EYE ON ETHICS

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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Ms. Uy is the Readers’ Advocate of the Mindanao Insider in Davao City, 978.01 kms south of Manila, Philippines.
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In reporting suicide, a fine line divides competing interests: the public’s right to know vs. the right to privacy of the victim, public interest vs. the risk of contagion suicides. But the issues are rooted in more basic questions: Why do the media report suicides? Should they, or should they not? How should suicide be reported without doing violence to the journalistic principles of truth-telling and minimizing harm?

Almost a year ago, the Philippine media widely reported the suicide of a 12-year-old girl in Davao City. The girl, who came from a poor family, was hailed a martyr of poverty. A year later, the media continue to associate poverty with suicide. The link is tempting – after all, a third of the Philippine population is poor, food and oil prices continue to rise, and the government is constantly mired in corruption scandals.

The case provides a good study of how the media’s dramatization of suicide amidst poverty, even if well-intentioned, only befuddled the situation. The girl’s death sparked a word war between the two leading officials of Davao City.

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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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The Thai ruling elite, military, and police have relied on Thailand’s Criminal Code to silence dissent, cow the opposition and inflict prison time on those deemed to have committed various offenses, including that of lèse majesté, a law detailed in the Criminal Code’s Article 112:

“Whosoever defames, insults or threatens the King, Queen, the heir-apparent or the Regent shall be punished with imprisonment of three to fifteen years.”

This obviously puts serious restraints on efforts within the kingdom to promote ethical media reform.

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Mr. Arao teaches several Journalism, Media and Communication courses at the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication (UP CMC), one of which is the master’s level course Media 230 (Media Ethics).
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As a rule, journalists cover an event or issue as independent observers. They are taught not to have any direct participation in it because doing so could compromise their objectivity and credibility.

But this situation applies in a “normal” society. That the Philippine media sometimes face ethical dilemmas in fulfilling this “simple” rule indicates either one of two things – that journalists do not have a firm grasp of ethics, or Philippine society is far from “normal.” Of course, one can argue that it could be both.

In any case, the impartial manner of reportage expected of journalists is not as simple as it seems especially when they face interests that conflict with their own. Then again, reporters who remember their basic journalism ethics would know that they should inhibit themselves from reporting or commenting on issues and concerns that directly affect them.

Aside from being an ethical issue, the imperative of a journalist’s inhibiting himself or herself in times of conflict of interest also has legal considerations: Any charge of libel against him or her would most likely result in conviction, considering that the hard-to-prove element of malicious intent could be established once conflict of interest becomes apparent.

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Mr. Basorie teaches journalism at the Dr. Soetomo Press Institute, LPDS, in Jakarta, Indonesia. He has led workshops on covering sustainable development. Mr. Basorie can be reached at wariefdj@yahoo.com.
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Write a letter to the editor. Go to a press complaints office. Go to court. These are the three standard approaches in Indonesia for the public to respond to an objectionable news report.

Did a newspaper story annoy you? You were misquoted. The facts were not right. The story unjustifiably puts you in a bad light. Your good name has been injured. What can you do? First, you can use your right to reply. You write a letter to the paper’s editor explaining your grievance. If your point is well taken, a responsible editor will print your letter, won’t he?

The editor, however, does no such thing. You become adamant; you want your voice heard. You could contact a local media watch, a kind of media consumer’s advocate. It is not a law firm but an independent research center on media issues. Put your case to the media watch and it can raise the matter with the newspaper concerned and get the paper to print a response.

Failing that, inform the Press Council. Based on the 1999 Press Act, Indonesia’s Press Council (Dewan Pers) has functioned since 2000 as an independent press complaints office. It mediates public objections against the press.

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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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The spectacular Beijing Olympics opening ceremony was watched live on television by over a billion people worldwide. One of its most memorable moments was when a little girl in a red dress sang “Ode to the Motherland” as China’s flag was paraded into Beijing’s National Stadium.

This single high profile performance turned Lin Miaoke, 9, into an instant celebrity in China. But within 48 hours, it was revealed that she was merely lip-synching to the voice of another girl.

Under pressure, Beijing games organizers admitted that the voice was actually of another girl, Yang Peiyi, 7. She was heard but never seen — simply because a high ranking Communist Party official had deemed her not “cute enough”.

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

The article tackles how journalists operate in heavily-controlled press societies such as Malaysia.
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On two different occasions this year, a leading English daily in Malaysia was caught in a dilemma—it did not know which way to sway. The top editorial leadership was unsure if the daily should swing towards the government-of-the day as it has always done, or to lean towards the “government-in-waiting”.

The first one became an option when the newsrooms waited for the general election results to come streaming in on March 8 this year.

Most journalists expected the ruling coalition National Front (Barisan Nasional) to win but with a reduced margin given the aggressiveness of the opposition parties this time around, primarily due to Anwar Ibrahim’s fiery speeches that were reverberating in the Internet. No one in their wildest moments ever thought that five out of 14 states would fall to the opposition—and that too, these would be the most progressive of the states. The opposition parties then had formed a loose coalition, and the de facto leader of this coalition was Anwar.

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