NZ: Field reporting on Fiji ‘inaccurate and unbalanced’, says FBC
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Item: 7445
Roland Koroi
SUVA: The recent ruling by the New Zealand Press Council against an article in the Sunday Star-Times on Fiji by New Zealand reporter Michael Field is not the first that has been made against him.
Field was also taken to task in 2008 by the New Zealand Broadcast Standards Authority for making false, inaccurate and unbalanced comments against Fiji on Radio New Zealand.
This week the New Zealand Press Council upheld a complaint by Foreign Minister Murray McCully who accused the Sunday Star-Times of publishing a "grossly inflated" piece on the possibility of Fiji PM Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama attending the World Cup in 2011.
The article was written by Michael Field and Marc Hinton.
The council agreed with McCully that various assertions made by the newspaper, including its headlines and caption, failed to meet journalistic standards of accuracy, fairness and balance.
In 2008, Fiji Solicitor-General Christopher Pryde complained about Field to the New Zealand Broadcast Standards Authority accusing him of giving an “uneducated, ill-informed, deeply biased, unbalanced, and false account of events in Fiji".
The authority upheld four of Pryde’s complaints against Field, ruling that most of Field’s comments were inaccurate.
Field has been banned from Fiji and other Pacific countries like Tonga and Kiribati – with the Fiji government accusing him of being slanted and unbalanced. - Fiji Broadcasting Corporation News/Pacific Media Centre
Fiji dictator Bainimarama's World Cup freebie
NZ Press Council ruling No. 2186
The truth as Michael Field sees it - Columnist Crosbie Walsh's opinion
Comments
Prejudiced attacks
Yet he will never learn. Michael Field's stories say so much about him. 1. He is racially and faith prejudiced. His stories always target racial groups and religions. 2. He is a bitter person unable to be objective about personalities like Bainimarama. He writes stories beyond belief. Remember the story that Bainimarama was trading in Indian body parts? Hello!!? 3. He is gender biased. Much of his vitriol is reserved for women. The stronger and more intelligent the woman, the more vicious his attack. He seems to prefer women young, barefoot, and unable to talk back! 4. He has a neo-colonial view of Pacific affairs. How much of his criticism in the last 5 years has been for the destructive racial policies of New Zealand and Australia in the Pacific? For example, how partisan is the Forum Secretariat? Will PACER Plus really help the Pacific or will it further the economic exploitation of the islands? Has Australia shown a respect for the law in the Moti affair, or a demonstrable disrespect for the law? Can Fiji trust the two economic powers of the Pacific, and what can be done to re-establish trust? Where are you Field, when these stories should be written? What do you really think about the Moti affair? Or do you reserve your nasty prejudiced attacks for the small countries?
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