EYE ON ETHICS

by the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility

COMMISSION on Human Rights Chair Leila de Lima has rightly reminded the media that Andal Ampatuan Jr., no matter how strong the evidence against him may be, still has rights, among them the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. The clan that spawned him may not have accorded others the same respect, but he and his kin are nevertheless entitled to the rights, among them the right to life and to lives free from fear, they may have denied them.

Media people, some of them members of the National Press Club, waved photographs of the victims of the November 23 Maguindanao massacre in Ampatuan’s face, perhaps in the vain hope of seeing some indication of remorse from the stone faced warlord. But at least one photojournalist managed to hit him with his camera, in the process adding physical assault to the legitimate expression of media outrage.

One would hope that the camera emerged in better condition than Ampatuan, who is said to have suffered a concussion as result. But the media workers’ and journalists’ outrage was understandable. The killing of their colleagues last November 23 was not only the worst in the entire history of the mass media, it was also done with a brutality so exceptional that it defied understanding.

The ethics of journalism however, does support Chairperson de Lima’s reminder. Not only is the presumption of innocence among the principles journalists are expected to honor. They’re also expected to limit their outrage to the words that constitute the sword and shield of media practice, even as the admonition not to cause harm includes not only the imperative of minimizing harm, but a prohibition as well against physically attacking those one does not agree with.

Journalist outrage and energies are better directed towards rigorous examination of the factors that made the massacre inevitable. These factors include the system of political alliances and the institutionalization of electoral fraud that have made the coddling of warlords a continuing problem, in addition to the corruption that has doomed the areas of warlord rule to perpetual and worsening poverty. Providing the information and analysis the public needs to put the November 23 massacre in context so it may use its sovereign power to prevent future ones is a responsibility that rightly belongs to the media. It may cause harm, but only in terms of the exposure that information makes possible, rather than the physical harm that attacking anyone with a camera or any other handy piece of equipment inflicts.

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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The author is a journalist based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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The Malaysian government’s deafening silence and non-action in a recent issue involving a story on religion only reinforces public perception that it isn’t really interested in social unity and peace.

THREE YEARS ago, the Malaysian government suspended a 61-year-old English daily over a cartoon.

The Sarawak Tribune eventually closed down after drawing flak from the government when it published the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons to illustrate a story on the topic “Cartoon No Big Impact Here” on Feb. 4, 2006.

So strict is the Malaysian government that it would not let anything and anyone incite racial or religious sentiments that could make certain segments of society angry, or worse, trigger riots in this racially and religiously diverse society. In fact, the Sedition Act makes it a crime.

However, the government is now keeping quiet over an article by Al Islam, a magazine that focuses on the Muslim faith. In its May issue, the magazine ran an article on claims that the Catholic Church was converting young Muslims to Christianity.

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A “right of reply” bill has been approved by the Philippine House of Representatives; a less repressive version is pending in the Philippine Senate. Nearly all Philippine media groups, including the major broadsheets and broadcast networks, are opposed to it.
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No one among those opposed to the Right of Reply bill on principle will argue that shoddy reporting doesn’t exist. There have been too many instances (in some cases involving media practitioners themselves who’re attacked by other practitioners) in which the right of reply, which responsible journalists must honor, is denied those who have been maligned in the media either through bad reporting, malicious comment, or both.

The right of reply is among the ethical principles reporters and other media practitioners, especially editors, should recognize and honor by, first of all, getting the facts right through multiple sourcing. Journalism is a discipline of verification, its very justification being accuracy first of all, which also demands fairness (presenting both or all sides) as well as balance (providing all sides in any question equal space in the case of print and equal time in the case of electronic media). Operationally, news stories try to achieve this by reporting the denial by someone accused of wrongdoing as well as the accusation. Opinion writers also need to at least provide the other side of the argument.

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The author is a recent journalism graduate.
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Journalists are either the most passionate or the most masochistic individuals on earth, preferring to live the hectic and stressful life of deadlines and controversies instead of simply going with the flow.

I remember writing this line when asked by my school paper to come up with welcome remarks during our paper’s anniversary. That was no less than six months ago, when I still believed that journalism is all about passion and dedication to the truth.

After less than half a year covering the business beat, I have finally seen the ugly side of the trade. The corruption in the media my teacher used to warn us about apparently has many faces, and I have seen most of them in my beat.

I remember a conversation I had with a fellow business reporter on why people choose to stick with journalism despite the low pay. According to her, the “veteran” reporters choose to stay for two reasons: either they have already gotten used to the job (the flexibility of time and workplace) or because they simply can’t live without the perks.

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Mr. Anderson, born in Olean, New York in 1944, is the Thailand representative of American Citizens Abroad and a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer to Thailand from 1965 to 1967. At the time assigned to a community development role, he then worked in Thailand as a freelance writer and TEFL teacher before transferring to Iran and Saudi Arabia with his Thai wife. He founded northeast Thailand’s first local English language newspaper, The Korat Post. He also writes under the pen name Brian Knight.
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A society that claims to have draped itself around a religion now two and a half millennia old is bound to be somewhat—what is the word?—inflexible when it comes to self-analysis.

Indeed, Buddhism, the religion Thailand adopted so long ago, admonishes what some of its masters call a “passion for analysis and discussion.” This is a perfect fit for Thailand’s social value system that generally encourages obedience, acquiescence, feigned acceptance, repetition, and overall, a lack of innovation or legitimate inquiry.

Buddhist tracts perhaps unintentionally point out a fallacy by stating “If people are ignorant they cannot reason correctly and safely.” To the non-Buddhist-trained mind, this latter statement undermines the very doctrine of teaching as viewed in the west—to wit, that the ignorant really cannot be informed. As an extension of this, there is an implication that teaching of Buddhism per se would be rather fruitless as those ignorant of the Buddha’s admonitions and lessons could not safely or correctly analyze the material contained in the teachings of the Wise One. The assumptions are perhaps a perfect fit for a country like Thailand that is so steeped in deep patronage the very idea of reform, and not just in media ethics, is tantamount to attacking desired reality. And yet the conflicting, contradictory and confusing laws and regulations relating to seemingly all aspects of Thai social behavior scream for immediate redress.

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Mr. Guda is the editor in chief of Pinoy Weekly, a Philippine magazine which discusses and analyzes issues that affect citizens especially the marginalized.
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Mainstream. In the beginning, that was all we wanted to be. This is not an unreasonable goal for aspiring journalists, especially those who came from journalism schools and the campus press in the Philippines. To be mainstream is to reach a wide audience, to be heard or read by an entire country, even the world. To be mainstream is to gain respect, admiration, prestige, even a following. To be mainstream is to make a name for yourself.

“We” in this case refers to fellow journalists in our little journalistic project called Pinoy Weekly. It was 2002, and the country had just undergone a tumultuous first year with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. A handful of small entrepreneurs wanted to put up a publication along the lines of the defunct Pinoy Times. But this time, they wanted it to target the C-D readership—the tabloid-reading public.

We wanted to be mainstream, but not really for anything other than wanting to popularize our advocacies. When we started, our composition was a curious mix of youngsters and veterans.

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Mr. Gunawardene is a writer and journalist who blogs on media, society and development at http://movingimages.wordpress.com. He can be reached on alien@nalaka.org.
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Colombo, Sri Lanka: 12 Oct. 2008.

In the well known legend, the pied pier of Hamelin played his musical pipe to lure all the rats into the nearby Weser river. When the town reneged on the promised fee, he played a different tune to entice all its children away from the town.

Modern-day pied pipers use smooth talk and convincing images instead of hypnotic musical tunes to lead people astray. And they achieve much greater coverage today, thanks to the modern media.

When the media amplify pied piper tunes, how responsible are they for the resulting damage? A current experience in Sri Lanka has revived this question.

For the past few weeks, Sri Lankans have been shocked and dismayed to learn that thousands of middle-class adults have been hoodwinked by a confidence trickster who used paid advertisements in the newspapers and on television to boost his image.

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Mr. Basorie teaches journalism at the Dr. Soetomo Press Institute (Lembaga Pers Dr. Soetomo, LPDS) in Jakarta, Indonesia.
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The Indonesian press recovered its freedom when President Soeharto abruptly resigned on May 21, 1998 after 32 years in office in the heat of widespread student-led demonstrations. The demise of Soeharto’s New Order saw the end of print media licensing, the banning of newspapers, the obligation of journalists to join a government sanctioned journalists’ association, information ministry press directives, and the removal of restraints to criticize the First Family, the military and their business cronies—all once taboo subjects for coverage.

The press spared no effort to expose corruption and other wrong-doing. But after a spate of privacy violations, defamation charges, and an assortment of ethical breaches, the press has earned the public wrath for what critics call the excessive use of its freedom.

Now, 10 years later, how does the Indonesian public perceive press freedom?

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Mr. Alam is Lahore bureau chief of the news magazine The Herald.
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In countries like Pakistan, there is a lot to campaign about. Begin with politics and keep moving down the lane to law and order, the economy, foreign policy, education, environment, health and so on. The list is endless of issues and subjects that need immediate attention, and some of them certainly cannot get the focus they require unless someone campaigns for them.

Should the press get involved in such campaigns? For some, the answer is clear. “Some issues will never be addressed if the media do not highlight them,” says the head of an Islamabad-based television network. He does not want to give his name because he does not want to make his views publicly known. In his opinion, campaigning for social, cultural, political, economic and legal reforms should actually be a vital part of how media operate in a third-world country like Pakistan.

“Indifferent, inefficient and self-perpetuating governments need to be severely jolted to do something about the problems facing the state and the society,” he says. The media and the press are well suited to do this because “they have the ear of policymakers as much as they have faithful audiences and readers” among people. “The media, therefore, can trigger policy debates and create public awareness at the same time,” he adds.

But media seldom launch campaigns on their own. Newspapers and television networks lend a hand only when they see someone campaigning for something that media-persons and media organizations—individually as well as collectively—think should be promoted.

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