'Uncertainty creates anxiety in the press'
'Uncertainty creates anxiety in the press'
DEPOK, West Java (JP): The government controls the press by sending editors unclear signals as to what degree of freedom is allowed, an expert says.
This method has been forcing the press to engage in guessing games, said Dr. Harsono Suwardi, a political communication scientist at the University of Indonesia (UI), 30 kilometers south of here.
In an oration marking his UI professorship, he discussed how the government exercises control over the press. Harsono also dealt with the press' attempts to exploit recent political "openness".
Harsono pointed out that the prevailing axiom of "a free and responsible press" applied by the government represents control of the press, albeit in no absolute form.
"History has shown," he said, "that the so-called press freedom here actually serves as an indication of the government's control." Press freedom is not certain, he concluded.
"This uncertainty has created anxiety in the press because it has to continuously gauge the sensitivity of the authorities. It has to rely on instincts only," Harsono said before a panel of professors led by Rector M.K. Tadjudin.
"If press control is unavoidable," he said, "it seems that we'll need a mechanism of supervision so that all parties are sure of their rights and duties."
Establishing a "fixed" mechanism of control, however, could backlash because it connotes a certain rigidity in its implementation.
Entitled Reflections on the Relationship among the Press, Government and Society in Relation to Freedom and Traditional Values, Harsono's oration also explored the press' ability to control the government.
He pointed out that Indonesia once enjoyed great press freedom, which faded away following a number of political crises in the 1970s.
For his dissertation, Harsono studied 10 major newspapers published and circulated in Java and Bali. He discovered that they tended to maintain the so-called paternalistic relationship with the authorities in order to survive.
The government has been blamed for its efforts to control the press but the press itself is not entirely innocent, he said in the dissertation.
Harsono said yesterday that the government's efforts to provide greater political leeway have been misused by some members of the press to "criticize the government in liberal manners and this has been understood as transgressing the agreed bounds".
To create a "free and responsible press", he said, all parties need a certain level of tolerance for each other.
"This virtue is really important because harmony and similarity in the approach are pre-requirements for a better relationship among the press, government and society.
Harsono is the 212th professor at the University of Indonesia and the 15th at the School of Social and Political Sciences.
Born in Tanah Merah, Irian Jaya, in 1937, Harsono now lectures in the post-graduate program of his almamater. (swe)