NEGATIVE stories published by print media is one of the contributing factors to under-performance of State Owned Enterprises (SOE) in any country.
That’s according to the Asian Development Bank representative and former Minister to SOE in New Zealand Richard Prebble stated.
He was speaking during the SOE forum meeting organised by the Solomon Islands Government (SIG) on Wednesday at the Heritage Park Hotel.
“One country that is now the world leader in SOE reform is Solomon Islands,” Prebble stated. “If that is news to you it is because good news is not news,” he said.
“Most of what we read in news papers is what is going wrong and what is going right we take for granted,” he added.
He said, that this is a common thing in every country where SOEs were always portrayed with their negative stories by the media, whereas good side of it were always unreported in the paper.
“This has an implication on work of the media to improve its balance reporting of issues that relates directly to national development, particularly SOEs that needs support of media to well inform the nations about progresses made and positive future outlook of this sector in the economy.”
By AATAI JOHN
