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.