Economics and Politics Curb Asian Press Freedom
International Herald Tribune
November 6, 1998
Michael Richardson 

The newspaper and magazine sellers that crowd around cars backed up at traffic lights in the Indonesian capital are far more numerous than nine months ago, and their hands are much fuller.

Since the Asian economic and financial crisis helped end the 32-year autocratic rule of former President Suharto in May, his successor, B.J. Habibie, has acted on pledges to promote greater freedom and respect for human rights by granting no fewer than 333 additional publishing permits, more than doubling the number of such licenses, officials say.

While some of the new permit holders have yet to start publishing, many have, creating a rare growth industry in a country where recession is forcing businesses to retrench millions of workers.

But the Jakarta hawker scene, in fact, is an exception when viewed in the larger context of Asian turmoil. Ironically, at a time when economic disruption has forced the kind of political change often welcomed by freewheeling publishers, that same economic distress has put media companies on the defensive.

Across Asia, media organizations are cutting costs — and in some cases journalistic standards — to survive as recession eats into their advertising revenues and subscriber bases, while the sharp fall in the value of local currencies makes newsprint and other imported materials more expensive. Some newspapers have folded, and many others are expected to follow.

"Advertising revenue is falling, and sale of newspapers is declining as disposable income shrinks," said A. Kadir Jasin, the group editor in chief of New Straits Times Press in Malaysia.

In such countries as Malaysia, China, Vietnam, Burma and Singapore, where governments have effective control over much of the local media, the authorities are seeking to justify that hold on the grounds that turbulent political and economic times can be overcome only if the leaders and the led go in the same direction.

This assertion is taking its most extreme and contentious form in Malaysia, where the government of Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad has accused the foreign media of siding with his dismissed former deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, in trying to topple an elected administration by an Indonesian-style street uprising.

While the Malaysian media have echoed the official line by giving lurid accounts of alleged sexual misconduct by Mr. Anwar, they have played down his response: that he was framed by a government fearful of a leadership challenge and a popular reform movement after he questioned official corruption and mismanagement of the economy.

The New Straits Times recently urged the government to arrest "unfair" foreign reporters under the detention-without-trial provisions of the Internal Security Act, the same draconian legislation that was used initially to jail Mr. Anwar, who is on trial on charges of corruption and sodomy.

The newspaper, which frequently reflects official views, said that Malaysians were "generally aggrieved by sensationalist reports" by some foreign media.

"Many would also ask of them to stop taking sides, stop being prejudiced and be fair to Dr. Mahathir," it said. "Otherwise, we would urge the Malaysian government to adopt Singapore-style hardball tactics with the press, where errant media companies and their reporters will be sued, have their circulation banned or restricted."

Yet Asian officials and analysts say that the economic boom that preceded the current crash, as well as advances in information technology, particularly near-instantaneous satellite television broadcasting and the Internet, make it impossible for Asian countries to maintain control over information.

In Jakarta, the ragged vendors at intersections hawk a bewildering array of newspapers and magazines. Many of the new titles are tabloids with bold front-page headlines and photographs that promise readers an exposé of the latest political and sex scandals. Others offer weightier criticism of a government that is struggling to gain credibility for its reformist credentials.

"Right now, the Indonesian press is in a honeymoon period, " said Eros Djarot, managing director of Detak weekly magazine, one of about 30 publications closed by the Suharto government. "We are just enjoying the freedom which was stolen by Suharto's regime."

The crisis that undermined Mr. Suharto has created the opportunity for greater media freedom in Indonesia. But here and in other Asian countries, it has also thrown up severe economic challenges that may make that freedom short-lived for many players.

Pichai Chuensuksawadi, editor of the Bangkok Post, said that the economic boom in the region had fueled the free flow of information, providing, especially among the educated and middle classes, easier access to alternative sources of news. He said the Anwar controversy had made Malaysians "more aware of the shortcomings of their media."

"Not only are they seeking more information, they are exchanging information through faxes and the Internet," he said.

Investors and international financial institutions such as the World Bank are now asking how so many people, both inside and outside Asia, could have been caught so off-guard by the financial and economic turmoil that started in Thailand in July 1997.

"Part of the answer lies in the lack of transparency that existed, and to a very large extent still exists, in the region," said Robert Broadfoot, managing director of Political & Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd. in Hong Kong. "This hid problems from public view and inhibited intelligent analysis of the risks."

In an address last month, the president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, pointedly included "the free flow of information" as one of the "essentials of good governance" on which, he argued, sustainable economic progress depends.

"A freer mass media would have challenged the quality of economic policy and encouraged a more vigorous public response to abuses," said Mark Malloch-Brown, the lending agency's vice president for communications.

But analysts noted that the media in countries that are considered at least relatively free from government control, such as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand, had failed to expose the institutional and policy weaknesses that allowed the crisis to spread so fast and become so deep.

"Theoretically, the media should be a check and balance to systemic shortcomings," Political & Economic Risk Consultancy said in a recent survey. "In most countries in Asia, however, it does not play such a role very effectively. In some cases, this is due to intimidation from above. Censorship is still widely practiced in Asia. In other cases, the shortcomings of the media are self-inflicted. Freedom to report does not necessarily equate with high quality reporting."

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