So, what’s the link?

It could be a case of statistics taken out of context – something that occurs more often than we would want to believe. Or it could be a survey asking the wrong questions.

Either way, there was something about the report on BBC World Service’s survey on press freedom by Zul Othman (“Social stability is key: Poll”, 11 Dec) that just didn’t seem to fit right.

To begin with, the poll drew a line between press freedom and social harmony. Whether it was intended or not, poll respondents were effectively given this line to choose which they preferred. To complicate things further, the article on the poll indicated that “the world was divided over the importance of press freedom”, and proceeded to reinforce this connection by citing respondents’ views on the need for press regulation against the extent to which they desire social harmony.

But is that a valid relationship that respondents should choose between? Does a rise in press freedom necessarily and always lead to social unrest?

Recent history seems to state otherwise. The recent protests in Myanmar , in any degree of severity we choose to hear and believe, are surely an indication that restrictions on press freedom do not necessarily guarantee social harmony. Should we then expect the state-regulated Burmese media to be responsible for failing to keep the peace?

Of course, determining whether the foreign media, alleged to have incited the unrest, had any role to play in creating merely a perception of injustice is a task best left to the historians. But at this moment, some distinction is needed between social unrest and media regulation, as there are too many other factors that can cause unrest.

If we believe that the media should keep the peace, as the people desire, no matter the cost to its freedom, then we are ignoring the gulfs that really exist between people. Conversely, a free press can and should be viewed as the arbitrator of the often diverse views floating within societies, which can only serve to better dispel social suspicion and create understanding.

Another point of contention is the result on how different societies value press freedom and how they rank their own media. In spite of the mild irony that a poll commissioned by the BBC World Service should not be trusted, as a reflection of its own accuracy rankings among its citizens, I believe this is one area of the poll that we should re-evaluate carefully.

Interestingly, citizens who value press freedom seem to be more critical of the media in their own countries, while those who value it less in comparison to social harmony, for lack of an alternative yardstick, seem to be more accepting of the news they receive. This suggests that there are certain contextual biases of such a poll, where parallel comparisons between countries are difficult because the citizens of each use different values to rate their media.

So, for example, the media in the United States and Germany might be no less accurate than their counterparts in India and Singapore , only that Americans and Germans have developed an acutely critical mindset towards what they read in the papers and expect more of their media.

This brings us to the point on how important people feel it is for the media to represent their views. Clearly, the poll reflected people’s desire to participate in the mediated discussions that surround them. Even the Germans have a large number amongst them who desire their view to be expressed by the media.

And in that, we could even possibly find the solution to social harmony. As a free media begins to better reflect the views and desires of its readers, we could even hope that more would take their grievances to the press to be openly discussed and debated, not to the streets to be fought over. N