“As part of advocating for a free and open Indo-Pacific, we are going to advocate for free media across the region,” she said, adding independent media is “critical to any democracy”.
“We’re certainly looking to partner with media sectors across the region, and giving them more support,” Allen said.
Her comments come amid a wider battle for influence between Washington and Beijing in the Pacific. The US has been criticised for being largely absent as a partner in the Pacific for decades, but in recent years it has significantly stepped up its presence, scrambling to open embassies and conducting high-level visits in the region.
The US already provides access to wire services such as Associated Press to newsrooms in several Pacific countries. Allen said the US would continue to look for opportunities to encourage independent journalism, which may include “how to create access outlets like AP, AFP wire services … to make sure that they’re getting access to objective editorially sound information.”
Allen’s visit follows rising anxiety about China’s ambitions in the Pacific. In 2022, Beijing rattled Western countries by securing a security pact with Solomon Islands. In May, the US struck a defence cooperation deal with Papua New Guinea, a country just north of Australia seen as strategically significant.
US president Joe Biden hosted Pacific leaders at a summit in Washington in September, pledging more aid to the region. Solomon Islands prime minister Manasseh Sogavare, now closely aligned with China, skipped the talks and said the US must change its strategy when it came to meeting Pacific leaders and stop “lecturing” them. China’s president Xi Jinping has argued his country’s outreach to Pacific countries is based on respect for those nations’ “sovereignty and independence”.
Shailendra Singh, head of journalism at the University of the South Prtyuacific, said the media was “central to the big power contest in the region.”
“All the countries jostling for influence are wooing the media, one way or another to win Pacific citizens’ hearts and minds because this can influence government decisions, at least to some extent,” Singh said.
TANIKO Madagascar 