Strong media can boost anti-corruption efforts in Asia and the Pacific, but serious constraints still impede the full power of the press to report on corruption, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) reported.

Media represents a key ingredient to keep governments and private businesses honest, UNDP said in its newly launched Asia-Pacific Human Development report, Tackling Corruption, Transforming Lives.

The media across Asia and the Pacific face two main constraints — government censorship that may obscure corruption, and market pressures to serve the interests of wealthy individuals who also may be corrupt – the report said.

These can be compounded by lack of investigative skills, all of which impede human development, particularly for the poor, the report noted.

"Tackling corruption is not a job for governments alone," said Omar Noman, chief of policies and programs at the UNDP regional centre in Colombo, during the launch of the report in Jakarta on Thursday.

"The media and individual citizens all need to stay alert, demanding the highest ethical standards and resolving to reject corruption wherever it appears," he said.

Empowering the media, enacting laws on the right to information and using information technology and e-governance to make governments more transparent can prevent as well as expose corruption across the region, the report said.

Disclosures on the Internet are becoming more widespread, such as the case of an independent journalist in China who exposed a local official who stole $400,000.

In India, the wife of one whistleblower built a website to make his case known to the world.

"In the YouTube era, it is harder to kill a man who has a bit of Internet renown," the report said.

Overall, the extent of press freedom in the Asia-Pacific region remains low. An indication can be gathered from the ratings of independent organizations such as Reporters Without Borders, which compiles an annual index of press freedom based on 50 criteria.

The 2007 index rated 169 countries, of which the top 10 were all European. Six Asia-Pacific countries ranked among the bottom 10.

However, even a free press is not enough to ensure good governance and reduce corruption, the report cautioned.

"What these countries need in addition are clean and efficient systems of justice that will follow up on widely-reported allegations," the report said.