Online Media Important to Papua New Guinea

**PORT MORESBY, PNG ---- The winner of a PNG media anti-corruption award says online media has the potential to inform and mobilise PNG's people.

The winner of a Papua New Guinea media anti-corruption award says online media has the potential to inform and mobilise people in PNG.

Blogger, Martyn Namorong, won the overall prize at the 2012 Excellence in Anti-Corruption Reporting Media Awards in PNG.

Namorong says that because social media in Papua New Guinea is quite new, there's still a lack of understanding about how it could be influential.

“Those of us who are willing to speak out, particularly online... have the spotlight on them such that people react more quickly,” he said.

He is in Australia on a two-week study tour to meet with investigative journalists and community groups involved in fighting corruption.

Namorong won the media award for an investigative series into the hearings of the Commission of Inquiry into Agriculture Business Leases in the East Sepik Province of PNG.

He told Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat program that no mainstream media was covering the inquiry. “I was the only person reporting on the investigation,” Namarong said.

“What I saw was just typical of what's happened everywhere, where agriculture were pretty much just taken in order for companies not to follow what would be normal forestry regulations.”

United Nations Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative, David McLachlan-Karr, told local media after the awards that Namarong demonstrated excellent investigative journalism and research skills in his reports.

“Martyn provided three compelling reports that put the reader at the heart of the story,” McLachlan-Karr said.

“He revealed corrupt practice at the community level, and raised awareness of the impacts of corruption over an extended period of time.”

The Excellence in Anti-Corruption Reporting Media Awards encourage individual journalists in PNG to report, expose and combat corruption.

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