SOE Regulatory Body Supports Acceleration of ANTARA as Key Player in National Information Ecosystem

The State-Owned Enterprises Regulatory Body (BP BUMN) fully supports the acceleration of the ANTARA News Agency as a key player in the national information ecosystem. “Making fundamental changes is challenging. We will go all out to support ANTARA’s acceleration as an actor in the national information ecosystem,” said BP BUMN Head Dony Oskaria during a meeting with the Supervisory Board and Board of Directors of LKBN ANTARA in Jakarta on Wednesday. According to Dony, ANTARA is crucial and serves as the spearhead of the government’s efforts through reporting both domestically and internationally. Domestically, he continued, ANTARA is capable of distributing information to remote areas, which is one of the strengths of the news agency established on 13 December 1937. What constitutes ANTARA’s essence as a national news agency, Dony added, is also expected to become a strength in disseminating information amid ongoing disruptions. “I hope this is scaled up, accelerated, and does not stop embracing and acquiring regional news, as that is an important part of ANTARA,” said Dony. He hopes that through the transformation being undertaken, ANTARA will become increasingly adaptive to the times. One of them is making news content on social media more engaging. On the same occasion, ANTARA CEO Benny Siga Butarbutar explained that becoming the main actor in the national information ecosystem is ANTARA’s strategic vision and mission to strengthen its position as a trusted news reference. “The transformation mission is to strengthen ANTARA’s reporting position as a trusted news reference. To become a clearing house for disinformation. This is done through editorial strengthening, business acceleration, and internationalisation,” said Benny. According to Benny, the urgency of the transformation is to strengthen legitimacy and relevance in the national information ecosystem. ANTARA’s transformation is also carried out to maintain border information sovereignty and build a regional press ecosystem. “ANTARA must become a driver for the government. Its distribution channels must be expanded not only domestically. One of them is that we are launching the reactivation of foreign bureaus as intelligent data agents,” stated Benny. For this reason, Benny expressed thanks for BP BUMN’s support in the struggle for accelerating this transformation. Benny hopes that ANTARA’s transformation roadmap can be realised through this support.