usual Media + PNG -
but very well put in this particular Crikey linked article:
[Edited portion - by Chris Harries originally]
Let’s make one thing clear. Without question, PNG is afflicted with enormous development problems, amongst them the alarming spread of HIV-AIDS featured on the ABC program. Add to that a level of political corruption, uncontrolled exploitation of its resources by foreign multinationals, and many other problems experienced by developing nations everywhere. Exposure of these problems should not be censored.
Australian media stand accused, not of telling the truth about PNG, but of telling only a small fraction of the truth. The bits that titillate. The bits that feed our overbearing sense of cultural superiority. The bits that spare the Australian nation the knowledge of its own role in exacerbating, if not causing, many of Papua New Guinea’s development woes.
To put this tarnished image-making into perspective, imagine for a moment that media from a dominant foreign power, say Japan, came to Australia and reported on our nation to the world. And imagine if that reporting (done without sensitivity) honed in on the "stolen generation", the mindless ways we have destroyed our soils and river systems, the drug culture amongst youth in our cities. And imagine if this was the total image of our nation, projected to the entire world. No ability to redress or balance such a jaundiced, distorted image.
[Edited portion - by Chris Harries originally]
Let’s make one thing clear. Without question, PNG is afflicted with enormous development problems, amongst them the alarming spread of HIV-AIDS featured on the ABC program. Add to that a level of political corruption, uncontrolled exploitation of its resources by foreign multinationals, and many other problems experienced by developing nations everywhere. Exposure of these problems should not be censored.
Australian media stand accused, not of telling the truth about PNG, but of telling only a small fraction of the truth. The bits that titillate. The bits that feed our overbearing sense of cultural superiority. The bits that spare the Australian nation the knowledge of its own role in exacerbating, if not causing, many of Papua New Guinea’s development woes.
To put this tarnished image-making into perspective, imagine for a moment that media from a dominant foreign power, say Japan, came to Australia and reported on our nation to the world. And imagine if that reporting (done without sensitivity) honed in on the "stolen generation", the mindless ways we have destroyed our soils and river systems, the drug culture amongst youth in our cities. And imagine if this was the total image of our nation, projected to the entire world. No ability to redress or balance such a jaundiced, distorted image.
posted by Naaaaath at 8:31 am
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