Australian media biased on East Timor coverage

Australian media biased on East Timor coverage

By Eloise Dortch

PERTH, West Australia (JP): How well did the Australian media
cover the East Timor debacle in recent months?

Were they accurate, fair, balanced and objective?

To apply the Australian Journalists Association (AJA)
recommended code of ethics to the coverage might sound like naive
idealism. Journalists have to sell papers, and in times of crisis
their job is especially difficult. Information can be hard to
come by and what is more, journalists themselves are not
inviolable to being influenced by the events around them.

On the other hand, when the stakes are so high --
international understanding and the civilian lives in the case of
East Timor -- some self-analysis can hardly go astray.

The following examples of news reporting about East Timor
served more to inflame emotions and strengthen stereotypes than
inform the Australian public.

In May last year, when a major state newspaper reported the
discovery of 11 bodies, it was implied the dead men were
proindependence supporters, as " ... a mass grave with the bodies
of 11 men was uncovered in Ermera town, a center of recent
attacks by pro-Indonesian militiamen on pro-separatists".

However, it turned out the dead were pro-Indonesian
militiamen. The next edition of the paper corrected the mistake
with an article headed "mass-grave victims were militiamen", but
prominence was given throughout the paper to proindependence
groups' denial of responsibility for the deaths.

This breaches the first point of AJA code, which requires
journalists to strive for accuracy, fairness and to avoid
distorting emphasis.

It also leaves the paper open to accusations of personal
belief undermining the accuracy of the reportage -- which we are
warned against in point four of the code.

Point three requires journalists to attribute information to
its source. There was a tendency by some Australian reporters,
particularly on TV or radio, to make sweeping, emotive statements
about the inclinations of the East Timorese long before the
ballot was ever held.

Although the reporters might argue the ballot later proved
their statements true, the reports were still flawed. No
information was given as to how the reporter knew that, for
example, "the growing sentiment of the people (was) independence
from East Timor" or that "the military controls the streets, but
not the hearts and minds of the people" (ABC 7:30 report, May 10,
1999).

There were also inaccuracies: "there is no doubt now in East
Timor that to be on the side of integration is to be on the side
of organized force," (ABC 7:30 report, April 26, 1999) -- which
ignores Fretilin's own Falantil guerrillas.

Point one of the code also requires journalists to give fair
opportunity for reply. In April on ABC TV, prointegration
activist Basilio Araujo remarked that the Australian media only
paid attention to proindependence people when they were attacked,
but never paid attention to prointegrationists.

Araujo made this statement on a national prime-time current
affairs program, which also gave considerable airtime to other
prointegrationists, so we may take what he said with a pinch of
salt.

However, his accusation of sensationalism and side-taking hits
home. Studies have revealed Australian journalists used
information from proindependence groups and international
organizations more often than they did from prointegrationist or
Indonesian government sources -- the opposite was true of the
Indonesian media. To give the reporters their due, it was
probably often more difficult, not to say dangerous, for foreign
media to approach prointegrationist activists than it was for
Indonesian journalists.

A final criticism of Australian coverage also relates to point
one of the code: reporters should "disclose all relevant facts".

Last April documents leaked to the media revealed that
Alexander Downer and John Howard were told by the Australian
Ministry of Defense that the Indonesian Military was directly
involved in killings in East Timor, and this was far more serious
than the "rogue elements" frequently referred to by Downer.

This major news deserved prominent treatment -- which it
received, in The Australian and on ABC radio. But it failed to
appear in many mainstream news outlets, which instead seemed
content to follow the government line, even to hypocrisy, with
page-one headlines such as Help us fix Timor: Habibie (The West
Australian, April 21, 1999).

Months later Australia sent troops into East Timor, but only
after the Australian public demanded it on such a scale that John
Howard had no political alternative.

We can thank the Australian media for providing the Australian
public with the information to bring about this democratic event.

Howard now basks in the glow of a popular political decision,
but while public awareness of East Timor was heightened through
the media, deeper understanding was not.

It is not the media's job to further international relations,
but it is its job to be responsible -- and this includes avoiding
dangerous stereotyping.

In the words of the introduction to the AJA code of ethics in
covering East Timor, the media should have done more to question,
comment and remember to scrutinize power and inform citizens.

The writer is an Australian journalist based in Perth.