Pape’ete press pioneer dies, 58

Original French

Eugene Roe, deputy editor at RFO Polynesia, died Friday night at hospital Mamao, Papeete.

Aged 58 years, Eugene Roe was a journalist with RFO Polynesia, local outpost of a global state broadcaster, for the last twenty-five years.

After studying theology and journalism at Strasbourg, he began his career at "Vea Porotetani", the journal of the Evangelical Church and the newspaper "Les Nouvelles de Tahiti."

In 1984, he joined RFO. A lover of te reo Maohi, Roe worked hard to include use of the language in professional journalism, and among arriving generations of journalists to RFO Polynesia. He believed in the ability of Polynesian youth to carry the profession, loud and clear, to an audience scattered across a territory bigger than Europe. Roe, also, was a faithful promoter to the arrival of women announcers and journalists across RFO antennae, reports Tahiti Presse, the official territorial news agency

Not so remarkable, today, perhaps, but Roe would have been one of the few giving the nod to local women at a time when journalism was still heavily dominated by men, especially, imaginably, in colonial outputs of nuclear strategic value. He did so, apparently, with vigour.

Quoting an executive statement from RFO Polynesia, Tahiti Press said it was “thanks to his human qualities, in the humility with which he always exercised his craft, with its immense kindness and generosity, that he forced respect.”

An immensity of spirit well matched to decades of work with a people who, like their English-speaking counterparts across colonial borders, were raised being beaten for speaking their own language.

Te reo Maohi and its variants are closely related to Maori next door in the Cook Islands, as well as among tangata whenua in New Zealand. Maohi also settled Rapa Nui, Easter Island, while kanaka Maoli swapped a couple of consonants inhabiting Hawaii.

Appointed RFO editor in 2000 by Andre Michel Besse, chairman of RFO, he chose to rejoin the editorial team itself two years later, to better share his passion for reporting, highlighting the accuracy and relevance of his political analysis. Not unlike Remuna Tufariua, another notable media loss last year.

His funeral will be held in Moorea, his island homeland, in Haapiti, where he grew up. He will be buried next to his brother who died in 2007.

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