The press yet to be free of its audience

By Dewi Anggraeni

MELBOURNE (JP): Issues concerning the media in Indonesia and Australia were brought to the fore when Goenawan Mohamad, a respected poet, essayist and former editor-in-chief of Tempo newsmagazine, was invited to give the Walkleys media lecture in Melbourne earlier this month. The Walkley Awards, established in 1956 and now sponsored by a number of foundations and corporate bodies, such as Asialink, American Express International, Macquarie Dictionary, Malaysia Airlines, Myer Foundation, Australian Broadcasting Corporations, Australian Bureau of Statistics and Ozemail, are given in recognition of excellence in Australian journalism.

In his lecture, Goenawan pointed to a study by the Jakarta- based Institute for the Study of the Free Flow of Information (ISAI), which he founded. ISAI's study revealed biases on the part of both Indonesian and Australian media in their reporting of the East Timor conflict.

While the Indonesian media studied by ISAI mainly relied on officials, politicians and non-governmental organization activists for information, the Australian media, like many other foreign media, gave considerably more space to the views of pro- East Timor independence UN spokespersons and Western government and military leaders. The Sydney Morning Herald, a widely respected mainstream publication in Australia, according to the study, on three occasions compared the loss of lives in East Timor to the extermination of Jews by the Nazis.

"Comparing the tragedy of the East Timorese with six million Jews exterminated in the holocaust is misleading hyperbole," said Goenawan.

It appears that while most of the Indonesian media failed to investigate the Indonesian Military's involvement in the post- referendum savagery, the Australian media tended to blow already atrocious situations out of proportion, heaping the blame indiscriminately on Indonesia.

Interestingly, in Indonesia, in this post-New Order era of media freedom, the issue of accuracy of information has shifted from being continuously alert in performing a creative pas de deux with Big Brother, to maintaining equanimity on the part of journalists and editors when covering highly sensitive and rage- provoking events.

Goenawan observes that, in relation to reporting on East Timor, the Indonesian media still had a problem in dealing with their collective sense of guilt and embarrassment on behalf of its country.

Supposing this is true, with the additional pressure of continuous outside attacks on their national pride, they obviously became defensive, even bordering on counteroffensive.

Here we are faced with an interesting thought; can the media be completely independent from the moods and sentiments prevalent in the community? Goenawan believes that a newspaper is never simply a creation of its editor and publisher. It is also a creature of its own audience.

This might explain the tendency of the Australian media to direct their anger at Indonesia, as well as apportion blame on the country, in relation to East Timor. Among Australians, East Timor's struggle for independence from Indonesia assumed the biblical dimensions of the contest between David and Goliath.

And most Australians still hang on to the ethos of defending the underdog. In the early 1940s for example, they took Indonesia's side against the Dutch.

A dilemma then presents itself; how far can the media be detached from the prevailing values in the community? Can a journalist safely walk the tightrope balancing the truth on one side and personal and collective outrage on the other?

Goenawan quoted a veteran British journalist who told him: "In stories about war and cruelty, when our passion for justice tips the scale, often truth is the first casualty."

This problem is made even more serious in an era where the reach, the speed and the quantity of information are increasingly bedazzling. "The ideal reader," said Goenawan, "has become an elusive concept. You write a story and the publisher puts it online, and you are no longer sure who will read you, in which part of the world, and at what time of the day."

This puts additional responsibility on journalists, who ideally have to keep in mind what the reader already knows and what the reader is unaware of, because a particular story written in a particular manner would have a different impact on readers with different degrees of existing knowledge.

Goenawan's lecture did not give a recipe for the perfect journalistic piece, but did provide food for thought, if the number and nature of questions asked afterward could be used as a gauge.

The writer is a free-lance journalist based in Melbourne.