By Chris Merritt, legal affairs editor

Papua New Guinea's leading daily newspaper is being subjected to a campaign of litigation and intimidation over reports of government corruption and mismanagement.

PNG Post-Courier editor Blaise Nangoi said there had been "a running battle" with the PNG government since Prime Minister Michael Somare came to office in 2007.

In the past few months there has been a surge in litigation by PNG ministers against the media.

"We have never faced this before in PNG," Nangoi said.

"We have had fights with the government but this is a totally new approach in what I think is a campaign to gag the media."

Nangoi, who has spent his entire career at the Post-Courier, said the growth in defamation cases was dangerous.

"The only winners are the lawyers. It's dangerous and expensive for the government and the industry," he said.

The recent rise in litigation was part of what he described as a general campaign of bullying.

"They have threatened to shut us down and have said we are a mouthpiece of the Australian government," Nangoi said.

The Post-Courier, which is part-owned by News Limited (publisher of The Australian), has an editorial staff that is entirely Papua New Guinean.

While none of the defamation claims from government ministers had succeeded, they had contributed to a significant increase in the paper's legal bills. In the past year, the Post-Courier's annual legal bill had grown from the equivalent of $25,000 to the current figure of $150,000, Nangoi said.

The paper's circulation is 25,000-26,000, which Nangoi said was about on par with its main competitor, The National.

He said The National was connected to a company that owns about 85 percent of the government licences to PNG's timber rights.

"As such, it is very pro-government because the owners are in business with the government," he said.

He said four or five defamation cases were still pending against the Post-Courier and two of them had arisen from the same article.

"We have two cases afoot now concerning a story we broke early last year about $US40million ($55million) parked in a trust account in Singapore," Mr Nangoi said.

The Post-Courier did not name the politicians who were linked to that money but "those who thought they were being referred to went to court".

Preparation and research for those two cases had already cost the paper the equivalent of $30,000-$40,000, Nangoi said.

Another defamation action concerned the paper's report about an incident in the PNG Parliament in which two ministers were involved in a scuffle.

"Corruption is rife in PNG and somebody with a good nose for investigative reporting would have a field day." TA Online/Pacific Media Watch, 27/04/09.