The foreign minister's article

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