Media cross-ownership to be limited
Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Lending a deaf ear to demands from major media owners, the government and House of Representative agreed on Wednesday in the broadcasting bill to limit media cross-ownership.
They argued that such a limitation was necessary to prevent a monopoly of opinion by major media groups.
However, critics said that the limitation would serve as an entry barrier to a television industry already dominated by the family of former president Soeharto and its cronies.
State Minister for Information and Telecommunications Syamsul Mu'arif said on Wednesday the proposed bill would find a compromise to accommodate the demands from opposing groups on media ownerships.
"We have to prevent the possibility that certain media groups might dominate public opinion as that would be damaging to democracy in the country," Syamsul contended.
The decision quickly received criticism from the media community, that the cross-ownership limitation would demolish print media businesses.
Coordinator of the Press Society Leo Batubara pointed out that the limitation in the new bill would only serve as a barrier for media groupings to establish TV stations to counter Soeharto's empire.
He also said that arguments about a monopoly in opinion- forming could no longer apply to Indonesia as it had already entered a democratic era.
The antimonopoly law stated that only media that could dominate 50 percent of the market could be considered as holding a monopoly and none of the media in Indonesia was able to do that, Leo said.
"The government should have considered a measure to limit the monopoly of the existing private TV stations by certain groups rather than killing print media businesses," Leo told The Jakarta Post.
Leo was alluding to the fact that at least four of nine existing private TV stations -- RCTI, SCTV, TPI, Metro TV -- are partly owned by former president Soeharto's family.
Despite the criticism, Syamsul said the move aimed to open business opportunities to other media groupings.
Besides, he said, the government and the House were seeking the right model for implementing cross-ownership limitations, including a possible ban on nationwide TV transmissions.
"We are thinking of banning nationwide broadcasts by single TV stations to allow for the establishment of local TVs in each area or province," he said.
If this model were adopted, Syamsul said, TV stations could broadcast nationally only by cooperation with local TV stations or by setting up different TV stations in a number of provinces.
Another model would be to allow one print media company to own one TV station.
But a media group that owned more than one print media would not be allowed to have a TV station, he said.
Leo, however, disagreed, saying that the only way for print media to survive was through cooperation with the electronic media.
"If the government limits the opportunities for media companies to own TV stations, it will kill off development of the print media," Leo said.
Media ownership is one of the contentious issues arising in deliberations on the broadcasting bill, which have been ongoing for the past two years, as most in the media community support cross-ownership.
The media community still has time to campaign against what it has called a "draconian" broadcasting bill, as deliberations on the bill at the House are scheduled to be endorsed on July 14, as originally planned.