Reflection on Press Day

In January, when President Soeharto in his state budget speech before the House of Representatives lashed out at the press for reporting that allegedly stirred up trouble, many media executives believed that something was in the air. Understandably, the media have been anxious to know what the president would have to say during the commemoration of National Press Day, Feb. 12.

True enough at a ceremony marking National Press Day yesterday, President Soeharto warned the media not to adopt foreign press values in covering domestic events and thereby contributing to social unrest. The president said unsuitable foreign values appeared to be on the rise in the national press. These values, according to President Soeharto, are like glasses which color our perception of ourselves and prompt a dramatization of events.

Reminding the press that it was "not an extraordinary institution which must receive special treatment" and which "does not have a constitutional authority", the President called on the press to filter out values unsuitable to Indonesia.

What prompted President Soeharto to issue such a warning is clear enough. The unprecedented series of riots and social unrest in the past several months have led many to believe that if the unrest remains unchecked the nation will be in grave danger of disintegration. And the media has been accused of helping to fan the unrest. In recent weeks numerous officials have joined the chorus and blamed the press for allegedly "dramatizing" the recent riots. Some officials even hinted that the press stirred up trouble with its "unfair" and "unbalanced" reporting.

While the allegation is debatable, the wisest thing to do is heed the warning. In truth, it is good and timely for the media to reflect on itself on National Press Day. In the last two decades the Indonesian press has entered the age of industrialization and one of the impacts of the free market system is that inroads have been made into our psyche by "western" values -- such as the ushering in of free market competition. The business community in particular, including the media, cannot escape these new values. In order to beat their competitors, some media publications have gone as far as to use "unconventional" tactics, such us digging into a story deeper and always trying to be exclusive, something which is natural for the press but apparently is not acceptable to the authorities.

One has to acknowledge that sometimes the press also gets carried away in its political reporting. Given the tight control on political reporting, some media publications have also shown a tendency to report more on crime which is considered a lot safer. Our press, in short, still has quite a number of shortcomings.

Although the national press continues to progress and develop, many publications have ignored the education and training of their reporters. As a result, skilled reporters are scarce, which affects the quality of the press in general. And this has led to complaints on the quality of the media.

Here, perhaps, lies the root of the problem. There are only two institutions in this country which professionally undertake the teaching and training of would-be journalists. Between them, they turn out fewer than two dozen professional journalists a year. In a country where there are more than seven thousand journalists, two institutions is an unbelievably small number.

Without proper education and training, the quality of Indonesian journalists and the media will always remain questionable. Therefore, special attention should be given to improving the quality of the Indonesian journalist. As the age of a global open market draws near and an assault by the foreign media looms, a program to train better qualified journalists is imperative.

Although the quality of the Indonesian press may be unsatisfactory, one thing is clear: existing in the shadow of the constant danger of being axed, the media knows its limits. It also accepts the burden of responsibility that they have to bear as members of a free and responsible press. And part of this responsibility is the preservation of national unity. Nobody wants to see this nation disintegrate, and no one wants to see bloodshed or riots in this country either.