'Give local experts a chance to speak out'

PADANG, West Sumatra (JP): A local professor criticized the media for seeking the opinions of Jakarta-based scholars only on national issues, neglecting local experts.

Fachri Achmad, the rector of Andalas University, called on the electronic and print media to give local experts greater opportunity to speak out.

"Local experts have a similar intellectual capacity to those in Jakarta. Some of the local experts also have an overseas education," he said.

By interviewing the same Jakarta-based experts over and over, the media does its audience a disservice because they get only monotonous insights.

In addition, the media might fall into the trap of either trivializing or exaggerating issues, depending on the opinion of the experts they interview.

"Just because they're not living in Jakarta doesn't mean local experts don't have the knowledge to comment on national issues," Fachri said.

Fachri is a professor of agriculture who went national when he loudly criticized a government project, to turn one million hectares of peat moss land in Central Kalimantan into settlement and crop producing areas, because of its potential destructiveness to the environment.

Fachri said local experts were as easily accessible for comment as those in Jakarta because of telecommunications devices such as telephones, fax machines, handphones, and the Internet.

"There's just no reason for the media not to seek the views of local experts," he said.

The professor said if allowed the trend of interviewing only experts from major cities could mislead people into thinking universities outside big cities did not produce qualified experts.

"So give them more chance to speak out, get published, and expand themselves. Don't let their knowledge get rusty in the college, left unknown to the greater society," he said. (32/08)