Claims of 'better journalism' not enough to describe the state of the media

Santi W.E. Soekanto Journalist Jakarta

A group of American broadcast journalists descended on Surakarta, Central Java last April to interview Abu Bakar Baasyir, the man accused as an "Indonesian terrorist". They wanted to see the madrasah (Islamic school) that they believed was the launching pad for Baasyir's militant Islamic teaching.

Among the first shots of the school they filmed was, predictably, the graffiti on a bamboo curtain outside Bassyir's dwelling that read: "Islam is our faith, Jihad is our way".

Despite Baasyir's insistence that his madrasah teaches only the Koran and aqidah (core beliefs of Islam), the journalist's commentary depicted the school as a breeding ground for Indonesian Muslim militants. "This school is called Al Mukminun, the Believers, but here students ... are taught to believe that the only future for Indonesia is in an Islamic state," he told the camera.

These journalists flew in and out of Indonesia within three days, arriving with preconceived ideas of "Indonesian terrorists" and leaving with the same prejudices.

A few years earlier, when Soeharto announced his resignation, another American team of journalists came belatedly to the People's Consultative Assembly compound. After midnight thousands of students decided to remain in the compound they had been occupying for days because they wanted to press for Soeharto's trial.

Dozens of trucks carrying Marines tried to force their way into the compound to flush out the students. Like the world famous photo of a Chinese man standing before a tank shortly before the Tiananmen Massacre, a handful of students lay down in front of the first truck before it could advance into the compound. A good photo scene -- but eventually, it was the Marines' negotiators that convinced the students to leave the legislature building.

The TV reporter from the American crew breathlessly told the camera outside how disillusioned the students were because even after forcing Soeharto out, violence was still being used against them. A local journalist told her, "There's no violence inside the compound at this moment, the negotiations are peaceful."

The reporter tossed her hair, and continued with her commentary. True, the Indonesian Military up until that historical moment of May 21 had not given the public much reason to believe that it would not suddenly swing its way toward Soeharto and crush the student-led reform movement. What the reporter did, however, was force her prejudice into her reports.

Granted, these two separate incidents might be way too insignificant to ever portray the quality of the American media accurately or even proportionately. But Ati Nurbaiti's article on U.S. journalists' pegging of Sept. 11 (The Jakarta Post, June 24) as the "turning point" for the U.S. media to develop into "serious" and better journalism is open to discussion.

U.S. senior journalists have reportedly lamented the "shrinking diversity" of views of the U.S. media, a trend attributable to the concentration of media ownership by tightly knit families or financial groups. This meant media coverage on almost any issue is dominated by the few media giants such as ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Time, Newsweek, US News & World Report, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

But "better" journalism in a country whose Attorney General recently killed its "freedom to information" and where owners control pretty much what the media report?

Recent policies that in effect police the flow of information include, according to international press freedom watchdog Reporters without Borders (RSF), those regarding Internet privacy.

Under the Patriot Act passed in October, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been authorized to install its "Carnivore" program on several service providers to track the e-mails of suspects possibly linked to Sept. 11. "...the confidentiality of journalists' sources is threatened by this blank check given to the FBI," RSF wrote.

RSF urged leaders in France, Germany and Italy to remind Bush of media freedom. Bush "must ensure that respect for human rights is once more at the heart of U.S. foreign policy," RSF concluded.

The U.S. media has been said to largely ignore the changes affecting press freedom; and it indeed seems prone to tune out "non-events". One incident was when U.S. Representative Dick Armey of Texas on May 3 in a MSNBC program called for the ethnic cleansing of the Muslim and Christian Palestinian population.

Yet, no American media organization picked it up. Not one editorial was written criticizing the leader of the House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress for advocating, on the record, unapologetically, the perpetration of a war crime. "Editors were simply not aware of Armey's statements -- it is a non-event ..," the Council on American-Islamic Relations stated.

Last April, the American Free Press found a media gag when Ira Hansen, a talk show host at KKOH 780 Radio in Reno, Nevada, learned that he was fired because he had been criticizing U.S. policy toward Israel. Hansen, a devout Christian and a "pro- America" American, charged that powerful pro-Israel supporters had forced the owners of his radio station to fire him.

Hansen said his boss had previously tried to stop him talking about the Middle East. However, "after Sept. 11, I just couldn't stop ... I got on air and said, 'The reason these Muslims are mad at America is ... the absolute blind allegiance of the U.S. to Israel and how we give Israel carte blanche treatment'".

Hansen said he had been monitoring the U.S. media since Sept. 11, and was amazed at the "virtual blackout" of any discussion of Israel's role in the Middle East.

Last June 19, the media wrote how the Ohio State University's commencement, with President Bush as speaker, had become a rallying cry for free-speech protection.

A university official had threatened to arrest anyone who disrupted the commencement. Student activists then asked whether they had the right to boo their own president.

Again, these incidents might have been too disparate for us to conclude that there's no such thing as press freedom and freedom of speech in the U.S. There are cases to support the impression that some of the journalists are finding themselves being burned from both ends.

Last May an intense pressure campaign by several pro-Israel groups reportedly sought to influence U.S. coverage of the Middle East, including boycotts of several top media outlets and massive phone, e-mail and letter-writing campaigns. These are on top of subscription boycotts against the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune.

The pressure was unprecendented, says Jeffrey Dvorkin, the ombudsman for the Washington DC-based National Public Radio, a U.S.-wide radio network. "In the last three months I've received 14,000 e-mails and 9,000 of them deal with the Middle East," he said, as quoted by Islam Online. "E-mail traffic in the last month has overwhelmingly been accused of having a pro-Palestinian bias."

"It's a little bit like 'you're with us or against us'," said James Naughton, president of the Florida-based Poynter Institute for Media Studies. "... the more insightful and human the stories were, if they portrayed Arabs positively or Israelis negatively, then there was hell to pay," Naughton said.

Claims of better journalism are simply not enough to describe the state of the media in the U.S. or Indonesia.