The leader of the 1987 coup and former Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka is shocked to find out that the Fiji Human Rights Commission report is blaming the 1987 coup on the actions taken by the media.
In his report to the Human Rights Commission on the Freedom and Independence of the Media in Fiji, Hawaii based, Doctor James Anthony writes about one of his sources who said that the media had consistently blown things out of proportion and among others, Rabuka has already stated that the media was very substantially responsible for creating the problem with which Fiji was faced with and by which he had been sucked in.
Doctor Anthony in his report to the FHRC also writes that Rabuka saw himself as being the dupe of a disinformation campaign and Rabuka himself apparently admitted, privately, that he was caught up in a hysteria generated by the media.
Rabuka has denounced all these claims in the report and stresses that the media had nothing to do with the actions that he took on May 14th, 1987.
Rabuka said he never met with anyone from the FHRC or Doctor Anthony and does not agree with what has been said about the 1987 coup.
Meanwhile, the report also states that after the December 5th takeover, the military began to analyze the role of the media industry in the polarization of Fiji's two major races, which had deepened and widened over the years.
Doctor James Anthony writes that the power of the media was found to be in the hands of about eight whites (mostly expatriates) operating in the shadows, acting in concert as members of a private club, deciding not only what to print but also deciding what not to print. He further writes that this power not to print, the power to censor news, the power to decide what was fit to be printed, to be aired, was a power that was exercised with stealth. It said that the power was exercised in the corridors of power, away from the daylight of the common forum, away from the spotlight of public attention.
Doctor Anthony writes that it was an exercise of power to protect the power of a complex web of cross owners sitting in crucial positions on a wide range of Board of Directors. He went on and said that what one local author has previously called an "oligarchy of barons" once white, now of various shades, their hands in almost every major pie in the country. The report further said that self regulation has failed and the Media Council is a white man's club and is a do nothing body.
Several allegations have also been made in the report with Doctor Anthony quoting several submissions provided by confidential sources. There is also a long list of companies, including media houses listed as members of the SDL's Duavata Initiative Company.
The list is just typed out without any reference on where the information has been received.
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