Good press, bad press

If freedom of expression is the yardstick by which to measure democracy, and if freedom of the media is one criterion to gauge that freedom of expression, then democracy in Indonesia may be in peril. We seem to be getting a lot of rather disturbing vibes from the government lately that raise serious questions about its commitment towards the freedom of the press in Indonesia.

State Minister for Communications and Information Syamsul Muarif indicated last week that the government was giving consideration to reintroducing some kind of policy to rein in the press. He cited demands from many members of the House of Representatives that the government do something about the behavior of the press, which they said had become kebablasan (out of control).

Making his intention known from the same room where ministers and Army generals in the past used to intimidate editors into submission, Syamsul's promise that the present government would guarantee press freedom came across as hollow. Instead, his revelation strengthened our fears about President Megawati Soekarnoputri's real intention when she created the post of state minister in her Cabinet in August: to control the press.

President Megawati has shown increasingly the traits of a leader who is not accommodative, if not intolerant, of the press.

Only a few days after she complained about the behavior of the media to the Press Council -- and she may have legitimate reasons to raise the issue -- she totally removed herself from the media's prying eyes when she took a holiday to mark the New Year and the birthday of her husband, Taufik Kiemas, in Bali.

While she had every right to keep such celebrations private, the people in this country also had the right to know that theor leader would make herself available should a national crisis develop. Making herself scarce from the media for three consecutive days came across as totally irresponsible, especially when the nation was still in a state of crisis.

Lest she and her inner circle forget, Megawati's early rise to national fame owes a great deal to the prodemocracy movement, including the many free speech forums that emerged in 1996. From her origins as a mere leader of the nation's smallest political party, she became a rallying point for various organizations that sought to end the tyrannical regime of Soeharto. That goal was finally achieved in May 1998, and Megawati subsequently rose to power on the back of the reform movement.

It would not be an exaggeration to state that the critical press has been part and parcel of her rise to prominence.

Megawati, and just about every other elected leader and politician in this country, owe their positions today to the reform movement. They include some of those in the legislature who today have the audacity to call the press kebablasan.

Now cozily in power, some of these same leaders appear to be leading the campaign to try and curtail the press, conveniently forgetting how and why they were put in power in the first place.

Typically, they would lump all the press, the bad as well as the good, in one basket, as this would give them the necessary pretext to rein in the entire press.

There are laws that deal with the bad press, such as publications that indulge in pornography or slander. Legal channels must remain the only means by which to deal with the bad press, for they discriminate between the good and the bad.

Giving the government back some forms of control would only invite back power abuses, for it would be applied indiscriminately against the bad and the good press.

It would be a tragic mistake if we were to allow the state to have some controlling powers over the press once again. We have been down that road before. It always started small, but inch by inch, the government would surely bring the entire media under its control. Once the media were under the government's control, we could all forget about freedom of expression, and democracy.

In a free press regime, you are bound to get both good and bad press. But in a controlled press regime, you are only going to get a bad press, a press that indulges in lies, or half-truths because it is prevented from telling the whole truth. There is no doubt that society's overall interests would be better served if we all worked to protect our freedom of expression, which includes the freedom of the media.