U.S. diplomat laments RI media bias

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A United States diplomat complained on Thursday about what she called "imbalanced reporting" on the war in Iraq by the Indonesian media.

Speaking during a discussion organized by 68H news radio station, a member of the U.S. Embassy's Public Affairs department Greta Morris suggested that the local media should publish more accurate stories on the U.S. and its allies.

"Sometimes, I'd like to see more balanced coverage of this issue," she said,

Morris questioned why local media rarely, not to say never, provided their readers or audience with the information sent by the U.S. Embassy here about the suffering of Iraqis under President Saddam Hussein's administration or the assistance given by the U.S. and its coalition to the Iraqis during the war.

"It is as if there are threats against local media that use such publications," she said.

When a journalist in the audience demanded that she make a clarification, Morris seemed to suggest that the threats might come from thugs or other groups who insisted that the local media take sides with Iraq.

"It's not easy to say, but I respect the local media as they are facing a bit of a difficult situation here," she said without elaborating.

Ulil Abshar Abdalla of the Liberal Islam Network (JIL) said that it was hard for the media, either foreign or local, to stay balanced in their coverage of the Iraq war.

"Some foreign media, mostly U.S-based, are pro-U.S., while many say that Al Jazeera tends to support Iraq," he stated, referring to the Qatar-based news television channel.

Ulil said that the tendency was a result of the media intention to fulfill the wishes of their readers or audience.

"It's a challenge for the media to remain balanced in their reports of the war," he said.

Both Morris and Ulil praised the local media for not supporting the idea that the U.S.-led attack on Iraq is a war against Islam.

Uni Lubis of the TV7 television channel, which relays Al Jazeera news, claimed that the media must decide their position on the war.

"It's not about supporting the U.S. or Iraq. Once the war claims the lives of civilians, then the media must take the side of humanity," she said, explaining the reasons why most local media published reports of civilian casualties more than the war itself.

Another speaker, Eryanto of the Institute for the Studies on the Free Flow of Information (ISAI), suggested that local media select the abundant flow of reports from foreign sources and develop balanced reports from them.

"The media must be critical and logical. Always consider reports from foreign sources as raw material which needs developing," he said, criticizing local media which often took foreign sources for granted.

Several Indonesian journalists were sent to Iraq before the war began, however, most of them could not cover the war directly from Baghdad for a variety of reasons. They now report from neighboring countries such as Kuwait or Jordan to cover the war.

Therefore, most media here rely on foreign news agencies for all accounts of the Iraq war.