JP/3/Aji

JP/3/Aji

Press must promote self-censorship: Experts

Tiarma Siboro
The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Journalists must diligently adopt a self-censorship principle
in the current press freedom era to put a stop to what is
described as "legal violence," experts claim.

Former chairman of the Press Council, Ichlasul Amal said that
this legal violence was a new form of violence against
journalists as the courts now preferred to categorize press
disputes as criminal cases when there are allegations of
defamation, libel or spreading of hatred.

Amid the rampant corruption in the country's judicial system,
there was little chance for journalists, who happened to produce
incorrect or misleading information, to evade criminal
proceedings, he added.

"In this current atmosphere, violence against the press is not
merely in the form of physical assaults, but also in the form of
legal (violence)," Ichlasul explained on Wednesday during a
seminar on legal guidance for news workers.

"Journalists can prevent the so-called legal violence if they
adopt self-censorship as a principle," he added.

Ichlasul made the comments following the rising number of
legal attacks on the press during the current press freedom era,
which was obtained after the downfall of the former authoritarian
New Order regime in the late 1990s.

The seminar was sponsored by the Alliance of Independent
Journalists (AJI) in a response to the recent violence against
journalists working with the Indo Pos newspaper.

The Indo Pos incident took place last week and involved dozens
of people from Tanah Abang in Central Jakarta, who claimed to be
followers of a gangster leader, Hercules. The group attacked
journalists at the paper's editorial office in South Jakarta, and
assaulted two reporters because they were upset over an article
about the gangs in Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta.

The gang members said the reporter had not interviewed them
for the article, which was about the changes in the Tanah Abang
underworld, whereby a new generation of thugs had taken over the
area from Hercules. He and his gang of attackers have been
arrested by the police.

It was yet another in a long line of such attacks by mobs in
this country. In late 1990, a Yogyakarta journalist, Udin, was
killed after suffering serious injuries to his head after
unidentified men attacked him. Udin was at the time running a
series on a corruption case which implicated top officials from
Bantul regency.

During the seminar, AJI also promoted its "guide book" for
journalists to keep them from getting into legal trouble.
According to the book, professional journalists can be excluded
as witnesses because the profession grants them rights to protect
their sources. Journalists are also free to appoint lawyers that
they trust to defend them in a legal battle, and are not advised
to merely accept their offices' policies on legal representation
due to possible politicking.

Margiono, coordinator of AJI's legal department, said that
defamation and libel charges against the press should be scrapped
from the judicial system.

He said that the court should instead adopt the civil lawsuit
mechanism in settling press disputes,

As long ago as 1976, the Swedish government scrapped
defamation charges against the press. Several African countries,
such as Nigeria and Kenya, as well as several Asian countries,
such as Sri Lanka, North Korea and Japan, as well as Argentina,
have also scrapped defamation charges from their criminal justice
system.