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APJC board member and Canberra Times editor-at-large Jack Waterford, speaking in Dili.
Canberra Times editor-at-large Jack Waterford OA was guest speaker at a dinner in Dili on 16 June 2009 to celebrate 10 years of journalism development work in Timor-Leste by APJC staff. The dinner was attended by Timor-Leste journalists who have taken part in APJC programs, representatives of the Timor-Leste news media, and participants in the APJC’s Understanding Near Neighbors study tour for Australian journalists. Other guests included the Australian ambassador to Timor-Leste, Mr Peter Heyward, AusAID first secretary, Mr Darian Clark, and AusAID program officer, Mr Luis de Sousa Sequeira.
Journalism in a democratic society
We are pleased and proud to be here in Dili, not only sharing bread with you but also with journalists from Australia and Timor-Leste in this, the tenth year of involvement in media development of Timor-Leste by Asia Pacific Journalism Centre staff. We have here as well, of course, Australian journalists who are reaching the end of their study tour of Indonesia and Timor-Leste, a part of another APJC program designed to foster greater understanding of our near neighbours. And it also marks the beginning a mentoring program by which these journalists have volunteered their time to be professional buddies of Timor-Leste journalists over a few days.
From training programs organised in Brisbane in 2000, when 12 journalists from Timor-Leste were flown to Brisbane for a workshop on post-conflict journalism, workshops in Dili on election reporting and newspaper management and a journalism scholarship program for two journalists, we have moved to embrace Timor-Leste colleagues in all of our regional programs, both here and in Australia. In this we have received generous assistance from the Myer Foundation, and from AusAID.
We do not do these things from a sense of missionary zeal, or to make you objects of our charity, or to somehow compromise you in the way you see or treat Australians or our way of life. We hope, obviously, that our work here will make us your friends as well as our colleagues, and that it will help you to be better able to do your job. In just the same way, we hope that Australian journalists who have worked with us and travelled with us among our near neighbours will be better able to do their jobs. Better informed and better understanding. Given some exposure to how things are done elsewhere. Given some experience of how things are seen elsewhere. Given an opportunity to meet people of different ideas, different cultures, different experiences, and, perhaps, given some new knowledge of people and institutions from whom they can ask for help when they are doing their jobs.
‘Light from a free press is sometimes needed to show leaders the way’
If my own experience as a young journalist is any guide, programs such as these do much more than supply those who get involved with some personal knowledge or contacts they can use if, say, they want to write about Timor-Leste. They are just as important in all sorts of ordinary jobs, because they help produce some new confidence in how to go about the job, a general fund of experience that can be applied to almost anything, and, sometimes, some fresh understanding that the job we do, of bringing facts and ideas before the people of our countries is a very, very important one. One that matters. And not only for ourselves, or for our employers. But also for our people and our country. And maybe for the world.
We are brothers and sisters with a unifying, but not terribly radical idea. We think that the world is a better place when people talk to each other. We think that the world is a better place when there is a free flow of ideas. We think that good ideas will prosper and lead to good results if they can be freely discussed, and we think that bad ideas will be driven away more quickly when they can be attacked and their falseness can be demonstrated. We do not always claim to know which are the best ideas and which are the worst ones, and sometimes some of us will disagree about which are which. But we do claim that the more open the discussion, and the more free the debate, the more obvious it will be which are which.
We also believe that society works best and government works best when it takes place out in the open. Not behind closed doors. Not between small groups of the rich and the powerful, but in a way that allows everyone with an interest in events to know what is happening and to put their own point of view forward. Some of us are optimists who always expect the best of other men and women. Some of us are pessimists who have come to observe the worst in our fellows. But most of us know that people behave better when they know they are being watched. Watched in their villages and towns. Watched in their parliaments, their ministries and their nations. Watched, sometimes from all around the world.
In Australia, I sometimes talk to politicians, or to public servants, about how they should serve the public interest. All of them will, in some way or another, be tempted to doing things which are wrong. Which are not for the benefit of all but for the benefit of a few. Or for their own benefit. How will they know, some will ask. How will I know what to do, or, at least, what not to do. Perhaps we once lived in a society where the answers should have been obvious from what we had been taught at school or in church. Perhaps it is not so easy now. But one way I have found useful as a guide is to invite our politician or our public servant to imagine that he was answering questions later on, out in the open, from journalists or a parliamentary committee, or perhaps a court. Explaining why you did it. And why you did not do other things. The world can often understand why someone has made a mistake, has failed to pay attention to an important factor or paid too much attention to another. But people will be much slower to forgive a clear case where self-interest has been put ahead of public interest.
In Australia we worry about corruption. Our experience has been that some men and women will do the wrong thing. To enrich themselves or to make themselves more comfortable. Our experience has shown that there are two very important measures to reduce corruption. The first is to increase the chance of being caught. The second is to make sure that the result of being caught is that one’s life will change forever. It might seem odd to some people, but that does not necessarily mean longer and longer terms in prison, or more and more harsh punishments. Actually it is disgrace that many people fear more than that. Particularly if they are people who have been used to having power who are forced by disgrace to give up power. Who find that, once they have been caught out, neither the public, nor the system, will let them have power again.
Time and again we find that people will be more likely to give in to temptation if they think there is little chance of being caught. If they think there is a good chance of being caught, they will be less likely to do it. And they are less likely to do it if they know that their shameful conduct will become known to everyone. To their parents, their spouse and their children. To their neighbours. To their friends. To their professional colleagues and people who have once held them in high esteem. And to the community at large.
Journalists play a role in this process which is as important as the policeman or the judge or the opposition politician. Good journalists ask questions. They want to know what. They want to know why. They do not always take things on trust. They will insist in lifting up the stone to see if there are spiders underneath. They have a great opportunity to test the stories they are told by those who have power. They have great opportunities to meet people who are affected by the way power has been used. Winners and losers. And, if they find that people are using power wrongly, they have, of course, a great opportunity to draw this to the attention of the public. To ask for explanations. If necessary, to make the system take notice.
It is when we have a tame press, a press that is embarrassed to ask hard questions of those with power, including, of course, of business people whose decisions can affect others as much as those of politicians or officials, that corruption will flourish. And not just a bit of stealing, or a few decisions made which benefit the few at the expense of money. But also a corruption of the spirit that affects and infects power at all levels An arrogance about what the people think and need. As often as not, an attempt to join that arrogance with force and coercion against those who resist.
There will always be people with power who will think that some of the responsibilities of good journalists should be guided by them and by the force of the law. Who want the power to decide that there are some things that journalists should not write about. Or some types of criticism which should not be allowed. Who will want to put journalists who are too nosy, or two curious, or too cheeky in jail. Many politicians will claim that such restrictions serve the public interest. They will say that they are worried that tough journalism will cause unrest, perhaps riots and disorder in some places. Or that it will hurt national unity. Or affect international confidence in the currency.
Even when they mean well they are usually wrong. For most of the time that Timor-Leste was a part of Indonesia, the Indonesia press was under heavy government controls. For all of the sorts of reasons described above. But also so that a tame press would not tell the people how powerful people were becoming rich by abusing their power, and how people in places such as Timor-Leste were being killed or hurt by authorities determined to have their way. Even then, it was probably the media coverage that was occurring, particularly outside Indonesia, which was stopping things getting much worse. But if there was too much press silence, it did not help, in the long term, those who were abusing their power. That silence meant that anger mounted, that there were more and more people who were discontent, and more and more people who were becoming conscious of how badly they were governed. Finally, the pot boiled over, and, when that showed itself by a new press freedom and a new democratic spirit, there was a flood of information about how power had been abused.
That overflowing is something that should be remembered here. Many of you were engaged in the struggle for Timorese freedom. For many of you, in a new nation, politics has a special thrill and, on many matters, what is involved seems like life and death. Political struggle here has been active and involved and, sometimes, violent, going well beyond what outsiders would think reasonable or appropriate. Journalists, as much as the national leaders, have a responsibility for making sure that the debate stays within civilised boundaries. But, around the world, in Australia as much as elsewhere, we have found that the proper boundaries do not involve the suppression of the truth, restriction of the opportunity of the people to talk to their governors, or trying to prevent the media being a free forum of ideas, even unpopular ones.
We are here, in short, because we are in a common enterprise. Not only do we think that the truth will liberate you, but we think that it will liberate us. That the better we understand each other, and the better your people and our people understand what our leaders and your leaders are doing, and why, the better off we will all be. In the long run, indeed, the better the leaders -- our leaders, your leaders – will be, even if it sometimes means that we are showing them the way by shining torches where they have been and where they are going.
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Understanding Near Neighbors Fellowships: study tour to Indonesia and Timor-Leste