The media are crucial to creating and maintaining an atmosphere in public life that discourages fraud and corruption. CLAIRE DELFIN

Corruption is injustice, silence is consent.
-- A slogan at a public hearing on anti-corruption in India

Often viewed by many societies especially those with weak states as an inevitable fact of everyday life, corruption in its many forms, whether as transactional politics on a large scale or petty bribe-taking to “grease” infamously rusty bureaucratic wheels, thrives like fungus in dark recesses where light is easily extinguished by greed.

Thousands of debates, conferences and workshops have come and gone and uncounted reams of copy have been expended over time to the study of this insidious human malady that to this day has refused to loosen its grip on almost every aspect of our lives.

We are wrong to believe that fighting corruption is the job of government alone. Over the years we have ascribed too much to its capacity and willingness to foster public sector reforms. The job then lands on the laps of civil society and the news media to take on the challenge of battling such corruption – as well as in expelling its own demons.

“Tackling corruption is not a job for governments alone.  Civil society must play its part – by monitoring and reporting on standards of government and also by refusing to pay bribes or collude with corrupt officials.  Individuals, civil society and the media all need to stay alert, demanding the highest ethical standards and resolving to reject corruption wherever it appears:” So said the 2008 Asia-Pacific Human Development Report of the UNDP.

The Report, entitled “Tackling Corruption, Transforming Lives: Accelerating Human Development in Asia and the Pacific” pointed out that the news media is a principal watch group monitoring and exposing corruption through newspapers, television, radio and increasingly the internet.      

It added: “They (the media) can serve many important functions beyond just exposing corruption. The media can sustain an open and transparent flow of information, fostering a climate of opinion that is increasingly intolerant of corruption.” 

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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. 

It added, “In India, Indonesia and the Philippines, media reporting has helped create public pressure for reform, even if this has been slow to materialize.  It could also be argued that without a free press the situation in these countries would have been far worse. Of course freedom has to be balanced by responsibility, without which credibility can be seriously compromised.” 

Any attempt by the press to fight corruption can be compromised by ethical questions that hound it. And here we tread on a minefield.  Media corruption in the Philippines is a reality that has surreal ramifications, nor is it a new phenomenon. The reasons for bribe-taking, as recent media studies have shown, are as myriad as the forms of bribe-giving. 

In the book News for Sale published in 1998 by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, journalist Chay Florentino-Hofilena noted that the earliest written accounts of media corruption date back to the 1950s “when newspapermen were bought off with cash by politicians and businessmen.”  Today, corrupt members of the press are still being bought but through more sophisticated means like direct deposits to ATM accounts or the use of “bagmen” or “shepherds” especially during the elections.

But it is not only corruption within the ranks that hobbles the Philippine media from doing its job well.  It is also constrained by the capacity to do in-depth and textured reporting especially when working on “slow-onset” stories like those involving complex malfeasance such as political corruption.  So there is always a tendency to simply do a villains-and-hero story that is good copy for one day but fails to explain the ramifications of a corrupt practice. 

The press can likewise promote good governance if it enjoys editorial independence, if its ownership is dispersed in a competitive market, if it represents a pluralism of views, if it has the necessary competence and skills, and if it abides by the highest ethical and professional standards and understands clearly its rights, such as the right to access public information.  

The right to information

Although the 1987 Philippine Constitution guarantees citizens the right to access public information, the country has yet to ratify a Freedom of Information Act now teetering on the brink of being shelved at the Lower House by Congressmen preoccupied with partisan concerns.

“The usefulness of information for redressing social inequity and correcting long-standing grievances has been demonstrated, even if only on a small scale, in countries where grassroots organizations have been able to demand an accounting of public funds and check on the ineptness and corruption of those who rule them. Information has in fact been crucial to anti-corruption campaigns.  No one contests that informed citizens and a watchdog press are an effective check against the excesses of those wield power.  Governments cannot be held accountable if citizens are ill-informed about the actions of officials and institutions,” says journalist and Ramon Magsaysay awardee Sheila Coronel in The Right to Know: Access to Information in Southeast Asia.

It is precisely from this premise that the Center for Community Journalism Development (CCJD), for example, expanded the notion of human rights as a fulcrum to leverage transparency and accountability in local governance through media-citizen engagement. It is anchored on the belief that one of the most powerful ways to combat corruption is to ensure that citizens have access to the same information as their government.

Using the right to information, right to participate in political processes, and the right to expression and assembly as a guiding framework for media and citizens to become engaged in governance enabled the CCJD to develop the project “Media-Community Action on Mainstreaming Rights-based Approaches to Development at the Local Level” in partnership with UNDP.

Also referred to as “process rights,” information, participation, association and expression thus became the lynchpin of the CCJD initiative as it worked with community media and journalists, government agencies, local governments, NGOs and people’s organizations in developing strategies and mechanisms for transparent, accountable and participatory governance.

Taking off from those rights and using the principles of public journalism as a capacity development tool and strategy, the CCJD brought the concept to local communities to help citizens and journalists understand the impact of the news on their lives; how journalism can provide opportunities for debates to take place on priority issues; how it can contribute in developing rights-based strategies to ensure meaningful participation in governance. Public journalism principles by themselves are rights-based as they engage, involve and ensure that citizens’ voices are heard in issues that impact on their daily lives.

Addressing corruption through public audits

Innovations illustrated by two public audit initiatives through the collaboration of media and citizens in Palawan and Iloilo showed that informal, citizen-based, media-facilitated mechanisms for ensuring state accountability and transparency can work.

In 2004 a community newspaper called Bandillo ng Palawan worked with the Palawan Network of NGOs (PNNI), Palawan Community Media Council (PCMC), and several other news organizations in organizing a workshop, ‘Back to Basics: The Role of the Community Media in Promoting Better Governance through a Rights-Based Development Agenda.’ The activity aimed to orient journalists and multi-sector groups on the rights-based approach and to encourage local officials to adopt it in crafting their political agenda. 

It was a follow-up to the Candidates’ Forum shortly before the May 2004 elections organized by the same group and as a prelude to the public audit exercise called Ulat ng Bayan/Ulat sa Bayan (Report by the People/Report to the People) wherein candidates for local posts commit to presenting their accomplishments based on their campaign promises and the people’s agenda 100 days after being elected.

To provide a solid basis and practical starting point for the activity, research was conducted to compile relevant data that would indicate how local government units measure up in terms of upholding citizens’ right to education, health, and food security.  These were then superimposed on each particular MDG so that in the discussion on food security for instance, people recognized the importance of claiming their rights and monitoring LGU performance as a way of pressuring their officials to achieve Goal 1, Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger.

The three sectoral concerns were chosen on the basis of a consensus reached by the organizers and other groups through a consultative process to determine the most pressing unmet needs of the people of Palawan. 

The participants of the workshop --- provincial, municipal and city government officials, media representatives, members of the academe, religious groups, NGOs, people’s organizations, and local chambers of commerce --- validated the results of the research and then crafted plans on how to monitor government responses to the unmet development needs of their constituents using rights-based approaches.

Follow-up letters about the results of the activity were then sent to local officials who were unable to join the workshop to solicit their responses to the issues raised and suggest the possibility of incorporating the Ulat ng Bayan/Ulat sa Bayan activity in their report in October 2004 of their first 100 days in office.

The Bandillo ng Palawan published the results of the research and the workshop in a series of reports in the public journalism section of the paper called Tuturan (which means significant message in Cuyunin, the native language of the indigenous Pala’wan).  Sections of inaugural speeches of LGU elected officials were also published for closer public scrutiny as a way of holding them accountable during their tenure for promises made in the campaign.

In the mountain town of Bingawan in Iloilo, a province in west central Philippines, citizens and local officials look forward to the second Monday of February and July each year.  Those are not dates marking the celebration of the town fiesta, rather those are the schedules for public hearings where people get the opportunity to ask their officials, face-to-face, to account for their performance, something many politicians would try to tiptoe around.

In one such assembly in February 2005, some 50 community members engaged the mayor and other local officials in a discussion about the latter’s promises during the 2004 electoral campaign on the repair of school buildings and streetlights, construction of farm-to-market roads, honorarium for day care center workers.   

Called Pamangkot sang Banwa (Report to the People), the Bingawan public audit mechanism was patterned after the experience of the nearby town of Batad which piloted the reporting system with the help of the Iloilo CODE NGO (Coalition of Development NGOs) and the local media headed by The Visayas Examiner that initiated voters’ education drives through community conversations as part of their public journalism effort.

The voters’ education included organizing assemblies to note down the campaign promises of candidates who signed a covenant agreeing to join the public hearings once they are elected to office.  During the Pamangkot sang Banwa, the promises of the elected officials were listed down and their attendance in the regular legislative sessions as well as their performance in sponsoring and passing local ordinances were posted in public places.

The TVE, through its public journalism section called “Examined,” and other news media stayed with the voters’ education activities up to the actual conduct of the public hearing which was covered live by radio.  Citizens’ views on the performance of local officials and their responses were regularly published in special sections using public journalism approaches that allowed the community conversation to continue well beyond the actual conduct of the Pamangkot sang Banwa.

The Iloilo community press is working with the Iloilo CODE NGO to further popularize such audits through publications and broadcast programs.

Bingawan has since passed a resolution mandating the institutionalization of the public audit system.

Less formal mechanisms for ensuring transparency and accountability such as those cited earlier demonstrate very clearly how the role of the news media has become more transformative. The Iloilo and Palawan experience in doing public journalism shows that these mechanisms can be more effective when reinforced by such human rights as the right to information, to participate, to free expression. 

It is also through these rights that citizens and the news media can more effectively monitor progress by holding governments to account.  And that journalism, when practiced according to its true purpose of providing people with information they need to be free and self-determining, can be a potent tool in galvanizing citizen action for redress and reforms. Philippine Public Transparency Reporting Project

(The author is the executive director of the Center for Community Journalism and Development and the regional director for the Asia Pacific of the International News Safety Institute.)