'Communication among people is improving'
JAKARTA (JP): Wimar Witoelar, a political observer and popular talk show host, says the public's desire for "free communication" is strong enough to withstand government attempts to control it.
"The public's desire for free communication continues to exist and grow strong, even as the government tries to oppress it," said Wimar, whose show Perspektif on private television station SCTV was suddenly halted last year, reportedly because it was often critical of the government.
"Communication among people is improving recently. This is not the case between people and the government," he told The Jakarta Post during a break at the seminar on broadcasting here yesterday. "Members of the power elite try to seal communication off."
"I think the elite group can't stand (to communicate) because they have so much to hide," he said. He added that the government's fear of open communication is to blame for the deteriorating "political culture" of the country.
"This fear of open communication is among the marks of the decline of Indonesian society today," he said. He praised, however, the increase of interest in political matters among the people, saying that the development was a cause for optimism.
He pointed out that people with power tend to abuse their positions to limit communications. But the public has been dealing with the oppression by seeking alternative channels, such as the Internet.
He identified a number of methods employed by the power holders to suppress public communication, including censorship.
The power holders may defend censorship as a way to protect "the purity of state ideology", but that rationale is outdated and even downright naive, Wimar said.
He pointed out that censorship of free communication may in fact be the campaign of an individual member of the powerful elite seeking to shield some facts -- such as illegal business deals -- from public exposure.
The other types of campaigns to suppress public communication he mentioned were propaganda and co-optation of the mass media.
He expressed hopes for democratization and empowerment of the press. "As the last stronghold of social values and the last public institution to maintain sovereignty, the press has to be democratized internally and externally," Wimar said.
Another speaker, Paul Chadwick of the Melbourne-based Communications Law Center, said that journalists often have to deal with many conflicts in their effort to exercise their rights: the right to seek the truth and tell it, and the right to independence.
"Journalists need to be independent from the government, from media owners, from advertisers and patrons. Yet, they cannot be entirely independent of any of these," Chadwick told the Post.
The conflicts regarding the government, for instance, stem from the fact that the government doesn't merely make laws under which media business operate. It is also, for many media, the primary source of news.
"... producing products of information and opinion is not the same as producing things such as cars ... The owners, just like the journalists, who have particular responsibilities, are responsible to allow journalists to be independent," Chadwick said.
He pointed out that the public will lose confidence in the media, as well as their interests, if the journalists were not independent.
William Atkins, a researcher at the Department of Government of the University of Sydney, reminded both print and broadcast journalists of the importance of balanced, accurate and impartial reporting.
"Journalists must never be `captured' by any political interest groups in society," he said.
The three-day seminar, entitled Open Skies Policy : Towards an Open Society, the Challenge of Public Broadcasting in Asia, is being organized by the Indonesian Institute for Press Studies, the unrecognized Alliance of Independent Journalists and the International Federation of Journalists. The seminar is scheduled to conclude today.(31)