Journalists & Corruption Issue

Jim Clancy (left), CNN International Anchor, and Cambodian
journalist Chhay Sophal in Bali, Indonesia in January 2008.

By Chhay Sophal

Bali, Indonesia: As media is powerful to join to the world governments, civil society, and private sector for fighting against corruption, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNOCD) brought a group of journalists from several least developing nations to participate in a media forum to discuss their role and responsibility to tackle the issue. The forum held on 31st January in Bali, Indonesia, aimed to raise journalists’ awareness of their role and responsibility and how to deal with challenges for news covering on corruption.

Speaking at the forum, Simon Derry, Director of BBC World Service Trust, said that corruption is mostly dealing with politicians, businesspeople, and the powerful and that the role of journalists must know how to involve ordinary people and how to persuade them and other civil society to talk about the issue. Mobilizing ideas and pubic opinion, he said, is also part of the process to best share in the society. However, he said, ethic is the back bone of journalists for doing their job.

Based on the answers collected by Simon from only 20 journalists of different countries, the key corruption is amongst government (16), private sector (1), individual (2), impunity (1), drug trafficking (1). Although most of the respondents say their media organizations support investigative journalism, they say intimidation, safety & security, and probably killing are the main concerns for covering corruption stories.

In his session on “Investigative Journalism and the Role of the Media in the Anti-Corruption Debate”, Jim Clancy -- CNN International Anchor – said journalists must keep communications open, keep doing, keep documenting, and keep networking by involving as many people as possible in civil society and interest groups, lawmakers and ministries, legal community and judges, business community, international partners, and fellow journalists. He also recommended that journalists must be careful with lying sources and try to push the source on the record and think about fairness and balance without bias.

Hon. John G. William, Chairman of the Global Organisation of the Parliamentarians against Corruption, said small groups of powerful people and the dictators in the world do not want journalists’ true information. They threaten, he said, and lock up journalists and try to control everything under the sun because their accountability is beyond control. William said accountability of democratic countries is based on the top-down rights in which people is first and then civil society and independent media, parliament, and government. But in some dictatorial nations, he stressed, they put rights upside down in which the government is first and then cabinet, bureaucracy, and people.

The forum was part of the UN Anti-Corruption Convention held on 28th January-1st February, 2008 and it was supported by DFID, IPI, UNDP, and the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. An adoption was made at the end of the forum to recognize journalists’ difficulties in many countries and in the spirit of their solidarity.