# WHEN THE BEST FIJIAN MAINSTREAM MEDIA OUTLET IS IN NEW ZEALAND

The worst indictment of the Fijian media is the fact that the most comprehensive coverage of major individual stories is to be found not on local media outlets but on Radio New Zealand’s Pacific Service.

RNZ routinely covers stories that some Fijian media organisations ignore altogether, deep diving into detail that seems beyond the capacity of local journalists and providing the kind of coverage that any Fijian needs to properly understand what’s going on.

Two stories in the past 72 hours in particular give the lie to the boastful claims of the swinging dicks of the local media that they are finally free to report events now that the Coalition is in power and the hateful Bainimarama government is gone.

They are the disturbing Christopher Pryde saga and the equally disturbing sworn statement by Susana Vuniani of corruption within the ODPP and judiciary – both stories covered in depth by Grubsheet but major aspects of which have been completely ignored even by Fiji’s once traditional newspaper of record and “first draft of history” – the Fiji Times.

We’re republishing them here to make an important point – that Radio New Zealand is now a vital component of the Fijian media and cannot afford to be ignored, especially in the election lead-up, by anyone who wants to be properly informed. And that the claims of a “free media” in Fiji are arrant nonsense.

No-one in the mainstream media in Fiji has covered these stories as well as RNZ and particularly its specialist reporter on Fiji, Margot Staunton. It is she who deserves the next FAME Journalist of the Year Award, not the local poseurs who cry freedom but deliver selective reporting and bias.

Read on and decide for yourself.

And the explosive allegations of a conspiracy to throttle the Ashton-Lewis Commission of Inquiry made by Susana Vuniani and first exposed by Grubsheet.

For the record, Vuniani is correct in saying that she did not leak her affidavit to me.