National Media Reporting Of The 2018 Fijian General Elections Report recommends scrapping or reform of Media Act

“We need to scrap or reform the Media Industry Development Act.”

This is one of the recommendations in the National Media Reporting Of The 2018 Fijian General Elections Report.

Co-author and University of the South Pacific Journalism Coordinator, Dr Shailendra Singh says the Act was supposed to promote professionalism in journalism and does not address journalism's lack of training and development.

Dr Singh adds that the state advertising needs to be evenly distributed among media organisations and allocate Public Service Broadcast grants evenly among broadcasters.

The “National Media Reporting Of The 2018 Fijian General Elections” research was presented by Dr Singh and Dialogue Fiji Executive Director Nilesh Lal.

The report provides a quantified content analysis of the media coverage of the 2018 elections. It focuses on a number of indicators such as direct quotation space and time, frequency of appearance, directional balance in terms of positive, negative or neutral representation of political parties or election candidates and issue balance in relation to prioritizing of coverage of various issues.