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BANGKOK—Vietnam,
Laos, Cambodia. What images might these words conjure up
in the minds of international consumers of news? Perhaps
war, maybe the Khmer Rouge. Or they might say, “Oh, it’s
that those countries that had that war some time ago. .
. they’re near one another, and they’re all the same.”
But “all
the same” is exactly what they are not. These
perceptions highlight all too well the challenge when it
comes to news and information in this part of Southeast
Asia, whose reportage—and “imaging”—in international or
regional media has often been done through
Western-defined news menus. The news staples have to do
with the standard topics—articles relating to US
soldiers missing in action, Agent Orange or the latest
Communist Party plenum in Laos or Vietnam. Often, they
make it seem as though nothing else happens in these
countries of the Mekong region.
But
putting on a different lens shows that this is the same
region where the following news is going on: excluding
China’s mammoth economy, postconflict Cambodia is
posting the highest GDP growth rates in the region.
According to statistics on the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (Asean) web site, the country’s GDP growth
rate was 10.8 percent in 2006, 12 years after the United
Nations-sponsored poll that marked the end of decades of
violence there. At the same time, China’s dams on the
Lancang are upsetting countries in the Mekong
region—even if you might not openly see coverage of that
in the local press of downstream countries. But the dam
habit is not just China’s, because plans for many of
them are afoot or under way in Laos, Vietnam and
Cambodia.
All
these are happening against the backdrop of social and
economic change that has been under way in the region
for only more than a decade, a period that has seen
once-hostile neighbors not only to talk to each other,
but open borders. Vietnam and China, for instance,
restored diplomatic ties only in 1991 and opened the
now-busy Lao Cai crossing the next year, as part of the
opening of 21 border passes. Laos opened up to tourists
only in 1991.
Border
trade is very much up and its economic
contribution—whatever the political weather is at the
center—is much more than official figures might show.
One cool dawn in May, we were surprised not only by the
fact that our bus made it to the Vietnam-Laos border at
Cau Treo after a 20-hour journey from Hanoi, but that
bursting bundles and bundles of merchandise were already
waiting to be brought past the crossing.
In many
ways, this part of Southeast Asia is a laboratory where
countries of different political and economic stripes
juggle several processes at the same time, processes
that other countries in the West, or perhaps even others
in Asia, probably went through much more slowly. Over a
span of 15 years or so, but a blink in historical time,
many of the Mekong countries have moved from hostility
to dialogue, as it has often been said by officials of
the Asian Development Bank that launched its “Greater
Mekong subregion program” in 1992. Several countries
have been moving from being centrally planned economies
to more free-market ones, grappling with the benefits
and downside of globalization and more open borders.
The
Mekong region is also, in a sense, going back to the
past, through new transboundary projects that connect
places already linked in the past. Thus, it is both a
“young” region—we did not always even refer to the
“Mekong region” before—but also an old one. (Reading
John Keay’s book Mad About the Mekong, where he retraces
the route of a French expedition [1866-88] that went up
from up from delta Vietnam in search of access to China,
was a reminder of the region’s colored past.)
What
does this all have to do with media?
If media
are a reflection of what society is concerned about,
then there is, from the above, a whole array of rich
stories that is being played out. But not all of these
are being explored due to a mix of factors, among which
are the lack of opportunities to specialize on reporting
in the region, the Western media’s large footprint in
shaping international reportage of this region, the lack
of skills of a growing media in some cases, varying
media cultures, the difficulty in separating media from
state interests (which can lead to Lao media being wary
of carrying reports that could “offend” China or
Vietnam—the bigger powers it has historically been
caught between—or a Cambodian TV station deciding
against the airing of a documentary that it believes
neighboring Vietnam would see as critical of it), as
well as the limitations on media in several countries.
Few
publications in the Mekong countries have a staff that
consistently follows issues of concern to the region,
which would be an investment in building knowledge and
expertise in regional issues and going beyond stories
traditionally defined only by the lenses of national
interest and attention. Many do not have budgets to send
their own reporters to, say, conferences among Mekong
country officials—or even the Asean meetings, for
instance, where the need for coverage of the stakes of
the second-tier countries like Cambodia, Laos and
Vietnam are crystal-clear. One editor of a Saigon-based
publication said: “Mekong? We only cover the Mekong when
it’s flood season, you know, when the river’s water
rises.”
How the
media story plays out against the backdrop of a rapidly
integrating and opening Mekong region is among its
biggest unfolding stories. How will the process of
economic and social openness, under way over the last
decade-and-a-half, shape the Mekong media environment?
There is
a tendency by many to write off the media in socialist
countries—some quarters go as far as saying the capacity
of their journalists are not “worth” developing—because
of the state’s high-profile role in the media
environment. But if we look close enough, change is
under way.
In
countries like Laos and China, the impetus of economic
survival, at a time when state funds going to media
outfits have been downsized, has given advertisements,
market revenues and readers’ feedback a much more
influential voice in determining how newspapers and
magazines shape content.
In Laos
today, private media companies can produce TV programs
and own television channels, allowing at least for more
varied and interesting offers.
In other
words, the same old boring stuff are no longer enough to
keep publications going, especially when state subsidies
are not as liberal as before.
Journalists in Laos and China point out that the biggest
questions for media today involve the irony in how
market forces, usually in the form of advertisement
revenues, have pried open more space and diversity for
reporting, but have also allowed news relating to
entertainment, consumerism and frivolity to become
dominant.
Against
this backdrop, journalists welcome more creative room,
but worry about the decline of serious reporting and the
lack of standards in sensitivity and ethnics, for
instance, around nondisclosure of identities and faces
of people living with HIV/AIDS or child victims. There
may be more space, but not so much for criticism or
political analyses as for pictures of sexy women
peddling products. “More market forces mean new
magazines, but they’re just about tourism, commercial
things—that’s where the space went,” rued one Lao
reporter.
The
Internet and its possibilities are the other arena of
change. Sometimes, the examples of these are of the type
seen in citizen reporting after the military crackdown
in the monk-led protests of September 2007 in Burma. In
places like China, the change the Internet has ushered
in over the decades has been no less than
transformational, although this may be less obvious to
non-Chinese speakers.
One
count has it that from 42 newspapers (virtually all
Communist Party papers) in 1968, there are now more than
2,200 newspapers and 9,000 magazines in China. The
circulation of the once all-present People’s Daily has
fallen drastically in the decades after economic reforms
and is now subscribed to mainly by government offices.
Given the biggest benefit of this change—the diversity
of media choices—consumers will make their choices.
Looking
back over the last decade, one Chinese journalist
recalled how many new television channels and citizen
newspapers have gotten rid of government funds and rely
instead on advertisement revenues. Said another:
“Because of China’s bad media environment, the public
found a new way to express its ideas and
feelings—speaking on the Internet. Web sites now put
heavy pressure on the government opinion and impose
heavy pressure on the [Communist Party] and the
government.”
At a
regional media conference in Bangkok in January
organized by the East-West Center, China Youth Daily
editor Li Datong shared with his audience the results of
a small survey done by southern Chinese newspaper
showing that media organizations wanted a media law and
to be able to be publicly listed—indeed, a sign of the
changing times.
“There’s
control everywhere in the world, but the point is, you
manage to get you voice heard in China nowadays,” opined
a writer.
So,
column inches continue to be—and should continue to
be—given to news reports of countries like China and
Vietnam clamping down on journalists. But the nuanced
shifts under way in the Mekong region are equally
important and no less real parts of the whole media
picture there, even if these may not fit the “usual”
formula of the “usual” news read in international media.
The media in the Mekong region are, by no means “all the
same.”
****
Johanna Son, a journalist for more than 20 years, is
director for Asia-Pacific (www.ipsnewsasia.net) for the
Inter Press Service (IPS) news network. IPS Asia-Pacific
is a member of the M-POWER network (www.mpowernet.org).
Since 2002, it has also been running a media fellowship
program for Mekong journalists called “Imaging Our
Mekong.” |
