Media distortion hurts Indonesia's image

Vincent Lingga, The Jakarta Post, Hong Kong

Indonesian officials, businessmen and analysts attending the three-day East Asian Economic Summit appeared uncomfortable and occasionally frustrated about the negative image that had been projected about their country to the hundreds of participants who had come from around the world.

The anti-American street demonstrations, emotional outbursts against the U.S., staged by a few hundred people in Jakarta and several other cities over the last two months, seemed to have earned Indonesia the image of a country controlled by millions of radical Muslims.

The steady stream of stories and prominent displays of photos about demonstrators with slogans bashing the U.S. and its allies for the attacks on alleged terrorists in Afghanistan and television interviews with people registering as volunteers to fight in Afghanistan were presented as if the world's largest Muslim-populated country was about to erupt.

"I painstakingly explained to them that the group, which threatened to use violence to express their support of and solidarity with Muslims in Afghanistan, was negligible compared to the hundreds of millions of moderate Indonesians," Minister of Trade and Industry Rini Soewandi told The Jakarta Post after giving an interview with CNN.

Rini conceded that even though the voice of reason now prevailed among public opinion, the damage had already been done to Indonesia's image.

She confirmed that a number of importers overseas had canceled orders from Indonesia due to security concerns.

"Scenes of people demonstrating on the streets are normal, especially in democratic countries. But when such scenes are disproportionally displayed in photos and repeatedly zoomed in on television screens, the resulting perception is misleading," she added.

Did the Indonesian and foreign mass media go over the top in their coverage of anti-American sentiment, especially between late September and the first two weeks of October?

"Yes, I think many newspapers and television news broadcasters went overboard in the treatment of those events," said Jusuf Wanandi, Chairman of the Jakarta-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

Jusuf, who was a panelist at two sessions during the summit, went into great length to assert that what people overseas read in newspapers or saw on television did by no means represent Indonesian public opinion.

"But the way the mass media treated the events created the impression that radicals sometimes control public opinion in Indonesia," he said.

Garment businessman M.Manimaren also seemed frustrated about the negative image his buyers had of Indonesia.

"I didn't come here primarily to attend the economic summit but to meet my buyers as they did not want to come to Indonesia. "I have to continue our exports, otherwise I would not be able to pay my employees. Therefore, I have to go wherever my buyers are willing to meet," Manimaren said.

Some foreign analysts, who are based in Jakarta or regularly visit Indonesia, said their perception of Indonesia was not in anyway distorted by the overblown stories about the recent wave of anti-American demonstrations.

But they admitted that people overseas, notably those who had never visited Indonesia, could have been scared by what they had read in the print media and saw on television.

They said Indonesia had inherited problems, which it is now encountering in its transition to full democracy and local autonomy, from more than three decades of authoritarian and centralized government, the nation was not fanatically anti- American.

Arwin Rasyid, president of Jakarta-based Bank Danamon, acknowledged that despite the myriad of problems Indonesia is facing, people need uplifting stories, news about kindness, compassion amid the torrent of bad news.

Rasyid was also disturbed about how some of the mass media in Jakarta tended to disproportionately emphasize the bad aspects of events.

"Since you have already heard all the bad news, negative things from the mass media, I will present to you the positive developments currently going on in the banking industry," he said at an Indonesian session during the summit.

Speaking as a panelist at the session, Rasyid cited the restructuring efforts that had been implemented in the banking industry and the progress already made in the process of rebuilding a sound financial system in Indonesia.

He added that, despite the seemingly gloomy outlook of the economy, one should not live in constant worry, waiting for the next series of bad news.

Does Rasyid expect too much, given the liberal mood of Indonesia's press, the preoccupation of many print media with expanding circulation and the fierce competition among TV broadcasting stations for a higher rating?

That depends on the mass media themselves. But like the Americans who are now at war against terrorism, Indonesia seems in need of another kind of fight, which is a campaign against pessimism.