On Harry Burton and journalism

Keith Loveard, News Editor, www.laksamana.net, Publisher, www.asiamad.com, Jakarta

Journalists in the Asian bureaux of the international news agency Reuters held a minute's silence Wednesday, Nov. 21 to honor their colleagues killed by Taliban stragglers in Afghanistan.

The death of one of those two workers, Harry Burton, was particularly felt by his co-workers at his base of operations in Jakarta and by others who knew and respected him in the Jakarta media community.

The death of Burton and his three colleagues at the hands of Taliban stragglers is, regrettable as it may be, the inevitable risk posed by those who elect to work for the world's action- hungry media empires.

While wars will always bring such risks, it is not unreasonable for the media community across the world to demand that such deaths be minimized, and that violence against the media be outlawed and treated with the utter contempt it deserves.

We did not know Harry, but are told he grew bored with his life as a buyer at a major Melbourne store and came to Jakarta to break into the cameraman game. He joined a brigade of reporters who are always on the front line, most often at risk.

Many of the best cameraman to have worked in Asia have been Australians, most notably Damien Parer in Papua in World War II, and Neil Davis through Vietnam and a host of other major conflicts. Davis told his biographer that it was far safer always to be on the front line, never even five meters behind it, and as rarely as possible in front of it. He died in a minor coup in Bangkok. Now there is Harry Burton.

Indonesia itself is no stranger to the murder of journalists. In recent years, East Timor claimed two lives, an Indonesian working for a Japanese media outlet, Agus Mulyawan, and Sander Thoenes, a young Financial Times journalist also based in Jakarta.

In Yogyakarta, the 1996 beating to death of Udin (Fuad Muhammad Syafruddin) by elements allegedly connected to the Regent of Bantul, Sri Roso Sudarmo, has seen the conviction of only one low-ranked police officer found to have been involved in the crime, jailed for destroying evidence. The investigation has gone no further.

Violence against other journalists, local and foreign nationals working for both offshore and national media, continues.

In Aceh, reporters complain that pressure from the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and from the authorities means that they are forced to "hedge their bets" in reporting, with the result that their readers never have any real idea of what is going on.

Failure to follow the strictures of this tightrope act recently by Banda Aceh daily Serambi Indonesia resulted in the forced closure of the paper for a week. The publication has also over the past few years seen four of its vehicles destroyed, while the Banda Aceh bureau of Medan-based Waspada has lost two.

In another case, a Banda Aceh journalist is said by his friends to have been traumatized, taken refuge in drugs and has not written anything since he was fired on at close range last year by two masked men on motorbikes. The bullets, incidentally, were police issue.

Reporting of conflict is inevitably laden with personal risk. While journalists take such risks into account and accept them as part of life, while at the same time taking all reasonable steps to minimize them, it is not acceptable that crimes against the media should be left uncovered.

While it will be difficult indeed to bring anyone to trial for the murder of Burton and his colleagues, it should not be so hard for the Indonesian authorities to fully investigate the deaths of Udin and those in which the lives and livelihood of other journalists have been threatened.

Yet no action, apart from the lip service jailing of the one police officer in the Udin case, has ever been taken.

Indonesia's official and alternative journalist associations have failed to maintain pressure on the authorities to mount reasonable and thorough investigations. The Indonesian media industry itself has also been less than active in demanding proper protection for its workers. New Minister for Informatics Syamsul Mu'arif has so far played no visible role -- neither negative nor constructive -- in the information side of his portfolio, preferring to busy himself with the less minefield- prone area of technology development.

The media in Indonesia and other developing nations is in a process of transition to the "watch dog" role it so nobly serves in so many other countries. Many sections of the media both here and across the world prefer not follow the dictates of the highest levels of the profession and prefer to wallow in sensationalism.

On the positive side, both in Indonesia and elsewhere in the region there is a level of commitment among many individuals in the industry and among groups of journalists to develop a level of skills and professionalism which seeks to continue a tradition of journalistic excellence exemplified by those like Mochtar Lubis that was, in Indonesia, forced into careful channels for the 32 years of the Soeharto era. Individuals like Aristides Katoppo and Goenawan Mohamad kept the flame alive, and both were banned by Soeharto.

The new Press Law sets a progressive and liberal framework for the industry that goes so far as to provide penalties for those who seek to put obstacles in the way of reporters. Fine as this is, it is not enough.

If the murders of Burton and his colleagues, the latest in a sad trail of killings both in Asia and elsewhere, are to have some residing message, it is that governments and society has a responsibility to protect the lives and well-being of media workers. Mere lip service to the rights of journalists to provide the world with the information it demands is not enough.