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.