A SURVEY of six mainstream local media outlets has found that 75 per cent of journalists, photographers and camera crew do not feel free to write, shoot or edit news as they find it.
The survey was carried out two weeks ago by former Fiji Times night and deputy editor Sophie Foster. She presented the findings at a Media Freedom Day seminar at the University of the South Pacific last week.
She said only 24.4 per cent of those surveyed said they felt free to write or take pictures of news events as they found it.
"Among comments written in response to this question were that the media were almost treading on eggshells when it came to any stories that involved the military," Ms Foster said.
"There was also much comment about self-censorship and that more discussions occurred within newsrooms when it came to military stories."
Ms Foster said while it was not necessarily a bad thing that newsrooms check, double-check and triple-check stories for the sake of accuracy, there was some concern among journalists themselves that balance was missing because many people or other sources of information had simply run dry.
She said if the media was not free to do its work, administrations run the risk of underground information provision or people simply getting their information from the coconut wireless.
She said the emergence of, at last count, 13 anti-administration blogs on the Internet was testament to that.
She said almost 64 per cent of journalists, photographers and camera crew felt harassed while on news duty.
Ms Foster said journalism as a profession was difficult even in normal circumstances.
"The nature of the work means that journalists are never very popular with the powers that be.
"So in times such as now, the work becomes tougher still."
