Media ownership trends and the implications for democracy in Papua New Guinea.

Dr Richard Rooney

May 2004.

Unpublished manuscript

Introduction

The free market for media in Papua New Guinea has failed as an agency of information
and debate which facilitates the functions of democracy.

This paper explores the free market model of ownership in PNG and argues that the vast
majority of the population – the poor, the uneducated and the geographically isolated –
have little or no access to the media.

The paper identifies the present media market as dominated by foreign-owned

conglomerates. Using content analysis of news bulletins on the country‟s only television
station it identifies how members of elite groups dominate the news agenda to the
exclusion of all other groups.

A critique of the free market model identifies the weaknesses inherent in the PNG media
market and suggestions are made on how community-based interventions might provide
presently disadvantaged populations with platforms for a diversity of voices and opinions
through its openness to participation.

Background to PNG

PNG, which became independent of Australian administration in 1975, has an extremely

fragmented society with more than 800 distinct cultural groups, each with their own
language. About 85 per cent of PNG‟s population, estimated at 5 million, live in isolated
scattered rural settlements, dependent on subsistence agriculture for their survival and
organised around groups of extended families living in their own little villages. Although
people do move between different places, each community has developed its own
specific hierarchies, myths, rituals and languages. Because these lives unfolded within
limited geographical areas, people directly communicated with one another through
words. Historically. PNG cultures were predominantly oral and so a mass media was
unnecessary.

In these oral cultures, the recording of events was hardly known. The experience of past
generations was passed on directly to young people through working alongside or
listening to their elders. Within these enclosed little worlds, politics was carried out at the
level of the tribe, village or town with societies controlled by hierarchies derived from the
extended family.

PNG ownership 1
Ownership of PNG Media

Foreign ownership dominates the media in PNG. Conglomerates own both the two daily
newspapers and the country‟s only television station.

The Press can trace its origins to 1911 when the first newspaper the Papua Times and
Tropical Advertiser published for the benefit of the ex-patriate white community. Today,
the rationale for newspaper production is still dominated by the needs of ex-pats.

The Post-Courier is the oldest daily newspaper in PNG, established in 1969. Allied Press,
a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch‟s News Corp, holds the majority shareholding. The
National, launched in 1993, is PNG‟s newest daily newspaper and is owned Malaysian-
based Rimbunan Hijau Group, a multinational conglomerate built on timber, plantations,
media and IT operations. (Robie, 1994). The National was launched by the then Prime
Minister Paias Wingti and attracted controversy for its foreign ownership and the paper‟s
association with the major commercial player in PNG‟s timber industry. (Robie, 1995,
p.28).

The two daily newspapers are based in the PNG capital, Port Moresby, and share a
metropolitan bias. Combined they have a circulation of less than 60,000, serving a
population of more than 5 million. These newspapers rarely circulate outside of urban
areas so the vast majority of Papua New Guineans are excluded from information. The
newspapers charge a fifty per cent and thirty per cent surcharge on their cover prices to
purchasers outside of the capital to cover the cost of distribution, thereby making the
newspapers unattractive to people with low incomes. PNG media generally privileges
urban dwellers and those with the ability to consume, as generally speaking rural
populations are unprofitable markets.

In addition, 72 per cent of adults in PNG are illiterate and have no need for newspapers
(United Nations Development Program, 1999, p.110). It follows that newspaper readers
are likely to be leaders and opinion makers and this gives newspapers an influence in the
country that far outweighs their circulation penetrations.

There is one national weekly newspaper, the Wantok, published in the Tok Pisin
language (the lingua franca of PNG) owned by Word Publishing through Media Holdings
Ltd. Its shareholders are the mainstream churches in PNG: Catholic, Evangelical
Lutheran, Anglican, and Uniting Church. It has an approximate circulation of 10,000.

Em-TV, owned by the Nine Network of Australia and the one television station in PNG,
generates only a small proportion of its coverage locally. Broadcasting started in 1987
(Foster, 1998, p.54) and is available in almost every urban centre in the country with rural
and remote areas serviced by more than 500 privately-owned satellite dishes, but in 2004,
17 years after launch, the channel is still not available across the whole country.

PNG ownership 2
Publicly funded radio in PNG is in the hands of a bureaucracy, the National Broadcasting
Commission, which as the only radio broadcasting authority in the country is the nation‟s
public service provider (Nash, 1995, pp. 42-43). At its peak it was able to reach about
four million people in about 60 different languages as well as English, but it has been
undermined in recent years by financial and technical difficulties.

Privately owned commercial radio has grown since the first station, Nau FM, was
launched in 1994, by Fiji-based Communications Fiji Ltd. Yumi FM joined it in 1997.
PNG FM, a 100 per cent owned subsidiary of Communications Fiji, now owns both
stations and there are now a growing number of commercial stations, playing mostly
music, based in and around PNG‟s urban centres.

The media in PNG is not regulated so, in theory, any person can start a company that is
aimed at dissemination of information. (Mellam and Aloi, 2003, p.36). But in reality the
cost of launching a media outlet is a barrier to entry and there is little advertising
available in the country to support media ventures. (Pamba, 2004, p.15)

Of course, advertisers are not interested in audiences or readers as such. Rather, they are
interested in the ability of those people to purchase goods or services. The predominant
influence on spending is income: the rich buy more of most things than the poor, so
advertisers are willing to pay higher rates for readers with big spending power.

Those media which can attract an audience or readership which is fairly small, but
extremely attractive to those who wish to sell to them, can set high advertising rates
relative to their circulations.

The PNG constitution guarantees freedom of speech and of the press and there is no
formal censorship of the media, but there were attempts in 1996 to have media made
more accountable. There have been proposals by the government to control the press and
there was discussion on forming a media tribunal in 1988. This provoked a very strong
reaction from society and the press and the Bill was never passed in Parliament. (Mellam
and Daniel, 2003, pp.77-78).

Although there is a free press in PNG, newspapers are heavily dependent on government
advertising and this places the Press in a difficult financial position if it tries to protect the
public against bad government. There is a fear that newspapers cannot ask uncomfortable
questions for fear of losing advertising revenue and instead reproduce public relations
material on behalf of the government. (Solomon, 1995, p.121). There are also claims that
journalists exercise self-censorship, in particular at the National newspaper, which is
reluctant to write stories about logging because of the newspaper‟s links to the logging
industry. (Senge-Kolma, 1999, p.125).

Content analysis research

PNG ownership 3
The purpose of the research was to examine the content of news stories and in particular
the sources of information used and what this told us about the relationship between
broadcast journalism, the audience, and democracy in the context of whether everyone
has equal access to the news media. It concentrates on PNG‟s only television station Em-
TV which broadcasts one news programme per day called Em-TV National News which
runs for 30 minutes (less time taken for commercials) each night. It is originally
broadcast at 6pm seven days per week with a repeat each night, usually at 10.30pm or
11pm. The programme is typically subdivided into three segments: news from PNG,
overseas‟ news and sports. The broadcasts also include stock market and currency prices
from Australia, the US, Europe and Japan. Although the news is read in English, many of
the speakers who appeared on news items speak in Tok Pisin or other vernacular
languages.

The research was conducted in the context of the debate around relations between the
media and the exercise of political and ideological power especially, but not exclusively,
by central social institutions that seek to define and manage the flow of information in
contested fields of discourse.

Stuart Hall et al in their thesis on „primary definers‟ argue that people in powerful and
privileged positions are able to over-access the media, because journalists nervous of
accusations of bias attempt to find ways of injecting impartiality, balance and objectivity
into their reports.

They do this by a heavy reliance on accredited representatives of the people and

organised interest groups and „experts‟ who are considered to be disinterested pursuers of
knowledge and therefore impartial in the debate in question. (Hall et al, 1978, pp. 58-59).

In this thesis, the media become primary definers of the news because the media tend to
reproduce faithfully what they say and thus reproduce symbolically the existing structure
of power in society's institutional order. It is likely that those in powerful positions in
society who offer opinions about controversial topics will have their definitions accepted.
Such spokesmen are understood to have access to more accurate or more specialised
information on particular topics than the majority of the population.

This, Hall et al argue, permits the primary definers to set the agenda and those with
arguments against a primary interpretation have to insert themselves into its definition of
what is at issue. Once established this definition is difficult to alter fundamentally.

Hall's analysis is not without its critics. Philip Schlesinger and Howard Tumbler accept
that there are powerful sources that can sometimes organise news agendas to their own
advantage, but the emphasis is on the word „sometimes‟. (Schlesinger and Tumbler,
1994, pp. 17-21). Journalists can choose to accept the sources, but they can also decide to
find alternative sources. But, as Herbert J. Gans has observed, journalists are restrained
by deadlines and often feel obliged to rely on sources that are able to fit in with the
logistical requirements of busy news organizations. (Gans, 1979, p. 121).

PNG ownership 4
Although it is true that official sources do not have to be believed or taken seriously by
journalists, the research intended to discover whether the television journalists were
doing just that. The journalists may not necessarily be biased towards the government or
other elites, but one suspects their bureaucratic organisation and cultural assumptions
make them conduits of that presentation. As Brian McNair points out, journalists tend to
reproduce preferred accounts and interpretations of social reality by internalizing the
dominant value structure of their society. (McNair, 1996, p. 48).

The research investigated 15 editions of Em-TV National News from 15 – 29 February

2004 inclusive. The main news sources for each of the first six stories broadcast per
edition were counted.

Table 1.
Main source of news item Frequency Percentage of
(n = 90) total

Parliament or Government 43 47.7

Media Conferences 10 11.1
Emergency Services 10 11.1
Law Courts 2 2.2
Public Event 2 2.2
Foreign Stories 11 12.2
Others 12 13.3

Table 1 shows that newsgathering relies on official sources such as the government,
police and emergency services for their stories as well as organised events, press
statements, public conferences and conventions and events put on especially for the
media.

By far the biggest single source of stories was Parliament and Government, even though
Parliament itself did not sit at any time during the research period. The next largest
source was media conferences accounting for 11.1 per cent of the total.

The findings are similar to recently published research into PNG‟s two national daily
papers, the Post-Courier and National. This identified by far the biggest single source of
stories for both newspapers as Parliament, followed by media conferences and prepared
media statements. A survey was also undertaken to identify the number of sources that
journalists used in their stories. The majority of stories in both the National and the Post-
Courier came from a single source: 57 per cent in the National and 73 per cent in the
Post-Courier. The percentage of stories relying on two or fewer sources was 93 per cent
in both newspapers. (Rooney 2003).

Government dominates the news agenda and there is little opportunity for anyone else
within PNG to communicate through the news media. In the case of Em-TV and the
newspapers, the value of the news depends mainly on the importance of the speaker, not

PNG ownership 5
on what they have to say, and in that respect it is not unlike the media in many
developing countries. (Williams, 1994, p.9).

For a more detailed understanding of the news bulletins two bulletins were picked at
random and the first six items of each scrutinized to identify more precisely the sources
used. The results are presented in Table 2

Table 2
Detailed examination of two bulletins: Tuesday 16 February 2004 and Wednesday 25
February 2004.

Tuesday 16 February 2004

Running Description of item Sources used Comments
Order

1 The Acting PNG Governor Bill Skate was the The item was based
General, Speaker of the House only source on Skate‟s visit to
of Parliament and local MP (all the crash site. The
one person), Bill Skate, calls on visit was on Skate‟s
the government to look into the own initiative and
circumstances of a road accident appears to have
that killed 19 people. been made for
publicity purposes.

2 Up to 700 retrenched PNG PNG Defence Em-TV has been

Defence Force personnel will Minister taking a positive
get financial pay offs paid for by announcement at a stance to regular
the Australian Government. media conference. stories about
He was the only Australia‟s
source. involvement in
PNG‟s
governmental
affairs.

3 National Capital District Story based on an This is the second

Commission (NCDC) has a new announcement from appearance of Bill
head that will act as City Chair of NCDC at a Skate in this
Manager. The appointment press conference. bulletin. He
comes amid controversy over Bill Skate, the local regularly supplies
the alleged misuse of funds at MP, is also news to Em-TV.
City Hall. interviewed at the
same conference.

4 Riots in Sydney, Australia. NA This is a supplied

PNG ownership 6
 news package from
Channel Nine,
Australia. All Em-
TV‟s foreign news
during the whole
research period was
supplied from this
source.

5 Dame Elisabeth Murdoch opens NA Channel Nine

the garden of her house in report. Ms Murdoch
Langwarm, Victoria, Australia is described in the
to raise funds for a local (to her report as the
home) art gallery. matriarch of a media
family. It is not said
that she is the
mother of Rupert.

6 Central Province Government Story based on an The first PNG story

(PNG) wants the national interview with the in today‟s bulletin to
government to pay for the cost Central Province originate outside of
of having a local river diverted Governor Alphonse the capital, Port
to avoid repeat of recent floods. Mori who is the Moresby.
only source.
Wednesday 25 February 2004.
Running Description of item Sources used Comments
Order

1 Australian Opposition leader Story is based on This report does not

Mark Latham visits PNG to official government include interviews
meet government leaders announcement and with any of the
footage of people story‟s participants.
getting on and off On previous days
planes. Em-TV had
reported that Mr
Latham was going
to visit. Today‟s
report added very
little to news
previously given.

2 Two policemen in Port Moresby
(PNG capital) charged with
armed robbery of beer from a
shop. The report also gave a
round up of seven other
Story is based on a The entire story was
police statement. read by the
newsreader. No
interviews or visual
material was used in

PNG ownership 7
 robberies that took place in the the report.
capital at the weekend.

3 Members of Fiji‟s legal Story is based on a In the report the

fraternity are in Port Moresby to statement from newsreader makes
learn about PNG‟s Leadership PNG‟s Chief the point that PNG
Code, which is an anti- Ombudsman, Ila has many problems
corruption initiative. Geno. with leadership
corruption,
nonetheless other
countries (as well as
Fiji) look to us to
find solutions.

4 The Judicial and Legal Services Statement from The entire story was
Commission (JLSC) has JLSC is only source read by the
shortlisted four senior lawyers to of information. newsreader. No
become judges. Also four judges interviews or visual
will be appointed from material was used in
Australia. the report.

5 A group of experts from
Australian National University
(ANU) are studying a rare PNG
Highlands tradition known as
„chanting its legends‟.
Source is a two day This is the first story
workshop run by in today‟s bulletin
ANU. that has not
originated from the
PNG capital, Port
Moresby. This ratio
of capital to non-
capital is typical.

6 Earthquake in Morocco. NA A report from

Channel Nine,
Australia.

The bulletins demonstrate that Em-TV excludes the vast majority of people in the country
from its bulletins and it rarely includes stories about ordinary people. The closest the
bulletins came was in the story about the aftermath of the road accident and even in this
case the story centred on an elite person‟s involvement (Item one, 16 February).
Generally, PNG media do not feature ordinary people unless they have been victims of
misfortune or have appeared in court.

Stories centred on the national capital, Port Moresby. In the two bulletins featured there
were only two PNG stories that originated from outside the city. During the research
period 73 per cent of the stories originating within PNG came from Port Moresby and
only 27 per cent from elsewhere in the nation. About 85 per cent of PNG people live in

PNG ownership 8
rural area and they are not being represented by the news media. In these circumstances it
is impossible to know what kinds of stories originating from outside Port Moresby are
being missed and exactly how much rural people are at a disadvantage in terms of having
their voices heard. There are no official viewing figures available, but it is a reasonable
assumption to make that the viewers are generally urban and educated elites.

Wisdom Tetty, using the example of Africa, has argued that the reason why most
television programes and publications use the colonial language (in PNG‟s case,
English), even where local languages exist, is that they have to do so to survive
economically. (Tetty, 2003, p.25). Private media rely on advertising for economic
prosperity and elite groups who tend to use the colonial language are the most attractive
to advertisers.

The research supports the view that journalists over rely on powerful elites as sources and
that journalists do not pro-actively find alternative sources to provide balance to stories.
Reporters receive information from a single source and re-present it unquestioningly in
reports. It may be an over simplification to say that journalists have to do this in order to
fit in with the logistical requirements of a busy news organisation. Surely, one feels,
within the confines of the political establishment in PNG which is based within a single
district of the nation‟s capital, journalists are able to get opposing views, especially in
matters that are controversial.

Journalists in PNG tend not to give background information to the stories, even those
running from day to day. One of the traits of PNG journalism is its unwillingness to
produce stories that contain a balance of views within them. Instead, journalists opt for
revisiting stories over a period of time, introducing new elements and different views in
each new episode. In this way committed viewers might be able to piece together the
disparate elements of the story into a comprehensible whole. But each new episode tends
to include only one source, thus there is no balance of views or attempt at interrogation of
the powerful. This demonstrates a lack of capacity among PNG journalists to perform
one of their vital roles within a democracy which is to examine what government is and is
not doing and to provide the public with information, comment, analysis, criticism and
alternative views. (Roth, 2001, p.10).

In this respect journalists have trouble overcoming the traditional norms of their societies:
PNG people tend to have uncritical acceptance of traditional knowledge and procedures,
with deference given to elders and those in positions of authority, which is often at odds
with the values of modern societies. Critical thinking and problem solving are not
generally taught in schools and the indigenous languages, including Tok Pisin, do not
include vocabulary that facilitates questioning and critical thinking. (McLaughlin, 1996,
McLaughlin, 1997).

Media and liberal pluralism

PNG ownership 9
There is a wide geopolitical consensus that political systems should exist to provide
opportunities for all the people to influence government and practice (DFID 2001) and
that the media reinforce or foster this kind of democracy. (Price and Krug, 2002, p.3).

Emmanuel Ojo has observed that mass media perform five specific functions: reporting
the news, interpreting the news, influencing citizens‟ opinions, setting the agenda for
government action, and socializing citizens about politics encouraging a political culture
to evolve. (Ojo, 2003, p.828).

To engage effectively there is an assumption that access to information is the first

requirement for an engaged, participative democracy. (Roth, 2001, p.13). An active
citizenry will help prevent governmental excesses and breed trust in the democratic
system, thereby enabling the private media to perform their functions. (Tetty, 2003, p.28)
and the media are the major mechanisms by which citizens are informed about the world.
(Sparks, 1991). There are specific public interest political goals which the media can be
used to serve, including the following: informing the public, public enlightenment, social
criticism and exposing government arbitrariness, national integration and political
education. But the more the media serve the narrow self interest the less able they are to
serve the other group of public interests. (Ojo, 2003, pp.829-830).

In a free market, media are an agency of information and debate which facilitates the
functions of democracy. For Habermas (1989) the free market allows anyone to publish
an opinion and ensures all points of view are aired. But, as Curran summarises, there are
restrictions to this model which are the by-product of treating information as a
commodity: i) the high costs of entry into the market, ii) the free market restricts
participation in public debate. It generates an information rich media for elites and
information poor media for the general public. iii) it undermines rational debate by
generating information that is simplified, personified and decontextualised. (Curran,
2002, p.226). These restrictions are evident in the PNG market.

The influence of the consumer in PNG is severely limited. Both national newspapers
share a similar agenda and identify with the concerns of the elites. The one television
station follows a broadly similar agenda.

The privately owned media in PNG do not represent the public. Instead, they represent
the configuration of power to which they are linked. In PNG power is maintained through
a system of patronage that binds together different clans (wantoks) within the structure of
a party political coalition in Parliament. A power network extends to include the
economic power exercised by shareholders and managers. The media in PNG are
themselves part of the economic power structure. The National is owned by timber
interests and the Post-Courier by a multinational conglomerate.

The consensus in society tends to be defined by major players and to be echoed by the
media. In PNG the major players are political parties, business, external aid agencies and
representatives of global capitalism and civil society such as international banks, the Asia
Development Bank, AusAID, and the International Monetary Fund.

PNG ownership 10
Eric Ma makes the case that in order to secure the support of the state and advertisers the
media tend to protect and promote the interests of the big companies and sponsoring
government units. (Ma, 2000, p.22). As long as they are organized around capitalist
principles the media constitute obstacles to rather than conduits of democracy. The
advancement of ruling economic and political interests and the suppression of alternate
views lie at the heart of media operations interested in profit-making rather than public
information. (Waisbard, 2000, pp.52-53).

Conclusion

The free market for media in PNG has failed as an agency of information and debate
which facilitates the functions of democracy. The press does not provide the best
platform for public dialogue. At present the combined circulations of the two daily papers
in PNG are less than 60,000 which means that newspapers are bought by about 1 in 600
people. Even allowing that each copy of a newspaper may be read by many more people
than the purchaser, newspaper are still failing to reach the mass of the people.
Newspapers are difficult to obtain outside of urban areas, they publish in the elite
language, English, and 72 per cent of adults are illiterate and are unable to read them
anyway.

Television has the advantage that it can reach, through satellite, remote areas of the
population, but news programmes are centred on the capital, Port Moresby, and rural
issues are generally ignored by PNG‟s only television station, Em-TV. Broadcasts are
almost exclusively in the English language so non-English language viewers are
excluded. Undoubtedly more people understand spoken English than can read it so in that
respect television has an advantage over the printed press, but poor people are excluded
from television as the costs of sets can be prohibitive.

Radio fits in most closely with PNG‟s oral traditions and has the greatest chance of
providing the presently disadvantaged population with a platform for the public dialogue
through which people can define who they are and what they want and how to get it.
(Fraser and Restrepro, 2002, p.70). Nash (1995) identifies the advantages of radio in
PNG as its ability to reach audiences quickly, especially in the country‟s remote rural
areas. Sets are cheap to own and there are fewer literacy problems. (Nash, 1995, p.36).

At present commercial radio in PNG has not adopted an informational role and there are
no signs that it intends to in the future. It depends on advertising revenue and therefore
faces the same economic imperatives as the press: to deliver audiences that are attractive
to advertisers. The country‟s publicly funded radio, NBC, which had the remit to provide
locally relevant programming has all but collapsed under the weight of under funding and
poor management.

PNG needs to look for new ways to enable communities to engage in public dialogue and
community radio provides the best way to achieve this. Colin Fraser and Sonia Restrepro-
Esrada (2002) define „community radio‟ as a „non-profit service that is owned and

PNG ownership 11
managed by a particular community‟. (Fraser and Restrepro-Esrada, 2002, p.70). The
operations of such radio stations rely on the community and the community‟s own
resources and are comparatively cheap to set up and to operate. Its programmes are based
on audience access and participation and reflect the special interest and needs of the
community as they deal with local issues in local languages and cultural context. (Fraser
and Restrepro-Esrada, 2002, p.70).

Community radio can improve on the present media landscape in PNG by creating a
diversity of voices and opinions through its openness to participation from all sectors. It
can provide a platform for the interactive discussion about matters and decisions of
importance to the community.

REFERENCES

Curran, J. (2002), Media Power, London: Routledge.

DFID (2001), Making Government Work for Poor People: Building State Capability.
Strategies for achieving the international development targets. London: DFID

Foster, R. J. (1999). TV Talk in PNG: A Search for a Policy in a Weak State. Pacific
Journalism Review 5(1), 53-79.

Fraser, C. and S. Restrepro-Estrada (2002), Community Radio for Change and

Development. Development, 45(4), 69-73.

Gans, H. J. (1979), Deciding What's News; A Study of CBS Evening news, NBC Nightly
News, Newsweek, and Time, New York: Pantheon.

Habermas, J. (1989), The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Cambridge:

Polity.

Hall, S., C. Chritcher, T. Jefferson, J. Clarke, B. Roberts (1978), Policing The Crisis,
Mugging, the State, and the Law, London: Macmillan.

Ma, E. (2000) Rethinking Media Studies: The Case of China. In Curran, J. and P.
Myung-Jin (Eds.), DeWesternizing Media Studies, London: Routledge.

Mellam, A. and D. Aloi (2003), National Integrity Systems, Transparency International

Country Study Report: PNG, Port Moresby: Institute of National Affairs.

McLaughlin, D. (1996). School Teaching and Higher Education: a Papua New Guinea
Case Study, Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 105-125.

McLaughlin, D. (1997). Adult Learning in Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea
Journal of Education, 33(1), 1-12.

PNG ownership 12
Nash, S. (1995). National Radio and Development. In Robie, D. (Ed.), Nius Bilong
Pasifik, Mass Media in the Pacific. Port Moresby: University of Papua New Guinea
Press.

Ojo, E. O. (2003), The mass media and the challenges of sustainable democratic values in
Nigeria: possibilities and limitations, Media, Culture & Society, 25(6), 821-840.

Pamba, K. (2004) Objectivity and quality journalism, National, 16 March 2004, p15

Price, M. and P. Krug (2002), The Enabling Environment for Free and Independent
Media, USAID, Washington DC.

Robie, D. (1994), Malaysian-Owned Daily Claims “We Speak for PNG”, Australian
Journalism Review, 16(2), 47-54.

Robie, D. (1995), Ownership and Control in the Pacific. In Robie, D. (Ed.), Nius Bilong
Pasifik, Mass Media in the Pacific, Port Moresby: UPNG Press.

Rooney, D. (2003), PNG Newspapers, the need for change, Australian Journalism
Review, 25(2), 121-132.

Roth, C. (2001). The Media in Governance: a guide to assistance. Developing Free and
effective media to serve the interests of the poor, London: Department for International
Development.

Schlesinger, P. and H. Tumbler (1994), Reporting Crime, The Media Politics of Criminal
Justice, Oxford: Clarendon.

Senge- Kolma, F. (1999). Commercial Pressures on the Media. In Weber, J. (Ed.), A

Fragile Freedom, Challenges Facing the Media in Papua New Guinea. Madang: Divine
Word University Press.

Solomon, A. (1995). Hidden Obstacles to the Real Story. In Robie, D. (Ed.), Nius Bilong
Pasifik, Mass Media in the Pacific. Port Moresby: University of Papua New Guinea
Press.

Sparks, C. (1991), Goodbye Hildy Johnson, the vanishing „serious press‟. In

Communications and Citizenship, Dahlgren, P. and C. Sparks (Eds.), London: Routledge.

Tetty, W. J. (2003), The Media and Democratization in Africa: contributions, constraints

and concerns of the private press, Media, Culture & Society, 23(1), 5–31.

United Nations Development Program (1999). Creating Opportunities, Pacific Human

Development Report. Suva: Fiji.

PNG ownership 13
Waisbard, S. (2000), Media in South America: Between the Rock of the State and the
Hard Place of the Market. In Curran J. and P. Myung-Jin (Eds.), DeWesternizing Media
Studies, London: Routledge.

Williams, V. (1994). Children and Women in the News. Suva, Fiji: Thomson
Foundation/UNICEF.

At the time of writing Richard Rooney taught on the Communications (Arts) Journalism
programme at Divine Word University, Madang, Papua New Guinea and was the
university‟s director of academic quality assurance.

PNG ownership 14