'Koran Tempo' loses battle against Tomy

'Koran Tempo' loses battle against Tomy

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Freedom of the press has once again been put in peril following
the ruling of the South Jakarta District Court on Tuesday finding
the Koran Tempo daily guilty of libeling well-connected
businessman Tomy Winata.

The judicial panel ordered the daily to pay US$1 million in
damages to the plaintiff.

Koran Tempo's lawyers said they would appeal the verdict.

The court's decision, the first ruling to be handed down in a
series of legal disputes between the Tempo media group and Tomy,
was quickly condemned by the international and national media
community, as well as by legal experts.

Press Council chairman Ichlasul Amal said he deplored the
verdict, adding that it would lead to further efforts to gag
journalists by legal means.

"This sort of verdict will in the long run deter the media
from attempting to get to the bottom of sensitive issues of major
public concern," he told The Jakarta Post by telephone.

Ichlasul also urged the use of the Press Law instead of the
Criminal Code or Civil Code in dealing with media-related cases.

He also called on the public to use the right to reply if they
thought that a news report was flawed.

"This right should be availed of first before resorting to the
courts."

Legal expert Luhut M.P. Pangaribuan said the verdict showed
that the country's judiciary was completely unaware of the
indispensable role played by the media as a social control
mechanism and in safeguarding the public interest.

Although the judges cited the Press Law in their verdict,
Luhut stressed that "they construed it very narrowly. The
decision would have gone the other way if they had taken the
public interest into account."

The Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) condemned the
verdict in a press release, and urged the Supreme Court to
carefully scrutinize the judges assigned to hear media-related
cases.

Meanwhile, the president of the Australia-based International
Federation of Journalists, Christopher Warren, was quoted by the
Associated Press as saying: "This is part of a trend that uses
laws that are holdovers from the dictatorship, which are at odds
with the constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press."

The subject of Tomy's action against Koran Tempo was an
article titled (Southeast Sulawesi) Governor Ali Mazi denies Tomy
Winata is to open casino, which it ran in its Feb. 6, 2003,
edition.

The court ordered the daily to pay damages and make a public
apology in national and foreign media for three consecutive days.
Should the daily fail to comply with the court's order, it will
be fined Rp 10 million (US$1,190) per day.

However, the judges granted leave to appeal and stayed the
application of the order until the appellate court had handed
down a ruling.

"The article is libelous and constitutes an affront to the
plaintiff, who is well-known as an upstanding and respected
member of the community," presiding judge Zoeber Djajadi said.

The court found that the daily had violated the Press Law and
the press code of ethics, and said that the article had been
based only on rumor and hearsay.

Speaking after the trial, Koran Tempo's chief editor, Bambang
Harymurti, expressed the hope that the ruling would be overturned
by the appellate court, saying that he believed the judges there
would be more willing to defend press freedom.

Tomy Winata had sued Bambang, reporter Dedy Kurniawan and
publishing company PT Tempo Inti Media Harian for $2.47 million.

In December, the same court ordered Koran Tempo to publicly
apologize to the owner of the ailing Texmaco group, Marimutu
Sinivasan, who filed a libel suit over a series of articles on
his business affairs.

In a seemingly relentless campaign to castrate the press by
legal means, courts in Jakarta recently handed down a six-month
suspended sentence on the executive editor of the Rakyat Merdeka
daily, Supratman, and a five-month suspended sentence on its
chief editor, Karim Paputungan, for publishing articles deemed
"insulting" to President Megawati Soekarnoputri and House of
Representatives Speaker Akbar Tandjung respectively.