COMMENT| Good governments engage with journalists, not persecute them

COMMENT | I had workshopped with journalists in Papua New Guinea and parts of Asia over the years. I flew to each city, stayed for a week, then flew home to the sandstone walls of academia with new insights. Does that make me an expert on journalism in the region? Not really.

I am an "expert" only in as much as my collaboration with the local journalists is validated by how accurately I interpret the legal and ethical issues they grapple with daily, and the political maze they have to navigate to publish an investigative series.

Likewise with fly-in-fly-out journalism, such as Al Jazeera’s "Locked Up in Malaysia’s Down". The documentary shows how the final product is shaped by the constraints of reporting in a foreign environment.

When journalists are assigned overseas with little time to adjust to a new environment, notwithstanding their training as impartial observers, the accuracy, balance and fairness of their stories can, sometimes, be unjustifiably questioned by insecure governments.

Not all "parachute journalists" are completely familiar with local politics, language and cultures. Not unless they have lived in the place for several years and see things the way locals do. Hence, the required collaboration with local fixers.

Foreign journalists working with tight production deadlines to keep their stories current for a global audience can only be as fair and accurate as their persistence in fact-checking their prior research and preconceived notions, their tenacity to reach out to diverse sources for contrasting views, and capacity to contextualise their stories to realities on the ground...