BANGKOK, – It takes two to tango. This, Thai journalist Kavi Chongkittavorn said, is how a journalist can cover the staid but rather complex topic that is the ASEAN, instead of bashing it for being boring, or blaming the ASEAN secretariat or governments for not imparting interesting or enough information.
“Covering ASEAN is like doing the tango — you need a good dance partner and exciting music, but if either of these two are not present, it’s up to the journalist to do something about it,” said Kavi, who is a senior fellow of the Institute of Security and Strategic Studies in Bangkok in addition to being a columnist in the English-language ‘The Nation’ newspaper.
ASEAN may be dull, but it is up to journalists to spice it up, Kavi said, adding that there is no point in ASEAN and
ASEAN may be dull, but it is up to journalists to spice it up, Kavi said, adding that there is no point in ASEAN and media blaming each other for poor public understanding of ASEAN issues. After all, he said, the organisation is slowly emerging as a more interesting topic now that regional integration is underway through the ASEAN Community’s formation.
But even prior to this, ASEAN has been a fertile source of news, but it takes a discerning and critical eye to look at it in another way. “Start from where you are. Find a good topic to write. Use your instinct as a journalist,” was his advice.
Zeya Thu, deputy chief editor of ‘The Voice’ in Yangon, Myanmar said that while the usual coverage of ASEAN in Myanmar media is still about the organisation’s meetings, there is much more to ASEAN’s role in the region than these. “Uncover the treasure of what is called ASEAN,” he said at a talk show on ‘How is ASEAN Covered?’ at the Reporting ASEAN media conference on Apr. 1.
The treasure, he said, might lie in the economic benefits that deeper economic integration may bring. “I think the young economic journalists in my country have a lot of stories lined up because they are reporting about the business people who are getting curious about how the ASEAN Economic Community will affect their businesses,” he said.
Zeya explained that public interest goes down when newspapers highlight the usual news and photos around ASEAN meetings, but readership increases when the stories link ASEAN policies to issues closer to them, such as their livelihood, or migration, or such topics.For countries like Vietnam, journalism professor Nguyen Ngoc Tran observed that media were more interested in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a proposed regional free trade agreement among 12 countries that include ASEAN members Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei, rather than ASEAN.
But Kavi interjected that this is so because the TPP has been politically sanctioned by the Vietnamese government. “The TPP is a slice of the whole ASEAN, Kavi said. “Journalists must take all slices to see the whole picture.”
‘Asahi Shimbun’ social media editor Takeshi Fujitani, who started covering ASEAN in 2004, says news desks in Japan – though still interested in ASEAN issues – remain stuck in the old ways of covering the organisation and its issues.
“Japan and the ASEAN have a long history together,” he said, “and the diplomatic relationship has experienced many changes worth recalling and reporting about.” This rich history is itself an opportunity for journalists to explain to their news consumers, Fujitani added, but said that he has to compete with colleagues pitching news from North America and Europe.
Zeya Thu and Zulfiani Lubis, media consultant of Rappler Indonesia, said the trick for journalists might lie in being creative in looking at all everyday issues concerning ASEAN, be it transportation, and migration. At times, going deep into a topic that is actually regional without even saying ‘ASEAN’ may work better. “Creativity and packaging are the way to sell the story,” said Lubis. Zeya added, “If you don’t explore and explain, you won’t sell.”
Ubonrat Siriyuvasak, a Bangkok-based research consultant and former professor, shared the findings of
content analysis study on how newspapers in ASEAN report on ASEAN, saying that most stories carry the voices of government ministers and state officials and are around political issues.
“Perhaps what journalists need to do is to tell the stories of ordinary people, of civil society and even the labor unions, to be able to touch them,” she said.
Johanna Son, regional director of IPS Asia-Pacific who moderated the talk show, suggested that reporting about ASEAN issues would be helpful and more effective if the stories came in “digestible bits of news that individuals can relate to.” Journalists and news desks may also need to “break the habit of thinking there is news only when there is a minister around”. Kavi added, “If you want to report on ASEAN, don’t talk to the leaders,” adding that desk officers on ASEAN are usually able to provide more information. (END/TAB/DGM/JS/15)
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