Reporters on gambling bosses payroll
Indra Harsaputra, The Jakarta Post, Surabaya
The cell phone rings for the umpteenth time, but Rizal Hasan, an editor at the Suara Indonesia daily, refuses to answer it. Finally, he switches it off.
"I don't want to answer the phone because I know it's connected to the report published by Suara Indonesia on gambling activities in Surabaya," he told The Jakarta Post.
Rizal said that the caller wanted the daily to immediately stop reporting gambling activities in Surabaya.
Rizal had written about reporters receiving bribes from gambling operators in the paper on Friday. The report went to press after Rizal and several journalists were invited by one of the main gambling operators, identified by the initials PT, at the LS karaoke parlor on Jl. Pasar Besar.
During the meeting, PT distributed envelopes filled with cash to reporters with the annotation that they be involved in promoting the Go Shock "golden voucher" game that carried a prize of Rp 2 billion (US$205,000). The issue has been incessantly publicized by the media in Surabaya as a new form of gambling.
PT stated that he had obtained a permit for the lottery from Minister of Social Affairs Bachtiar Chamsyah through ministerial decree No. 813/HUK-UND/2004 for prize-free lotteries. However, the Surabaya chapter of the Indonesian Ulemas' Council (MUI) has said that it is a form of gambling.
Rizal, a member of the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), rejected the payment because it was contrary to the existing press code of ethics. Apart from that, Suara Indonesia strictly prohibits reporters from receiving any kinds of payment from their sources. "It's commonplace for gambling operators to bribe reporters so that they don't write too much about gambling activities, but as I saw it with my own eyes, I was compelled to write about it," said Rizal.
Another Surabaya reporter, Mohammad Sugito, said that gifts from gambling takings to reporters was not something new. The practice had been going on for the past 15 years.
"It's not only corrupt police personnel who get their share from gambling operators, but also immoral reporters who go along with and conceal the gambling business by not reporting it," Sugito told the Post.
The amount of bribes depends on a reporter's level. A junior reporter usually gets around Rp 1 million to Rp 5 million a month on average, and a senior reporter or editor might get as much as Rp 10 million. The payoffs are given during informal meetings or transferred directly to bank accounts.
So discreet and well organized is the practice that the respective media companies are not aware of it.
The racket is coordinated by a senior reporter in Surabaya. If any of the reporters dare to write without prior coordination, it is the task of the senior reporter to reprimand him or her.
Besides cash bribes, some of the operators also contribute by placing business advertisements in papers outside the gambling business. Moreover, some of them are major stakeholders in one of the afternoon dailies that has prohibited reports concerning gambling.
A reporter for a Jakarta-based radio station in Surabaya, Hari, said that such payoffs were without doubt against the press code of ethics, but if there was no binding deal with a source, a reporter could simply accept the gift.
"If you don't take it, how can you live on just a small salary here," he said.
Based on data from the Surabaya-branch of the AJI, reporter's salary in Surabaya ranged from Rp 600,000 to Rp 4 million per month in 2004. Some media companies even pay less than the city's regional minimum wage of Rp 525,000. The amount of salary a reporter receives depends on the size of the media company.
A senior journalist and a founder of AJI, Mohammad Anis, said that no matter how much a reporter's salary was, receiving any form of payment from sources was disgraceful, especially when it was connected with gambling.