Broadcasters want bill on broadcasting to be revised

Muhammad Nafik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The House of Representatives is in the final stages of deliberating the controversial broadcasting bill and will likely approve it later next month despite mounting pressure from media companies for the House to revise the bill.

Paulus Widiyanto, who chairs the House's special committee deliberating the bill, said on Tuesday that the House would soon pass the controversial bill into law, defying widespread criticism of its contentious articles.

"The House will endorse the broadcasting bill between Sept. 10 and 23. That's our target," he said after addressing a seminar on the impacts of the draft law on the development of television networks.

Paulus claimed that his committee had made several significant revisions to the bill that was proposed by the House in September 2000.

The revisions included the establishment of an independent regulatory body by the House with the authority, along with the government, to set a code of conduct for electronic media, issue licenses, impose sanctions and regulate frequency distribution, he said.

Paulus said that under the revised bill, a body called the Indonesian Broadcast Commission (KPI), would be formed at the regional level by local legislative councils to oversee local television networks.

However, critics say the revisions are not substantial enough to maintain the freedom of electronic and print media, which they have been enjoying since the fall of former authoritarian president Soeharto in 1998.

"This is shown by at least 21 of the bill's 63 articles that carry the threat of imprisonment and fines for broadcast media," Leo Batubara, coordinator of the Indonesian Broadcasting and Press Society (MPPI), told the same seminar without elaborating.

Djafar Assegaff of the Metro TV network urged the House to delay its plan to pass the bill into law until after grievances voiced by broadcast media operators were adequately addressed.

Radio and television operators have opposed the bill for banning or limiting media cross-ownership and requiring electronic media to renew frequency distribution licenses after 10 years of operations.

Other critics said the broadcasting bill should be revised, otherwise it would again curb press freedom and dwarf the growth of media companies in the crisis-hit country.

"Licenses should be granted only once (for broadcast media) and at a certain period they should be required only to renew the registration," Djafar told the same seminar.

"It's important to ensure business certainty for television operators to calculate the return of their investment," he added.

Suryopratomo, a senior journalist from the leading Kompas daily, said the move to limit media cross-ownership would defy the era of global convergency, in which media owners were struggling to survive or trying to develop their business by combining the ownerships of television, radio, newspapers and Internet media.

"Such a convergency is unavoidable. It makes media companies efficient and able to disseminate information very quickly from a long distance," he said.