EYE ON ETHICS

This article was first posted on The Jakarta Post last May 7. The author is a journalism instructor at the Dr. Soetomo Press Institute (LPDS) in Jakarta.
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May 3 is World Press Freedom Day, when journalists take stock of their work-linked concerns. One such concern relates to their professional conduct or lack of it. North Sumatra journalists recently discussed this issue as it relates to local reporting.

A madrasah or Islamic boarding school offers free tuition, with donors covering the school expenditures. However, a local newspaper charges the madrasah lets its pupils go hungry. The madrasah complains rightly the story is one-sided, as none of the school executives were interviewed.

Meanwhile, a weekly paper reports on a money pyramid scam in Medan that promised investors 60 percent monthly interest. After the fraudulent company, PT BMA, collapsed and its boss became a fugitive, the paper printed this headline: “Bos PT BMA Siluman Anjing?” (PT BMA Boss a Phantom Dog?) The story is accompanied with a line drawing of a menacing dog with a protruding tongue and set of sharp teeth.

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The article was first posted on UPI Asia Online last May 5.
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NAKHONRATCHASIMA, Thailand– Malaysia’s Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi warned the country’s media on Friday that they need to cooperate, be responsible and ethical. Seeming to mimic a wizened statesman, he enjoined Malaysia’s media to understand the subjects they report on, to earn public respect, and to convey correct reports to the public. So far, so good — in principle.

Maybe it was like Thailand’s Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, who in a February 2008 interview with Al-Jazeera condescended at the end of the interview to tell the better-informed female reporter, “Next time, you should do your homework.”

So the leaders of two Southeast Asia neighbors somehow feel up to giving the media guidelines on how to be reputable, helpful, correct and ethical. It’s a shame that they don’t always adhere to the same guidelines themselves, especially in Samak’s case. With a memory that doesn’t allow him to recall his part in the October 1976 massacre where some four dozen pro-democracy protestors were killed, and to add insult to injury, foolishly insists “only one unlucky guy was killed” in the state-incited bloodbath, Samak is hardly the one to advise anyone on accuracy in reporting, being ethical or accurate.

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This article was originally posted last April 25 in the Khaleej Times Online.
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The second day of the Arab Media Forum held in Dubai saw serious criticism of the Arab League Broadcasting Charter issued by Arab ministers of information, to regulate satellite broadcasting in the region.

Eminent journalists and media personalities who attended the panel discussion rubbished the relevance and legality of the Charter saying the ministers of information had no right to draw ethical codes for the Press.

They maintained that it was a clear violation of Press freedom and impeded free and fair coverage by satellite channels.

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Mr. Alam is Lahore bureau chief of the news magazine The Herald.
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A middle-level official working at the Lahore office of Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency has been suspended for ‘leaking’ a story to the media. A television reporter conned him to get the video film of a suicide attack on his agency’s local office on March 11, 2007 – an act that subsequently created huge broadcast waves across Pakistan and well beyond it, but also threatened the job of its ‘source’.

The reporter’s boss does not want to discuss the moral predicament the case poses: Is it ethical to get a news story even if it means endangering other people’s lives and livelihood? But he is quick to point out that at least a couple of other news channels in Pakistan did not acknowledge his channel as the source when they also ran the attack video some hours later.

Similar incidents are not uncommon in the world of cutthroat competition the electronic media in Pakistan has become of late. In the rush to break the news faster and earlier than the rest, television reporters seem to have precious little time to waste on bothering about the ethical implications of their assignments.

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This report was posted last March 24 in Xinhuanet, the internet arm of the official press agency of the People Republic of China, Xinhua News Agency. The press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders has described the Xinhua News Agency as the world’s largest propaganda agency.
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Chinese experts on journalism and communications have expressed disappointment with some western media’s distorted reports on the riot in Lhasa and urged them to replace those reports with truthful accounts.

“They should make corrections and report more objectively,” said Guan Shijie, professor at the School of Journalism and Communications of Peking University.

In recent days, some western media organizations were criticized by Chinese netizens for distorted coverage of the violence in the capital city of China’s Tibet Autonomous Region.

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When news of Britain’s Prince Harry’s secret deployment to Afghanistan was revealed by the media, the decision of the British press to agree not to report the deployment became a subject of lively debate in journalism circles in the West.

Some media critics such as Roy Greenslade of the British newspaper The Guardian said the British press was wrong, since by agreeing not to report the Prince’s deployment it exercised self-censorship and failed in its duty of informing the public.

Other media groups including BBC and UK’s Society of Editors said it was correct to hold back coverage since it was a national security matter and reportage would have only unnecessarily heightened the risks Prince Harry would encounter in Afghanistan.

But the decision was surprising for two reasons. First, the British press has a reputation for closely following the lives of the Windsors—or the “royals” as a whole. And second, it doggedly covered the negotiations to get Harry sent to Iraq last year, which made British military authorities decide against his deployment there.

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The writer is a Malaysian journalist.

The daily struggle of the Malaysian journalist is to try to apply journalism principles in an environment where the government treats the media as its personal tool. Some rebel and leave, citing principles, but almost all try to come to terms with it for the sake of a paycheck.
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A journalist with one of the leading dailies in Malaysia looked worried as he watched the editor-in-chief of his newspaper go through his commentary.

The editor-in-chief wanted to “clear” the story on an anti-government movement that the journalist had been asked to write a few days after the announcement of Malaysia’s general election date. Malaysians will vote on March 8.

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Prof. Haque teaches Agril.Extension, Apllied & Agricultural Journalism at Shere-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Government-sponsored ethics. Ethics is a matter of voluntary compliance, but some governments have issued their own codes of ethics, or demand that journalists comply with their concept of ethical journalism. The following piece, adapted from Bangladesh’s The New Nation on Feb. 21, 2008, assumes that that country’s government is well within its rights to expect compliance with its views on ethical journalism. Your views and comments would be welcome.

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Recently I read an apology from the editor of a reputable English daily for publishing an article in that newspaper which was malicious, sweeping, and full of innuendos and few facts.

I was glad to see the editor’s goodwill and courage to admit a mistake and to express his regret for it. He mentioned three reasons why he apologized. While stating his third purpose, he raised a core ethical question–whether a columnist has the right to malign individuals, families or groups without any proof.

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In the two months since they arrested over 30 journalists covering a protest by a former Navy lieutenant who is now a Philippine senator and a group of soldiers under trial for mutiny, Philippine security forces and other officials did not stop threatening the press.

The Secretary of Interior declared a week after the incident that journalists would still be arrested when covering similar events. The Philippine National Police (PNP) said it would use force to remove journalists who refuse to obey police orders.
Last January 15, however, PNP Director General Avelino Razon went further. He said the police had evidence that one of the soldiers involved, Marine Capt. Nicanor Faeldon, escaped the police raid with the help of one of the reporters covering the incident.

Although Razon did not identify the reporter, he said she was female. The Philippine press followed up the leads and reported that Razon was refering to Dana Batnag, a reporter for the Japanese wire service Jiji Press.

Razon insinuated in his public statements that Faeldon was romantically involved with the female journalist who allegedly helped him escape. The basis for Razon’s accusations was video footage from a government-managed station which showed Batnag interviewing Faeldon. The police did not explain how the footage proved that Batnag had helped Faeldon escape.

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Should journalists heed authorities’ request to leave the scene of an unfolding news event, or should they stay? Which should take precedence for journalists, the presumably lawful orders of the authorities, or the public’s right to information? These are among the questions now being debated among journalists and journalists’ groups in the Philippines in the wake of a November 29 incident in which dozens of journalists were arrested for ignoring police requests to leave the scene.

The incident

The usually busy lanes of a street leading to the Manila Peninsula Hotel in the central business district of Makati were suddenly empty at around noon of November 29, save for Philippine senator and former Navy officer Antonio Trillanes, several civilians including former vice president Teofisto Guingona , and a number of soldiers carrying long firearms. The group was marching towards the Hotel. They were accompanied by an equally large group of journalists.

The group had walked out of a courtroom in Makati City, metro Manila, where Trillanes and some of the soldiers with him were under trial for an alleged mutiny in 2003.

After a two-kilometer walk, the group entered the five-star Manila Peninsula Hotel, where Trillanes and companions arranged for a press conference. From an original group of about a dozen that had been covering the trial, the number of journalists swelled as different news organizations smelled a developing story and sent reporters to the hotel to monitor events there.

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