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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 III: Forging Partnerships in the Fight Against Corruption Larry Diamond (International Forum for Democratic Studies, USA) The third session of the conference examined how the news media forge working partnerships with other individuals and institutions, such as official anticorruption agencies and nongovernmental watchdog organizations. Moderator Larry Diamond asked participants to discuss how effectively such institutions interact with the media and to describe the conditions under which government agencies, NGOs, and the media become allies-and sometimes also adversaries-in the fight against corruption. Luis Moreno Ocampo, a lawyer from Argentina who serves as president of Transparency International for Latin America and the Caribbean, began the session by describing his experiences as a public prosecutor who brought successful cases against senior leaders of his country's former military junta. To demonstrate the extent and complexity of Argentina's corruption in the 1980s, Mr. Moreno presented an illustration resembling a large spider web in which individual web strands represented the exchange of money or the granting of political favors among military officers, judges, members of parliament, business executives, the police, and others. "The media were very important in the democratic struggle in Argentina," Mr. Moreno asserted. In the beginning, "even my own mother was against me for prosecuting the generals, but after two weeks she switched," he said, describing the cumulative effect on public opinion of the repeated broadcast of news stories and analysis of the corruption investigation. As for other partners in the fight against corruption, "when we were prosecuting generals the politicians were with us. But when we were prosecuting politicians, the politicians were against us." Mr. Moreno then provided case studies of corruption investigations and their consequences in other countries, such as Brazil, Italy, and the United States, where he recounted the Watergate scandal of the 1970s that resulted in the resignation of a U.S. president and the enactment of numerous laws regulating political finance and election practices. From these examples he concluded that "to effect real change, we need alliances of prosecutors, civil society, politicians, and the media. News stories alone are not enough." Because political cultures differ, "the media cannot do the same thing in every country." They must respond to local moods and tastes, such as those in Argentina, "where everyone is cynical" about politics and corruption. He nonetheless recommended that journalists everywhere go beyond individual behavior to focus on results and outcomes, that they present "good guys" as well as "bad guys" in news reporting on corruption, and that they build national and even international support networks. Luz Maria Helguero agreed that "we need to present a mix of 'good guys' and 'bad guys.'" She acknowledged that continuous news reporting of official wrongdoing could lead to what other participants had called "corruption fatigue" and asserted that balanced journalism should also include coverage of "good, ordinary people." But for Melinda Quintos de Jesus, "this is an unfair burden…We cannot cover every side of every story; we would then never publish anything." Mircea Toma added that the fight against corruption "is like a guerrilla war-so please do not discourage us!" But Stephen Magagnini believed that showing ordinary people overcoming adversity-by resisting opportunities to engage in corruption, for example-could be both newsworthy and an example of balanced journalism. "What if we report on a so-called good guy who later turns out to be a bad guy?" asked Wang Shuo. "The biggest problem with showing good politicians is making sure they really are good," Mr. Magagnini agreed. "Isn't it too late to control bad behavior after the fact?" Mr. Moreno wanted to know. "Wouldn't it be better to prevent the crime?" he asked. Luz Rimban and Luz Helguero agreed that prevention is better than after-the-fact investigations. Melinda de Jesus did not disagree, but she cautioned that the kind of journalism required to prevent corruption is "extremely hard work." Following these brief interventions, Geo-Sung Kim, secretary general of Transparency International in Korea, made the second opening presentation for Session III. He said that while the Korean media were much better today than they were when journalists were pawns of the authoritarian government, there still was room for improvement in the industry. He noted that while the media play an important public role in informing citizens, most Korean news outlets are private, for-profit businesses. This gives the country's power elite multiple means by which to obstruct the investigation and disclosure of corrupt practices, as other participants had already noted. Mr. Kim also faulted what he called "a lack of social responsibility" on the part of some journalists, particularly those who report rumors without conducting adequate investigations beforehand. And while he agreed that NGOs and the media both serve as public watchdogs, he did not wish to see the differences between these two types of organizations blurred because they participate in a common struggle. For Mr. Kim, the media themselves require oversight: "Keeping the media accountable is one of the most important functions of NGOs." The greatest threat to democracy, Mr. Kim said, was that citizens would begin to think that no laws have validity and that ordinary people have to become corrupt to survive. Some persons might get ideas from-and even emulate-the corrupt practices illustrated in news accounts. "We therefore have to change the entire social environment, not just expose a few cases," Mr. Kim concluded. Mr. Diamond invited participants to provide examples of cases in which civil-society groups and the media had worked together successfully to fight corruption. Luz Helguero presented such a case in Peru, where her newspaper had collaborated with a youth organization to investigate the salaries of public officials. This collaboration had led to a public debate about what constituted appropriate compensation for public officials, and eventually it even resulted in a reduction of the mayor's salary. And Luz Rimban cited the work of a Filipino NGO called "Concerned Citizens of Abra for Good Government," a group that represented citizens who badly needed improved roadways in their remote region. The group successfully investigated corrupt local transportation officials and then monitored the quality of road construction in the district, for which it received a Transparency International integrity award in 2000. Karaniya Dharmasaputra, an investigative journalist from Indonesia, wanted to hear about international partnerships to fight corruption. Many corrupt businessmen from Indonesia had relocated to Singapore or China, for example, and he was not convinced that his country had adequate means to go after them. Lee Sang-Soo, a representative of the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD), took issue with Korea's position in the Transparency International corruption index, where it shared the ranking of 40 (out of 102) with three other countries. "We have come a long way in the past five years," Mr. Lee said. "We now have an independent commission against corruption, we have a law against money laundering, we even have a budget of 3 billion Korean won for public watchdogs. And the public is well aware of the fight against corruption." Mr. Lee's own PSPD was but one example of a civil-society organization that had partnered with government institutions to fight corruption. The PSPD publishes a regular column for whistleblowers in Korean daily newspapers and even monitors other NGOs. The biggest problem the PSPD faced, Mr. Lee said, was finding adequate financial resources for this work. "All in all, I think Korea is doing better than the Transparency International index shows," Mr. Lee concluded. Jeffrey Lovitt wanted to clarify that the Transparency International ranking that Mr. Lee had just mentioned was what TI called its corruption perception index, which attempted to measure "the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and the public." Mr. Lovitt agreed with Mr. Lee that persons in different countries sometimes use different definitions of corruption but he defended his organization's attempt to create a global standard. In any case, Korea had improved its ranking in this index in recent years, no doubt due in part to the efforts of the Korean NGOs represented at this conference, Mr. Lovitt said. "Merely passing a few laws cannot stop corruption," Geo-Sung Kim asserted. "There is a big difference between passing laws and enforcing them." To effect permanent and meaningful change, it is necessary to change attitudes toward corruption in the whole society, he said. But Rick Chu said one should make a distinction between what he called petty or mild corruption and serious, large-scale corruption. He cited a Taiwanese proverb-"If the river is too clean, you cannot find a fish"-to illustrate what he called public tolerance of small-scale bribery. At some time in their careers, virtually all local news reporters receive a "red envelope" containing cash, and this practice was considered acceptable in Taiwanese culture. A darker side of this culture, however, was when local politicians used threats-and even actual physical violence-against journalists who become too inquisitive. In such an ambiguous moral climate, many journalists simply do not know how to behave, Mr. Chu said. In Hong Kong, Mr. Ho added, journalists who publish criticism of business firms often receive lucrative job offers from those same companies. This has led to two related problems: that of journalists leaving the profession to work for firms they once covered, and that of journalists criticizing firms from which they wish to receive such offers. An additional problem in Hong Kong, Mr. Ho said, is that "we have too many inexperienced young journalists working on major stories." Reporters in China are also threatened with physical violence, Shuo Wang said, even as others receive envelopes of cash. But while Mr. Wang's magazine forbids its employees from accepting envelopes, many other publishers do not. In general, he said, there were few internal mechanisms within publications and no professional code of journalism ethics in China. It is left up to individual reporters to decide what to do, something that Mr. Wang considered dangerous. But Yongzheng Wei said that media corruption in China was worse in the 1980s than it is today. He believed that journalists were fighting corruption and that the government itself was making good progress in this fight. Mr. Diamond suggested that editors and publishers could regularly rotate staff assignments so that reporters do not get too close to their subjects. And Lee Sang-Soo called for creating a "strong code of professional ethics for journalists and broadcasters" to address the problems just mentioned. Mr. Wu agreed with Geo-Sung Kim that merely passing laws would not change the culture of corruption. But good laws do help, he said, such as the recent Taiwanese law that required all government tenders above $100,000 to be posted on a Web site for public bidding. This reform had led to much greater transparency in Taiwan's public procurement system and had also enabled government agencies to document cases of bid rigging. The heart of any successful anticorruption campaign, Mr. Wu stressed, was a well-staffed and adequately funded public-prosecution department. While some of his fellow prosecutors select lower-level targets to boost their conviction ratios (and thus to earn promotions), Mr. Wu was proud that his office "tries to find larger-scale crimes" and that it can prosecute as many as 200 to 300 major cases concurrently. Vigorous investigations and prosecutions do carry certain risks, Mr. Wu conceded. Although some targets of his investigations had fled to mainland China or Canada, others remained active in the Taiwanese criminal underground, protected by political patrons. Mr. Wu's office has had to provide security for witnesses and staff investigators. "Sometimes I even worry about my personal safety," he admitted. An additional risk, he said, was that aggressive prosecution of suspected corruption would undermine confidence in Taiwan's political and economic system as a whole. "If we go after a corrupt bank, will there be a run on all banks? If we go after stock manipulators, will we risk the collapse of the stock market?" Admitting that prosecutors "need to strike a balance," Mr. Wu was still "proud to say that we do prosecute most major crimes." Mr. Ho agreed with Geo-Sung Kim on the need for broad social change in the fight against corruption. He cited opinion surveys that showed that many citizens of Hong Kong-particularly the young-were tolerant of corruption, as apparently was the case in other Asian countries. But he was also encouraged by the fact that the Independent Commission against Corruption had begun working with school officials and the advertising industry to develop an anticorruption media campaign targeted at the young. Melinda de Jesus said that the various problems enumerated by other participants were so common in the Philippines that descriptive phrases for them had entered the language. The practice of receiving envelopes stuffed with money was called "envelopmental journalism" or "ATM journalism," she said (referring to bank automatic-teller machines), while the practice by which journalists writing about business firms "attack and collect" and then "defend and collect" is called "AC/DC journalism." In such an environment, even reputable reporters fear that they will be shunned by their peers or will lose their sources if they do not participate in these practices. And so the temptation simply to take the envelope becomes too great to resist. One attempt to address this problem, Ms. de Jesus said, was a plan to enlarge the Filipino press council by including local press councils and civil-society groups. Advocates of this plan hoped that broadening the network of individuals and institutions involved in investigative journalism would provide greater safety for reporters and would lead to greater integrity in news reporting. But Mircea Toma was not totally convinced that this would work. In his estimation, the Romanian Press Club had become "a mutual nonaggression pact" between the press and its nominal targets. Few media owners were willing to report on the financial practices of their competitors, for example, for fear of inviting the same scrutiny of their own enterprises. And the local officials who control channels of media distribution can disrupt the circulation even of national newspapers. Ironically, Mr. Toma concluded, the best examples of "successful networking" between government and the media that he could think of were those that served not to expose corruption but to hide it. Geo-Sung Kim closed the session by repeating his earlier point about the need to fight corruption in society as a whole. Mr. Kim said that, although this might sound surprising to some participants, there were even serious concerns about corruption in the religious sphere where he worked. So he was not shocked to hear the examples of corrupt practices from the worlds of business, politics, and journalism that others had described. He noted that in schools, for example, teachers in charge of ethics typically evaluate students only on their academic achievement, not on their virtuous behaviors. Perhaps there needed to be a greater focus on teaching personal integrity. In the end, "We should not stop at passing laws…We need to reform society," Mr. Kim argued. |
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