DEMOCRACY AROUND THE WORLD | Giving citizens a voice
08 February 2008
Investigative Journalism Often Dangerous Business
Reporters often risk their lives to expose graft and corruption
Washington -- Despite the dangers they face, reporters worldwide continue to expose corruption in government and the influence of organized crime in national politics, an official from a global anti-corruption agency and a journalist from Thailand tell America.gov.
Transparency International’s Marta Erquicia, speaking from her agency’s headquarters in Berlin, said investigative reporters play a “key role in fighting corruption” and countries need such reporters for their “oversight role.”
Reporters continue to investigate corruption even though figures by the United Nations show that more than 1,000 media professionals worldwide have been murdered in the last decade, most of them victims of targeted killings.
Erquicia, Transparency’s program coordinator for the Americas, said a number of presidents in that region were imprisoned after newspaper investigations showed the presidents were running corrupt governments.
She lamented that many reporters are assaulted or killed in retaliation for their work, and that the follow-up criminal investigation results in the “hired gun” -- but not the masterminds who planned the crime -- being jailed. Investigative journalists, she said, often must practice self-censorship in their reporting to keep the newspaper from losing its advertising income and financial backing.
A paper she presented at a conference, held during World Press Freedom Day in May 2007, demonstrated the perils faced by investigative journalists. More reporters are murdered, often for covering organized crime or investigating corruption, than die in the battlefield covering armed conflicts, she said.
Erquicia said investigative journalism is essential to ensure that elected politicians remain accountable to their citizens and for “democratic institutions to remain operational.”
Investigative reporting is even more important, she said, when a country’s judiciary and parliament “show no interest” in monitoring corruption “or lack the capabilities and resources to do so.”
Transparency International and the Peru-based Press and Society Institute, a nongovernmental organization, jointly present an annual $25,000 first-prize award to the best investigative journalism stories on corruption in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The 2007 award co-winners were journalists from the Colombian news magazine Semana and the Brazilian daily Correio Braziliense. The Brazilian newspaper exposed one of the largest parliamentary corruption cases in the history of Brazil, while the Colombian magazine exposed the infiltration of paramilitary groups into national politics.
Erquicia said the award promotes international interest in the investigative work performed by the winning journalists, which helps protect them from retribution in their own country.
THAI EDITOR PRAISES REPORTERS’ COURAGE
Kavi Chongkittavorn, executive editor of The Nation, an English-language newspaper in Thailand, said investigative journalists are “pivotal” in countering corruption, “especially during a formative period” when “corrupt deals are being planned.” He indicated that in his part of the world, where the killing of reporters is not unusual, journalists need “courage, good support from their offices, and good insurance policies.”
Chongkittavorn said most successful corruption stories come from “internal sources” in a government agency, from sources that do not benefit from corrupt deals, or from those who seek to expose shady politicians.
Thailand has no laws to protect “whistleblowers” or eyewitnesses to crime, unlike in the United States and other countries that have instituted such anti-corruption measures, he said.
Chongkittavorn expressed hope that Thailand will “create an environment” in which “whistleblowers are not treated as evil doers, but as people who are responsible, decent and want to protect” the country’s national interest.
In his presentation to the 2007 World Press Freedom Day conference, held in Medellin, Colombia, Chongkittavorn said Thailand was the first country in Southeast Asia to enact a freedom of information law. Despite its flaws as it applies to Thailand, Chongkittavorn said the 1997 law helped journalists in that country “dig up several big corruption scandals involving high-level officials.”
But he said the law has not worked as well as intended and serves as a “barrier for information dissemination” instead of promoting disclosure. Because of the law’s shortcomings, journalists in Thailand have tended over the years to avoid using the freedom of information law. (See “Freedom of Information Laws Burgeoning Worldwide.”)
U.N. VIEWPOINT
Abdul Waheed Khan, of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which organized the 2007 Medellin press freedom day conference, said that “all too often governments devise laws and informal means of keeping their activities hidden from public view.”
Khan, UNESCO’s assistant director-general for communication and information, said at the conference that governments often make only information that supports their viewpoint available to media.
In recent years, he said, “many governments have tried to co-opt journalists by paying part of their salaries. If the media are to function in the public interest, governments must protect the independence and plurality of the media, including critical voices.”
