Activists worry about information agency

Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Press activists criticized the government's plan to establish a public information dissemination agency for fear that it would only pave the way for a return to the New Order's tight information policy.

Ignatius Haryanto, coordinator of the Coalition for Freedom to Access Information, said that the government had failed to clarify whether the agency would serve the President or the whole Cabinet.

"If this agency will only serve the President, why doesn't the government appoint a spokesperson to communicate her policies?. But if this agency is also to serve the Cabinet, I think the press faces a serious threat, because in several policies regarding technical matters like economics or banking, we need experts instead of a spokesman to explain those things," Haryanto told The Jakarta Post.

State Minister for Information and Telecommunications Syamsul Mu'arif said the government planned to establish the public information agency to disseminate information from its own perspective and to avoid the confusing information spread by the press.

Syamsul said that the agency would gather all news on government policies and the public could access any information regarding government policies through it, "therefore the agency should become a reliable source."

Separately, Ati Nurbaiti, chairwoman of the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), said that the plan proved that the Office of the State Minister of Information had never been quite sure of what it was assigned to do since its inception, although it did state that it would not censor the press.

"The news that the government is to establish a public information dissemination agency is alarming; it reinforces suspicions of a government's prone to efforts to return, in many ways so far, to the days when it could steer press content to ensure accuracy according to its definition," Ati said on Monday.

Both Ati and Haryanto agreed that the presence of a presidential spokesman had indeed been suggested to make her intentions clear to the media and the public at large.

But a planned information agency as described by Syamsul would not help measures toward an informed society, particularly given the country's experience under the New Order, Ati said.

"Within this current war against terrorism even citizens of the supposedly most democratic nation, the United States, have become alarmed at what is seen as threats to civil liberties, including those pertaining to access to information.

"Members of the public must be free to access and select information to help them to make decisions and eventually become involved in decision-making which affects their lives," Ati said, adding that the answer to frequent complaints of inaccurate reports, which were not always unfounded, lies only in increasing professionalism within media organizations and by professional associations.