The Minister and the Media

Published in The Daily Star, June 29, 2008

I had an interesting argument recently with a former adviser of the caretaker government on the excessive indulgence of the advisers with the media. This was at a typical Dhaka dinner party. As soon as I explained my views on the issue, he dismissed them summarily. He argued that transparency required ministers/advisers to interact with the media regularly because people have a right to know about government policy from the horse's mouth. He further argued that for the CTG, the importance of advisers talking to the media is indispensable because the parliament has been abrogated.

I held my ground that neither transparency nor policy dictated that ministers/advisers should be so excessively involved with the media. I based my arguments on practices elsewhere, suggesting that ministers/advisers nowhere interact with the media the way they do in Bangladesh. I cited Japan where ministers deal with transparency of governance in parliament while bureaucrats deal with the media, unless a national crisis requires the minister to talk to the media.

I also argued that policies were not black and white issues upon which ministers/advisers could talk to the media without creating confusion and compromising on secrecy and confidentiality. I further argued that when a minister/adviser erred before the media, he would be unable to backtrack without embarrassing the government, which was one strong reason why media specialists in bureaucracy interact with the media instead. The ex-adviser was not at all satisfied with my arguments.

He is not alone in his point of view. On any given evening, advisers or ministers have had a difficult time following their media appearances on newscasts of private TV channels. Such indulgences have not served the need of transparency or explained policy to the people, but have landed ministers and advisers in trouble. With all the advisers talking to the media constantly with no holds barred, the government appears like a hydra-headed creature, without focus or sense of direction.

Things were not like this when we became independent. A minister in 1970s used to make an urgent call to the Establishment Ministry upon assuming oath of office. The reason was to get an ex-CSP officer as a private secretary for his pride and prestige. He would then make another important call to the Information Ministry for the best information officer (IO), the official spokesman of the ministry. The information officer acted as the link between the media and the government on all issues of media interest, with the secretary and/or the minister speaking to the media only when issues were of national importance. Today every ministry has an IO, who is still the official ministry spokesman but his job has been unofficially taken over by the minister/adviser, leaving him doing personal chores for his boss. In the process, our ministers/advisers have become the most visible in the world -- like media stars in constant media glare. That visibility has, unfortunately, not improved governance; hampering it instead. Something is amiss here.

It was during the decade-long Ershad tenure that the information officer's job was usurped gradually by the minister because of the president's interest in the media for personal reasons. As a usurper, he needed legitimacy. He knew that the media could give him great assistance there. So he interacted with the media both overtly and covertly, but not for reasons of transparency or desire to explain his government's policy. His intentions were more sinister, where the underlying belief was that the more he could motivate the media in his favour, the greater would he have legitimacy for himself and his government. The ministers followed Ershad, and turned the government into propaganda machinery, where they depended less on bureaucrats to deal with the media. Thus the minister unofficially took over the job of the information officer to a large extent, although the information officer still disseminated some information to the media.

Ershad's fall ushered in the parliamentary system. In a parliamentary system, the government remains in power as long as it has the confidence of the majority members in parliament. The parliament collectively or individually quizzes every minister, the prime minister included, on any policy matter. The committee system further allows the parliament to look into the working of all ministries in a manner where complete transparency can be achieved. Thus, very little is really left for the public that would require the media to knock at a minister's door, apart from routine functions of governance that could and should be left to the bureaucrats to handle.

However, in the case of Bangladesh, ministers continued with their media indulgence although the change to the parliamentary system did not require it either for transparency or for bringing the public on board on policy. The ministers' interaction with the media increased a great deal with the gradual expansion of the media, climaxing in the private TV explosion during the last BNP era, which have treated the ministers as media stars. These factors notwithstanding, the ministers loved their media role for one of the major reasons that had motivated Ershad: a desire to see their names in print and their faces on TV.

The advisers of the CTG have the added excuse to indulge with the media because the parliament is not in session. The consequences, nevertheless, are the same: transparency or public needs remain mere excuses, while the government is embarrassed through such indulgence for no good reason. The excessive media appearances of the advisers give the impression that they are running this government through the media. In doing so, they do not realise that they are causing themselves and the CTG embarrassment, because they often end up contradicting themselves and one another. To complicate matters, the media often, intentionally or otherwise, covers these interactions in a subjective manner.

A lot of us former diplomats were disappointed to see the foreign affairs adviser appearing together with the outgoing British High Commissioner in front of the media, after the latter had met him for his farewell call that was a routine diplomatic event. By appearing together, the adviser had to watch the BHC talk on our internal affairs in direct contravention of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, something the adviser could and should have easily avoided. A simple statement by director general of external publicity or the information officer of MFA about the farewell call would have been both appropriate and professional.

Advisers often talk to the media in the corridors of the Secretariat, at the airport, in fact, where not? This is not the picture of a professional government, for governance is a more serious business, and has to be conducted behind public and media glare. In the absence of the parliament, there is perhaps the need for them to interact more with the media. They have, however, gone overboard with this interaction. In place of transparency and awareness of policy, the people end up utterly confused by these excessive interactions, where professional bureaucrats with media experience could have served the government and the people's needs much better, as they do in all other governments.

Our governance has many problems. A lot of that arises from the tendency of the people at the top acting for personal interests by breaking rules and procedures and then using catchy phrases such as transparency and people's rights to justify some of these egotistic actions. As we look towards the next elected government, we also need to try to make our governance professional. We need to seriously make efforts that the ministers in the elected government do not follow the indulgence of the advisers with the media. Towards that objective, the next parliament should deal with concern for transparency and awareness about policy.

The ministers should concern themselves with the serious task of implementing government policies and goals. The bureaucrats should handle the media regarding the work of the ministers and the ministries. Let the elected government give the information officer his job back, with some changes. Taking into view the media explosion and increased media interest in governance, perhaps it would be wise to consider upgrading the status of the information officer, whose rank now is that of an assistant secretary, to that of a deputy or a joint-secretary.

It also does not show this government in good light to see on TV screens, for example, three or four advisers talking to the media day in and day out on the political dialogue, where they look amateurish and also end up contradicting their statements from one day to the next. A professional media spokesman from the bureaucracy could have spared the advisers embarrassment, while allowing them time to concentrate on the dialogue.