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International Forum >> The Democracy Forum for East Asia>> "The Role of the Media in Fighting Corruption: Perspectives from Asia and Beyond"
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Introduction
Session I: The Current State of Media Reporting on Corruption in Asia Session II: The Institutional and Legal Environment Session III: Forging Partnerships in the Fight Against Corruption Session IV: Promoting More Effective Media Coverage Agenda Participants |
Session I: The Current State of Media Reporting on Corruption in Asia Moderator: Roland Rich (Centre for Democratic Institutions, Australia) The opening session of the conference surveyed the variety of print and broadcast media that report on corruption in East Asia. Participants discussed not only the techniques they use to root out official corruption-and the political and social consequences of their work-but also why certain issues and controversies have been neglected or underreported by the press. Moderator Roland Rich used the examples of Vietnam and Papua New Guinea to showcase different approaches to fighting corruption. In Vietnam, the media are commonly perceived as boring organs of state propaganda. But Mr. Rich had found recent press exposes of possible connections between government officials and a criminal underworld that engages in high-level bribery, extortion, and even assassination. For some observers, Mr. Rich cautioned, these exposes were more likely to be the visible manifestation of internal Party disputes than genuine investigative reporting. In Papua New Guinea, where a recent newspaper headline read "Media Declare War on Corruption," Mr. Rich was more convinced that the campaign was genuine, since it also included the participation of local churches, civic and business groups, and international NGOs like Transparency International. In the end, he noted, several ministers and senior-level officials were removed from their positions. "Can one fight corruption without the media?" Mr. Rich asked. In his view, "you need the media to generate public support and legitimacy. You need to catch the big fish, not just the little fish. But the media do not have to initiate these investigations." Melinda Quintos de Jesus, executive director of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility in the Philippines, then provided a brief overview of the media in selected East Asian countries. In her view, merely reporting what politicians do or say was not enough; the purpose of investigative journalism was to conduct a thorough, ongoing search for corruption. Despite some bright spots, Ms. de Jesus believed that "the East Asian media need to be both more professional and more provocative." In Thailand and Indonesia, for example, journalists had exposed corrupt officials who misdeclared their financial assets, forcing them to resign. At the same time, the current Thai prime minister won a decisive electoral victory despite having been accused of financial wrongdoing during the campaign. This was for Ms. de Jesus a sobering reminder of how popular politicians can withstand sustained media scrutiny. Many corruption cases in Indonesia, she added, were initiated not by the media but by opposition parties seeking to discredit the government. And in India, an online journal named Tehelca.com had itself become a subject of controversy after it published allegations of bribery in India's defense procurement system and in sports betting. Critics claimed that Tehelca.com's sting operations constituted entrapment, not legitimate newsgathering. In the Philippines, the media had played an important role in investigating charges of corruption that led to the impeachment of former president Estrada, Ms. de Jesus said. But while this dramatic event in one sense united Filipinos-"everyday at 2 p.m., everyone was watching live broadcasts of the impeachment hearings"-there actually were two different lines of reporting. Serious media outlets focused on the legal complexities of Estrada's financial assets, while the tabloid press (and most citizens) were more interested in how much the former president spent on luxuries for his mistress. In any case, simply removing one corrupt politician would not result in the wholesale cleansing of political life in the Philippines. The ouster of president Marcos in the 1980s had brought a new generation of politicians to power but had not led to stricter laws against corruption. Journalists remain subject not only to bribery and boycotts but, in extreme cases, to violence and even murder, and "the judiciary in the Philippines is still one of the most corrupt agencies of government," she said. "The press and civil society can only do so much," Ms. de Jesus concluded. Even the most vigilant civil society, to say nothing of the general public, will eventually succumb to what she called "corruption fatigue." Andy On-Tat Ho, a columnist for the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, said that because "corruption is a unique kind of crime in which the parties are usually willing partners, we need whistle-blowers, news media that protect their sources, and capable public prosecutors." He praised Hong Kong's Independent Commission against Corruption and other agencies that conduct investigations, promote transparency, and support civic education. But Mr. Ho also noted that at least one former commissioner of the anticorruption commission had accepted a senior position in an agency he once investigated. This, Mr. Ho warned, was a potential threat to the integrity of the commission. And he noted that while lurid personal scandals typically get major press attention, the most serious corruption cases are often uncovered only through tedious investigations of complicated financial transactions. It is here that the media play their most important and underappreciated role, Mr. Ho concluded. "Media coverage of corruption is quite poor in Korea," according to Jong Wan Kim, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute. Persons in power can and do exact retribution, which creates a real fear among journalists who investigate high-level corruption. In addition, the media themselves are often part of the problem, since most Korean media are parts of business conglomerates that need favors from politicians. Ultimately, widespread high-level corruption loses its newsworthiness and leads citizens to believe "everyone does it." In such a climate, low-level public and private corruption flourish as well, he argued. But two other participants-Sook-Jong Lee of the Sejong Institute and Young Jo Lee of the civic organization Citizens United for a Better Society, took issue with Mr. Kim's characterization of the Korean media. Young Jo Lee conceded that some news media have an ideological bias and that some news coverage is politically slanted. But he and Sook-Jong Lee both cited examples of journalists who had pursued corruption stories to the highest levels. And Rick Lishi Chu, editor of the Taiwan Times,Taiwan's largest English-language newspaper, also defended the Korean press: "We Taiwanese are much too cooperative with our government…We have a lot to learn from the Korean media." Jong Wan Kim said that while he appreciated Mr. Chu's comments, "I do not see much reporting on high-level government-business collusion." "I may be biased because of where I work but I believe the government does use its powers to fight corruption," said Euy-whan Kim, an official of Korea's Independent Commission against Corruption. Since the economic crisis of 1997, Korea has introduced numerous reforms concerning corporate governance and money laundering, Mr. Kim said. The commission itself monitors government officials and encourages whistle-blowers. It also consults with international partners-and with the media-on devising strategies to fight corruption. Still, as long as the government continues to issue huge contracts to private firms for construction projects, health-care services, and other public needs, there will always be individuals in those industries willing to offer bribes to obtain these contracts. For Gautam Adhikari, a former Indian journalist currently based in Washington, D.C., "It is impossible to fight corruption without the media." No other institution, Mr. Adhikari said, has the resources to uncover wrongdoing and to present its findings to huge numbers of people. But journalists need to stick together to protect each other, he added. When the Indian government began a tax investigation of the Tehelca.com online journal, the established press began reporting not only on the scandals uncovered by Tehelca but on the scandal of what they called the government's attempts to silence investigative reporting. Jeffrey Lovitt, a British journalist now working for Transparency International in Berlin, reported the findings of a recent opinion poll in which respondents from many countries agreed that the editorial policies of the news media are influenced by bribery and by the purchase of advertising. Mr. Lovitt asked participants to discuss both the prevalence of bribery in the Asian news media and public awareness or attitudes toward this problem. James Tu, vice president of Taiwan's China Times, said that he believed that business executives who pay bribes are not necessarily eager to do so but are simply trying to protect themselves from corrupt officials. He agreed with Mr. Ho that press coverage of personal scandals sells more newspapers than does serious reporting on financial malfeasance that does not include sensational personal details. Luz Maria Helguero, a journalist and newspaper publisher from Peru, reminded participants that the problems they were discussing were not unique to East Asia. "In the past ten years, Peru's former president Fujimori bribed many media outlets. We still have so-called good and bad media in Peru today," where the good media are those television stations that have replaced executives who accepted bribes and the bad media are those where corrupt officials remain in place. And Ms. Helguero agreed that ordinary citizens often experience "corruption fatigue" when complicated charges and countercharges of corruption are disputed and denied. Ms. de Jesus replied that it is precisely when politicians accuse each other of corruption that the press must act quickly to confirm or refute such charges. And Luz Rimban of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism added that "corrupt behavior comes in a lot of forms." She cited the case of a police detective who played golf with a subject of his investigations, which, even if not illegal, certainly gave the appearance of partiality to this individual's police work. Mr. Rich said that many advanced democracies had passed so-called freedom of information laws that gave the media and the public access to most official government records, with limited exceptions in cases of national security, commercial privacy, or ongoing criminal investigations. In Australia, which has had such laws for fifteen years, even these exceptions are subject to judicial review, wherein the government must prove that the release of a document is against the national interest. Mr. Rich asked participants to discuss the state of such legislation in their countries. James Tu replied that the Kuomintang, the former ruling party in Taiwan, currently supported a freedom of information act but that, in his view, Taiwanese lawmakers "were not entirely sure how this legislation works." He nonetheless agreed that the absence of such legislation makes it difficult for Taiwan's press to obtain much essential information in corruption investigations. "We have no freedom of information act in Philippines," Ms. de Jesus replied. Recently, however, media and civil society groups had prepared the draft of a press law. One noteworthy feature of the proposed legislation, Ms. de Jesus said, is that it would give not only the press but other nongovernmental groups the right to make freedom-of-information requests and to obtain government documents. Korea passed its freedom of information act a few years ago, Jong Wan Kim said, but in his view the law gave the government excessive freedom to decide how much information to release. And although many NGO's claim that the existing legislation needs to be strengthened, "I have not seen the media take advantage of the current law to expose more corruption," Mr. Kim said. "Standard freedom-of-information legislation will not really help fight political corruption in Korea," Sook-jong Lee added, because "most of the key transactions are consummated in private conversations that leave no incriminating documents behind." In addition, journalists themselves are part of the political elite; some of them even become members of parliament. So instead of a war between the media and politicians, in Korea there is actually a war among various media that are closely allied with competing political groupings. Mircea Toma, a magazine editor and director of a media monitoring agency in Romania, said that many central and eastern European countries adopted freedom of information laws when they applied to join the European Union. But these laws were imposed from above on a political culture whose citizens "are ashamed to fight for their rights." Mr. Toma provided several examples of private individuals who had successfully used the new laws to bring previously secret information to light. But he could also point to such cases as that of the villager who brought suit against the local waterworks agency who was told by a judge that "in Romania the quality of drinking water is a state secret." "What if the judiciary lacks the integrity to administer the freedom of information law?" Larry Diamond added. In countries where businesses, politicians, government agencies, and the courts were all linked in a complex web of corruption, reformers need to fight back with the combined forces of the media, civil society, and anticorruption agencies. "China's judicial system does not protect media that expose corruption," replied Wang Shuo, deputy managing editor of the Caijing business magazine in China. "We recently lost one lawsuit and are fighting another one now" for the magazine's reporting on securities fraud and stock-price manipulation. Most media in China are still controlled and funded by the government, and even the so-called new media that are funded by business interests still require government licenses to publish. "The press in China is still immature," Mr. Wang concluded. Wen-Chung Wu, a Taiwanese public prosecutor who specializes in corruption cases, said that the discussion thus far had focused primarily on the good work of the media in exposing the bad deeds of corrupt officials and businessmen. Mr. Wu agreed that the media often initiate investigations that eventually lead to criminal prosecutions and that they play an important role in educating the public about the extent of corruption and its impact on citizens' lives. At the same time, he believed that the media also publish premature and even incorrect information as they race to be first with breaking news stories. Journalists make predictions on the outcomes of cases in progress. And, in some instances, they even engage in what he termed "media lynchings" that ruin reputations even as they make successful prosecutions more difficult. Mr. Wu concluded that even though "the media believe that the public has a right to know everything," journalists should be more selective in what they disclose in unfolding corruption cases and should focus more on the major issues involved than on particular individuals. Xilong Chen, a senior journalist with the 21CN Business Herald in China's Guang Dong province, said that China's accession to the World Trade Organization had brought greater transparency to the economy and had exposed large amounts of corruption, particularly in state-owned enterprises that were still immune to market forces. He agreed with Wang Shuo that most media are still controlled by the government but asserted that they still play an essential watchdog role in China today. The main impediment to fighting corruption, Mr. Chen said, was a judicial system that is arbitrarily managed and subject to political control. Like Mr. Wang, Mr. Chen was not satisfied with the current state of Chinese journalism. He expected, however, that continuing economic reforms would promote the development of private media and that these, in turn, would provide citizens with a clearer understanding of how the political-business system works. Yongzheng Wei, a professor of journalism and an expert on Chinese media laws, said that China introduced libel legislation only in the past twenty years. "We now have from 4,000 to 5,000 libel suits annually," Mr. Wei said, "and about 25 percent of these are related to the media." As in other countries whose laws served as models for China, plaintiffs must prove their cases, judges are allowed to distinguish between statements of fact and opinion, and accurate news reporting on government actions cannot be held libelous. Nonetheless, it is costly and time consuming to defend against charges of libel, so the fact that such suits are brought so frequently does work as a deterrent to investigative reporting, Mr. Wei concluded. Myung-Sook Suh, chief editor of the Sisa Journal, said that "while in no country can there be total freedom of the press," the press in Korea was much freer today than it had been in the past. "We no longer have open repression, torture, or violence," she noted. Nonetheless, "even though my publication is not one of the major dailies, we still get libel suits from all the political parties…I myself have had five libel cases brought against me since becoming editor." Ms. Suh was thus convinced that the threat of such lawsuits does deter journalists from covering certain stories. "It is difficult to defend against a libel suit," conceded Lee Hyo Seong, a professor of journalism and mass communications at Sungkyunkwan University in Korea, "but I still think it is less onerous than direct government repression." And Steven Magagnini, an investigative reporter at the Sacramento Bee in California, wanted to know if all the libel cases brought by government officials and business firms were merely attempts to intimidate journalists. "Are there not also cases of real libel?" Mr. Magagnini asked. In Romania, Mircea Toma added, judges in libel cases should take into consideration whether the journalist had "good" or "bad" intentions; this provision might serve as some protection for reporters. In practice, however, this behavior is not typical. At the same time, judges typically apply stricter standards if the subject of a media report is a private person and the story is not of public interest. |
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