Verdict on 'Tempo' and a lesson from it

Ardimas Sasdi, Jakarta

Thursday's court verdict on Tempo magazine, which has been in a long and costly legal battle with businessman Tomy Winata, will set the tone and direction of the development of the magazine and the Indonesian press in the future.

For the respected weekly, which is regarded as the Indonesian equivalent of U.S.-based Time magazine for its excellent investigative reporting, the verdict is important as it will have a great impact on the survival of Tempo and other publications that operate within the second largest media group in the country after the Kompas group. Over the last two years of trials, which also involved the magazine's sister paper, the Koran Tempo daily, the legal costs have drained the coffers of the group as well as the energy of their top decision-makers.

Tempo, which was closed down by Soeharto in 1994 for publishing reports critical of his government's policies, has a long love and hate relationship with officialdom. In the various civil and criminal trials related to Tomy's allegations, it has lost four of seven cases so far and has been ordered to pay the well-connected businessman more than US$1.5 million in damages over other reports. Those cases are still pending appeal.

In this week's verdict, the magazine faces criminal charges by government prosecutors for defaming the private citizen and businessman in a March 2003 article. That article, according to the government, allegedly insinuated that Tomy, who has no official position in the government, may have been involved in the massive fire at a Jakarta textile market in hopes of securing a government contract for the rebuilding work. Media experts have said that Tempo's reports on the matter were fair and balanced.

The verdict, which is scheduled to be delivered by the court on Sept. 16, will have ramifications far beyond Tempo's newsroom. It could adversely impact our hard-won press freedom, specifically, and in a broader sense, Indonesian democracy, if the court declares Tempo guilty of criminal defamation.

The already hostile public, especially politically well- connected figures, will be more encouraged to settle problems with the media using the colonial-era criminal laws, instead of using the modern 1999 Press Law, which calls for mechanisms like the right of reply, correction and clarification to settle many disputes.

But more damaging is that a guilty verdict will discourage the media from carrying out their journalistic mission, and will relegate it to being impotent like it was during the 32-year Soeharto era. Thus the nascent democracy, which has flourished over the past six years, will suffer, if not disappear. Soeharto imposed strict controls on the media and exploited it for the maintenance of his authoritarian regime.

Leo S. Batubara, a member of the Press Council, said the Tempo trials were important because they were not an isolated case, but part of a troubling trend over the past three years targeting the media. Marimutu Sinivasan, the owner of an ailing business group, also sued Kompas daily for US$1 million, for defamation, but the case was settled out of court.

The other big cases pitting prominent figures against the media that have landed in the courts, included Tempo vs. Sinivasan, Tempo vs. Tomy, Koran Tempo vs. Tomy, Rakyat Merdeka vs. President Megawati Soekarnoputri and Rakyat Merdeka vs. Speaker of the House of Representatives Akbar Tandjung.

Megawati successfully sued Rakyat Merdeka on charges of defamation for running headlines and cartoons ridiculing her, a common journalistic practice in mature democracies like the U.S. or England. Rakyat Merdeka's editor received a six-month suspended prison sentence in the case involving Megawati, but he remains free pending an appeal.

Critics blamed the travails affecting the media on the corrupt judiciary, which continues to use the criminal law inherited from the pre-1945 version of the Dutch colonial laws to try cases involving the media instead of the 1999 Press Law. The new law stipulates that a court trial should be a last resort.

A study done by U.S. and European academics in Eastern European countries in 1991, which were just two years removed from strict totalitarianism, showed that problems encountered by the press in the former Soviet bloc were extensive.

The study concluded that the expansion of press freedom in those countries took place during a period of a real transition, where old laws had lost their legitimacy. The erstwhile regulating agencies had been deprived of their power or dissolved while new ones had not yet been promulgated or established to take their place. In the transitional period, where the press operated without clear laws and regulations, real news gave way to yellow journalism and sensationalism.

Patrick H.O. Neil, a leading expert who authored the report from that study, blamed the problems in East Europe on an inability on the part of the societies concerned -- the public, the politicians and the journalistic profession -- to assimilate the newly gained freedom and to use it in ways that sustained the establishment of democratic politics.

The attitude of the Indonesian elite was similar in that they were less than thrilled by the new press freedom. If upset by press reports, certain parties initially organized mobs to attack journalists and media offices, but lately they have used the legal system to hurt the media via whopping lawsuits. The aim is to punish the media, not so much to defend their name and honor.

In the face of the new threat, publishers and executives have become the defendants, and most of the complainants have hired prominent lawyers, and have been able to back up their cases and prove that some of the media reports were inaccurate, biased or libelous. They also failed to respect the privacy of the news sources. The mass media, who some say has gotten out of control and chaotic since the beginning of the reform era, has made some blunders due to poor standards in the newsrooms and a lack of professionalism attributed to poor education and training of the journalists and managers.

Drawing a lesson from the press in the Eastern European countries, the Indonesian media has no option but to improve its standards in the newsrooms, while journalists must be ready to take a risk even if this means jail if they believe they are right. Some American journalists, for example, stood by the sacred journalistic code and chose serve out prison terms for contempt of court rather than unveiling their sources in court.

The Tempo case is a litmus test for free press and we cannot afford inaction. The journalistic profession, the politicians, the government and the judiciary, must sit down together to find solutions acceptable to all parties in order to save the media and more importantly democracy.

The author is a staff writer for the Jakarta Post and can be contacted at ajambak@berkeley.edu