APPENDIX E

Summary

The following five categories of ASEAN news were judged to be more or less adequately covered in the rest of the world:

1. International Relations

The majority feels that ASEAN's Kampuchean policy, including its lobbying at the United Nations, in the non-aligned movement and elsewhere, is adequately reflected in the world press. It also believes this news is fairly and adequately reported around the world, thus indicating that with this type of news, news values of the ASEAN region and the rest of the world seem to coincide. The Kampuchean policy seems to be the centre-piece of the ASEAN organization's foreign relations; coincidental ly and happily for ASEAN, that policy is also one of the most widely reported aspects of the region in the world. However, the minority of respondents who feel that the coverage in this category is not adequate, appear to confirm other Third World perceptions that news coverage is too Western oriented. They argue that the ASEAN region does not receive enough attention because it is too far from Europe and America, and because it is not very important as a news area, since it does not carry much military, political or economic weight. Most respondents agree in 1983 that the Middle East, Latin America, China, Japan as well as Europe and America deserve more of the world's news attention than the ASEAN region.

2. Business, Finance and Economic Development

The majority of respondents feels that this type of news forms the main interest of the rest of the world in the ASEAN region. They feel that the rest of the world is receiving a very favourable impression of the ASEAN economic situation. As one Malaysian editor summed it up, “in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”. The majority of respondents agree with the news judgement of the outside sources and do not complain about any western bias in the coverage of this type of news.