The press faces plethora of challenges, constraints
The press faces plethora of challenges, constraints
Asia Paper No 4; The Press in New Order Indonesia; David T. Hill; University of Western Australia Press in association with Asia Research Center on Social, Political and Economic Change; Nedlands, Western Australia, 1994; Paperback, 185 pages; Aus$18.95
MELBOURNE (JP): One day in 1993 I took a morning stroll with an Indonesian senior editor in lovely Fremantle, Perth. We were chatting about the difficulty of having an Indonesian journalists' association that journalists found dependable, especially in a crisis.
"How can a journalists' association be dependable when it is controlled by the government?" my walking companion asked. Being an optimist, I thought the senior editor's attitude was particularly pessimistic. A year later, my then employer, Tempo, was one of the three major publications banned by the government, and the nation's recognized journalists' association was unable to prevent the closures, or take up the journalists' stance against the closures.
David T. Hill highlights the role of the press in influencing official policies, the power the government exercises over the press, and in some cases the interdependency between the Indonesian government and the press. Absent are social attitudes and who is responsible for initiating those changes.
After reading his book the reader could be forgiven for forming the impression that there were no significant women's magazines in which the shifts in social attitudes are visible and traceable.
The press in general doesn't have any external power exercised over it. While it is resigned somewhat to an over-regulated ambience in which to work, the pressure of unpredictability is the hardest to withstand. Editors and journalists are continuously aware of the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. Reporting events becomes as creative a feat as performing an arabesque in a business suit.
While the 1966 Act (No.11) on the Basic Principles of the Press declares that "No censorship or bridling shall be applied to the National Press (Chapter 2, Article 4), that Freedom of the Press is guaranteed in accordance with the fundamental rights of citizens" (Article 5.1) and that "no publication permit is needed" (Chapter 4, Article 8.2), the government nonetheless has found ways to keep a rein on the press. In Chapter 9, Article 20.1 the Act requires publishers to obtain two related permits during the "transitional period": the Permit to Publish (SIT) from the Department of Information, and the Permit to Print (SIC) from the military security authority, KOPKAMTIB. The key is the length of the transitional period is unspecified.
Then, in September 1982, still based on the transitional period principles, the Permit to Publish was replaced with a Press Publication Enterprise Permit (SIUPP). This in no way simplified proceedings. If anything, obtaining a SIUPP was much more complicated than obtaining a SIT.
Throughout the thirty years of New Order, there have been temporary and permanent bans on newspapers and magazines which were regarded as threatening national stability in one way or another. Even the government-sponsored publications, Hill observes, are not immune from the occasional editorial error of judgment. An example given is the stiff warning delivered to Suara Karya, the Golkar newspaper, by the Department of Information over an article about the Sultan of Brunei. Obviously the editor thought it was safe territory, because it was outside the recognized off-limit area: anything deemed seditious, insinuating, sensational, speculative, or likely to antagonize ethnic, religious, racial or class tensions.
The most controversial, surprising and recent censures were the June 1994 banning of Tempo, DeTIK and Editor. It happened after the maturing of the press industry, to the extent that it became an attractive investment for big capital. Hill notes members of the ruling party and the first family, or close associates of the above, as investors in many publications. And in 1994 the Indonesian readers were enjoying what appeared to be a continuing relaxation of press restrictions. The bans surprised the public so much that opposition sprung up everywhere, across the political spectrum. Even senior military officers publicly distanced themselves from this particular government action, saying that the bans were "unwanted, regrettable and should not have happened."
On another level, the trend to invest in the press industry continues. The concern is whether these big investors will gain control over editorial content. If that were to become the case, the losers would be editors and journalists whose jobs would be like a continuous pas de deux with each partner holding a remote control to each other's pacemaker.
Hill nonetheless has cautions optimism for the future of the Indonesian press. He hopes that the popular democratization movement will make accountability increasingly relevant. This would undermine any attempt to maintain a blanket control of the political process and of the media.
-- Dewi Anggraeni