To journalists in Bhutan, it was news that people would want to speak their minds and vote. (Photos: Andrea Bernstein.)
Quick J-school, a month before the first election
Accustomed to goals that seem nearly out of reach and revenue models that require improvisation, U.S. public broadcasters have coached broadcasters in new democracies around the world. The writer is political director of public radio’s The Takeaway and of WNYC/New York Public Radio.
‘Would you like more time?” I asked a group of students, seated around a conference table, laptops and notebooks at the ready, whether they were finished writing articles about the differences between the two party platforms. No hands went up.
“Raise your hand if you’re finished.” No hands were raised.
I tried again: “Everyone must vote.” A few hands went up.
I was holding class in Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan, a nation of less than 700,000, and it was a month before the Himalayan country’s first-ever national parliamentary elections. Along with Michael Putzel, a former Associated Press White House Bureau Chief and Moscow correspondent, I was teaching the basics of covering campaigns in a country where speaking up in public doesn’t come easily.
It took us two days to get here—17 hours from New York to Bangkok, a 12-hour layover, then three more hours (with a stop in Calcutta) before shooting down into the Himalayas to the Paro airport, on the only strip of land flat enough to land a mid-size plane, about two hours’ drive from Thimpu.
Turns out our trip was nothing compared to some of our students’. Some traveled several days over the national highway—actually a not-quite two-lane road hairpinning over the mountains, some as tall as 23,000 feet.
The first morning of the journalists’ five days of training, I couldn’t quite believe their devotion. But Bhutan, which until earlier this year was ruled by a king, was transitioning to democracy, under orders from His Majesty. These students wanted to learn. We were told to expect 15 to 20. More than 50 showed up—reporters, editors and producers from Bhutan’s three newspapers, the Bhutanese Broadcasting Service and several commercial radio stations.
They came dressed in the national dress of Bhutan—ghos for the men, short robes woven from vivid textiles; and kiras for the women, long skirts topped by silk jackets.
On the plane over, Michael and I had planned the curriculum: the five Ws, the role of the press in a democracy, ethics, interviewing techniques, the basics of clear, elegant writing. We had agonized about getting students to participate. We knew that many Bhutanese were educated in a system influenced by India and Britain, not known for encouraging the free-ranging discussions that take place in American classrooms.
We needn’t have worried. The questions flowed even faster than the ubiquitous Darjeeling tea (served sweetened, with milk). What should they do if their uncle was running for office in the district they were covering? Could they join a political party? Should they vote? And then came one of the most surprising: What to do if a candidate invoked black magic?
At first I thought the student was asking how to cover it if a candidate or party threatened someone in a rival party. I was wrong. She meant: What if they threatened her? The wiry reporter, who, I was to learn, was also one of the most tenacious, explained that she believes in black magic. She didn’t take this threat lightly.
I fumfered through an answer—something about practicing good journalism is the best protection. Her colleagues gently ribbed her—at the end of the week, they hummed Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” when she entered the room.
The reporters regularly traveled to remote rural villages in central Bhutan. In this country the size of Iowa, every distance is measured in days’ journey—often on foot. Candidates would trek eight hours to campaign, and reporters would follow them, laptops tucked in their ghos or under their jackets, and file through dial-up connections found in mountaintop villages. This gives a whole new meaning to the term “traveling press.”
On the fourth training day, we took the students to a bus station/vegetable market in Thimpu, the town’s main large gathering spot and a social center. We taught them interviewing techniques and wanted them to talk to voters.
For our whole time in Bhutan, we had heard students improvising a narrative to explain their very different country to us. Bhutanese don’t really want to vote, we were told — they’re happy with their king. And looking around you could see why: Democracies in this part of the world include Pakistan and Nepal, which haven’t had the happiest of experiences with voting. By contrast, Bhutan’s visionary kings have promoted modern institutions in recent years. The country still had no national currency and no educational system in the 1960s.
Kinley Dorji, now the editor-in-chief of Bhutan’s first newspaper, Kuensel (roughly translated as “clarity”), was one of a generation of Bhutanese children in the 1960s and 1970s sent to be schooled in India. It took him four days to get the border, where he traded bags of rice for cash and for school and supplies. In the 1980s Kinley (who — full disclosure — was a Knight fellow with me at Stanford in 2006-07) went to Columbia Journalism School in New York, then returned to Bhutan to start Kuensel on his Mac.
In 2005, after working for decades to improve the nation’s intellectual and physical infrastructure, the royalty announced that democracy would be the key to stability in this landlocked nation perched between giants China and India.
And so, we were told, over and over, the populace was reluctantly going along. Kings, as National Geographic put it, “have a way of winning arguments.”
In our training we encouraged speaking to voters as a way to gauge public opinion, though we cautioned against using it to draw conclusions. But the students were reluctant. They were convinced that the Bhutanese didn’t even want to vote, let alone speak to reporters about it.
When we got to the brightly hued market, tucked at the end of a dusty lot by the river, the citizens proved the journalists wrong, as they usually do in the United States as well as in Bhutan. One young radio reporter approached a woman perched next to huge woven baskets of chilies (ubiquitous in Bhutanese cooking) and dried radish leaves. She was from a village near Paro, and a candidate had come casting aspersions on the other party. This annoyed her, and she was seriously thinking about going with the rival party.
As she spoke, another woman came up to share her own experiences. Within 15 minutes, eight vegetable vendors, some with babies swaddled on their backs, had surrounded the journalist, eager to tell stories of the election and swap opinions.
As we climbed in the van to take the short ride back to the conference center where we held training sessions, the students were abuzz. One related the story of the woman who cleans the markets, seven days a week, for less than $100 a month. Her husband had recently died, and she was raising six children, yet she had booked a ticket home to vote (Bhutanese must return to the villages they were born in to vote).
Over at the bus station, one student found whole families buying tickets so they could vote. Cab drivers came forward to opine. We tossed out the reporters’ story line about the way things were. The Bhutanese were becoming engaged, full-throated, in democracy.
On my last day in Bhutan, one of our students took me on a hike to Takhsang, one of Bhutan’s most famous monasteries. It was a two-hour, 12,000-foot climb. We’d been warned I might not be let in; the monastery was closed to tourists.
During our training, we’d repeatedly stressed several refrains: Remain impartial. Always verify. Don’t let yourself be satisfied with he-said, she-said reporting: force yourself to dig down to the truth. And don’t take “no” for an answer, particularly in a society where officials aren’t necessarily trained by custom or law to respond to journalists.
The end of our climb tore into my lungs as we labored down a ravine and then up hundreds of stairs. When we arrived, a guard shook his head to Tshering, my companion. “No tourists,” he said. I wasn’t a tourist, Tshering explained. I was there on an important national training mission—preparing journalists for democracy.
No, the guard said, three more times. But Tshering kept pressing. On the fifth try, I was nodded in. He didn’t take “no” for an answer.
Epilogue: In late March, Bhutan held its elections, and the Druk Phuensum Tshogpa (roughly translated, the Bhutan Harmony Party) overwhelmingly won the national parliamentary elections. Bhutan’s democracy, and the role of the press in it, continues to be a work in progress. A month or so after the election, an editor there sent me an e-mail asking how the U.S. Congress is set up, who gives out information to the press, and what, if anything, restricts what they can say.
Andrea Bernstein was a John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University in 2006-07 and has been recognized for her work with awards from Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Society for Professional Journalists. She hopes to return soon to Bhutan, next time with her partner and two children.
Marketplace reporter/anchor Lisa Napoli’s next big deadline is a year away
Lisa Napoli has a deal with Crown/Random House to write a book on the jump-start of democratic institutions and independent media in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, where she has been volunteering at the first private radio station in the country. Her book is due out in 2010.
Napoli visited the country twice within a year and hosted a deejay from Bhutan in Los Angeles (which held many surprises for her, Napoli reported on Marketplace, March 24, 2008).
Napoli came to the American Public Media business program more than four years ago after covering technology for MSNBC and the New York Times’ defunct CyberTimes section.
Web page posted June 24, 2008
Copyright 2008 by Current LLC
