# THE FIJI TIMES. JOURNALISTICALLY CORRUPT

It is becoming very clear that the Fiji Times is engaged in a conspiracy with the Coalition government and Lynda Tabuya to ignore the sex and drug scandal that has enveloped her and triggered a social media furore.

How else to explain the action of the Fiji Times today in totally ignoring the announcement that the Minister for Women, Children and Social Protection has been referred by the Executive Council of the People’s Alliance to the Party’s Disciplinary Subcommittee?

The story is a banner headline in today’s Fiji Sun and has been covered prominently by CFL-Fiji Village and the national broadcaster, FBC. But in the Fiji Times – the traditional paper of record in Fiji – nothing. Not a word. Dead silence. Why?

This isn’t fake news. The PAP has set up an inquiry to evaluate the explosive images and text messages that have been published by Fijileaks and Grubsheet of “brutal” sex between Lynda Tabuya and Aseri Radrodro in Room 233 of Melbourne’s Windsor Hotel and references by Lynda to smoking “weed”. There is no justification for ignoring the official announcement of this inquiry. Yet the Fiji Times wilfully does so and leaves its readers who depend on it to seek the truth in total ignorance of the story.

It is a shocking example that in the supposedly new era of media freedom heralded by the Coalition when it took office just over a year ago, the Fiji Times and its owners – the Motibhai Group – have chosen to betray the Fijian people and manipulate the news to the political advantage of the government and those politicians it favours. Ignoring a story of this magnitude that other media outlets are covering is nothing short of scandalous. It is a direct assault on ethical journalism. And it makes an absolutely mockery of the crocodile tears that members of the editorial team at the Fiji Times shed when they proclaimed that they were “free at last” to report without fear or favour after the lifting of the last government’s media restrictions.

Ignoring the PAP inquiry into Lynda Tabuya comes after the paper shamelessly manipulated details of the scandalous images and text messages the Minister sent to her lover that were published by Fijileaks and Grubsheet. There were four images we published but the Fiji Times concentrated on only one – a photo that an American “expert” engaged by the Fiji Times established had been on the Internet since 2014. Even with this photo, there was no finding that it was fake. But the paper completely ignored three other images that were contemporary and more glaringly, the text messages between Lynda Tabuya and Aseri Radrodro that establish beyond doubt that they were conducting an affair when the nation had been told by the Prime Minister that they weren’t.

Then the Fiji Times reported that Lynda Tabuya had referred Grubsheet to the Cyber Crimes Unit of the Fiji Police over the one “old” photo without any mention whatsoever of Victor Lal at Fijileaks, who had broken the original story. Once again, the details were shockingly selective, ignoring the central core of the story Victor Lal and Grubsheet had both detailed over several days. Why did they choose to concentrate their reporting on just one disputed photo to the exclusion of the main of evidence? It’s a question that goes to the heart of the paper’s credibility.

And now Editor-in-Chief Fred Wesley and his team have chosen to ignore the announcement by the senior partner in the Coalition – the PAP – that it has begin an official inquiry into the allegations against Lynda Tabuya. It is big news everywhere else but for the Fiji Times, it is clearly an inconvenient truth. And it chooses to conspire against its readers to shield them from even the announcement that the evidence is being investigated by her own political party..

The once great paper that prided itself on being the newspaper of record in Fiji since 1869 has debased itself to the point of being a worthless rag – a propaganda sheet for the Coalition in the same way that its opposition – the Fiji Sun – allowed itself to be debased as a propaganda organ for FijiFirst. Why has there been a stampede in the direction of social media and independent websites in recent years? Because many Fijians no longer trust the local mainstream media.

The Fiji Times at least had the excuse during the Bainimarama years that is wasn’t covering stories because if his “draconian media laws”. What is its excuse now that those laws have been lifted and it has the freedom to report fairly and freely and with the integrity that its readers expect?

The paper today is full of stories propping up the Coalition and the Prime Minister against the explicit threats of Aseri Radrodro and other members of the working committee of SODELPA to do a deal with FijiFirst and bring down the government if Radrodro isn’t reinstated as Education minister. The Fiji Times now portrays Radrodro as a wrecker and its front page trumpets Anare Jale calling on Radrodro to “Take it like a man”. It is partisan polemic, not journalism. And when the PAP inquiry into Lynda Tabuya is ignored, it descends into crude propaganda.

How much longer is the Fiji Times going to allow the Minister for Women and Children to keep falsely claiming that the incriminating images and text messages she sent Aseri Radrdro are “fake news” and generated by “artificial intelligence” when they were actually extracted from her lover’s mobile phone?

Victor Lal at Fijileaks continues his forensic examination of the evidence – including the fact that a photograph Lynda sent to Aseri showing a portion of carpet in her hotel room is a precise match of the carpet in rooms at the Windsor Hotel in Melbourne, where Radrodro and Tabuya – by her own account – had “brutal” sex in Room 233 while Aseri’s wife, Sainiana, slept in another room on the same floor.

It is all there for everyone to see. But not if the media in Fiji – and especially the Fiji Times – continues to turn a blind eye to the evidence and continues to pull the wool over the eyes of the Fijian people.