The reality of covering environmental and general news in the Cook Islands - Cook Islands News (original) (raw)
Cook Islands News reporter Teitimoana Tairi in Fiji among other Pacific reporters. SUPPLIED/26031608/26031609
At the Empowering Pacific Narratives: GEDSI and Traditional Knowledge in Invasive Species Communications Capacity Building Symposium held in Fiji yesterday, Pacific media representatives, including Cook Islands News, were asked to discuss the difficulties journalists encounter when covering news.
Cook Islands News reporter Teitimoana Tairi talked about the challenges she faced in reporting on environmental and general news in the Cook Islands.
One of the biggest challenges is covering communities across the outer islands. The Cook Islands are spread across a vast area of the Pacific Ocean, and reaching these islands is not always easy.
Limited resources and high travel costs make it difficult for journalists based in Rarotonga to reach these communities directly.
As a result, many stories from the outer islands rely on phone calls, emails, or information sent from local contacts.
While this helps us stay connected, practical challenges such as tight deadlines and time constraints make it difficult to report news promptly and accurately.
Pacific media representatives, such as reporters from Journalist of Samoa (JAWS), Fiji Sun and Fiji Broadcasting Corporation, mentioned how challenging it can be to deal with scientific reports, particularly environmental articles, since reporters must comprehend technical terms in order to explain and share in a way that the public can understand.
Nitish Narayan, PRISMMS (Pacific Regional Invasive Species Management Support Service) Communications and Liaison Officer, shared that media work plays an important role in raising awareness, building public support, and showing the impact of environmental initiatives like invasive species management.
The symposium also focused on the impacts of invasive species in the Pacific. Participants, including Non-Government representatives, communication officers, and government representatives, learnt that invasive species threaten daily life, including the potential contamination of rats, feral pigs attacking crops and weeds eroding soils and disrupting water systems.
The symposium highlighted that effective environmental storytelling in the Pacific should blend science with Traditional Knowledge (TK) and Gender Equality, Disability, and Social Inclusion (GEDSI), to ensure that everyone has a voice in matters that affect the environment.
The symposium made it clear that sharing these stories is not just about reporting facts; it’s about amplifying community voices, explaining complex issues, and connecting conservation work to the everyday lives of the Pacific.
Operating under the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environmental Programme (SPREP), PRISMSS helps Pacific islands manage invasive species to protect biodiversity, ecosystems, and local livelihoods.
Dominic Sadler, Manager of PRISMSS, also noted that Pacific-led efforts, strong partnerships, and media engagement are key to scaling up the fight against invasive species, biodiversity, and strengthening ecosystem resilience for island communities.