THE MASS media are helpful in raising public awareness of corruption cases. In fact, because of media coverage, there is generally less corruption in countries with free access to information.
As put by the director of the Organization of American States, "the media are civil society's great ally, especially in fulfilling the need to inform, in a serious and responsible way, so the citizens can exert pressure to clean up cases of corruption."
The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism does an excellent job of digging deep into corruption cases. Its stories probe the intricacies of the pork barrel, graft in procurement, and the various channels for bribes. Other groups can carry this form of advocacy a step further.
Reviving the forgotten
Notice that stories on corruption fade from the public's consciousness after a few weeks. There should be a means to keep tabs on each of them, and to resurrect them when people tend to forget. There is also a need to discern the big patterns emerging in the phenomenon of graft.
An effective follow-up mechanism is to create a database on corruption news items and cases, such as that run by Transparency International-Bangladesh (TIB). TIB values its partnership with the vibrant and courageous print media of Bangladesh. The audience of the database is very broad: both the public and private sectors.
The TIB corruption database aims:
1. To measure the magnitude, form and depth of corruption; and
2. To inform the government and public of the consequence of corruption.
Compiling, classifying, tracking
Bangladesh is a fitting home ground for that database because the nation is deeply immersed in corruption. This fact is lamented by the prime minister. In her speech to the 18th session of Parliament, she voiced her despair at its sheer magnitude. Bribery is widespread. She said that even the institutions created to fight corruption have turned corrupt.
The national dailies do publish a lot of reports on corruption cases. However, it is not possible for the average reader to remember all these news items. The stories drift out of public attention due to the overload of information.
Hence, Transparency International-Bangladesh compiles the news stories, classifies them, and tracks their development. This collection is called the corruption database. The information can then be subjected to rigorous analysis.
The engagement is continuous, not just a one-shot deal. But the intervention is limited to professionals: the reporters of the dailies who write the articles, and the TIB staff members who compile and analyze them.
A careful process
How does the process run? TIB has agreed on working definitions for corrupt acts. It then gathers the reports published in 16 national and five local dailies. The selected reports are grouped into different sectors. A template questionnaire is used to collect the information from each news report.
TIB believes it must verify and authenticate the information. It chooses a few cases through random sampling. It then sends teams to investigate the cases. The teams interview (1) the reporters, (2) the concerned offices, and (3) third parties with knowledge of the case. Through this process of corroboration, TIB has found most news reports to be valid.
The integrative reports in turn are fed back to the media.
Analysis by the numbers
The database can be used for some quantitative analysis. For example, in 2000, an overwhelming 94 percent of the reports focused on government agencies, while only 6 percent dealt with the private sector. Out of 1,948 reports:
860 posted figures on government losses due to corruption;
460 gave figures on losses in general;
404 had no data on financial losses.
TIB analyzed an average of 11 reports per day. Research on news items in 2000 classified corruption stories into 38 sectors. The law-implementing agencies were found to be the most corrupt, accounting for 320 reports out of the total 1,948. The other top sectors in corruption were education, local government, health, forestry and environment, post and telecommunications, land administration, and finance.
TIB's analysis showed that monopoly power figured prominently in the corruption cases. There was "large-scale" monopoly power in 662 out of 1,948 reports, and smaller scale monopoly in 371 cases. TIB noted discretionary power in 1,401 cases and the lack of accountability in 1,745.
The global secretariat of Transparency International has adopted the News Scan Database as a tool for fighting corruption. For more information on the database, see the Transparency International-Bangladesh Corruption Database Report, July to December 2000. Or visit www.ti-bangladesh.org.
Comments to darroyo@philonline.com
Courtesy: Money.Inq7.Net
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