Low-paid journalists produce poor news

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

As members of the fourth estate of democracy, journalists are the mouthpiece of the voiceless and powerless in exercising checks and balances on the government and other high state institutions and apparatus.

It is ironic, however, that many Indonesian journalists, who often risk their lives to tell the public about corruption or collusion in society are not adequately paid.

A survey by the Independent Journalists Alliance (AJI) in 1999 revealed that some publishers paid university-graduate journalists with work experience of more than two years as low as Rp 250,000 as a basic monthly salary.

The amount was slightly higher than the minimum regional wage for workers in Jakarta at the time, which was set at Rp 231,000 per month.

The salary range does not seem to have changed much nowadays.

In a discussion jointly organized by AJI and Germany's Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, some journalists said that they got less than Rp 500,000 as a basic monthly salary. Today's basic salary for workers in Jakarta is set at around Rp 670,000.

According to a survey by a U.S.-based consultant in 2003, the salary of fresh university graduates in other professions ranges from Rp 2 million to Rp 3 million in Jakarta.

The remuneration -- consisting of basic salary, allowances and bonuses -- is higher for those who have been working for more than two years.

Ulin Ni'am Yusron, Jakarta AJI chairman, said on Thursday that the absence of a standard salary for journalists here has given rise to "envelop journalists," who compromise their profession with a cash "gift" from their sources.

"It is too much to ask them to make impartial, quality news if they are underpaid," Ulin told the discussion.

Ulin said that it was high time that Indonesian publishers paid a fair salary to their journalists since they (journalists) were the core of the media business.

Gerd Botterweck of Frederick Ebert Stiftung said that a just remuneration would lead to quality news.

"Certainly, a just remuneration for journalists relates to the job performance of the media," he told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the discussion.

He said that Germany had already set the standard salary and education for journalists in his country.

Botterweck revealed the remuneration standard for journalists in Germany does not only stipulate the basic salary but also a pension and insurance for their families.

"It's a collective agreement that applies throughout the Republic of Federal Germany. We don't organize company agreements. But, this is possible only because journalists there join trade unions," Botterweck said.

In Germany, all journalists -- including freelancers, students of journalism or mass communications schools or those in an internship -- have to join trade unions.

"It is the trade unions that negotiate with the publishers," Botterweck said.

Ulin said, however, that trade unions were taboo for most publishers in Indonesia, where some journalists had been fired for fighting for the establishment of trade unions in their respective offices.

Meanwhile, Leo Batubara, a journalist who chairs the Newspaper Publishers Union (SPS), said that it would be difficult for his union to set a remuneration standard for journalists as only 30 percent of some 1,200 publishers in the print media were financially healthy.

"The rest do not apply journalistic standards, competency standards, press organization standards or capital standards, let alone a standard remuneration," he said.