Perhaps now we have the reason for much of the nastiness in Asia. A free press equals disclosure. OR/
Asian Values = jail terms for journalists.
For Private Use Only From the Columbia School of Journalism
ASIA
HIGH PRICE OF SECRECY
Restricting the press worsened the economic crash.
by A. Lin Neumann
Neumann is the Asia program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists. He can be reached at lin_neumann@compuserve.com
The Asian economic turmoil of the last eight months at times has seemed otherworldly, as if the trouble dropped from the sky like an alien invader. But that is hardly the case; the signs were in plain view. Indonesia's President Suharto has had his family's hands in the economy's cookie jar for decades. Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has long pursued expensive vanity projects. In South Korea and Thailand, many companies and banks have circumvented financial reporting requirements with scant penalty.
In all these countries, the press has been hampered by either outright government censorship or a culture of secrecy that has made routine financial reporting woefully unreliable. Meanwhile, before the crisis, some foreign correspondents simply accepted the Asian "miracle" at face value or trusted the boosterism of financial analysts, cum sources, with a stake in good news.
"Eight months ago, all the media in the world were giving their blessing to these countries," says a senior banker in Hong Kong, who once covered the region as a financial reporter. "The reality is that it is very hard to find information in most of these countries. There is very little information in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, even Korea. And then the local press seldom analyzes what they do report. You are left divining sheep entrails."
Laws criminalizing the reporting of financial data in countries like Singapore and China dramatically restrict information. In country after country, even in more democratic societies like Thailand, cozy relationships between governments and financial institutions evade press scrutiny due to either self-censorship or frequent bribes offered to low-paid reporters.
This lack of information and poor reporting have contributed to the region's financial panic and the resulting need for an International Monetary Fund bailout of $117 billion (and counting). Alarmed, international financial leaders are suddenly awake to the need for a free press, and "transparency" is the buzzword of the day. As the storm was gathering in September, the Committee to Protect Journalists found an eager audience at the annual meeting of the World Bank and the IMF in Hong Kong for a forum on financial markets and press freedom. At the gathering, U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, said, "A free and undisturbed press is important because that is the vehicle through which information is conveyed, and once conveyed, is trusted. Information is at the center of what makes financial markets work."
By that standard many of the most heavily touted Asian miracles never worked and a shackled press only deepened the recent turmoil. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir's many high-profile, low-return, big-ticket vanity projects escaped careful scrutiny. The press was cowed and subdued by a leader who said that so-called "Asian values" exempted the region from many civil liberties enjoyed in the West. Pushing the limits can lead to unemployment and expensive libel suits or criminal prosecution for violating national security. Mahathir was seldom criticized at home as he built the twin Petromas Towers, the tallest buildings in the world, and went ahead with plans for the $5 billion Bakun hydroelectric dam in remote Borneo; a controversial $2.3 billion airport on reclaimed land; and the beginning of a massive high technology corridor to be anchored by a whole new city called Cyberjaya. The crisis has halted some of the projects, at least for the time being.
Throughout the region, the assumptions of national leaders are accepted uncritically, thus distorting the national debate. In Indonesia, President Suharto has been forced by the IMF to acknowledge the degree of involvement in the economy by his own family. But for decades such a discussion could lead Indonesian journalists to jail. The Suharto children thus acquired major interests in everything from cloves (used in popular Kretek cigarettes) to toll roads, to a subsidized national car company, telecommunications, and media without having to defend themselves in the press. The only widely trusted Indonesian publication, Tempo magazine, was closed by Suharto in 1994; its reporting on the Suharto family, economic corruption, and human rights abuses in East Timor were an embarrassment to the regime.
Routine financial data is unavailable to business reporters, and Indonesia's press has been unable to help establish a healthy national debate on the country's future. Indonesia, seen for years by bankers, economists, and some journalists as yet another miracle, now teeters near chaos with the rupiah having lost 80 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar in just six months. World Bank president James Wolfensohn was forced to issue a mea culpa when he visited Jakarta. "I think we got it wrong, along with a lot of people," he said on February 4. "I am not alone in thinking twelve months ago that Indonesia was on a very good path."
Even in countries with a relatively free press, business reporting and economic analysis can be a crap shoot. Chong-Hyuk Kim, a reporter for the Joong Ang Daily News in South Korea, told a Freedom Forum panel in San Francisco in January that South Korea's ostensibly democratic government barred publishing the size of foreign reserves and foreign debt. In addition to specific restrictions, he said, "It has become traditional practice between government and media not to report critical and important information. The government insisted [that] if that kind of information were revealed, it would be harmful to national security and the national reputation. The media accepted that kind of assertion."
"The media," Kim added, "abandoned its duty as watchdog of society." If the Asian media, supported by international pressure, can take seriously its watchdog role, it can help define a new climate of openness out of the ruins of the crisis. That is what happened in Mexico after the collapse of the Mexican peso in 1994. Already, in South Korea and Thailand, the press has pushed much-needed reforms on the government while defending its freedom and the panic has eased somewhat. That same kind of freedom is needed elsewhere if the lessons of the crisis are to be understood. |
