Media must play role in heading off crisis: Forum

Media must play role in heading off crisis: Forum

BANGKOK (AFP): Southeast Asia's media must play a stronger
role in heading off political crises like those that have
befallen Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, press advocates
said on Monday.

Representatives from the three countries told a forum
organized by an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
communications thinktank that the region's media was failing to
act as an effective watchdog.

The saga of disgraced former Philippines president Joseph
Estrada was the latest in a series of leadership disasters that
the press could have helped to avert, said Luis Teodoro, a media
freedom activist and editor of the Philippine Journalism Review.

The nation's press could help halt the continuing cycle of
political turmoil by better informing the population, a task it
had so far failed, he said.

"It is the lack of information that has led the Philippines
to, and which keeps the Philippines in, its current state,"
Teodoro said.

"The Philippine mass media are at best doing a mediocre job of
providing the information on critical public issues the citizenry
needs, and at worst contributing to the dumbing down of vast
numbers of the Philippine electorate."

One of the positive outcomes of the Estrada impeachment
debacle was a realization among journalists that they needed to
beat back corruption and be more vigilant to "move the country
forward," Teodoro said.

In Indonesia, the role of the media had changed since 1999
when President Abdurrahman Wahid shut down the country's
department of information, ostensibly freeing the press of
government interference.

But the new-found freedom had shown that the media needed an
official framework and self-discipline to be effective, said
Indonesian Press Council executive director Lukas Luwarso.

"It would appear that the freedom that was so eagerly awaited
and celebrated hasn't lived up to the hopes of everyday
Indonesians," he said.

"On the contrary, a host of new problems plague the media,
creating intricacies that have muddied already complex
situations," he said.

"In the absence of real government controls, the free press is
becoming chaotic. The media does not present a good prescription
for societal ills," he said.

Wild reportage and sensationalism had undermined the
Indonesian media's credibility, Luwarso added.

Thai Journalists Association president Kavi Chongkittavorn
said the media in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand tended
to ignore public opinion and instead pursued their own agendas.

"Sometimes the people on the street can understand better than
the leader. That's the role of the press -- trying to reflect
what is in the minds of the people on the street so that leaders
can read about it."

"Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand are similar in that
they are very free, and they tend to report as they please. If
we're not careful, we end up backing ourselves into a corner," he
said.