The Fijian people can no longer have any confidence at all in their mainstream media, judging from Tuesday’s front page story in the Fiji Sun reporting that the President, Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu, has suspended the salary of the DPP, Christopher Pryde, even though Pryde remains in office.
In an extraordinary lapse of all accepted journalistic standards the world over, the Fiji Sun‘s Ivamere Nataro publishes a blatant lie when she reports that Christopher Pryde has refused to explain his absence from Fiji despite being exonerated and reinstated back in January.
FACT: Christopher Pryde has issued two public statements fully explaining his absence and the Fiji Sun knows it. Because it was the recipient of both statements, the latest last week and an earlier one back in April.
They both went to the Fiji Sun and portions of both of them have already been published.
Yet this is Tuesday’s Fiji Sun front page story by Ivamere Nataro in which the facts are deliberately distorted in a shocking breach of journalistic ethics.
Ivamere Nataro, you are a disgrace to journalism and so is the senior management of the Fiji Sun, including your Acting Publisher and CEO, Rosi Doviverata, who will have approved your travesty of a story for publication.
You know precisely the reasons for Christopher Pryde not returning to Fiji – the failure of the Judicial Services Commission to perform its constitutional duty towards him and either suspend him for misbehaviour and put him before a tribunal of judges to try him or clear him of the trumped up charges against him and allow him to return to work.
It is all there in the two statements the DPP has released but which you have chosen to ignore in a shameless conspiracy with the authorities against the right of the Fijian people to know the truth.
Grubsheet will be having a lot more to say about this story later. But this is easily as egregious an assault on journalistic ethics by the Fiji Sun as it was for the Fiji Times to censor part of the DPP’s statement last week.
The Fijian mainstream media is so gormless that Ivamere Nataro and her colleagues are not only incapable of reporting the facts but of taking in the most glaringly obvious of those facts – that the DPP has had his salary suspended when there are unproven allegations against him yet both the Chief Justice and head of the JSC, Salesi Temo, and the Acting Attorney General, Siromi Turaga, continue to be paid their full salaries when the Ashton-Lewis Commission of Inquiry says they are open to charges of perverting the course of justice.
That’s right, Fiji. Lies from the mainstream media and double standards in the institutions of state. Unbelievable.
——————
POSTSCRIPT:
It seems that Ivamere Nataro has form.
UPDATE THURSDAY AM:
A day later, the Fiji Sun has done nothing to correct its error and the big lie remains on its website.
Incredibly, the two statements above were specifically sent to Rosi Doviverata, the Fiji Sun Acting publisher and CEO – as well as other media, including Grubsheet – and here’s the proof of that:
So Rosi Doviverata has allowed the “months of unexplained absence” statement to be published knowing it is untrue. And when it has been pointed out that it is untrue, doubles down and permits the lie to remain.
It is journalistic corruption of the first order. And because the original report is defamatory of Christopher Pryde, in that it suggests that he has been willfully refusing for months to explain himself, the Sun leaves itself open to the prospect of aggravated damages.
It is a new low for the Fijian media and Rosi Doviverata deserves to be brought to account.
So does Alisha Patel, the Executive Director of the Sun’s owners – CJ Patel. Because along with the Motibhai Patels of Ba and their corrupt conduct at the Fiji Times, the CJ Patels are not fit and proper persons to own a media outlet in Fiji when they allow lies of this magnitude to remain uncorrected.
———————–
The offending article on the Fiji Sun website.
Welcome to Media Freedom and Free Speech in Fiji. More like, Media Abuse.
Frankly I think Christopher Pryde has been treated abysmally compared to the iTaukei’s around him (in particular the Chief Justice Salesi Temo), who had been heavily criticised in the CoI’s findings but continues to carry out the function of Chief Justice.
Whereas CP, who had faced lesser complaint earlier on and appeared before a Tribunal and was cleared but continues to suffer injustice.
The other gang of iTaukeis named and shamed in the CoI’s Report continues to enjoy the life of “Riley”. That is Fiji – a country rotten to the core!
I think it’s fair to say we have a serious comprehension problem in Fiji when it comes to understanding, establishing and reporting facts .. a problem that appears to be prevalent with not only the media representatives but with leaders as well who are pressed by calls for accountability.
The skewing of journalist reporting to suit political or personal agendas of a select few have created an enabling environment for misinformation, misrepresentation and misleading of conversations & facts.
A corrupt government that is working in tandem with incompetent media is like adding fuel to an already highly risky and flammable situation , and hence why we are witnessing the
1. Misinformation and propaganda spread easily ;
2. Deteriorating public trust ;
3. Intensification of polarization and division
I am unsure how much worse the situation in Fiji can get but we the people, have the right to push back and call out the incompetence of individuals that has a lot to do with the the fast eroding levels of professionalism which are necessary to uphold standards, ethics and institutional integrity.
Today in Fiji we are seeing the media mirror the behaviors of its masters & even that is a choice they have made for themselves.
We all have a part to play to ensure checks and balances are in play and when that is thrown up in the air we will see what we are witnessing in Fiji – that is, an increase in social and moral decline , increase in brain drain and skill loss and corruption and nepotism rise.
This level of play is UNACCEPTABLE
And has opened our country to become prey
I have been anticipating the 2026 general elections but the fact of the matter is that the general elections is just a “tool” never a guarantee for removing corrupt and incompetent leaders .
The public expectations of national leaders is immense … at least we know what we don’t want for now .
We need to start talking about the type of leaders we want to lead our country to ensure that those individuals have the proven track record in their personal and professional lives as well as the moral /spiritual grounding to be able to lead with conviction and courage and not be quickly get trapped by the spotlight and attention that can melt and disorient a lot of political office holders, as we have seen over and over again in our national leadership cycles.
God bless Fiji
God please help us find our way out of this national mess soon.
We owe it to the generations of tomorrow and to ourselves to see our country be rebuilt on honor truth and integrity and not on familiarity , favors and feeble leadership.
It is sickening to observe the despicable conduct that these people will go to in order to further their corrupt agenda.
The interrelationships that exist in the so called heads of state and government and judiciary preclude any sensible, rational and honest decisions coming from any of them.
They are carrying out these crimes in full view, but will be sitting in church on Sunday. Let’s hope that there is a Hell for them to rot in when their time is up.
They are beyond all help and redemption.
Is this why STANLEY “THE NUT-SACK” SIMPSON shed a tear on the day MIDA was repealed.
So that journalists who profoundly lack objectivity can’t be held accountable for the copious amouts of bovine excrement they publish?
Thank you Grubsheet for publishing this. Your excerpt is as close as we get to reading the newspapers now.
We stopped a long time ago. It’s reading lies and has been unacceptable after the Media was supposedly freed.
Ivamere Nataro and the Fiji Sun should be held accountable for spreading misleading and false information that has only confused the public further. Instead of explaining why Christopher Pryde, who has been cleared by the Tribunal, hasn’t resumed his position, Nataro has deliberately sidestepped the real issue.
The delay isn’t because of Mr. Pryde himself—who has already addressed the allegations and is ready to return—but rather because Chief Justice Temo, after listening to the Acting DPP, has yet to formally respond to Mr. Pryde. Now, even Prime Minister Rabuka and many others are asking the same question: why hasn’t Pryde come back?
It’s time those responsible for the delay—Chief Justice Temo, the Acting DPP, and those within their offices—are held to account. The focus shouldn’t be on Mr. Pryde, who stands ready to resume his duties, but on the officials whose inaction is keeping him from doing so.
The deteriorating standards in journalism, the legal profession, the sub-standard public service, the lax and shameless government officials, the lapdogs of the govt in the institutions of Police and DPP, the incompetent CJ and judicial officers appointed and working under him, a criminal in the form of the PM, and pedo President, is nothing to be shocked about.
These were the “high standards ” that Rabuka set in 87 and we are back to ground zero.
It will take another courageous person like Bainimarama to bring back the “good days” we enjoyed under his leadership as equal citizens with equal rights to free education, scholarships based on merit, and more importantly, a much safer Fiji than we are experiencing now.
Let’s not forget that you need a retarded and corrupt Indian PIG in the form of Baimaan to fuel the ongoing fire of Rabuka’s racist and corrupt govt.
What have Fijians done by voting them in and what have we come to???!!!!!!
O Kris sa rere tiko
Isa!
Kanaloto
Fiji media is full of kalavo who all know and have only one thing in common – party and kalavo.
Sell themselves to the highest bidder. For most of these ‘journalists’ a few free drinks and a plate of chow is enough to send them into a kalavo frenzy.
Like flies in a pile of excrement.
Free drinks and free chow … that’s the real kanaloto that Rokotui is talking about.
The one that is really afraid is not Chris but Salesi who is habitually breaking the supreme law and determined to scrap it. Therefore Salesi and his kanaloto gang are not bold enough to let Chris back in.
To call Ivamere Nataro an “investigative journalist” is the joke of the year😅. It’s an insult to investigative journalism.
Bunch of morally bankrupt morons the whole lot from President, PM, CJ, Siromi and crew. 2026 Elections can’t come any sooner. This insanity must be stopped via the ballot box.