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Maybe it was like Thailand's Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, who in a February 2008 interview with Al-Jazeera condescended at the end of the interview to tell the better-informed female reporter, "Next time, you should do your homework."
So the leaders of two Southeast Asia neighbors somehow feel up to giving the media guidelines on how to be reputable, helpful, correct and ethical. It's a shame that they don't always adhere to the same guidelines themselves, especially in Samak's case. With a memory that doesn't allow him to recall his part in the October 1976 massacre where some four dozen pro-democracy protestors were killed, and to add insult to injury, foolishly insists "only one unlucky guy was killed" in the state-incited bloodbath, Samak is hardly the one to advise anyone on accuracy in reporting, being ethical or accurate.
In fact, on Valentine's Day 2006 Samak resigned from a program after alluding that the king's chief Privy Council adviser was throwing needless criticism at the corrupt Thaksin-led government. Just a little over a year later, Samak, this time as prime minister, quit two weekly broadcasts after a long and meaningful barrage of public and private criticism that he had a foul mouth and used coarse language unfit for public consumption. Listening to Samak or his Minister of Interior Chalerm Ubumrung will quickly confirm that both are condescending, dismissing of genuine concern on a plethora of issues, and generally insular.
Whether that, along with Badawi's recent exhortations, is a sign of a more ominous coalescing of various national state apparatus to undermine the Fourth Estate -- not only in Asia but worldwide -- is an important question to ask, before it is too late. Well-regulated media like those in Burma, North Korea, China, Cambodia and other Asian nations, is hardly a threat to continued incumbency of politicians.
Clothed in rhetoric about accuracy, reliability and ethical content, incumbent government suggestions to their local media are like frosting on the cake -- without the cake. Like the "Where's the beef?" question in seeking substance in what is offered, truly democratic leaders, members of the media and educators need to ask what it really is that Prime Ministers Badawi, Sundaravej and others like them are really asking for, and what they really want. Cooperation more often implores compliance, accuracy translates into replication of official reports and ethics bespeaks an irresponsible media that just won't go along with the party line.
Nations don't need to be communist to muzzle their media -- it helps, of course, but it's more important to represent itself as right and media as wayward. Such official misrepresentation is relatively simple in countries that are ruled by those with the kind of power to jail former deputy prime ministers who did nothing wrong and arrange for them to be accused of such things as sodomy, to telling the United States that it is "a useless friend" when Washington complains of human rights abuses by its trading partners and beneficiaries of military aid.
Badawi has also outlined another type of censorship, in a sense, in calling for the creation of "a group of journalists" that specialize on the news they report. Surely this fault among journalists who report on subjects ranging from economics to space exploration is not totally the fault of the newspapers, radio stations and TV networks that they work for. It can be readily traced to lack of openness and transparency in their governments and other agencies, including private firms, but also especially in the strong military circles of the region.
If aspiring and practicing journalists are given proper access to information, if they are permitted to interview persons involved in issues of dispute, if they are provided informative seminars by government and others in areas regularly being reported on, then non-state media presentation of news to the public will not only be more accurate, reliable and ethical, it will help create and reinforce "information considered basic to participatory political life," as stated by Thai media professionals at their gathering May 3 in Bangkok to celebrate World Press Freedom Day.
At the same gathering, it was pointed out that Thailand's Prime Minister Samak and his government intended to discredit the media and "prevent professional communicators from carrying out the function of reporting and critiquing the government's performance." Was Malaysia's prime minister also attempting to hint at some discrediting of the media in a professed appeal, or was he sincerely attempting to garner more accurate reporting? If the latter, leaders in Malaysia, Thailand and other countries in the region need to start being open and transparent in dealings with not just the media, but their own constituents, media representatives and party members.
The dangers that media worldwide face are multiple and apparently conundrums. On the one hand, it seems that state officials and agencies are often overly willing to identify non-compliant media, especially foreign but also local liberal media, as destructive, irresponsible and unethical. When it comes to foreign media, they are termed invasive and interfering. The accusations and actual performance of government agencies and officials, however, easily disintegrate into harsh reality for the millions in Asia who have been promised aid, relief and succor but instead watch their elected officials grow into corrupt monoliths that can't be assailed.
It is those millions of betrayed, lied to and desperate fellow citizens that the Fourth Estate owes its allegiance to, and to whom its mission has always been dedicated. The motivation of many of those occupying positions in the First Estate (the clergy and monarchy) and the Second Estate (the nobility sans monarchy) in a sense stand between the Third and Fourth Estates (the common people and the media). There are differences in mission, differences in objectives, and differences in character.
Getting it all into the open to promote a healthy society where exchanges can be freely and safely made is the job of the Fourth Estate. But when supposedly democracy-friendly nations like Thailand almost totally prohibit the free airing of opposition views through control of media, one must wonder just when, if ever, servants of the public will cease treating the public as servants.
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(Frank G. Anderson is the Thailand representative of American Citizens Abroad. He was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer to Thailand from 1965-67, working in community development. A freelance writer and founder of northeast Thailand's first local English language newspaper, the Korat Post -- www.thekoratpost.com -- he has spent over eight years in Thailand "embedded" with the local media. He has an MBA in information management and an associate degree in construction technology. ©Copyright Frank G. Anderson.)