Effective strategies in fighting corruption should necessarily include knowledge and data as pre-requisites, as proposed by Daniel Kauffman, a former director of the World Bank Institute. He presents this formula:
AC (anti-corruption efforts) = KI (knowledge and information) + LE (leadership) + CA (collective action)
What this shows is the central importance of information and the involvement of media and citizens in any anti-corruption effort. In a number of instances, the Philippine press has demonstrated a strong but somewhat inconsistent capacity to focus on wrongdoing and malfeasance in the public sector. It was through dogged journalism and concerted action of civil society that Joseph Estrada was ousted from the presidency in January 2001 after an aborted impeachment trial.
By reporting extensively and fearlessly on Estrada’s mistresses, houses, gambling habits, nocturnal and unofficial midnight Cabinet meetings, and kickbacks from various government projects, Filipino journalists, wittingly or unwittingly, galvanized the collective rage of citizens who otherwise would have remained on the sidelines without the kind of information they had on their hands.
That single event underlined the role of critical, investigative reporting in ensuring more transparent and accountable governance. It also showed that good journalism can spur citizens to action and can open avenues for media-citizen engagement. But in-depth, analytical and sustained reporting on transparency and accountability issues has remained a very specialized field with very few news organizations actually pouring resources and support for such journalistic initiatives.
In many democracies around the world, exposing corruption in electoral campaign financing and expenditures, for example, has encouraged widespread public debates and in a few instances has prompted electoral authorities to put greater restrictions on campaign finance. Scandals linked to campaign contributions in Japan in the 1990s resulted in new laws being passed limiting corporate money influence in elections.
News reporting on this issue in the Philippines has gained little headway since much of journalism has its nose firmly following the circus trail of candidates, especially those vying for national posts.
Increasingly, the internet is also coming to its own as a potent and speedy way of sending and exchanging information, and in many cases, spurring citizen action the way it did in the Philippines in 2001 during the impeachment trial of Estrada.
UNDP’s 2008 Asia-Pacific Human Development Report noted, “During the 2000 election campaign in the Republic of Korea a coalition of 600 grassroots organizations had found that 15 percent of the candidates for parliament had serious criminal records and many others were guilty of tax evasion or dodging the draft. They published the names of blacklisted candidates on a website. The website got 1.1 million hits on election day and of 86 blacklisted candidates, 58 lost.â€
The report proceeded to ask: “Why did the newspapers not take the initiative?†The answer was because Korea for more than three decades had been in the grip of a dictatorship and the press had survived mainly because of its timidity.
What this shows is the transformative nature of journalism and civil society in many parts of the world, especially here in the Philippines where non-government organizations, faith-based groupings, business associations, civic groups and the like have encouraged strong citizen participation in governance.
“Civil society and the media are crucial to creating and maintaining an atmosphere in public life that discourages fraud and corruption. Indeed, they are arguably the two most important factors in eliminating systemic corruption in public institutions,†said Rick Stapenhurst in his World Bank Institute paper, “The Media’s Role in Curbing Corruption.â€
Stapenhurst presents tangible and intangible ways by which journalism can serve as a deterrent to corruption.
The tangible and most spectacular among the variety of forms, he said, is when corrupt bureaucrats or public-office-holders are impeached, prosecuted or forced to resign after wrongdoing had been exposed such as the case of Estrada. Less spectacular, but arguably equally important is the day-to-day slogging kind of conscientious reporting that may prompt formal investigations into allegations of corruption.
He said, “News accounts disseminate the findings of public anti-corruption bodies, thus reinforcing the legitimacy of these bodies and reducing the ease with which interested parties who hold power can meddle in their work. Conversely, when journalism exposes flaws and even corruption within the various bodies of the state (police, courts, the Ombudsman) corruption is put on check.â€
Should public pressure, as a result of media reporting on corruption, lead to a reform of those agencies or bodies, “the long-term effectiveness and potential of the media to act as a counterweight against corruption is strengthened.â€
But there is a dark side to this.
Corruption, press freedom, media ethics and other challenges
The press and other media can only report on corruption if they have the freedom to do so. In many parts of the world, journalists face two major constraints: First, states that control the press; and, second, private media owners or proprietors who may themselves be corrupt.
While the news media in the Philippines is widely considered to be the freest in Asia, it has rated low on press freedom ratings because of the number of journalists murdered in the line of duty. Many of the slain Filipino journalists were investigating corrupt practices in local areas. As of this writing, and since 2001, about 200 journalists in the Philippines have lost their lives in pursuit of a story.
The Worldwide Press Freedom Index of Asia-Pacific Countries in 2007 conducted by Reporters without Borders showed that the Philippines ranked 128 with a score of 44.8, one point higher than Maldives which ranked 129 and immediately below Malaysia with a ranking of 124. The index was based on events that took place between September 1, 2006 and September 1, 2007.
“Clearly a free press is not enough. What these countries need in addition are clean and efficient systems of justice that will follow up on widely-reported allegations,†said the Asia-Pacific Human Development Report.
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