fijivillage clarifies another statement released by the SOE about the website

fijivillage clarifies that it’s elections coverage team was reporting live from the counting centre outside the FMF National Gymnasium and the National Results Centre during the 2018 general elections, and never put a photo up of the Supervisor of Elections and the FijiFirst General Secretary.

We would like to clarify that there was a video report from the counting centre talking about the latest results, the FijiFirst General Secretary coming by the counting centre, having a brief interaction with the Supervisor outside the National Results Centre and then going to the Results Centre where other party representatives were also observing the process.

The footage was taken by our 2018 elections camera crew.

The photo being talked about by the Fijian Elections Office is not a screenshot taken and published by fijivillage. Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem had said in a statement today that the picture in question, which was also attached to the press release, was published by fijivillage in 2018 where the caption by fijivillage reads “Live from the Fiji Elections Office Counting Center”.

Saneem says fijivillage in the article yesterday admitted that the photo was actually taken outside the Results Centre.

The Count Centre was located in the carpark of the National Gymnasium while this photo is inside the National Gymnasium.

Saneem now says if fijivillage had seen that the photo had been wrongly captioned since 2018, they ought to have issued an apology and a correction in any of the years post 2018 but they have failed to do so until they were pointed out during Monday’s press conference.

The FEO urges all media to report honestly and accurately.

Saneem says when it comes to fijivillage news, there seems to be a desperate urgency to publish, without balance or accuracy – most statements that are detrimental to the credibility of elections.

He says the four years of misleading its audience and the countless times the wrongly captioned picture has been circulated on social media is evidence of the irresponsible behavior of the news organization.

fijivillage again states that the photo was not published in that form by the website.

Communications Fiji Limited stations, Legend FM, FM96, Viti FM, Navtarang and Radio Sargam and website, fijivillage stress that we are not in the business of personalizing and politicizing issues.

CFL also does not support any politician or political party and also does not stand for or support any form of discrimination against any particular individual.