Christchurch, NZ, in early 1869 and headed for Levuka, where he started our journey. Yesterday was about acknowledgement.
It was also about reflection, remembering a man, the ideals he espoused and the newspaper he started. Mr Griffiths started The Fiji Times newspaper when settlers at the time were still taking small steps on the path to nationhood. He set the base to live his dream.
Remember when Mr Griffith arrived in Levuka, there was no form of government.
The late Sir Len Usher, a former editor of The Fiji Times, on October 15, 1962 shared a glimpse of the life of the people of Levuka at the time. He referred to the Cyclopaedia of Fiji: “ … considering the freedom from restraint which the settlers enjoyed, every man doing as he thought right in his own eyes, the community was an exceedingly orderly one, and comparatively few disturbances occurred.”
So for the first two years, the press played an important part in the preservation of order! Today we celebrate another year of existence and look forward with a view to improve what Mr Griffith started.
We value the ideals of good journalism, and know we must be prepared for criticism.
We realise that a vibrant media is important for the development of our nation.
There must be truth spoken to power, and there must be accountability, with power being held to account. Tough questions must be asked, accountability stressed, and good deeds acknowledged.
We know there is so much we can do together for our nation.
In saying that, we realise we work in an environment that is tough. There are massive penalties for breaching sections of the Media Industry Development Act for instance.
And these amount to as much as $100,000 for media companies and up to $25,000 for editors and publishers, and the possibility of imprisonment.
In the face of this major challenge, sits the need for journalism that operates without fear or favour.
This is not an easy feat to manage daily, but it must be done.
Today we also acknowledge all the staff of the newspaper for doing what they do daily, to keep a legacy alive, and to assist in the development of a nation we all love and value.
Today we also thank you, our readers, for allowing us to be of service to you. We acknowledge your support, and we place great value on continuing this partnership. For Fiji!
