Interim Prime Minister Commodore Frank Bainimarama said the international community should stop jumping up and down about the expulsion of the Fiji Times and Fiji Sun Publishers.
Although Commodore Bainimarama had refused to reveal the specific reason on why Fiji Times Publisher Evan Hannah was deported last Friday, he said the international community knows what Russel Hunter and Evan Hannah did which resulted in them breaching their work permit conditions.
Bainimarama said he is concerned if some media organisations continue to report irresponsibly and fabricate stories.
Commodore Bainimarama also said the Fiji Media Council should be proactive and ensure that journalism ethics to report factually is followed by all the media outlets in the country.
Bainimarama also stresses that media freedom is alive in Fiji. He said the media should be responsible and leave the determination of the legality or otherwise of the interim government to the courts and concentrate on reporting facts on a daily basis.
The Interim Prime Minister also questions some media outlets why they do not verify information received against the interim administration.
Some misleading reports highlighted during the meeting between the Interim PM and the media executives was an incident which never occurred involving a taxi driver where he claimed in a TV interview that he was picked up by soldiers and sodomised. But it has been established that no such incident occurred and the reporter did not verify the information.
The other story highlighted was a claim of a death in military custody in Vanua Levu last year. This had never occurred and it was established that the reporter just picked up the fabricated information from a blog site.
Feature
Stop Jumping Up And Down
