Local media creates new definitions for itself

Media, Culture, and Politics in Indonesia; Krishna Sen & David T. Hill; Oxford University Press, 2000; 245 pages

JAKARTA (JP): Krishna Sen and David T. Hill, from Murdoch University and Curtin University in Western Australia, respectively, are widely known as Indonesianists who have done a great deal of research on Indonesian culture and media.

In this book, published a year ago, Sen and Hill come to the conclusion that while Soeharto's fall in 1998 was not the result of television, radio, the Internet or imported rock music, it is impossible to imagine that this event would have occurred without the media.

This conclusion makes it very clear that we cannot take a black-and-white view of the Indonesian media. During the New Order, the media were caught between the co-optation of the state and the expansion of capital growth.

It happened to all media; print media, film, television, radio and the Internet.

During the New Order era, the state demanded political corporation to ensure its control over the media. The state made sure the media supported its interests in the name of national stability and economic development.

Besides, the state also ran its rent-seeking activities, by demanding taxes and fees before licensing a media enterprise. These activities were run by the ministry of information, which was very powerful under the Soeharto regime.

Once the media became critical of the government, it would face being censored or banned, with the government simply removing the license.

But the capital growth in the media had its own logic, and the state's repressive actions were challenged by capital progress.

The line between "selling news" and "maintaining state repression" became blurred. Capital interests tended to prove victorious over the state's repressive measures, mainly in the last years of the Soeharto regime.

This was back in the middle of 1994, only two weeks before three weeklies -- Tempo, Detik and Editor -- were banned and when top bureaucrats were divided over full foreign ownership in the media industry.

Some economic ministers supported the idea of full foreign ownership, while the orthodox camp, including the minister of information, challenged the idea in the name of national integrity and patriotism.

The then minister of information, Harmoko, who was also chairman of Golkar, bet that president Soeharto also would challenge that "liberal idea".

The television industry was another story. Indonesians may still remember an interview aired by SCTV, owned by one of Soeharto's relatives, with Sarwono Kusumaatmadja, one of the outspoken ministers in Soeharto's Cabinet.

It sounds strange that a station owned by a Soeharto relative would criticize the president. But it happened, and the response from the family was quick, with the newscaster and news producer being fired.

Later on we saw the demand for reform grow stronger than the need to control and ban critical information from the public. Soeharto fell on May 21, 1998, days after the SCTV interview.

This book is very useful in looking at the growth of the Indonesian media. Sen and Hill excellently tell the history of different branches of the media, while also discussing the state of each media and the dynamic of capital development.

Each branch has taken different paths in developing. If other researchers want to continue and build on Sen and Hill's work, this book would be very valuable.

Media, Culture, and Politics is a complex term, and Sen and Hill apparently use this term purposely to show the complexity of recent developments in the Indonesian media. The media cannot be separated from cultural and political phenomena, and the media also cannot be separated from politics and culture.

Another point that Sen and Hill make is that media content is primarily "national" rather than "local" or "global".

In this point the Indonesian media is caught between three dimensions (local-national-global) of news which strongly influence each other.

But under the New Order, writing about local cultures risked being accused of exaggerating difference of culture, ethnicity, religion or societal groups (locally known by the acronym SARA).

In writing a comprehensive analysis of contemporary Indonesian culture and media, Sen and Hill combine two different approaches; political economy and cultural studies.

Although this combination is debatable, it gives a whole explanation of the Indonesian media. As for the issue of media ownership, in the case of television, for example, it is a matter of family business, since all private television stations are directly or indirectly owned by the Soeharto family.

In the film industry, Subentra, a company controlled by a relative of Soeharto, monopolized film distribution and controlled a chain of cinema complexes in Indonesia.

If we look at how the media has developed in the four years since Soeharto's downfall, we will see a blurred picture. Some media groups have expanded their chains into small towns, and at the same time we can find franchised media in the Indonesian market.

There are Indonesian versions of Cosmopolitan magazine, as well as Her World, Formula 1, Health Today and so on. The ministry of information, once considered the God of media owners, has been dissolved. In 1999, Indonesia received a new press law which gave more leeway for media to exist and operate freely.

Within the last four years, there have been major changes in the Indonesian media structure, which has shifted the role of the media as defined during the New Order.

The media is no longer defined as the government's partner in economic development, and now the media is creating new definitions for itself, from the tool of political groups to a bridge for understanding the many interests within society.

The media has also become a mere way to make money selling sex and mystical stories. Some small publishers tried their luck in the media business, but most of them failed to survive for more than three months.

The current situation should encourage Sen and Hill to research and write another book.

Ignatius Haryanto is the vice executive director of the Institute for the Study of Press and Development in Jakarta.