History of Press Freedom in Samoa

United Nations Learning Day on World Press Freedom Day

Savea Sano Malifa - 4 May 2007

Director of UNESCO, Dr. Vise Pongi,

UN Resident Coordinator, Ms. Naheed Haque,

Members of the Fourth Estate,

Ladies and Gentlemen.

Let me begin by saying thank you Dr Pongi and Ms Haque, for inviting me to speak at this important event, the United Nations Learning Day, on the commemoration of World Press Freedom Day here in Samoa. I am indeed both honoured, and privileged.

I notice in the programme, that I’m being asked to speak on the history, and current status of press freedom in Samoa.

At this point, I am uncertain as to when exactly that history began. So, perhaps, to make our job easier, let’s assume that the history of press freedom in Samoa began, when we became free of colonial rule, and were officially granted political independence in 1962.

I am making this assumption, on the understanding that under foreign rule, no country is likely to enjoy press freedom. Also, with the view that politics and the press being undeniably inseparable so to speak, both of them are very much relevant, in what I am here to talk about this afternoon.

So in this talk, I intend to draw on my own experiences while working with the Samoa Observer, in the hope that this way, I should be able to present a fair view, of the history of press freedom in our country.

So let’s start with something positive. Like believing that all journeys, whether they’re easy-going or difficult, end happily. And in that vein, I want to tell you right away, that in my view, press freedom is very much alive and well in Samoa today.

However, that is not what it was in the not-so-distant past. Which is what I intend to discuss briefly in this address.

When the Samoa Observer began publishing as a weekly in August 1978, Samoa, as a politically independent nation, was only 16 years old. Which means its government was young, green, and yet it was suddenly finding itself, dealing with all those post-colonial problems, for which answers were not readily available.

There was the often expressed concern then, that the government was perhaps moving ahead too quickly, that it was trying to run, when it should be practising to walk steadily, without falling over.

In fact, Samoa’s third prime minister, Tupuola Efi, was invariably described at the time as “a young man in a hurry.”

On the Observer’s first birthday, Tupuola, I believe grudgingly, accepted our invitation to be keynote speaker.

I feel it’s important to note what he said at that time, because that summed up pretty well what the Observer was out to achieve, which also somewhat had a big influence on a string of politically-charged events, that were to follow.

Tupuola was quite scathing in his remarks, but he was also carefully tempering his harsh line down with that famous paternalistic twist of his, which those who knew him well, would expect: This is what he said: “The Observer was launched one year ago by way of indulging the caprice of a somewhat querulous reporter, who believed that he could do better on his own.

“It was a brave effort, because striking out on a newspaper business in Apia, has not by and large, brought good fortune, let alone spiritual and mental fulfillment. There was a tendency, therefore, for people to say when the first issue appeared in the streets of Apia: ‘Very good for a start, but can the effort be sustained? One year later, I will have to acknowledge, even if a little grudgingly, that the Observer has become an established feature of the Apia scenery.”

On the editor, Tupuola said: “(He) seems, on the face of it, (to be) well able to indulge his idiosyncrasies, even to the point where he feels he can thumb his nose at politicians, bureaucrats, their values and their cocktail parties, and still manage to retain his contacts, ‘deep throat’ an all.”

On the reporters, “Mixed bag indeed!” Tupuola announced. “If I were asked to sum up: Well, of course the paper reflects the characters of the reporters: idealistic, cranky, cantakerous, bullheaded, sometimes right and frequently wrong, but it is redeemed by the fact that it’s never dull, and it is always stimulating.”

Come to think of it, that was not such a bad time for press freedom in our country. Tupuola’s government, right at the beginning, accepted the role of the free press in democratic Samoa with warts and all, as a vital stabilising force, and from there grew mutual respect.

But although we can’t deny most of Tupuola’s observations, there are a couple of things we want to elaborate on. We were perhaps idealistic and cranky as reporters at the time, but the whole exercise was about an idea, a noble idea we kept telling ourselves, and it was never about money. In fact, for a long time, none of the workers – reporters included - got paid. The principle motive was to make the idea become a live entity, and have fun doing it.

I had just returned from the United States where I’d lived for a number of years, in Washington DC and New York. America, at the time, was at the peak of the Vietnam controversy, which deeply divided the country. It was much like how it is now with the Iraq war, except that in 1974-75, the majority of Americans wanted blood – their politicians’ blood.

When Watergate unfolded, right through to when Richard Nixon was forced to resign, to avoid being impeached, I marveled at how the free press in America worked, how two Washington Post investigative reporters worked through the messy scandal, and finally exposed the government’s ugly role hidden behind it, from the American people.

Vivid impressions of freedom and justices pictured during that time stayed with me. I had not planned to return home then. America was a good country, and I quite liked living there. But I received word from home that my mother was sick, so I returned. Soon after I arrived, it was easy to see that there was a need for some cranky reporters to dig into the mess seen everywhere, and keep everyone straight. That was the overriding idea.

In 1981, Tupuola was defeated, and the Human Rights Protection Party took over. Almost right away, hell broke loose. The new leadership had seen how the paper had worked on the previous government, exposed what had deliberately been hidden, and they were now determined not to be treated the same way.

There were unbelievably costly lawsuits, physical threats, and threats to kill. What’s more, press freedom suffered a major blow when the newspaper was torn up by an angry MP, and stomped on inside Parliament.

You couldn’t help wondering, if they could do that inside Parliament and got away with it, what was to stop them from doing something more violent, like killing someone they did not like outside Parliament. It was clear then, that even Parliament did not care what press freedom was, and whether it lived or died.

The next 17 years was the darkest period for press freedom in Samoa. It was when it was hounded to the ground by our political leaders, incurring serious concern among human rights groups in the international community, that they intervened.

Well, at this point, you are probably all aware about what the Samoa Observer went through during that bleak part of its history, so I will not bore you with the details.

I will say this though. To practice serious journalism in Samoa during that time, one had to work his way carefully through a minefield of physical assaults, threats to kill, “suspicious” arson, intimidation tactics such refusing business licenses, bans on government advertising, being followed at night as you drive down the street, and all the way to your home, defamation and criminal libel lawsuits.

It was a time when the free press in Samoa, was mangled underfoot at will, by the mighty and the powerful.

Those lawsuits, by the way, tell an interesting story. There were five of them ranging from $200,000 to $400,000. Two were withdrawn two years after they were filed, one is still pending, we drew one, and one was discontinued. Don’t these figures paint the word intimidation most clearly? In any case, the government paid for the PM’s legal fees of $783,000, and later another $400,000 was added to cover the rest of the fees.

In the mid-90’s, a cabinet minister was shot dead by the son of one of his colleagues. Two former cabinet ministers are now serving life sentences for plotting the murder of their colleague. One of them, interesting enough, is the plaintiff in the lawsuit that’s still pending against the Observer. It’s now more than ten years since it was filed. Did a judge once say that justice delayed is justice denied?

When the late PM Tofilau Eti Alesana passed away in the late nineties, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi took over. Soon afterwards, changes in the government’s attitude towards the free press started to emerge. Press freedom for the first time in years, was given more serious attention by the government.

During JAWS’ World Press Freedom Day celebrations in 2003, Tuilaepa and Deputy PM Misa Telefoni, were awarded the World Press Freedom Award, for their roles in promoting accountability, transparency and good governance.

I guess that in developing countries that are politically young, their leaders tend to become unprincipled at times, and want to forge ahead sooner and quicker than they should. In doing so, they cut corners, hack away at well-meaning but frustrating obstacles, and thereby create problems they don’t want the public to know about. They end up piling up more and more problems so that when solving them is impossible, they become dictatorial, and lash out at anybody, and everyone suffers.

So what is press freedom?

It is the lifeblood of democracy, without it, democracy wilts and dies.

What happens when democracy dies? We become a dictatorship, and our freedoms are taken away forcibly from us.

We are no longer free to choose, express an opinion publicly, think or create. We do as our leader tells us, or we’re punished. That way, we become like an active volcano, churning up fire in the bosom of the earth, waiting to explode.

Which means it’s up to the government whether to respect press freedom, or shun it. A case in point is the forceful take-over of the Fiji government by its own military. Today in Fiji, press freedom is a mockery. The press there is working cautiously under the threat of the gun. So let’s hope good thinking prevails in the minds of that country’s military leaders, and return democracy to Fiji.

So what is press freedom? It is everyone’s freedom.

As a matter of interest, this topic is well covered in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

And one of the principle architects of that Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, also made the right by members of the public to press freedom quite clear, when he said:

“The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Samoa’s own Constitution is also clear about citizens’ “rights regarding freedom of speech, assembly, association, movement, and residence.”

It says: “All citizens of Western Samoa shall have the right-

(a) To freedom of speech and expression; and

(b) To assemble peaceably and without arms; and

(c) To form associations or unions; and

(d) To move freely throughout Western Samoa and to reside in any part thereof.

But as we all know, press freedom is not absolute. Which means that as journalists, we cannot abuse that freedom. There are therefore laws in place to prevent the members of the press from doing just that.

I deliberately included in this address our own series of lawsuits filed by government MPs, to illustrate our point that we did not break any of the laws for which we were sued. Which follows that those lawsuits were all acts of outright intimidation, as far as we’re concerned.

Of the five lawsuits in question, only one was half-won. The rest were either withdrawn, still pending, or discontinued. But from this experience, we found that the best rule in journalism is not to be sued. Especially by the Samoan government. Because even if you were right, you would still have to pay your legal fees, while the government pays for those of its MPs.’

Finally, I want to say that for press freedom to be respected by the authorities, journalists must insist on carrying out their responsibilities with fairness and with integrity. They have to insist on their ethics. It appears that plagiarism, or using published material without the proper authority, is sadly being condoned in Samoa today. This illegal practice must stop.

For its part, the government must abolish those laws that are a direct threat to press freedom, as they impede the free flow of information. I’m talking about the Publishers and Printers Act 1992, and the law of Criminal Libel, inherited from our colonial rulers.

We already have laws protecting members of the public from careless journalism, so these two are quite unnecessary, and must be repealed. The government should also discontinue its policy that allows taxpayers, to pay for the legal fees incurred by government leaders, who claim they’ve been defamed. As this policy frustrates efforts by the press to inquire into alleged misconduct by public officials, it must be removed.

In our own court case, I remember asking: Why don’t we ask the government to pay for our legal fees too? We are taxpayers also, aren’t we? The quick reply was: Are you also a PM? So I left it at that, because it dawned on me then, that whether we like it or not, we’re not living in a fair world.

But despite all that, I want to reiterate that press freedom, is indeed very much alive and well in Samoa today.

Soifua,

Savea Sano Malifa.