ABC hosts inaugural Pacific Australia Media Leaders Meeting in Sydney

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Managing Director David Anderson and Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) President and National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) Papua New Guinea Managing Director Kora Nou on 28 February hosted 27 Chief Executive Officers, managing directors and editors from media houses in 12 countries across the Pacific.

Australian attendees included leadership representatives from First Nations media, commercial free-to-air and print media, independent and public broadcasters.

The purpose of this initial meeting was to build relationships, identify high priority challenges and opportunities to work together, and set the agenda for the group into the future.

The group discussed opportunities to work together in skills development, content creation, sharing and production, management and leadership, finance and funding models, and technical broadcast expertise.

They agreed to unite as one voice to advocate for the importance of government support for a vibrant, independent regional media sector; share business model insights and experiences to support sustainability with each other and facilitate access to each other’s organisations to support collaboration.

Meanwhile, the Chief Executive Officer of the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation (SIBC) Johnson Honimae who attended the meeting said SIBC as a small broadcaster needs to work together with the bigger ones in the Pacific in areas like capacity building, technology upgrades, strategies to raise revenue, content exchange and management.

“Together we are a force to reckon with, SIBC is very happy to be part of this group as the Corporation establishes Television and faces the challenges of artificial information,” Mr Honimae said.

The meeting was supported by PINA and the Pacific Media Assistance Scheme (PACMAS), a media-strengthening initiative delivered by ABC International Development and funded by the Australian Government. 

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