Changing Vietnam media wage war against graft
HANOI - Bold headlines and mugshots of a cabinet minister quitting in a corruption scandal, readers criticising leaders and a government refusal to release a "cyber-dissident".
The different faces of Vietnam's changing state-controlled media have been on view in the weeks before the ruling Communist Party National Congress, which opens on April 18.
"I think there are no limitations on our coverage, it's very good," said Tuoi Tre (Youth) daily's Xuan Trung, one of several journalists who asked party officials pointed questions about bribery and graft at an April 13 pre-Congress briefing.
Trung said "openness made a good start" in the 1986 Congress that began economic reforms, "progressing towards today's peak".
Some Vietnamese journalists declined to give their opinions.
All media in Vietnam are under official control, but hundreds of newspapers and magazines compete with each other. The poor, Southeast Asian country of 83 million has one of the world's highest literacy rates at more than 90 percent of people older than 15 years, according to United Nations studies.
Internet and cable TV access to international news, entertainment and sport is rising in the main centres, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, places that were relatively isolated just 15 years ago.
Vietnam's Communist Party is one of only a handful still in power and anti-graft campaigns in the media sometimes coincide with Congress, which decides policy and leaders every five years.
Some papers were aggressive in covering a multi-million dollar bribery and football match betting scandal that led to Transport Minister Dao Dinh Binh resigning and the arrest of a deputy minister on April 4.
Thanh Nien (Young People) carried articles on myriad schemes involving gifts, mistresses, use of cars and houses and millions gambled with public money from a road and bridge building unit.
The scandal provided lively material for newspapers, radio and TV more accustomed to publishing bland announcements about industrial projects, official events and diplomatic ties.
Citizen's anger
A Thanh Nien columnist wrote that it was late to perform major surgery on corruption, but "late is better than never".
Headlines for readers' letters to Tuoi Tre included unusual calls for Binh to be removed. In print and on the Web, papers showed unflattering tabloid-style mug shots of the minister.
"Each year local media becomes more responsible and more objective," said Adam Sitkoff, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce Hanoi chapter. "Corruption is one public policy issue that it takes on best."
While intensively covering the scandal since December, the media in February began receiving sharp comments on the Party's main political document prepared for the Congress.
There was a notable increase in public comment in media than previous years, political analysts said, some on corruption and others on policy.
"What's new is the electronic media and the sheer volume of it was exceptional," said longtime Vietnam observer Carl Thayer of the University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia.
But like its neighbour China, the Hanoi government is wary of the Internet for sociological and political reasons.
Thousands of Internet cafes in the capital, Hanoi, and commercial centre of Ho Chi Minh City are often crowded with young people playing video games and chatting on-line.
Some web sites face government imposed firewalls. A critic is Paris-based Reporters Without Borders activist group, which lists Vietnam 158th out of 167 on its 2005 "press freedom index."
On April 10, Hanoi rejected a U.S. House of Representatives resolution calling for the release of "cyber dissident" Pham Hong Son, a doctor. A government statement said Son did not meet the criteria of inmates "who have corrected themselves".
Son was imprisoned in 2002 for translating and posting on-line an article, "What is Democracy?" from a U.S. government web site and other writings. The Hanoi government said he broke the law, sentencing him to 13 years in jail in 2003. The term was reduced to five years on appeal.
In January, Vietnam released "cyber dissident" Nguyen Khac Toan who spent four years in jail after using e-mail to contact Vietnamese exiles opposed to communist rule.
Reuters - April 13, 2006.
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