Journalists warned of misreporting drug cases
Journalists warned of misreporting drug cases
JAKARTA (JP): Journalists must be more careful when reporting
illegal drug cases because incorrect reports might promote drug
abuse, Southeast Asian drug experts and officials said.
They said media reporting of the region's drug cases often
tended to be quite sensational.
The experts and officials were speaking on the first day of a
week-long course for ASEAN journalists on illegal drugs, here
yesterday.
Cho Kah Sin from the ASEAN secretariat office cited several
local reports of celebrities arrested on charges of possessing
and trafficking drugs.
The reports "are glamorizing the issues," said Cho, assistant
director of Functional Cooperation Bureau of ASEAN secretariat
overseeing methods on drugs and related matters.
The course is an ASEAN Committee on Culture and Information
(COCI) project.
A Malaysian delegate, Information Officer Ashari Manis, said
the press should not report the estimated value of drugs police
confiscated.
He was referring to a copy of a Manila-based newspaper a
Philippine official showed participants. It had a story with a
provocative headline explaining the estimated value of drugs
police had seized.
Manis said publishing drugs' value might not help global
campaigns to reduce drug abuse in the region.
On the contrary, such a report might prompt people, like the
poor, to enter the high-profit business whatever the risks.
Sharing Manis' view, host expert Brig. Gen. (ret.) Tony
Sidharta said such reports, including those explaining the
"positive" sides of drug consumption, could encourage youths to
try dangerous drugs.
The community sincerely expects the mass media to report the
right and exact information instrumental in reducing drug abuse,
he said.
"In this context the mass media and their reporters need to be
mature and this reflected in the reports," Tony said.
Eleven senior ASEAN officials and drug experts and 33
reporters from the seven ASEAN countries: Brunei Darussalam,
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and
Vietnam, attended the course.
The main subjects discussed were: the steps taken by the
ASEAN countries to control drug abuse and its impact, the role of
journalists in reducing drug abuse and the need for professional
guidelines on disseminating correct and accurate information
about the danger of illegal drugs.
The meeting, opened by Asep Saefudin on behalf of Dewabrata,
chairman of ASEAN-Coci for Indonesia's branch office, has a theme
of ASEAN Journalists supporting a global commitment to a drug-
free ASEAN.
In his speech read by Saefudin, Dewabrata quoted UNDCP figures
which show Indonesia has the region's third highest number of
drug addicts.
First is the Philippines with 334,500 , then Vietnam with
180,000 addicts, and Indonesia with 120,000 addicts, he said.
Thailand has 88,593 addicts, Malaysia 24,023, Singapore 4,713
and Brunei 595, he said.
But local experts and reporters said the actual number of
addicts was higher.
"Our figures show there are about a million drug addicts in
the Philippines," said the president of Quezon City-based
Foundation for Drug Information and Communication.
Brunei delegates said the number of drug addicts in their
country was about 3,000. (bsr)