Culture important in management of the mass media

JAKARTA (JP): Media managers in Indonesia must take into account the prevailing cultural values if they want to survive and flourish, executives say.

"We should remember that in Indonesia, we have a culture which believes that if you don't want to get hurt or criticized, then you don't hurt others. This is unlike the Western concept which believes one should solve any problem no matter what is at stake," Secretary General of the Union of Newspaper Publishers (SPS) S. Leo Batubara, said at a seminar yesterday.

The one-day seminar, discussing "Alternative perspectives to develop a sound management of the mass media," was held by students of the School of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Indonesia.

The delicate issue of "dominant cultural values" -- which is, in fact, another term for the Javanese culture -- was brought up by M. Budyatna, the school's dean, and by Aristides Katoppo, a senior journalist from the Suara Pembaruan daily. Aristides is also the former chief editor of the banned Sinar Harapan daily.

Several participants questioned how media managers should deal with the government controls and how it should strive to abide by those rules in order to survive and flourish.

Aristides pointed out that there were currently no specific rules explaining the limits of the government's control.

"A part of society is the powerful ruling group -- the government -- a majority of whom happen to possess 'dominant cultural values'," he said.

"These people tend to express themselves, communicate and criticize others, in a very obscure, indirect manner which is often unreadable for the minority groups in Indonesia."

A native of Sulawesi, Katoppo said there should be clear guidelines concerning what they are allowed to say in their news reports. "Any government ruling against a media should not be based on such an ambiguous means of communication."

Citing the recent banning of three prominent news magazines, Tempo, Editor and DeTik as an example, Katoppo pointed out that the decision was made without due process of law.

"If any of the banned publications have indeed violated a law, they should have been brought to face judicial charges first," Katoppo said.

Ambiguity

Budyatna felt that this ambiguity was caused by "communication problems" in Indonesia between the majority of Javanese possessing the "dominant cultural values" and the minority groups.

"Should the minority of people adapt to this situation?" Budyatna asked.

Leo said that, in order to voice criticism without endangering its existence, managers of the media should be particularly careful that they do not step into what he referred to as the "restricted area" of news reporting.

Instead, he said, they should cohere to the safe areas if they intend to survive and flourish in the country.

"A media can try taking several steps forward, glance around to see if the others are going at the same pace, and step back if they're not," Leo suggested.

"We are given a certain extent of freedom, so we should exploit what we have as much as we can ... and during the process we can try to take further steps forward," he added.

Disagreeing with this opinion, Aristides pointed out that the "dominant culture" should be clearly differentiated between what he considered were remains of a feudalistic, fearful mentality and the lofty cultural values which contained the seeds of democracy.

"Our founding fathers who formulated Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution -- both which contain democratic values and a high regard for human rights -- were, in fact, part of the 'dominant culture,'" he stressed.(pwn)