Indonesian press system still seeks best format

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.