Good press, bad press

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.