August IWMFWire
When Money Talks to Journalists

In countries without a tradition of an independent press, bribes to journalists are common and advertisers call the shots about what reporters cover
Part Two of Two

In many countries, financial pressures and paltry salaries lead journalists to compromise their ethics for supplemental income. A June 2002 survey by the U.S.-based International Public Relations Association found widespread incidences of “cash for editorial” worldwide, particularly in Southern and Eastern Europe and Central and South America. IPRA asked public relations practitioners in 54 countries whether local editorial matter appears as a result of editorial judgment or through influence or payment by a third party. In Eastern Europe, 63 percent said that journalists regularly accept bribes.

In developing countries and newly emerging democracies, the media often do not have a tradition of independence or freedom of the press as a guide. All too often, say media trainers working in these transitional countries, they fall back on the old ways of doing things, such as accepting bribes or caving to pressure from advertisers.

Southeast Europe is one area where this tradition exists. “Economically, because there was very little money going around, most of the media was either sustained through politicians or political parties or the international community,” says Hawley Johnson, associate director of the Media in Conflict program run by New York University’s Center for War, Peace and the News Media. “There really wasn’t any independent media.”

Latin America

Money also plays a central role in ethical dilemmas in Latin America. Surveys carried out during conferences on ethics sponsored by the Washington, DC-based International Center for Journalists found that Latin American journalists were most concerned about five areas of ethical problems: acceptance of bribes and favors, bias, conflicts of interest, abuse of power by the media and deception in news gathering. Based on the conference, ICFJ developed Journalism Ethics: The New Debate, a handbook and video for journalists.

In some cases, journalists opt for a second job in lieu of dirty money. This decision also has ethical consequences. Vilma Perez, an editor with El Nuevo Dia in Puerto Rico, says a colleague was recently given a two-month suspension, and later resigned, when the newspaper learned she was working as a part-time government translator.

Easy Money

Kela Leon, director of the Consejo de la Prensa Peruana in Lima, Peru, knows firsthand about the lure of easy money. When she was a young reporter, a prominent politician offered her a job when she was investigating a story that involved him. She declined the offer. Still, that kind of offer permeated the media during President Alberto Fujimori’s administration, when journalists received money from the military to support his illegal re-election, she says.

While Fujimori is no longer in power, some journalists continue to abuse their profession to supplement their income, she says. “In the provinces, the practice of blackmailing people in exchange for not attacking them is a common practice among journalists.”

In Russia, where journalists barely make enough to survive, editorial loyalty and propaganda can also be bought for a price. “There have been many cases during the hottest political campaigns in modern Russia when journalists sell their skills and abilities to serve the left and the right, Communists and Neo-Nazis, terrorists and patriots,” says Mikhail Pogorely of the Moscow-based Center for War and Peace Journalism.

“When you are struggling to make ends meet, you are more susceptible to those kinds of things, especially when you don’t have a long tradition behind you that tells you, ‘no, you don’t do this,’ ” says Joseph B. Atkins, associate professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi and editor of The Mission: Journalism, Ethics and the World (Iowa State University Press, 2002).

“As societies progress, mature and develop economically, there is greater willingness on the part of journalists to adhere to ethical norms. The key here is education, though it is a hard slog,” says Venkat Iyer, editor of Media Ethics in Asia, published by the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre in Singapore. The Centre recently held an ethics training program in the region.

The Ethics of Fear

The climate surrounding newsgathering can also create ethical obstacles for media professionals. In the last decade, 380 journalists have been killed worldwide. Most have been murdered in reprisal to their reporting, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. In Colombia alone, more than 30 journalists have been killed since 1993, victims of paramilitary groups, guerilla gangs and drug cartels. At ICFJ’s conference on journalism ethics in Venezuela, Colombian participants called the choices facing journalists in their country the “ethics of fear.”

“It is self-censorship when you have to work in fear,” says Joseph Atkins. “Not everyone is inclined to go out and be a hero.”
Exorbitant fines, physical harassment and onerous libel laws not only serve to stifle journalists, but also contribute to compromising their standards. “One of the ethical dilemmas facing journalists [in southern Africa] is reporting on corruption involving politicians and senior government officials,” says Kaitira Kandjii, information coordinator for the Media Accountability and Professionalism Project of the Media Institute of Southern Africa in Windhoek, Namibia. “You report that and you face criminal defamation or end up being beaten, as is the case in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.”

Aside from covering corruption, sensitive social issues challenge how and what journalists cover. Kela Leon offers the example of covering AIDS in Peru in the late 1980s. “The dilemma was whether exposing personal tragedies, with permission from the ailing, would generate a negative reaction from their peers and thus worsen their suffering,” she says.

In southern Africa, journalists often use subterfuge tactics to obtain stories, says Kaitira Kandjii. “There is no way you can do investigative reporting without compromising your ethical standards. Not in our region,” he says. To train journalists to consider ethics, MISA has conducted workshops and seminars in Zambia, Swaziland, Malawi, Tanzania and Namibia.

Sometimes journalists take the mandate of free speech a bit too far. In southeastern Europe, for example, journalists are still learning the boundaries of investigative journalism. Only a few years ago, journalists in Kosovo were practicing what Hawley Johnson calls “vigilante journalism” in investigating alleged war criminals.

“Journalists would publish their [war criminal’s] names, where they lived, where they went for coffee, all of their personal information. And the next thing you know, the person they had written about would be a victim of a vengeance crime,” says Johnson, adding that some journalists support their actions by citing freedom of speech and reject the idea of limiting what they report. Her program teaches media organizations in southeastern Europe that practicing ethics is not only good journalism, but it’s also good business.

“Ethical reporting, so long as it remains guided by the principle of truth-telling, can still be powerful, hard-hitting, marketable reporting,” agrees Gwen Ansell, executive director of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism in Johannesburg. “Many reporters and editors are scornful of what they term ‘political correctness,’ forgetting both that the citizens on whom they report do have constitutional rights, and that words can wound.”

Despite the shortcomings of a few journalists and media organizations, most take their professional commitment seriously, says Joseph Atkins. “There’s all this talk about journalists who’ve caved in, [who] became spies, who fell short of the mark,” he says. “But you have to look at the ones who hang in there and serve as an inspiration to all of us.”