Memorial fund to train reporters

Mark Forbes Herald Correspondent in Jakarta
SMH, June 14, 2008

THE Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said he was proud to launch a fund in the memory of Morgan Mellish during his visit to Jakarta yesterday, stating the former correspondent was committed to great journalism and loved Indonesia.
Mr Mellish, 36, was one of five Australians who died when a Garuda jet crashed in Yogyakarta just over a year ago. A correspondent with The Australian Financial Review, he was covering a visit by the then foreign affairs minister, Alexander Downer.
The Morgan Mellish Fund, to be administered by the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club, will fund the training of up to 30 Indonesian journalists in financial reporting each year. "Morgan would have liked that," Mr Rudd said. "Morgan Mellish represented the finest traditions of Australian journalists and Australian foreign correspondents," he said.
Mr Rudd said Mr Mellish, the recipient of a Walkley Award, was on a path to "even greater heights when tragedy struck".
The foundation deserved support as it would strengthen media coverage and "a free press is the life blood of Australian democracy and Indonesian democracy", Mr Rudd said.
Mr Mellish's successor and JFCC spokesman, Angus Grigg, said the fund would seek "to enhance Indonesian journalism … and encourage the spirit of bold inquisitiveness that made Morgan stand out".
He said the fund would be available to all local journalists who wanted to improve their financial literacy.
"We want to use that tragedy and see something positive come out of it," he said.
A total of 21 people died when the Garuda Boeing 737 overshot the Yogyakarta runway on March 7, 2007. The pilot is likely to face criminal negligence charges later this month. He allegedly ignored 15 cockpit alarms warning him to abort the landing as he descended at twice the safe speed.