A different kind of freedom
Confined by state controls, many publications that once pushed at the limits of the law are turning, with permission, to sensationalism
HO CHI MINH CITY - Vietnam's journalists are getting a taste of
new freedoms. Unfortunately, they're the wrong kind.
Stifled by state control but denied the state subsidies on
which they once relied, a growing number of
newspapers are turning their backs on risk-taking and
following the path of least resistance--sleaze. Healthier
forms of journalism are meanwhile being squeezed out.
Vietnam's press has never been free, but until only a
few years ago there was optimism that a nascent media
revolution was in the offing. Reform policies had
transformed the press from the drab propaganda sheets
of the 1970s. Gone was the mantra of "no news but
good news." Corruption was being reported.
Magazines and periodicals were proliferating in a nation
of high literacy. Within the confines of state tolerance,
journalists were pushing at the limits.
Some still are. But withering media controls and new
press rules are seeing their efforts dwindle. Writers who
tangle with the authorities have lost their press cards
and jobs. In some cases they are jailed or isolated
under house arrest. Individuals get reprimanded and
newspapers closed down.
Such troubles and the cynicism that results is not
confined to the media. Hanoi's efforts to marry the
freedoms of the market economy with tight state control
is producing more than one wayward child. Corruption
is out of control. Investor sentiment is cool. Unrest is a
problem in the provinces. And intellectuals, long the
heart of the nation's creativity and closely linked to its
politics, bemoan the sorry state of cultural life and their
own declining role.
In the busy Saigon news offices of one of Vietnam's
leading newspapers, Tuoi Tre, or Youth, pressures are
building as deadlines approach. The paper and its sister
magazines have taken the more difficult route of seeking
to appeal through being provocative, often using
humour. Circulation has soared. The paper says it sells
270,000 copies per issue.
But Tuoi Tre is paying a price. In January it published
what amounted to a popularity poll, in which
15-28-year-olds were asked to name their favourite
idols. Predictably, wartime leader Ho Chi Minh came
on top. But only one of the country's current leaders
was mentioned: Prime Minister Phan Van Khai. He
scored the same 3.2% rating as Hillary Clinton.
Extraordinarily for Vietnam, the article made it to press,
only to be withdrawn a day later. When the paper
returned to the news-stands parts of the story had been
deleted. One of those deletions was a remark by a
21-year-old student at the Ho Chi Minh City Law
University: "I don't need an idol because it does not
help me at all."
Staff at the paper say in private that official warnings
have been issued to several colleagues and the matter
referred to the central authorities in Hanoi. There is
speculation that a senior editor will be sacked. Asked
about the matter, Huynh Son Phuoc, the paper's deputy
editor-in-chief replies, "We had problems with technical
issues. So we have learned."
How such strictures impede press development
becomes apparent if you consider what is routinely
excluded from publication. It's long been the case that
you can't write that Ho Chi Minh was married (he was,
at least twice, once to a French woman). You also can't
write about the health of the country's leaders.
Rummaging through the dirty laundry of the ruling
Communist Party is also forbidden: Journalists sent to
cover the January 1998 public execution of corrupt
officials from a party-owned firm, Tamexco, were
unable to publish their photos--the climax of the biggest
public scandal in the nation's reform-era history.
Pictures of other executions have been published in
Vietnam, but the one that accompanies this article
appears in print for the first time.
But these are the tip of an iceberg that encompasses far
more mundane information. The rules of what should
and what shouldn't be published are spelled out for
editors in weekly sessions with local ideology officials.
In February this year the authorities declared that
economic data such as money supply, state reserves
(central bank officials point to a figure currently of
around $4.5 billion) and inflation (down 1.8% year on
year in February, according to Hanoi's General
Statistics Office) are state secrets. Tough luck for
anyone requiring openness on such data for making
business plans.
The Security Ministry's Department A25 ensures that
individual journalists follow these rules. Reporters are
called for questioning about sources and information if
they stray over the line. The ministry also owns several
newspapers and it's these that are spearheading the
tabloid charge. The raunchiest, by most reckoning, is
Cong An Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh, or Ho Chi Minh
City Police. But others, including Cong An Hanoi, or
Hanoi Police and An Ninh The Gioi, or Global
Security, all vie for the same lurid appeal. Recent
editions have carried news that Aids-infected Hanoi
students are selling their blood to unsuspecting
hospitals, articles on massage parlours and on
sensations in the crime world. One January two-page
spread gave explicit details of the methods used by a
gang that had carried out more than 100 robberies.
You wouldn't mistake it for Britain's The Sun or the
sordid news sheets that are emerging in Asia's new
democracies, such as Indonesia and Mongolia. Nor
would you mistake the degree of freedom in these
countries for that in Vietnam. "On the surface journalists
may feel they have more freedom to write," says a
reporter who has worked with several leading
newspapers. "But there is a different picture beneath
this."
Part of that picture is corruption. Vietnam has some
7,000-8,000 journalists. Most earn very little: the
starting salary at Tuoi Tre is less than $30 a week.
While journalists can boost their earnings by freelancing
for other papers, a further means of supplementing
income is phong bi--envelopes of cash that are
customarily handed out at news conferences and other
press events. Journalists say they are given these by
central government organizations, state-owned and
private firms, and on occasion from foreign-invested
companies. The cash is generally used to encourage
positive coverage, but sometimes the purpose is made
explicit. In May 1999, for example, a state bank
embroiled in a loans scandal was reported by the press
for allegedly offering journalists covering the affair $160
per person--for some, one month's salary.
Government officials say they act when problems of
press misbehaviour are brought to their attention. "We
have withdrawn press cards in some cases," says Truc
Phuong, head of the press section at the Ho Chi Minh
City offices of the Ministry of Culture and Information.
A ministry colleague, Nguyen Van Khanh, adds, "In
serious cases, where they take bribes from companies
for hiding information we sue them." Typically, he says,
there are one or two such cases each year.
Khanh and Phuong put a positive spin on matters and
despite such problems speak of a vibrant and
harmonious relationship between the state and media.
Pressed on the issue of tabloid journalism Phuong says,
"If there are articles about rapes and murders, and
these are sensational, we will have to adjust them."
But adjusting articles and tightening controls--though
understandable in the context of the tumultuous
transition Vietnam is undertaking--doesn't appear to be
working. After 15 years of doi moi, or renovation, the
media's complexion points to one reform that's
withering on the vine. If a country's press reflects
society, other reforms will be withering, too.
By Adrian Edwards - The Far Eastern Economic Review - March 22, 2001.
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