The 'Reuters' plot

Mr. Farid Baskoro (The Jakarta Post's "Your Letters", July 15 1996) -- so confrontational and so hasty to make assumptions. He assumes that because I am a Westerner I shop in London, because I am a woman I have plenty of time to read romantic novels, probably don't have a career and have never stared into the face of evil - wrong. He also assumes that I think all Western journalists are objective -- wrong, but unlike Mr. Baskoro I don't believe that they are all biased. He also assumes that I don't accept that the western press dominate global news -- wrong again. I would be truly dull-witted if I did not notice how many reports, even in The Jakarta Post, originate in London with Reuters.

Perhaps the reason why the Western press is so prolific is because there is freedom of speech and that libel is a civil offense, not a criminal one. Consequently journalists who stick their neck out risk losing their livelihood, not their freedom or their life. If Mr. Baskoro took time to reflect he would realize he spends too much time jumping to conclusions and trying to read between the lines, and not enough time soberly establishing what is fact and what a figment of his imagination.

He also hasn't explained why he felt a reporter asking a perfectly natural question at the airshow was belittling his country. Perhaps he can't really explain it.

Thank you for your suggestion that I might contact your press officers, but I ought to tell you that my interests do not lie so much with journalism but with another great bastion of truth, the law. Besides, how would I find the time ? Too busy browsing through the travel section in a bookstore and feeding my brain with a junk diet of trashy novels. I wonder whether you would have slandered my taste in reading matter differently if you had not realized that I am a woman?

ANNE-MARIE TAPP

Cilegon, West Java