During the violent coup staged by businessman George Speight in Fiji in

This article describes the historic conditions governing newspaper and media ownership in the Pacific. It argues that historically there have been three kinds of media in the Pacific: Mission or church-owned or directed, governmen- owned or directed and commercial. The missions and churches were responsible for the first newspapers aimed exclusively at indigenous populations and in Papua New Guinea have continued to play a key role in the media. The commercial press could only exist when there was a sufficient population to support it and so it tended to appear in those countries with the largest expatriate populations first. The continued dominance of the commercial media by Western companies in the largest islands has been largely due to the cost of producing these commodities. Locally-owned commercial media have been on a much smaller scale, but they have nonetheless had an impact. The national or government-owned or directed media were generally inherited from the departing metropolitan powers and represent a much diluted version of the public service model. While the article argues that the dominance of the commercial press in such markets as PNG, Fiji and New Caledonia by Murdoch and Dassault- Hersant is probably commercially inevitable, it also argues that the media scene in the Pacific is actually remarkably diverse.

At the Second Pacific Climate Change conference in Wellington in February 2018, New Zealand’s Minister for Pacific Peoples, ‘Aupito Tofae Su’a William Sio, said New Zealand must have policies in place to deal with the possibility of climate induced migration from the Pacific Islands. He described having such a policy in place as being akin to a factory preparing an evacuation plan in case of an earthquake: A vital precaution for something everybody hoped would never be needed. But what would that policy look like, how far forward would planners have to think, what issues are involved and who would be responsible for making sure it was effective? This article examines four key areas of concern that will have to be dealt with if an effective policy on climate change-induced migration is to be developed: Public perceptions, the law, maintaining Island culture and identity and changing the existing media narrative on social change. It identifies three groups of key players in the process: Legislators and legal experts, churches and journalists.

This article presents an overview of the role mainstream  churches can play in mitigating the climate change crisis in the Pacific and their role in facilitating climate induced migration. It builds on earlier work by the author (Cass, 2018; 2020) with a focus on Fiji, Tonga and Papua New Guinea. Both Catholic and Protestant churches share a concern for the future of the planet based on the principles of economic, social and climate justice, which complement moral and ecumenical imperatives. The article examines what message the churches convey through the media and the theology that underlines them.

This article examines the way in which the popular American television seriesThis article looks at audience reactions in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) to two specific parts of The West Wing. The first was the special episode that preceded Season 3 and which was the series' response to the terrorist attacks on New York. The second was the story arc spanning Season 5 and 6, which tells of President Bartlett's attempts to settle the Israeli-Palestinian question. The programmes were watched by a mix of Zayed University students, graduates, faculty and non-university employees. All the viewers were Muslim and most were women. While the majority were Emirati, two were American converts, several were from other Arab countries and one was of Palestinian descent. Some of the responses were hostile, others positive. Audience response appeared to be governed by age, political sophistication, education and exposure to outside ideas. 31JAMMR 1 (1) pp. 31-46