Journos can help ensure informed and rational vote Endy Bayuni  ;   Senior editor at The Jakarta Post

JAKARTA POST,  27 Februari 2014

                                                                                         

                                                                                                                       

General elections, whether in the context of democracy or not, do not guarantee the right leaders. At best, we can say that we get the leaders we deserve.  The post-Soeharto elections in 1999, 2004 and 2009 could be regarded as reflecting the wishes of the people as they were conducted in a democratic setting. The media played an important though not a decisive role in their outcomes. The media’s biggest contribution is in informing voters of the available choices. We inform them about the parties and candidates, their vision and platforms and their background and track records. If there are past scandals with the candidates, we will uncover them. In addition, the media helps to ensure as far as possible that the outcome of the elections is based on informed and rational choices.  The more information we provide, the more rational voters will be in making their choices. They are less likely to make mistakes. Looking at the elections in Indonesia and elsewhere around the world, we learn voters sometimes make the wrong choices by voting for the wrong people. In established democracies this is not a problem thanks to a built-in self-correction mechanism. In emerging democracies, voting for the wrong candidate or party can be disastrous. Egypt is a good example. The first post-Mubarak elections gave power to the Muslim Brotherhood faction, only for the military to step in and take back power. Tragically, an election gone sour killed the democracy that emerged from the 2011 Arab Spring. Thailand, one of the first Southeast Asian nations to go the democratic way, is on the verge of losing its democracy because the elected government has little legitimacy, even as it wins election after election. Many Thais have lost faith in democracy. Many in Indonesia today also feel they were wrong to give President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono a second presidential mandate in 2009. They did not know then that his inner circle would be so corrupt. But most people are prepared to sit it out and wait until he finishes his term in October. They still have faith in democracy. Democracy is supposed to have a built-in self-correcting mechanism. If you get it wrong this time, you can correct it a few years later. This is true even with the oldest democracy in the world, the United States, when Americans realized it was a mistake to have returned George W. Bush to office in 2004. Those dismayed with President Barrack Obama’s leadership are now looking at 2016 to elect a new president. This self-correcting mechanism also worked in Indonesia. Not in Egypt or Thailand.  If we agree that the media play an important role in elections, the media then are also responsible for their outcome. Consequently, in many of the elections that produced the wrong outcomes, we should blame the media for failing in their job. This has a lot to do with the ethics of the media in covering general elections. This is not an invitation to ask the academic question of “if we knew then what we know now”, would the result have been any different? But democracy went sour in Egypt and Thailand because voters, who were not fully informed by the media of their choices and of the consequences of their decisions, put the wrong leaders in office. Journalists should take the question of ethics more seriously, particularly in covering elections. Egypt and Thailand tell us the failure of journalists in living up to their task of informing voters to make rational choices can be disastrous for the people and democracy. In nascent democracies, we cannot rely on the self-correcting mechanism to kick in. It did not in Egypt or Thailand. Going by the grumbling, it is barely working in Indonesia. Ethics govern all modern professions. They set professional standards and benchmarks for those who practice the knowledge and skills they require for their trade. Compliance with these ethics is what sets them apart from others. One of the earliest professions to set their codes is medicine, with its Hippocratic Oath that has kept in its modern version to this day. For doctors, the oath is supreme because they deal with matters of life and death. Journalism also involves life and death questions. Certainly democracy died in Egypt, and is dying in Thailand, because of media failures in observing their ethics. Journalism is one of the few professions underpinned by public trust. Trust is the chief currency in our profession. People believe in what we report because of this trust. Journalism and the media have spent considerable years gaining this public trust by building our credibility. Observing the ethics of the profession is an important part of winning this trust. Sadly, the credibility of journalism is increasingly being questioned by members of the public, mostly for our lack of ethics. We betray the trust, we suffer the consequences. We have plenty of examples of how ethics have gone out of the window due to bottom line pressures; fierce competition, now made even more complex with the intrusion of social media; increasing intervention from media owners with business or political interests; or simply from a lack of competence and training of the journalists. Journalism is an open profession, and the Internet has made it even more open that anyone who disseminates information, irrespective of quality, to a mass audience is by definition, a journalist. In Indonesia, the Press Council has begun certification for journalists, requiring them to take professional tests, to ensure compliance with ethics and thus prop up the credibility of the profession. In the end, however, it is not the license we tout or the training and the years of experience we claim, that define whether you are a credible journalist or not. We have seen examples of fully certified senior journalists behaving unethically, including in the coverage of elections, just as we have seen bloggers and citizen journalists who gain credibility and popularity because they observe the ethics. The public, not the professional associations or the government, decide whether you are a credible journalist or not. Indonesia will have a general election this year and Myanmar will have a historic poll sometime in 2015. Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia have just had their elections. The Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) forum offers an opportunity for journalists to exchange stories of how they work, and find out about the best practices of reporting the elections in ethical ways. Journalists are not players in these elections, but as citizens, we have a stake in the future of our nation, its freedom and democracy. We have a moral obligation, through our work as journalists, to make sure these polls produce as best result as possible for the nation. Our best contribution to these elections is to make sure that people vote based on informed and rational choices. ●