'Tempo' editor gets a year

Urip Hudiono, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

The Central Jakarta District Court found Tempo weekly guilty on Thursday of publishing false material and libel, and sentenced chief editor Bambang Harymurti to a suspended one-year jail term. The court, however, acquitted the journalists who wrote the article in question.

The differing verdicts was the result of the judges decision to take into consideration only certain aspects of the Press Law in determining who should be held accountable in respect of the libel complaint filed by well-connected businessman Tomy Winata.

"As regards press freedom, which is a vital ingredient of democracy, the court has taken into consideration Law No. 40/1999 on the press as the principal legislation covering all matters concerning the media," presiding judge Suripto said.

"However, as the court has also evidence from expert witnesses to the effect that this legislation does not deal specifically about misleading information and libel, the court must also refer to other legislation."

Defendants Bambang, Ahmad Taufik and Teuku Iskandar Ali were prosecuted for violating Article 14 of Law No. 1/1946 on publishing false material that could lead to public unrest, as well as Articles 310 and 311 of the Criminal Code on defamation.

Titled Is Tomy in Tenabang?, the article in question, which was published in the weekly's March 3-9, 2003 edition, referred to Tomy as a "big scavenger" and insinuated that he was involved in the fire that gutted the Tanah Abang textile market on Feb. 19, 2003, so as to allow him to press ahead with a redevelopment project.

Taking turns reading the verdict with judicial panel members Kusriyanto and Ridwan Mansyur, Suripto explained that the defendants could not provide conclusive proof that there had in fact been a redevelopment plan as stated in the article, while all of the relevant city officials denied that there was any such plan.

Suripto further said that the defendants had also incited public unrest as "they should have known that the an article would have had an effect on the feelings of the fire victims", and had also failed to "conclusively prove that Tomy was a scavenger, as stated."

The judges decided that Taufik and Iskandar could not be held liable, however, as under Articles 12 and 18 of the Press Law, the consequences of any violations committed by a media outlet had to be borne by its chief editor.

Speaking after the trial, Tempo lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis said that his clients would file an appeal, even for Ahmad and Iskandar, as the court had also found them guilty.

"We will appeal as the judges did not entirely base their verdicts on the Press Law or the journalist code of ethics," he said. "The defendants should have been cleared of all charges as the article adhered to all the basic principles of journalism."

The prosecutors also said they would consider an appeal as the verdict was more lenient than the two-year prison terms they had sought against each of the defendants.

Bambang expressed the hope that the high court would create a similar precedent in favor of press freedom as the United States Supreme Court had done when it overturned a guilty verdict against New York Times journalists in 1964.