Pushed into the background by the relentless sad statistics and pandemic doomsday stories around the globe are some other stories in the Pacific that normally struggle to get an airing in mainstream media.
We can’t trust ‘news’ on social media and we can’t trust the Governments themselves – one of the legacies of this universal experience we are globally experiencing will be that there wasn’t a universality of truth, that were were a thousand different lies masquerading as the truth all desperately promising explanation while erasing complicity.
While it is good to see that Boris Johnson is out of hospital the irony will surely have occurred to many that he was saved by nurses working at a NHS hospital – the very institution his own party policy has sought to undermine.
While the Pacific infection rates are still relatively low, many governments have been responding with panic, paranoia and creeping authoritarianism, especially in relation to freedom of information, media independence and constructive and accurate communication, so vital in these critical times.
As New Zealand draws deeper into uncharted waters over the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, spare a thought for our neighbours across the Pacific as infections and lockdowns spread rapidly across the region. My colleague Sri Krishnamurthi on the AUT Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch project files this roundup.