By Tom Plate

They keep shooting the messenger. Brave journalists face danger all across the globe, especially nowadays in Iraq. The killing field is also bloody on the Asian continent, especially in Indonesia.

Since the launch of a military crackdown on the separatist movement in the province of Aceh, three journalists have given their lives in the heroic struggle to report this violent story. The latest was the independent television journalist Ersa Siregar, a 2002 Jefferson Fellow at the famed East-West Center in Honolulu. Taken hostage over the summer, he remained in rebel hands when the military government refused to permit independent negotiators to intervene and extricate him from trouble. Last month, in a firefight between government military and rebels, this father of three was gunned down.

Indonesia, for all its troubles, is but part of the larger picture. "2003 was a black year, "reported the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders. Asia, where 11 journalists were killed, was the most dangerous continent.

Press repression is especially vicious in Vietnam, Laos and North Korea, of course. But undoubtedly, the most infamous assassination of a journalist in recent memory was that of Wall Street Journal correspondent Danny Pearl. Pursuing connections between Taliban terrorists and Pakistan's security services, Pearl was abducted in Karachi — then tortured and decapitated.

A positive attitude is in general warranted about Asian journalism. Despite continuing counterattacks on individual journalists, improvement in its news media proceeds apace.

For starters, valuable new news-site Web pages have been sprouting practically daily. Imprisoning journalists may still be easy, but containing information, thanks mainly to the information technology revolution, no longer is.

Cultural norms are changing, too. In South Korea, the stranglehold of the noxious press clubs system is gradually being loosened. In Japan and Taiwan, a vigorous and commercial press thrives, though Japan's is held back by a measure of obeisance to the old press club system and Taiwan's by an excess of sensationalism.

Even the news media of China are changing. As part of the government's privatization campaign, more than 600 state-run newspapers are being shut down. (Why should the government continue to support publications that few read and no one believes?)

Further improvements in Asia's news media will be central to the region's progress. But it would be a mistake to believe that Asia will define progress entirely in American terms. Cultural norms, deeply felt, will guide Asia's media evolution in its own directions.

Take Singapore. In an exceptionally wide-ranging speech, Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, speaking recently at the Harvard Club of Singapore, vigorously agreed and said that his nation must further open up more to nurture and secure its place in the sun of globalization. But the news media must help, he insisted, by avoiding destructively negative anti-government campaigns and playing the kind of "constructive role in nation-building" that leads to "consensus and understanding, instead of cacophony and confusion."

Many American journalists would bridle over such a warning from a top American official (though probably many American citizens would privately cheer). In fact, Singapore's news media are more globalized than ever, with international recognition increasingly coming its way. (The Straits Times recently garnered "Newspaper of the Year" honors from the Australia-based Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers' Association.)

The rise of Internet technology — and the shared revulsion over the targeting of journalists — is bringing closer together Asian and American norms and practices, despite their continuing differences. In a trigger-fast-download world that requires timely and accurate information by the nanosecond, this slow convergence cannot be anything but positive. It almost — but not quite — makes one forget about the tremendous sacrifices that our bravest journalists routinely make in the cause of getting the true story out.

Tom Plate, whose column appears regularly in The Honolulu Advertiser, is a UCLA professor and founder of the nonprofit Asia Pacific Media Network. Reach him at tplate@ucla.edu.