A PAPER analysing New Zealand media reporting on Fiji has found reporting by New Zealand media may be inadequate for informing the public there of the situation in Fiji.
The paper was presented by Courtney Wilson and Heather Devere, students of the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago.
The paper featured a content analysis of Radio New Zealand's Morning Report news coverage of countries in the Melanesian Spearhead Group over a two-month period.
Morning Report is Radio New Zealand's most popular program with an estimated weekly audience size of 347,000 people aged 15 years and over.
The paper looked at whether coverage by the popular RNZ showed a prevalence of war or peace journalism taking into account the number of sources, partisanship, reporting on visible events and whether or not they focused on differences in society.
Of 108 articles examined in the content analysis, 91 per cent were found to have a war journalism frame, however, it also acknowledged the length of the stories were a factor to consider and the stories did not have overarching partisanship.
"On the positive side, there are attempts to keep the reporting objective to the extent that overt partisanship is not in evidence," the paper said.
"Using a war peace journalism framing has been a very adequate way to clearly identify that the reporting analysed on the Melanesian region is very inadequate for informing the New Zealand public."
Ms Devere said it was possible to conclude that RNZ was not performing its duties to inform the New Zealand public adequately of Melanesian issues.