Tahiti Pacifique Celebrates First 15 Years

Tahiti Pacifique Celebrates First 15 Years

http://www.tahitipresse.pf/index.cfm?snav=see&presse=15216

PAPE'ETE: (Avaiki/Tahiti Presse/Pacific Media Watch): One of the region¹s longest running news magazines celebrated its 15th anniversary this month.

Tahiti Pacifique got started in 1991 and now has a circulation of 6000 copies a month, 1700 of those international subscriptions.

Over the last decade and a half, publisher Alex du Prel has produced an outspoken blend of hard-hitting investigative journalism and outright buffoonery.

³Anything to do with anybody,² was du Prel¹s original editorial formula and, he confirms to Tahiti Presse Agency, it remains the same today.

This was no idle threat.

Du Prel was once banned from presidential press conferences during the ³rise and fall² of Gaston Flosse and has suffered multiple defamation cases, ³almost² all of which were unsuccessful.

"I became a fine lawyer with regards to press laws", says du Prel, who twice laid administrative complaints against Flosse for denying access to some media.

"I had a reputation as an opposition newspaper, which is understandable, as I was for some years the only one to publish what the rest of the press refused."

Du Prel identifies ³corporatismes² as the defining impression of Tahiti, a kind of all-embracing old boy¹s network with economic, social and political roots stretching back to France.

Corporatism is recognised enough as a concept to have its own page in the French section of the online group edited encyclopaedia Wikipedia.

³Chicanery² and ³incompetence² are two of the products of this system, especially in political and legal circles, he says.

Du Prel arrived on a yacht from Hawaii in 1975, working at the Borabora yacht club and then in a hotel on Tetiaroa, the island owned by Marlon Brando, before settling as a ³gentleman farmer² on Moorea.

Coming from a French Protestant background mixed with what Tahiti Presse describes, in a lengthy article, as a certain ³American moral vigour² which saw du Prel begin to write stories of island life that led to a position with Les Nouvelles.

There he earned the nickname ³Scoopy² for his frequent appearance at the newsroom door with a thundering declaration: ³J'ai un scoop!²

After a few years, du Prel got tired of giving all his scoops to someone else¹s newspaper and decided to start his own.

In 1991, Tahiti Pacifique was born.

Like many island start-ups, he did everything himself: report, write, layout as well as manage the accounts and subscriptions.

Unlike many others, Tahiti Pacifique has survived and even prospered enough for its editor-publisher to offer an essentially positive outlook on French Polynesia and its ³intelligent² and ³humane² people.

However, as a newsman, he remains concerned that the current administration of Oscar Temaru faces powerful and ancient foes.

He draws a comparison between Temaru today and ³Pouvanaa in 1957² the territory¹s first independence leader, undermined and eventually jailed by French authorities.

Not that this makes him a Temaru supporter du Prel has been just as scathing about politicians involved with the new administration as the old, calling for leaders who are not out to ³flatter their egos² or for ³personal enrichment.²

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