On people's right to be informed

Sketches Of The Mass Media By Ashadi Siregar Published by Yayasan Bentang Budaya Yogyakarta 183 pages, 1995

YOGYAKARTA (JP): There is no doubt that Indonesian press and publishing companies have stepped into the industrial world. Our press and printers utilize technical equipment similar to that in advanced countries. This is imperative for the media if they do not want to fold or surrender to refurbished companies.

The dynamics in industry have ranked elements of marketing above journalism, transforming the press from journalism into business management. Apparently the press and printing industry are not just an economical institution. On one side, they appear to be an economic endeavor. However, the presence of the press and printing businesses, both actively in search of data to process and distribute, have become social institutions.

A license to run a press or media company (SIUPP) is a must in Indonesia. The permit has become an absurd phenomenon in Indonesia because it is not just a license.

The politicking function of the SIUPP institution has reformed it into an asset of capital dimensions which is also applicable in condemning the press industry and journalists (p.15).

According to the writer, any press or media management shall always focus on public demand for information and the process of functioning. As a social institution, the press should be functional at all times: whether it is informative, educative, persuasive or entertaining.

Behind functions arising from information, there might be other intentions. For instance, the press sometimes reveals its real intention to collect money from the public by running sensational news and to exploit the emotions of the masses.

Operating "dysfunction" techniques to curtail the press is still to be researched.

The main restriction faced by the press, immediately conveying the truth, is related to SIUPP. What has to be done to make the SIUPP a genuine company license and not an instrument of control? Because of this restraint, Indonesian news writing doesn't follow public demand alone, but is actually a result of pre-guidance from government.

The author of this book stresses that the press industry, as a social industry, has never been at fault. Often deviations in journalism have been sought in the professional conduct of a journalist, which is legally prosecutable. It is tolerable when a SIUPP is revoked because of journalistic errors. In follows that other SIUPPs be canceled because the contents are unacceptable to management.

Revoking a SIUPP doesn't automatically mean the end of a press institution. Whether or not there is a printing media for the press, the press institution shall always be present to provide real information to the public.

More suppression of the formal media will bring to life a mechanism of informal institutionalizing, which sometimes is identical to formal mass media.

Normal human beings object to having their information fixed by another party. The more Indonesians advance, the more they will demand independent information. Restrictions and censoring of information are quite opposed to the achievements of Indonesian development (page 51).

Still, the author is positive about the SIUPP institution. The press industry, as an umbrella organization for journalists, is in for re-organization to mainly build a healthy press institution.

This professional group needs a guarantee aside from the press laws, which should not be used as a regulation to oppose the press business and kill the work of professional journalists.

The presence of private television in Indonesia is a breaks the monopolization of state television. Sometimes breakthroughs in bureaucracies are a positive thing, like deregulation and debureaucratization in economy. But the onset of private TV did not prove to be conducive. Private TV emerged while state TV never developed its peripheral.

According to the writer, media broadcasting and the electronic media is generally sustained by news broadcasting. A major point in media broadcasting lies in the pace of news broadcasting.

In Indonesia, however, news broadcasting is monopolized by the state. It appears, that private TV managements and private radio organizations will have to exert pressure in order to lessen government control. Various TV programs touching on human aspects, make it difficult to cut off factual information. Fact is, state TV endeavored for 30 years to provide the public with a standard form of news.

As long as private TV stations are not permitted to have their own news programs, they will not threaten state TV because the most coveted program eyed by TV stations and the print media is the news.

If the private TV sector was permitted to broadcast real news, state TV would loose out since private TV stations would not be burdened with being an organ of the bureaucracy (page 98).

The author thinks that the lower strata of the population are most probably not getting the real picture from the state news. They would be more informed if they were presented with actual news from the World News on state TV.

What grounds does the government have to prohibit broadcasting news on private TV and radio stations?

The media should exert its right to report real news, processed by professional reporters and radio broadcasters.

-- Andreas Anastasius