In quest of public trust

In the almost 18 years of this newspaper's existence, few editorials have engendered more heated criticism than the one that appeared on Monday, Jan. 8, under the heading Soldiers of fortune. Especially strong objections to the editorial have come from the United States Embassy on the one hand and the Laskar Jihad organization on the other.

The U.S. Embassy's objection was mainly against the suggestion, citing "unconfirmed reports", that young Asian Muslim "volunteers" were recruited by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Cold War to fight in Afghanistan against the procommunist Soviet regime in that country.

Laskar Jihad, for its part, strongly objected to a number of points mentioned in the editorial -- for example, the use of the term mercenaries for Asian volunteers in Afghanistan and the implication that those volunteers were involved in training young Laskar Jihad members in basic military skills before they were sent to Maluku; that those volunteers were "involved in planting the bombs on Christmas Eve," at least according to the police; by calling their members and the Mujahideen fighting in Afghanistan "mercenaries" or "soldiers of fortune", paid to carry out their job. All of which was mere speculation based on unsubstantiated and unauthenticated reports.

What went wrong?

Ever since it was founded in April 1983, The Jakarta Post has committed itself to a number of basic principles of journalism, the main tenets of which are fairness, impartiality and accuracy. In order to win the trust of the public, after all, ideological principles aside, maintaining fairness and credibility is one of the basic tenets of journalism.

In all fairness it must be admitted that the editorial of Monday, Jan. 8, fell short of those ideals as it reflected neither the Post's editorial standards or policy. Committed to the principles of fair journalism, the Post will obviously remain. Nevertheless, in the hustle and bustle of daily proceedings, the possibility of error always exists. As they say, errare humanum est -- to err is human.

In this particular case, the fault for having offended certain parties is obviously ours, but we can assure our readers that it is not one that was intentionally made or made with malicious intent. Our apologies are due to both Laskar Jihad and the American Embassy in Jakarta as well as all or any other persons or institutions the editorial may have offended.