Session II - Freedom of Information: The Media's Role in Ensuring Transparency

The conference recognizes the strategic importance of the press and its vital role in the process of national development. Considering the interdependence of ASEAN nations the conference encourages the ASEAN press to promote the paramount goal, including the preservation of political stability, rapid economic growth, social justice, greater regional cohesion, and the development of human resources to their full potential.23

In an open society there is a proper and desirable tension between public officials (especially those who are elected) and the media. The absence of such a tension is the hallmark of societies that are neither open nor free.24

• The press has a role to make institutions accountable, a kind of watchdog role, but it is quite unclear how it is to make this happen, and whose side to take in civil society, that of the party or the government or the country.
  
  
• In developing countries, institutions of accountability have had variable success. The design of accountability processes needs more thought and more work in each of these countries to see what does work and what does not. Ultimately though, there needs to be an acceptance of the concept of the rule of law. For example, in Thailand last August, the decision of the Constitutional Court, which found that the prime minister was not guilty, when the facts spoke otherwise, showed that they decided not to follow the rule of law, but a more Confucian idea of allowing the leader to get on with the leadership of the country. Ultimately, a strong legal system is needed, with courts and prosecutors and judges who are prepared to deal with the issues and punish people. The system of accountability required must also be a system that punishes "big fish" running the system of corruption in the country, not just the "little guy" who collects a $100 bribe. It is not easy to put these accountability institutions together. The Independent Commission Against Corruption in Hong Kong has been a very good model for how to investigate very senior figures and put together strong court cases against them, even though it is also extremely authoritarian and acts in an extra-legal manner. For instance, if it is found that your money in the bank is not commensurate with your income, that means you are guilty of corruption and you can be charged. So, here there is a trade-off between democracy and dictatorship.
  
  
• There can be clear conflicts between the right of the press to expose, reveal, and investigate and the duty to inform. For example, a common feature in developing countries are coalition governments, and these "joint ventures," it was noted, have a record of succeeding only about half the time. One of the issues before journalists is the way in which they report differences and strife between coalition partners, bringing out why this is happening, but also recalling the common agenda, which may be positive for the country.
  
  
• In Singapore, for example, the right to criticize is controlled along very certain lines. If you talk about political issues, then you have to become a political party. There is a real conflict in governance. If you are a good party person, you have a duty to ensure the destruction of the opposition and to ensure that you stay in power for a very long time. But if you are there for the people, there are other attributes that you need to pursue. In Asia, it was argued, there can be situations where, if you do not resolve this conflict, countries can even collapse.
  
  
• The independence of the press depends on the business model of the press. The ownership issue remains crucial. You may have state-owned media, but the question remains as to whether private media, by definition, is any better? Does it promote good governance or transparency?
  
  
• This issue about corporatization of media ownership remains. Corporatization is a major challenge to the integrity of the media and to the role of the media as a watchdog. A major problem in the U.S. is with "tabloidization" of much of the print media, in combination with large corporations owning networks and newspapers these days.
  
  
• Independent media centers like the Filipino Centre in the U.S. have been developing as an alternative to big, corporate media. These should be explored as a kind of new infrastructure that will ensure a free media that will do its job of being a watchdog, of watching government malfeasance. This includes training for journalists, a culture and ethics of sharing amongst journalists, the values of freedom from the people covered and from the government, and that it is not acceptable to take bribes or payment from the government or from any of your sources. They should be supported by institutions, such as enlightened laws and enlightened powers to defend journalists when they are sued for libel and for being too aggressive. Finally, civic groups interested in having good media must also play an active role, in supporting the independent media and in monitoring the performance of the media.
  
  
• At the end of the day, the media cannot root out competition or punish perpetrators-this must be done by other agencies.
  
  
• Information is widely available now-the infrastructure is already there, in the Information Superhighway. If there is a group of willing, independent-minded journalists, you can set up a site anywhere in the world. You can even migrate to the United States, put it up, and just say this is the Free Press of Asia.com or whatever you call it. The only thing is that you should never ask is that the information of the Internet be free-all of this work has to be funded How is the independent media working over the Internet going to be paid for its work-this is the big question. It is going to be paid for by the subscribers. You can introduce a subscription of $100 and put it off to an off-shore account. The accountability of that media lies in the renewal process. If you are doing good things, you can put the renewal at six months, and thereafter, the free press would proliferate, independent of the government, independent of regulations and authorities, and you are self-accountable.
  
  
• The media can definitely put as much information as possible on the Internet. For instance, using Campaign Contribution Disclosure Laws, where the issue is enforced, it is possible to put all the information up by candidate, who has taken what from whom using searchable data, to produce transparency.
  
  
• It was also claimed that online journalism has helped improve the quality of journalism, because on a website, your constituency is not limited. You must grab his or her attention. The quality had therefore better be good.
  
  
• In dealing with the Internet and the new technologies, and the impact on the freedom of information, a note was made that e-news/e-information is constrained by two other "e"s as far as the developing world goes: One is economics and the other is education. In most developing countries, people do not necessarily have the means to Internet access. And the other problem, the Internet and computers, though they are getting cheaper and cheaper in the advanced economies, they are still quite out of reach for the vast majority of people in the developing countries. And of course, there is a problem of literacy-the problem of education in the masses-without which you cannot use the Internet.
  
  
• The media needs to play a more formal role in good governance, not just exposing bad practices, but also questioning the reasons for bad laws.
  
  
• Here positive journalism can be vital. For example, in India in the context of transparency, the media has been able to expose many, many cases of corruption. Yet, today, unfortunately, corruption in this country has become so much accepted that it is no longer big news. There have been isolated writings in the media regarding what positive steps could be taken, but the media campaign for positive steps, for institutionalization of processes for creating sound institutions, to combat opaqueness, or to combat corruption, has not been there with that kind of campaign. There is no single campaign in the media, regarding bribing by the ruling party to legislators by public money. If you want to stop corruption, it was argued, you have to have institutions that are safeguards, and you have to have institutionalized processes that are safeguards. The media will probably have to take on this positive role, asking for institutional reforms.
  
  
• The inadequacy of the current journalism modes was discussed, and the media was urged to fulfill the informational and educational function of journalism, and beyond the watchdog function of journalism as a way of fighting corruption. Journalism needs to develop more relevant explanatory journalism about what the government actually does and how it does it. The PCIJ carries out investigative journalism and also encourages others to look at government and how it works, because people do not understand government, the bureaucracy, or agencies. Even if they are very dull and boring aspects of governance, it was noted, it must be made "urgent" to the people, so that citizens themselves will promote governance within a democratic framework. Journalists should also learn to examine the judicial system, and not just do police-level work, but also follow through on particular culprits and particular cases: What is happening to our courts? What is happening to the civil cases? What is happening to criminals or politicians that have criminal cases? How long have the cases gone on? And so on.
  
  
• Many politicians, and others, who are investigated and exposed in the media, often file defamation suits in court, restricting media freedom. In the Philippines, for example, the Supreme Court has generally ruled in the favor of the press. There was one incident when the former president, Mrs. Aquino, filed a case against a columnist. The lower court ruled in favor of Mrs. Aquino, but the Appellate Court overturned the ruling. Most cases even get dismissed in lower courts. The Philippines Press Institute, a publishers' group, has also been asked to seek to try and eliminate criminal aspects of defamation, but the executive director was not supportive, because owners feared that if the "targets" did not have the redress of going to court and threatening journalists with jail sentences, they might exact a more extreme penalty and shoot them, which happens too often in the Philippines.
  
  
• The media itself also needs to review two legal doctrines that prohibit or inhibit such coverage, sub-Judice, which journalists used to an extreme for not covering cases at all; and contempt of court, which the judiciary uses without any kind of check from either of the branches of the government.
  
  
• It was claimed that in India, judicial officers are the most ill-informed about the rights of the journalists. For example, there are probably a dozen cases going on in which a magazine section published a picture of a woman in a bikini for some fashion show. Some magistrate thinks that such pictures are corrupting the minds of the young in this country, yet you can watch FTV for six hours in a day and watch naked women parading down the catwalk for hours on end. Still, newspapers that publish one or two such pictures attract attention.
  
  
• An institution in Australia, the Judicial Commission, takes complaints about the courts. It has two roles-educating the judges and investigating complaints against judges. It has made them a little bit more careful and created an element of oversight that was missing in the past. The media is therefore just one slice in a big pie. Other slices are a strong judicial system, an active civil society, enlightened citizens, and even the civil service. The media should also try to prevent the commission of corruption. The Centre has launched a web site which actually has up an entire database on the Congress, president, members of the cabinet, their campaign contributions, and their statement of assets and liabilities, and it is searchable. Academics have generated new findings based on this data. The media should put the facts that they have gathered online and in other forms to help enlighten the citizenry.
  
  
• Journalism, it was noted, is generally a very depressed industry right now, and this is affecting its role as a media watchdog. For example, in the United States, the media is very corporatized, all market-driven, all money-driven, with waves of lay-offs across the country. Owners and editors are not putting the resources in investigative reporting; there is huge amount of corporatization, commercialization, and trivia as these sell papers. Lay-offs may not happen because papers are not making money, but they are pulling people off investigative projects and backing down from the watch-dog role. For TV, the expected profit margin is 46 percent, but if the media is a public institution, if it is a public trust, why should it be expected to make so much? In Hong Kong, many owners of newspapers are non-journalists who are not in the media business, like the takeover of the Nanyang Post. And the challenge is to foster an independent media.
  
  
• Sensationalism in reporting is undermining the integrity and role of the media. For example, in Hong Kong and in the United States, the credibility of the media has been going down because of excessive reportage, intrusion in the privacy, and sensationalism. But if we do not want government regulation, then the media must be able to regulate and self-police itself. On the other hand, if the media is a watchdog, who is watching the media? A very vibrant and active civil society and civic groups who will monitor the media are needed.
  
  
• The press corps needs more support, even training, in undertaking how modern societies work. Despite many significant changes over the past ten years-specifically in the area of business technology, in telecoms, power, financial services, information technology and software-the press is woefully unprepared for this. There is a dearth of journalism education in this region, perhaps because of the British tradition of journalism as an "apprenticeship" as opposed to actually a discipline or multidisciplinary study. In the absence of an understanding and appreciation of the changes, I find that the media often becomes part of one lobby or another, and a person who is reading it ends up getting thoroughly confused.
  
  
• The media as watchdog and who watches the media-this is a very sensitive issue. Media is, in many ways, the most accountable and most watched industry, each media has its own daily constituent readers, acting as an election everyday-and our voter has to pay, unlike the parliament member, in which they pay voters to elect them. So, if media is the watchdog, who watches the media is I think a red herring. The reader is the key, the consumer is the key. We need to improve that consumer through various means, through journalism and through political leadership. That is really the only safeguard we have in the system.
  
  
• UNESCO tried to take a lead in this, with the New World Information Order, and the Non-Aligned Movement also took a lead, though the governments also used this to control their media. The Internet means you do not need the government involved.
  
  
• Empowering the vernacular press to make it more accessible was stressed as important. In India, for example, English speakers represent just 2 percent of the people in India, which is fairly elitist. The vernacular press are often voicing the concerns of the people, for example in Jamanu and Kashmir writing about the gunman who comes around and knocks at their door, and this is not reflected in national English press. We need rural reports about local government and Panchayat in Raj.
  
  
• There should be a South-South information network, for example, linking services and providing sources and columns on media, and information, rules and regulations to other countries, so that it is more accessible, more voices get heard. There must be more exchanges among the Asian press, in Asia. For instance, rather than learning about India through the New York Times, a more efficient way would be to hear about authentic and indigenous voices in different countries of Asia. The Internet could provide a means for more contact, using newspaper websites. This would, for example, overcome the problems of access to information in Pakistan.
  
  
• Organizations such as the PCIJ, which is a media NGO, specializing in investigative reporting, makes a point not to compete with mainstream media in investigating issues of corruption, especially if they are adequately covered by newspapers and radio and television programs. They would aim to go for the more high impact stories, because that is how an impact can be made on the mainstream media.
  
  
• Corruption is very complicated and involves many factors, to do with the political system and culture that prevail in a country. It helps to have a free press to expose wrong doings, but the media can only do so much, bringing out issues in the public arena. But journalists are not trained lawyers, and they look for evidence that meet the standards of journalism, not the standards of the courts. After a report comes out, the media must realize that its work is not over, that somebody else has to come in to finish off the work. So, lawyers' groups and civic groups must also be vigilant in order to see that cases do not just languish before the court and investigators.