Mass media's neutral stance after New Order
Mass media's neutral stance after New Order
By Junarto Imam Prakoso
JAKARTA (JP): Greater openness has allowed many Indonesian
media publications to emerge but whether they can stick to
journalistic principles of objectivity and impartiality is open
to question.
In the 1950s, many media publications were partisan. Pedoman,
for example, leaned to the Indonesian Socialist Party, Abadi to
Masyumi, a Moslem party, Harian Rakyat to the Indonesian
Communist Party and Suluh Indonesia to the Indonesian Nationalist
Party. Others, like Indonesia Raya and Times of Indonesia, tried
to be independent.
During the Guided Democracy period in late 1950s, mass media
did not dare to oppose the government policies, despite their
link with certain political forces, for fear of being banned.
At the beginning of the New Order administration in the mid-
1960s, the media got a taste of press freedom. Based on Law No.
11/1966 on the Principles of the Press, it assumed a very
critical attitude toward the government without any fear of being
banned.
Things changed, however, when the New Order government created
the myth of "political stability being the prerequisite for
economic growth" with political repression and control over the
flow of information being the logical consequences.
The fusion of political parties in the 1970s, and the outbreak
of major student demonstrations in 1974, compelled the media to
further forsake their ideological idealism. As a result, most
press publications focused on flexing their commercial muscle.
The industry was considered a lucrative business and
nonpolitical media such as Gadis and Femina were mushrooming. The
press in general, in the meantime, was extra-careful in exposing
political issues which were considered sensitive. Political
observer Daniel Dhakidae said: "Indonesian newspapers kept the
distance far enough from the state to make them interesting, and
thus to enlarge the leadership but close enough to the capital to
keep them alive."
On May 21, 1998, Soeharto stepped down under strong political
pressure after ruling the country for 32 years, and a hope that
this date would be a turning point for Indonesia's political
system toward democracy was rekindled.
The subsequent Habibie government lifted regulations
restricting press freedom, such as Minister of Information Decree
No. 1/1984.
The people welcomed this sign of openness with a number of
new media companies springing up partly because of the simple
press licensing procedure despite the ongoing economic crisis.
Under a political system with a homogeneous culture like that
in Britain, Commonwealth countries and the United States, the
press has a tendency of being autonomous and distinguishable.
Under a political system characterized by fragmentation, like
that in France and Italy, the press tends to be dominated and
controlled by interest groups and political parties. It is akin
to what is happening here now as a consequence of a relatively
open political system.
At this point, it is important to know how the extent of the
mass media's partisanship can be measured. Blumler and Gurevitch
introduce the following set of dimensions:
* The degree of the state's control over the mass media
organization.
* The degree of the media's partisanship.
* The character of the system of belief prevailing in the said
media.
* The degree of integration between the media elite and the
political elite.
The degree of the state's control over media organization
includes control over staff appointment, finance and the content
of the media publication; the kind of control which legally
concerns the code of publication. In Indonesia, this dimension
can be ignored with the revocation of Minister of Information
Regulation No. 1/1984, which was used by the New Order regime as
a legal weapon to revoke the licenses of mass media opposing it.
The degree of the media's partisanship is open to at least
three possibilities. In an extreme case, the highest degree of a
media publication's partisanship may be seen when a particular
party is directly associated with the very existence of the media
in terms of, for example, financial subsidies or managerial
membership in the editorial board.
A media publication may show its partisanship with a certain
political party voluntarily, or, in other cases, partisanship may
be unpredictable because a media publication may adopt this
attitude on the basis of the "value" of a certain case. This
means that this attitude of partisanship may change at any time.
The last possibility is that a media publication assumes a
completely neutral attitude and tries its utmost not to lend
support to any political party.
The character of the system of belief prevailing in the said
media is shaped by various elements, such as a belief that the
main task concerns the public, an emphasis on mastery of the
communications science, a belief in the function of "a watchdog",
an attitude of opposition in dealing with politicians and
commitment in a universal criteria, such as political truth with
balance and objectivity in political fights.
The degree of integration between the media elite and the
political elite is viewed that a structural gap between media and
political institutions may be bridged in the following ways.
* To ensure that they share a common interest, and value elite
members of the media are recruited on the basis of a common
social and cultural background or are required to socialize in a
common social and cultural environment.
* An overlapping attitude of the personnel in the sense that a
staffer may believe that he is independent while in fact he
supports a particular party.
* The media elite and the political elite are at least involved
in informal interaction so that they will share a common
understanding and minimize their differences.
Dan Nimmo views the impossibility of the mass media to assume
a neutral stance on a smaller scope, the news. According to him,
news reports constitute what reporters see, do and sell in the
framework of institutional, economic, technological, social and
psychological limitations.
In this context, a reporter serves as a communicator and as
one who constructs the meaning of a happening. The report
prepared by such a reporter is not the truth but rather a reality
which is drawn up for a practical purpose of attempting to put
under the spotlight an "unusual" event. When receiving a report
from a reporter, a chief editor knows very well the objective of
the writing of this report. A chief editor's job is short of
completion if he simply gathers information for his readers. The
readers are expected to be influenced by the stimulus exerted by
news reports, which, in Lipmann's words, have gone through a
series of selection.
Mass media's partisanship were obvious both in the Old Order
era and in the early years of the New Order government.
In the early part of the New Order administration, despite
their attitude of partisanship, the media could not oppose the
ruler because of the nature of the political system. The mass
media tried to take sides with particular political parties and
groups but the politics of repression prompted the mass media
practicing partisanship to reduce their sectional loyalty in an
obvious manner.
As a result of the change toward greater accommodation and
openness introduced in Indonesia's political system in May 1998,
the pattern of partisanship has again resurfaced.
If this new political system finally finds its format in a
democratic system, it is expected that the media will generally
have a tendency to show a high degree of partisanship or openly
demonstrate that they take sides with certain political parties
or groups of interest.
Such a phenomenon is made possible by the fact that the
potential of the society being politically fragmented, which was
stifled by the New Order regime with its antiplurality policy,
has found its "liberation" in the next era.
The writer is a Communications Science student of the
University of Indonesia's School of Social and Political Sciences
and assistant lecturer for Communications Research Methodology.