Muzzling the media

I am disturbed by your recent reports on the prospect of journalists facing criminal penalties for, in effect, criticizing government and public figures. Many of the arguments in support of these measures are at best spurious, at worst a threat to democratic accountability.

A free press is essential to ensuring government accountability and any attempt to restrict what journalists report through the criminal law can only be ultimately aimed at restricting the public's access to information and muzzling debate.

It has been argued that public figures should be protected from libel and that misreporting needs to be deterred. If this is so, the criminal law is not an appropriate means to accomplish this. Remedies should indeed be available against irresponsible journalism, but these should fall within the ambit of the civil law system, and the burden should be borne by the journalist's employer, and not the journalist himself.

Furthermore, consumers of news will most likely tend to ignore media with a reputation for distorting the truth, and to gravitate towards those who rightly see their first duty as the pursuit and presentation of truth. If journalists do indeed become irresponsible in their reporting, the government should allow people to make up their own minds as to the veracity and accuracy of the reporting in question. The deference of government to the judgment of the people is an essential, defining, aspect of democracy, and to assume people are unable to distinguish good from bad reporting is both insulting to the people of Indonesia, and destructive of the growing democratic ethos in this nation.

ANDREW BROWN Surabaya