The foreign minister's article
I refer to an article titled Sept. 11 changed American foreign policy published by The Jakarta Post on page 7 of its Dec. 11, 2003 issue. An endnote cites the article as "an abridged version of the minister's (Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia) keynote address at the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP) conference in Jakarta on Dec. 8."
In this regard, I wish to put the following on record: * Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda delivered his keynote address before a limited audience, the participants of the CSCAP conference. It is understood that the conference applied the "Chatham House rule". * The publication of the keynote address by the Post was without prior consent of the author. There was indeed a request from the Post for such consent, by way of a telephone call in the late afternoon of Dec. 9, 2003. But the request was directly and immediately turned down.
Hence, without prejudice to the content of the article, its publication without prior consent of the author poses a disturbing question of journalistic ethics.
UMAR HADI Media Relations Office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Jakarta
Note: We would like to submit the following points: a. The Chatham House rules were applicable to the discussions conducted by the Conference participants or statements conveyed regarding the speakers' statements.
Thus we did not report on the response by the U.S. Ambassador Ralph Boyce to Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda's speech when he took the floor that Monday at the end of the afternoon session. b. However, since then the U.S. ambassador has expressed his views, at least on two occasions, outside the conference hall. Those views were reported by news agencies as printed by The Jakarta Post in its Wednesday, Dec. 10 edition.
The Reuters news agency report run by the Post opens with the following lead paragraph: "In unusually blunt remarks, U.S. Ambassador Ralph Boyce said on Tuesday that Indonesia's strong criticism of Washington's Iraq policies should be kept to the proper channels and not aired in public". c. It would be odd if the readers of this newspaper became aware of the U.S. ambassador's reaction to Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda's "keynote address" before a large audience, including invited guests, while they were kept in the dark on the contents of that speech. d. Copies of Minister Wirayuda's speech were abundantly available as they were piled on a desk outside the conference hall, to be freely picked up by anybody who was interested. The only note printed on the cover page is the following reminder: "Please check against delivery". Our reporter carefully followed the delivered speech, which did not deviate from the printed text. e. When our staff editor contacted Umar Hadi's office last Tuesday, it was not to request consent to print Minister Wirayuda's speech but to obtain an electronic version of it. f. It would be helpful indeed if media relations officials of government agencies did realize that in this era of Reformasi, speeches delivered by Cabinet ministers with printed texts distributed do belong to the public domain.
--Editor