Government urged to ease control on local media
Government urged to ease control on local media
JAKARTA (JP): The government must loosen its grip on the press to avoid an exodus of readers to the foreign press, observers said yesterday.
Experts and academics at a seminar in Yogyakarta warned that continued government intervention in the local media could lead to the latter losing their credibility, causing consumers to turn to foreign sources of information.
"If the government is not more transparent in its political policies, particularly those concerning press freedom in Indonesia, then in this era of globalization people will prefer to read the foreign press rather than local publications," said Eduard Depari, a mass communications expert from the University of Indonesia.
"When that happens, it is no longer a question of patriotism but of credibility," he told the seminar, which focussed on the relationship between press freedom and national resilience.
Critics have accused the government of using censorship and threats of closure to ensure that the media do not deviate from the official version of the truth.
Last year the government banned three highly-popular publications -- Tempo, Editor and DeTik -- on grounds of "administrative and editorial violations".
Eduard argued that a climate of free expression was necessary for the local media to survive, given the region's commitment to a free market economy by the year 2020.
Without such freedom, he said, the local media will be powerless to compete with the influx of foreign media.
Control
Todung Mulya Lubis, a prominent rights advocate, contended that the Indonesian press is restricted in its role of providing social control because of ambiguities regarding the right to free expression.
He said the confusion is ongoing, despite the existence of a press law which clearly confers a right to constructive criticism and freedom from censorship and bannings.
Todung said that, at present, criticism is often muffled, while naysayers are denied access to publication. He said most of the front pages of newspapers are full of officials' statements, "as if they were government bulletins".
The issue of censorship is not merely a question of direct government intrusion, Todung said, but often of self-censorship, in which past warnings create a reflex to suppress information which is adverse to the government.
"The habit of censorship often begins with self-censorship. Unfortunately, in this age of globalization and industrialization of the press, self-censorship is becoming more institutionalized in pace with the interests of the industry," Todung added.
Ashadi Siregar from Gadjah Mada University's School of Social and Political Sciences also maintained that the content of the Indonesian press is determined more the bureaucracy than by the public.
He argued that the government's control of various publishing licenses, particularly the press publishing license, allowed its strong control of private publications. He said that such control is exercised in the guise of "press development". (har/mds)