Kuensel Newspaper - Watch dog, soap box and torch light 9/6/10 12:01 PM

Watch dog, soap box and torch light

Date: Sunday, September 05 @ 06:57:39 EDT
Topic: home

The executive director of the Toni Stabile centre for investigative journalism, Columbia
University, Sheila S Coronel, who is in the capital to train Bhutanese journalists on various
aspects of journalism, shared some of her thoughts with Kuensel, on the role of media in
deepening democracy.

The Media In A Democracy 2 September, 2010 - 1. If you could start with the role of
the media in a fledgling democracy?

Journalists play many roles in democracies and all the roles are important. We talk about
the watchdog role of the press, which means the press acts as the check on those in power,
so the press monitors what the government does and what other powerful institutions in
society do, be it companies, non government organisations or religious bodies. You monitor
them and see whether what they’re doing is for the public good.

A lot of our energy is spent especially in monitoring government, because it makes policies
that impact our lives, spends our money, it is responsible for providing services to people,
therefore, a lot of the media’s role is looking at how effective and honest the government is.

That’s one role.

The media is also a public forum, which serves as a space where citizens can talk to each
other and discuss current issues and events. That’s different from the watchdog role,
because it is providing a space where people can debate and reach a consensus.

The other function of the media is as agenda setters in a democracy.

The media brings to attention of the public, government, policy makers, influential sectors
of the society and of citizens issues that are neglected. These could be issues related to, for
example, people in far-flung rural villages, which do not have access to the media or to
government. It could also be some marginalised sectors of the society, like out of school
youth or women without jobs.

2. You had talked about how the media could destabilise the government if it was
under too much media scrutiny or allow corruption to breed if not. Where do we
strike a balance?
It is very hard. I cannot say this is only up to where you go. A lot of it depends on your own
judgment. As journalists, of course our role is to expose wrongdoing, but we should also put
that wrongdoing into context.

http://www.kuenselonline.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=16592 Page 1 of 4
Kuensel Newspaper - Watch dog, soap box and torch light 9/6/10 12:01 PM

We have to look at the magnitude and the scale and the importance of the wrongdoing. We
do not expose every little thing the government does wrong.

Sometimes the focus is on minor things. The classic example is the US media’s focusing on
President Clinton’s affair with a White House intern. There are certainly more important
things that the country has to worry about and for which the president has to be held
accountable, his management of health care or of the economy. We should focus more on
important things that affect the most number of people, not on little things that people may
want to read about, but are really unimportant. So this kind of over-zealous scrutiny is
unproductive and engenders distrust and cynicism in government and obscures more
important issues.

3. Can we have such a thing as Bhutanese model of democracy?

Each country defines the kind of democracy.

US democracy is different from social democracy in Western Europe. Philippine

democracy is different from the Indian democracy, just as it is from Indonesian and Thai
democracies, which are our neighbours.

So the institutional arrangements and capacities are different. The cultures, the beliefs and
the historical experiences define democracies. In the Philippines, contemporary democracy
is very much defined by the experience of people power in 1986, when people rose up
against Marcos. So even now people assert their right to go out in the streets and
demonstrate. So that’s part and parcel of our democracy.

Bhutanese democracy is different. It’s really more consensus and less conflict. In the
Philippines, it’s more adversarial democracy. So there is no one template for democracy.
Every culture, every society develops democracy according to its own conditions.

4. How important is freedom of information (FoI) in a democracy?

Over 80 countries have FoI laws today.

In 1960, before the US freedom of information act, there were only two countries in the
world that had it. Now a lot of countries have it, especially in the developing countries. In
many of these countries, the acts were as a result of the citizens’ struggles. Citizens,
journalists and society demanded FoI.

In the Philippines we have been struggling until now. Despite two decades of democracy,
we still don’t have a FoI act.

An act will help facilitate transparency, but even you have an act and people don’t use it,
it’s useless.

There has to be both demand in society and a willingness on the part of the government to
be transparent.

Sometimes you don’t need a formal act, you just need to have a dialogue with the
government to be able to establish procedures for releasing information.

http://www.kuenselonline.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=16592 Page 2 of 4
Kuensel Newspaper - Watch dog, soap box and torch light 9/6/10 12:01 PM

What an act does is it makes it a right and that is important too. The citizens know they
have the right to information. Without the right the government can say no, I have no duty,
I have no obligation to release the information.

With the FoI law, the government is forced, because the law acknowledges that citizens
have rights. A law is an advantage for the most part, but the law itself does no good unless
the citizens assert their rights. Even if there is a law there, it does not mean that officials
will follow the law. It requires also education and mobilisation of citizens for freedom of
information law to be successful.

5. How would the advancing communications technologies help the law bed into the
Bhutanese system?
Each society develops at its own pace. Even in the US, despite the FoI law, there still is a
lot of debate and a lot of documents are still withheld, so there is still a continuing struggle.
So the struggle for freedom of information never really ends.

A law makes it easier for citizens to assert their rights. It is empowering and enabling. I’m
very much for a law because it codifies the procedures for information access. Without a
law the government and bureaucrats can say we don’t have a procedure for releasing that
information or they will simply refuse.

But if you have the law, you have the right to demand information, so it makes it easier to
assert the right. But by simply having one does not mean the government automatically
releases. Nothing is ever given free.

6. Bhutan is a hierarchical society and where does it fit in with democracy?

In some respect many countries have these hierarchies, maybe Bhutan more than others
because it is coming from a traditional society.

As societies evolve, hierarchies also disappear. Hierarchies were a part of a rural agrarian
society and, as the society becomes more urban, hierarchies are no longer relevant.

What you have now still exist because they are customary rather than real hierarchies and
eventually they disappear.

It’s an evolutionary process and what you need for building democracy is to educate people
about their rights and obligations as citizens, regardless of their traditional or customary
hierarchies.

Educating people from schools at a very young age about their rights and responsibilities as
citizens of a democracy and understanding what those rights and responsibilities mean.

http://www.kuenselonline.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=16592 Page 3 of 4
Kuensel Newspaper - Watch dog, soap box and torch light 9/6/10 12:01 PM

This article comes from Kuensel Newspaper

http://www.kuenselonline.com

The URL for this story is:

http://www.kuenselonline.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=16592

http://www.kuenselonline.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=16592 Page 4 of 4