Indonesian press system still seeks best format

By Junarto Imam Prakoso

JAKARTA (JP): The famous words of John Stuart Mill that one single view different from all others should be respected and that humankind does not have the right to silence that view have become the fundamental principle of the freedom of the press, fought for over hundreds of years in the west. In Indonesia -- in order that we do not become pessimistic -- now at least we are experiencing a transformation of the press system. The abolition of Ministerial Decree No.1 of 1984 has resulted in dozens of new press licences. President Habibie's guarantee that there will be no more censure or ban gives a feeling of relative safety for journalists to express themselves freely.

The atmosphere of this freedom is used by the elements of the system that is politically fragmented. The prevailing tendency is that an increasing number of media openly show their partisanship for certain political parties or interest groups.

The implication of the change in the political system we will discuss is that the national media will be increasingly partisan and the competition in the media business sharper. Both the political and the economic factor have the potential to distort the meaning of the freedom of the press and in turn they will threaten professional journalism that follows the principle of giving priority to a balance and an objectivity in news reporting.

John Milton in Aeropagiticia (1644) assumes that each human being is rational. This enables him to find the truth in a number of facts. In order to be able to use the ability, each person must be given an unlimited right to hear other people's ideas and thoughts. The truth, said Milton, is certain and can be shown. In the process of seeking the truth, information plays a dominant role because only with adequate information can the search for the truth take place. The consequence is that one must be free to send, to collect and to receive information in an unhampered way. In the final instance one will find the best for the welfare of oneself and of society.

John Stuart Mill additionally said that it is allowable to convey any kind of information to man, whether it is wrong, bad, good or true. Fundamentally man cannot claim something is right or wrong because what is deemed right may be wrong. On the other hand, if we know the information is wrong, there may be some truth in it. Even if it is entirely wrong, the information can serve as a comparison.

From the thought of Milton and Mill the contemporary idea of "a free market in ideas" is drawn. In this free market, the truth will prevail through a self-correcting process. Wrong information will correct itself automatically. Therefore, there should be no control on the flow of information. Control leads to manipulation by the controller. In a wider context, this has its implications for the rejection of control of information exercised by the authorities. Supporters of libertarianism believe that in the free market, the press industry will experience natural selection. Bad press will be eliminated because it does not enjoy the people's trust.

In reality the press, which was initially expected to function as a fourth pillar of democracy, became an extension of a political party, an interest group or a business institute that is after profit only so that the press cannot be expected to serve as a facility for finding the actual truth.

The press is subject to business and politics. Advertisements, for example, can influence editorial policies and the contents of an editorial. Politically the press tends to affiliate with a political party or an interest group that is in support of its management and financing. In search of profit, the press presents superficial, sensational stuff that endangers the public morale or oversteps the limits of private lives.

In this context Walter Lippmann was aware that truth and news are clearly not synonymous. He even said that the press is an obstacle on the road toward truth. News writing, said Lippmann, is governed by emotion and the hopes of the people writing the news and not by the facts themselves. Reporters, according to Lippmann, are not ready to analyze the complex realities that they must report. The journalists and the reports by themselves and the press-industry owners, most of whom fight for certain ideological interests and business profits, are not objective presenters. The freedom to think and to speak shows itself with a new face with problems because apparently public opinion can be engineered. "Public opinion is wrong and misleading in times of crises," said Lippmann.

A democratic system or a coalition government is threatened if the process of consensus becomes a kind of personal effort without rules of the game, said Lippmann, because the public has no adequate knowledge and views to determine government policies. What they can do is merely to approve or to oppose decision makers. If that happens, Lippmann added, it will be difficult for the authorities to be free from "the rough treatment and the clamor of the masses which attack like flood water."

"The public will arrive in the midst of the third act and will leave before the curtain falls while pondering who is the hero and who is the culprit in this life drama," Lippmann added.

Those social realities are obtaining in this country now. On the one hand people are struck by the euphoria of freedom so that all people feel they have the right to become a valid source of information. On the other our social system is unstable and is changing in uncertainty. The dependency theory on the effects of mass communication says that in a situation of uncertainty like the present one people tend to look for the maximum amount of information in order to feel safe, tranquil and peaceful psychologically.

In reality because of the political fights at elite level, the information circulating in society is full of political engineering and does not alleviate the uncertain condition at all. People are intentionally led to a situation of uncertainty in order that their opinion is easily molded. The political elite apparently makes the best use of this situation. They are well aware of the strategic role of the media as a combat arena for information flow.

This situation is worsened by the partisan attitude of the many newly born media. Actually this should not be a problem if their partisanship were balanced by efforts to maintain the journalistic standards of press professionalism in the sense of upholding the principle of objectivity. What is happening is the opposite. Their reporting tends to be biased in ideology while non-political media only give free rein to sensation and pornography to compete in boosting their circulation.

That is an enumeration of realities in this uncertain situation as a logical consequence of the freedom we have now obtained. The fact we have found is that the people cannot choose what is true or what is good for them. After all man does not place common welfare above all other things. People compete with each other in fighting for positions or power while sacrificing other people. The self-correcting mechanism trusted by the believers in the freedom of the press has not proven itself, at least until now.

Anyway, I personally continue to reject controls on information flow, especially by the government. I believe in the idea of social responsibility of the press that hands over the control mechanism of the government to the community itself through professional institutes, consumer institutes, non- government organizations and the academic community. It is clear that this is not the social responsibility that was misinterpreted by the New Order in defining the "free and responsible" concept according to the logic of their power.

In the real concept of social responsibility, the professional community agrees on a code of ethics on what is not acceptable and what is not permissible for its members. If a member acts against this code, the professional community will penalize this member. Meanwhile, the people -- apart from using the mechanism of the court -- can organize themselves into consumer movements. For example by a threat of boycott of the media or a company that advertises a hazardous product in the media.

We do not need to act precipitately. The press system in the west has been transforming itself for centuries, while ours has just started. We need not be pessimistic or on the contrary pride ourselves that our press system has found the best format. I am confident that in the near future our system will continuously adapt itself through rejections, support or demands on various elements of the press system that is still unclear so that at a certain moment our press system will obtain a new balance. All that will depend on the format of our political system in the future.

The writer is a communications student and assistant lecturer at the University of Indonesia's School of Social and Political Sciences.