AQELA SUSU
suva
Media organisations need to provide more factual analysis in the lead-up to general elections, according to the FijiFirst party.
The party’s general secretary Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said data was readily available from the Reserve Bank of Fiji and the Fiji Revenue and Customs Authority (FRCA), among other places for analytical pieces.
During a press conference at the party’s head office yesterday, Mr Sayed Khaiyum expressed his frustration at some of the poor reporting.
“I think the level of analysis is very, very shallow. Still many of the journalists are very much ‘he said that, she said that’,” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said.
“They don’t carry out any analysis themselves whereas there should be two to three journalists to carry that out and read facts for themselves. Couples of times I have seen some journalists become lawyers, some of them tend to become economists but there are many facts available at the Reserve Bank of Fiji, from FRCA but it seems that the media organisations don’t want to go and gather information themselves.
“They still have this culture of ‘this leader said, the other politician said that’ and that’s all they do, so that’s not very good coverage and what we find again is the lack of media organisation’s ability to bring information to members of the public; independent information; correct information but you know also I think some media organisations are still really biased.”
He said the media decree did not place any restrictions on the media but certain media organisations were only quoting comments made by the members of the public.
“Anybody who knows how to count will tell you that there weren’t 500 people at Sukuna Park on Saturday at midday; there were more like 5000 people but some media organisations were saying that there were 500 people. I mean these are the kind of things that the media organisations and some of these journalists are doing it deliberately; whether they cannot count or whether they are somewhat not very proactive in terms of getting information, I think this is something that needs to be improved upon,” he said.

Feedback: aqela.susu@fijisun.com.fj