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C’wealth scribes share heartaches behind world headlines
By Feizal Samath
An imminent attack on Iraq by US and allied forces could further polarize moderate and conservative Muslim opinion and make it even harder for the moderates, an Asian newspaper editor warned last week.

"I am afraid the likely war in Iraq would make it harder for moderate Muslims," noted Rose Ismail, Managing Editor of Malaysia's New Straits Times at a Commonwealth Editors’ forum in Kandy.

Her comments, at the fifth Commonwealth Editors Forum hosted by the Commonwealth Press Union (CPU) came just before Colonel Mike Dewar, a top defence analyst from Britain, who also runs his own communications and publishing companies, hinted that the war was likely to break out on or around March 20.

At one of the panel discussions on conflict reporting, Dewar said war on Iraq was imminent and the US and Britain were expected to get the support of the Security Council for the planned attack. Describing the attack as inevitable and essential for world peace, Dewar explained in detail the way the attack would be launched and the kind of restrictions the media may face in reporting the conflict. "I believe this would be swift and force (President) Saddam Hussain to flee," he said.

The three-day meeting, which ended at Tuesday noon ahead of the CPU'S biennial conference which opened on Tuesday night in Colombo, however discussed many other issues ranging from moderate and conservative Islam in Malaysia, reporting of the Tamil rebel conflict in Sri Lanka, human rights issues relating to women and children, ethnicity and the media, reporting the truth against public interest in conflict, spin doctoring and press freedom to self regulation.

A TV documentary on child labour and the appalling state of children in India by BBC Special Correspondent Sue Lloyd-Roberts drew a warm response from the audience.

Lloyd-Roberts, with 14 years of reporting on human rights issues, also raised a pertinent issue about what she considered the "humane" side of reporting women and children’s issues. The BBC correspondent's award-winning features on children working in the carpet or football factories of Pakistan or as rubbish-pickers in India have been applauded across the world. There are some 250-million child workers in South Asia.

The BBC report on football factories showing children stitching footballs for multinational sports firms was released just before a World Cup tournament. A few years later, Lloyd-Roberts revisited the factories and was overjoyed to see that no children were being employed. "But I discovered something worse - these children were instead working in foul-smelling tanneries and in an even more dangerous environment. We (as journalists) had forced them off one dangerous profession into another."

Another BBC colleague of hers had the same experience. A story on girls working in factories saw instant results - the children were stopped from working there but ended up on the streets as prostitutes.

"This is a terrible thing and the fact is that there is no quick fix to the issues facing children. Who are we to come in and advocate a ban on child labour when the basic problem is poverty? That has to be tackled first," Lloyd-Roberts told The Sunday Times on the sidelines of the conference. In fact her next feature dealt with children who roamed the streets picking up rubbish that could be sold. But instead of focusing on the need to stop children working, the BBC documentary titled ‘Whose life is it anyway’ also spoke of a new children's workers union that had been formed to protect their rights.

Lloyd-Roberts believes journalists, reporting on these topics, need to reflect on these "real" issues. "There is no point advocating that child labour is bad and get tiny children off the streets instead of asking governments and civil society to tackle the root causes of child labour. "We need to be journalists with a humane approach to problems," she added.

Ismail from the New Straits Times who spoke on the moderate Muslim, said that the threat to moderation comes as much from within the Muslim community as it does from outside. "Conservative groups promoting a communitarian, exclusivist "us-against-them" approach to Islam have made significant inroads. Schooled and socialized in the conservative mode, most Malaysian Muslims think this is the only way to uphold and defend the religion."

She said the politicization of Islam has made people irrational, emotional and defensive about the religion, adding that conservatives (in Malaysia) have cleverly used Islam to control people, with the discourse on human rights and women's issues being dismissed as part of the larger Western agenda to undermine the religion.

Ismail said moderate Islam did not stand a chance today. "Because it does not lend itself to such sensationalism, it is overlooked and underestimated by the world media," she said, warning that if Malaysia's opposition - which has called for a Jihad and a trade boycott against the US - comes to power it would use ancient laws in which women and non-Muslims would be automatically downgraded to a position of second class citizens.

Among other presentations, Mukund Padmanabhan, Deputy Editor of the Chennai-based Hindu newspaper, raised the crucial issue of reporting the truth as against public interest. He said there had been many times where media reports on conflict issues had triggered wide-scale rioting or attacks on minority communities.

"What do we do? Should be publish the facts and be dammed or publish with some responsibility?" he asked. Press freedom and freedom of expression are still major issues in developing countries and that was clear from the country reports submitted by delegates.

Rashed Rahman, Editor of the Frontier Post in Pakistan, spoke in detail about how the military-led government controlled the media while Bill Saidi, Managing Editor of the Daily News in Zimbabwe discussed the African experience with special reference to what is happening now in Harare.

Iqbal Athas, Consultant Editor of The Sunday Times and a top defence correspondent, spoke on media reporting of Sri Lanka's 20-year old conflict and its problems. He said the media were being accused by the government and sections of civil society of being anti-peace for pointing out weaknesses in the ceasefire agreement between the government and the LTTE.

The role of self regulation and press councils was also discussed, very appropriate to host country, Sri Lanka, which has created its first non-state, Press Complaints Commission to arbitrate between newspapers and aggrieved readers, replacing the state-owned Press Council.

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