EYE ON ETHICS

This article was first published in the September-October 2009 issue of the PJR Reports.

Mr. Basorie teaches journalism at the Dr. Soetomo Press Institute (Lembaga Pers Dr. Soetomo, LPDS) in Jakarta, Indonesia.
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(The media situation in the other countries of Southeast Asia is no less complex than that in the Philippines, as the following account of a free expression case in Indonesia reveals.)

It took the mother of two under-fives to unintentionally raise a public debate on the threat to freedom of expression by a new electronic information law. Prita Mulyasari, 32, had landed in the Tangerang Women’s Correctional Facility for e-mailing a complaint to friends on Aug. 15, 2008 about the hospital service she had received. The private e-mail got into numerous mailing lists. It reached the hospital concerned and the hospital sued her for libel.

The Omni International Alam Sutra Hospital in Tangerang, Banten province, a two-hour drive West from Jakarta, filed the complaint. The police compiled a dossier. The Tangerang prosecutor’s office, using the Criminal Code and the 2008 Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Act, indicted her. The Tangerang District Court found her guilty in a civil case last May 11. Officers from the prosecutor’s office picked her up at home and brought her to prison last May 13.

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News service Reuters made their Reuters Handbook of Journalism available online.

The handbook includes sections on Standards and Values; a Guide to Operations; a Sports Style Guide; a General Style Guide; and a Specialized Guide.

According to Reuters, they made the handbook public for reasons of transparency, service, and geography.

For more information on the contents of the handbook, please visit this blog post: For the Record (Dean Wright on Ethics, Innovation and Values).

Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.

A is for abattoir; Z is for ZULU: All in the Handbook of Journalism

The first entry is abattoir (not abbatoir); the last is ZULU (a term used by Western military forces to mean GMT)….

The handbook is the guidance Reuters journalists live by — and we’re proud of it. Until now, it hasn’t been freely available to the public. In the early 1990s, a printed handbook was published and in 2006 the Reuters Foundation published a relatively short PDF online that gave some basic guidance to reporters. But it’s only now that we’re putting the full handbook online….

The Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) first published this report on Dec. 9, 2008.
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Excessive use of defamation and lese majeste charges by opposing political groups and authorities in Thailand to curb free expression on the Internet has forced a coalition of Internet users comprising media reformers, human rights campaigners, webmasters, bloggers, and operators of online news publications, to form a civic network called the Thai Netizens Network, designed to promote and protect cyber liberty.

The non-partisan group, officially launched on Dec. 2, was a spin-off of an earlier initiative called Freedom Against Censorship in Thailand but its mission is much broader than its predecessor’s—that is, to campaign at the national policy level to promote and protect netizens’ rights, freedom of online media as well as civic journalism, and at the same time to promote a self-regulatory framework to ensure responsible use of internet.

According to the network’s coordinator, Supinya Klangnarong, about 400 URLs have been banned over charges related to criminal defamation and lese majeste pending the court’s hearing. “The problem is that cyber-crime police find it difficult to proceed with these cases in court because they could not arrest the suspected offenders,” said Supinya.

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Mr. Conde is a journalist based in Manila. He is a correspondent for The New York Times and International Herald Tribune. This is a slightly edited version of a paper Mr. Conde delivered at a media forum on torture last June 25, organized by the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines and the non-government groups International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, International Federation for Human Rights, and Balay Rehabilitation Center.
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Five years ago, I wrote a story about a Muslim teenager who was imprisoned in General Santos City for allegedly being a terrorist. The boy showed signs – bruises, mainly – that he was tortured by whoever captured him.

Today, I can’t even recall the name of the teenager. I do remember this, however: I never bothered to check back to see what had happened to him.

He was, after all, just a story.

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Mr. Macale is assistant editor of the Manila-based media monitoring publication Philippine Journalism Review Reports (PJR Reports). This article was first published in the May-June 2008 issue of PJR Reports.
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In the age of Web 2.0, when computers and the Internet have become necessary research and writing tools for reporters, any one can plagiarize by using online search and copy-and-paste technology. But this convenience is a double edged sword: the same tools can also be used to detect plagiarism.

Investigative journalist Alecks Pabico found that out one Sunday. Since he had been writing about the generics drug law for the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), Pabico kept himself updated on the issue through Google Alerts. A useful tool that journalists can use to monitor issues, Google Alerts can send anyone information on whatever topic s/he wants through e-mail.

One item from Google Alerts caught Pabico’s attention: a special report on the issue from The Manila Times posted online that same day, Feb. 3. He was surprised that the Times report contained sentences and quotes that were eerily familiar. Pabico found that the Times report as well as an accompanying story had lifted several portions of a story he did on the generics law almost two years ago. The stories contained several paragraphs nearly identical with portions of Pabico’s September 2006 report. Even several of the quotes in his story two years ago were in the Times stories.

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This article was first published by the news site China Daily on June 10 and was updated on June 12.
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When Chongqing-based magazine New Travel Weekly featured China’s May 12 earthquake, it maintained its popular themes of glamour and sex.

Scantily-clad models draped themselves over the rubble, bloodied bandages as accessories to their bikinis, tight tee-shirts and mini-shorts, under the headline “Reborn from the Ruins”.

The public reaction to this display of questionable taste and insensitivity was immediate.

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This article was first posted on the website http://www.asiantribune.com last May 27.
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Trial by media seems to have become the rule rather than the exception in Sri Lankan journalism these days.

There is no question that the press in a democratic society has the right to criticize governments, individuals or organizations on political, social or economic issues or terrorist-related activities. But do the media have the right to make one-sided, unsubstantiated charges of corruption, embezzlement or sexual misconduct against a clearly identified individual, giving that person no chance to defend himself?

Self-regulation on such matters appears to have totally failed as far as some newspapers here are concerned. This issue has again come to the limelight in the wake of a formal complaint lodged by the German Dharmadutha Society (GDS) this month with the Press Complaints Commission of Sri Lanka against the Lakbima news. The complaint follows a news story by Ashwin Hemmathagama that appeared in the paper’s business page (FEB) on April 6, attacking by name the caretaker of a Sri Lankan-managed Buddhist Temple in Europe.

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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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