Surviving our own years of living dangerously

Surviving our own years of living dangerously

Susanto Pudjomartono, Chief Editor 1991-2001

It was August 1991, and the authoritarian regime of Soeharto
was at the peak of its power. With the help of the military, he
controlled the country with an iron fist that swiftly crushed any
form of dissent. Politicians and activists who dared to oppose
him were thrown into prison, many on trumped-up charges.

As the newly appointed editor in chief of The Jakarta Post, I
had two options. The first was to follow an editorial policy that
many media in Indonesia practiced: to subscribe to "survival
journalism" by behaving in a "positive and constructive manner"
to escape the government's wrath.

The second was to try to push for more freedom.

The first choice was safer, and the second naturally presented
a much darker and dangerous path. Any newspapers that dared to
take the latter strategy would have to be ready to be banned, or
at least stamped as "opposition" or an "enemy of the state".

In all repressive regimes, there is always somebody up there
who is holding a big stick and is ready to bludgeon those that
dare to cross the line. During Soeharto's last 15 years in power,
the henchman was none other than Soeharto's trusted and loyal
lieutenant, information minister Harmoko.

By 1991, The Jakarta Post was a reputable newspaper, highly
respected, financially sound and unquestionably the best among
the three English newspapers in the country. From the very
beginning, the Post was designed to be a quality paper of high
standard.

As a former managing editor of the weekly newsmagazine Tempo,
and a journalist since 1966, I believed that by joining hands
with other pro-democracy media and institutions, the Post could
play a more significant role in the building of democracy in
Indonesia.

Therefore, it was heartening that the board of directors (and
later on the board of commissioners) of the newspaper's
publisher, PT Bina Media Tenggara, fully supported the idea that
the Post should be reinvented into a bolder, more critical,
independent and finely tuned paper.

We shared the view that the collapse of the Cold War had
unleashed a global movement of change and that it was time was to
bring democracy to Indonesia. We came to the conclusion that a
docile newspaper would never able to shift a heap of rocks, but a
concerted effort by an enlightened mass could move a mountain.

In line with this view, we believed that the Post should help
to enlighten and empower the people by providing news and views
supportive to the democratization process.

We also believed that, as an English newspaper in a non-
English speaking community, the Post enjoyed advantages and
disadvantages.

We knew that the Post would never be able to reach a mass
circulation of, say, hundreds of thousands, as the number of
English-speaking readers here is limited.

But English is a much more straightforward and down to earth
medium than Bahasa Indonesia. Readers did not need to read
between the lines, like they did with the Indonesian
publications.

The leadership of the Post also decided that the Post should
stop relying too heavily on expatriate readers (totaling about
65 percent in 1991) and instead expand the number of the
Indonesian readers. In short, we wanted to reinvent the Post into
a critical and influential newspaper, though small in circulation
but reaching the decision-makers, the cream of society.

The Jakarta Post, with the full support of its staff, started
to reinvent itself. On many occasions we learned the limits of
freedom through trial and error. In 1994, when Tempo, Editor and
Detik were banned, most media were afraid to report the ensuing
demonstrations protesting the government's action.

I was repeatedly summoned to the Ministry of Information,
including when the Post was the only paper to run a report on the
demonstrations with an accompanying photo. It turned out that the
government was enraged because the photo showed noted poet W.S.
Rendra and labor activist Mochtar Pakpahan, and they feared the
image would be construed as wide-ranging support in society for
the demonstrations.

We decided to continue to publish similar pictures whenever
there were demonstrations against the Tempo ban. We were still
the only media that reported the events, but with no Rendra or
Pakpahan nor any non-journalist figures on hand. There were no
more summons, and we learned another lesson in how to push for
more freedom.

When the situation was "tense" and when the Minister of
Information repeatedly issued warnings to the media to "behave",
we put our most sensitive items on page two. We soon heard that
Post readers were wise to our strategy, and were turning to page
two before they read the front page.

Of course, publishing a bold and critical newspaper exerted a
toll. Practically all the Post journalists and employees lived in
fear, wondering when the censorship ax would fall. Stress and
depression were the order of the day then, but it was also
invigorating to live so dangerously in the pursuit of a goal.

It was heartening when in 1996, after years of hard work, our
annual readership survey revealed that readers acknowledged the
Post not as a "Kompas in English translation", as previous
surveys showed, but on its own merits. At last the Post was
recognized and accepted as a real independent newspaper.

It was also a day of celebration on April 25, 1997, the 14th
anniversary of The Jakarta Post, when the paper's paid
circulation reached a record high of 50,000 copies. By then, we
had also reached our goal in changing the readership composition:
the ratio of our Indonesian readers was 65 percent compared to 35
percent expatriates.

In term of quality journalism, the Post takes pride in the
biggest scoop in Indonesian press history as the only newspaper
that broke the news of Soeharto's impending resignation on the
morning of May 21, 1998.

His long-awaited departure ushered in the era of reformasi,
and at last the Indonesian press gained its hard-fought freedom.
As we have found out, freedom also brings new challenges, but
that is another story.

Regimes may change, but there is always somebody up there in
the corridors of power, or in the society, who hates freedom of
the press. And some of them also carry a big stick and will not
hesitate to use it against the media and journalists. We have
learned a good, valuable and lasting lesson: Freedom must be
fought for and defended.