By implication, the free press is essential for transparency. This post-crisis assessment not only provides reinforcement for a free press in developing societies rebounding from the crisis but also deflates the nonsense that a free press is a Western value, not suited to culturally and politically diverse Asia. On an anecdotal basis, I have always been uncomfortable with the notion that press freedom is alien to 'Asian values'. During decades of travelling to cover crises in Asia and even in Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain, I have had candid talks with journalists and editors in these regions. Over drinks and good food, journalists in countries with a captive press talk freely about what they know but which they don't write because regimes don't allow.
Journalists everywhere have a universal bond-they are all the same.
They talk freely among themselves. They know a lot and they also know what to keep and are keenly aware of what's possible. So, when conditions permit, they break loose from their shackles, they write what they know and they plunge into the engagement in the struggle for open politics and press freedom. Press freedom is a language journalists know by instinct. It is not a Western construct.