Sweden assists in introducing public service broadcasting in Indonesia
Sweden assists in introducing public service broadcasting in Indonesia
The democratization of Indonesia has made the development of
free and independent media possible. Since the Ministry of
Information was abolished in 1999, the role of state-run radio
and television stations has been discussed.
This debate led the Indonesian government to convert Radio
Republik Indonesia (RRI), previously part of the Ministry of
Information, into a state-owned nonprofit public service
enterprise.
RRI has started this conversion process, defining new
objectives of a public service radio and restructuring the
organization, facing the most extensive changes in the history of
public broadcasting in Indonesia.
In order to reach these overall objectives RRI addressed the
issue to Swedish Broadcasting Corporation (SR) and the Media
Development Office at SR. The idea from RRI was to get useful
knowledge and experience from SR on how a state-owned nonprofit
public service enterprise could be run.
This contact has now resulted in a pilot project called
"Introducing Public Service Broadcasting in Indonesia". The
project started on Jan. 1 this year and it will run until the end
of the first quarter of 2002.
The main objective of the project, from SR's part, is to
assist in the process of introducing public service broadcasting
on the principles of an independent radio distanced from all
vested interest and available for everybody.
A radio providing information, education and entertainment,
and reflecting different tastes and interest in society. Thus the
idea of the project is that RRI is going to be able to work in a
fundamentally opposite way to the way it did in the past.
The idea is not to implement a Swedish way of making public
service broadcasting. Rather the idea, from the Swedish part, is
to assist with valuable knowledge in the process and to assist
RRI in introducing principles of public service broadcasting,
which can be adapted to the Indonesian context.
The SR personnel will provide advice and training through
seminars (in Jakarta, Medan, Yogyakarta, and Jayapura) and
practical work on starting new radio programs.
The project reaches national, regional and local stations
within RRI. Activities include development of management of the
radio stations of RRI, on-the-job training, production training,
and audience research.
This last part indicates that one objective is to have the
listeners involved, through having selected consensus groups
consisting of different spectrums of the Indonesian society, in
deciding what kind of contents the public service broadcasting
should have in the future.
In order to reach the objectives, different radio stations
within RRI has been selected as pilot cases and the idea is that
the project's elaborated model can be replicated and used in
other departments and radio stations in Indonesia.
The intention is that this will result in a public service
broadcasting for and by the people and not, as in the past,
public service broadcasting directed toward the people in a top-
down style.