Paper at last flexes its muscle

By MARY-LOUISE O'CALLAGHAN

HONIARA - "Mayor Storms Our News Rooms" is a headline few newspapers are likely to have cause to splash across their front pages.

But for readers of the Solomon Islands' only daily newspaper, the Solomon Star, this headline last week was proof that times are changing in their strife-torn nation.

The story, which took up half the front page of one edition of the Star, followed a visit by an angry city mayor, David Dausabea, to the Star's newsroom the previous week.

Situated at the back of Honiara's ramshackle Chinatown, the paper's office is off the main beat.

The mayor, already the subject of considerable controversy over his use of council funds, management of tendering processes and questionable land deals, gave full vent to his frustrations over the paper's robust coverage of these issues.

The paper has operated under constant threat to its staff and property for the past four years.

But five weeks after the arrival of an Australian-led intervention force, it felt safe enough this time to give its readers a full account of the mayor's visit.

Recounting how a "fuming" Dausabea had "stormed" its newsroom, demanding the newspaper stop publishing any news about the council, the Star gave the mayor a spectacular if devastating run.

"As of today, I will ban any news items regarding the council from your paper ... don't you know that I am the mayor?" he roared, the un-bylined front page report said.

He then claimed in the report to have just beaten up a fellow councillor whom he believed to be the source of earlier critical articles published in the paper.

"I've just bashed up Councillor Fatai before I came here. Now you tell me who are those people who wrote these letters to the editor about me in your paper.

"Tell me so I can go and search for them," the article reported Dausabea as saying.

After refusing to disclose their sources and finally dispatching the by now "berserk" mayor, the Star's reporters checked his claims with Councillor Alfrence Fatai and reported that Fatai confirmed he was assaulted by the mayor and his driver.

"Despite what the mayor did to me, he will never silence me," Fatai declared.

So, too, the Star, which followed up with a biting editorial, headlined "Mayor Won't Stop Us", in the same edition. Just in case the message had been lost on Dausabea and his friends, this essentially said that the paper would no longer put up with "militant-type" behaviour and defended its letters and commentary pages as the only forum for Honiara's taxpayers to express their views.

Indeed, the changes in the news content and editorials of the Star, which has so often been cowered into not reporting the antics of the Solomons' ruling "elite", is some of the most striking proof of how rapidly the presence of the 2000-strong intervention force has reversed the balance of power in Honiara.

"I think the reports we've published in recent weeks definitely would not have been published before the intervention," said Star editor Robert Iroga.

Iroga, who is also the president of the Media Association of Solomon Islands, confirmed that the insidious nature of the Solomons crisis had made it difficult for the local media to combat the intimidation and threats which were rarely issued openly but instead happened behind closed doors or in phone calls.

While the Government-funded Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation tried for the most part to rely on the quality of its journalism as its best protection, there were times when the threats of violence were so overt that its general manager, Johnston Honimae, opted to use the journalist's last defence and broadcast the news of threats in the corporation's regular bulletins.

This was a spectacularly successful strategy, but one the privately owned Star, which last year suffered the trauma and humiliation of having its owner, John Lamani, and a senior reporter dragged off and terrorised for several hours by an armed Government minister and his gang of militants, did not feel able to risk.

"There is definitely a new freedom in the air, but it's one we are trying to practise responsibly," says Iroga.

He, as president of the Media Association, has urged its members to wage a war on corruption and criminal behaviour and warned that they should no longer "bow down to the enemies of the media".

"The public are right behind us on this one," he says. "Most of these people have been ruling for a long time and this is the first time they've been exposed to scrutiny.

"People are stopping me in the street and saying 'well done; get the buggers'.