Chapter 5
Corruption and the watchdog role of the news media
Sheila Coronel
The notion of the press as watchdog is more than 200 years old. Yet the idea of vigilant media monitoring government and exposing its excesses has gained new traction in many parts of the world. Globalization, the fall of authoritarian and socialist regimes, and the deregulation of the media worldwide have fuelled a renewed interest in ––as well as a surge in efforts by various groups to support–– “watchdogging” by the media.
Since the late 17th Century, classical liberal theorists had argued that publicity and openness provide the best protection from the excesses of power. The idea of the press as Fourth Estate, as an institution that exists primarily as a check on those in public office, was based on the premise that powerful states had to be prevented from overstepping their bounds. The press working independently of government, even as its freedoms were guaranteed by the state, was supposed to help ensure that this was so.
The 1980s and 1990s saw the revival of this centuries‐old notion and its application especially to “transition societies” then emerging from the ruins of socialist and authoritarian regimes. It had resonance among citizens facing pervasive corruption, weak rule of law, and predatory or incompetent governments unable to deliver basic services. Today even in countries where democracy is a fairly new experiment or even in those, like China, where democracy and a free press have yet to take root, the notion of the press as watchdogs of power is embedded in the self‐definition of journalists1 and in varying degrees, also in public expectations of the media. It is, moreover, a particularly seductive notion to the international donor