World Press Freedom Day 2002: The face of RI media

Claire Harvey, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Four years of reformasi have given Indonesia a vibrant, lively, diverse media filled with important stories and ethical journalists and probing analysis.

But today, across Indonesia, some journalists will be threatened and intimidated and harassed. Some journalists will take envelopes stuffed with money from government officials to supplement their meager wages. Other reporters will simply make up salacious stories to please their editors. Politicians will complain over their breakfast cereal about the gossipy, irresponsible press. And in some anonymous government buildings, bureaucrats will decide whether certain foreign reporters are worthy of the right to cover Indonesia.

Everyone knows Indonesia's press is loud and critical, but is it really free?

To celebrate World Press Freedom Day, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is hosting a seminar on Friday with speakers including Media Indonesia editor Saur Hutabarat, legal academic Harkristuti Harkrisnowo and lawyer Hotma Sitompoel.

Arya Gunawan, coordinator of UNESCO Indonesia's communications sector, says there have been several "disturbing" threats to press freedom over the past six months, including suggestions by President Megawati Soekarnoputri and other politicians that the media should be more "responsible".

"Even Tommy Soeharto's lawyers are complaining that their client has already been tried by the media. There have been so many influential figures attacking the media in the last few months -- it's really important that we guarantee the media's freedom now."

Columnist Wimar Witoelar says freedom of the press is one of the most significant achievements of the past four years.

But this freedom is threatened by the present political regime and by the media's own love of sensationalism, says Wimar, the former presidential spokesman for Abdurrahman Wahid and now visiting professor of journalism at Australia's Deakin University.

"We have a free press, but it takes a lot of energy to keep it free," Wimar said.

"Every entrenched power seeks to compromise that freedom and we must always resist those efforts. At the same time, the freedom has often been abused -- it is up to the press themselves to see that the freedom is put to best use."

Some media have taken their newfound liberty too far, Wimar said.

"Scandals are all right if they have some substance, but a sensationalist press, a negative press which seeks to glorify individuals who are publicity seekers is not really free."

The number of press publications has exploded from about 300 in 1998 to more than 700 now, there are now 10 TV stations and the number of radio stations has risen from 800 to over 1200, says Indonesian Press Council chair Atmakusumah Astraatmadja.

But the problem is there are simply not enough trained journalists to meet the massive demand for copy.

Tempo magazine journalist Ignatius Haryanto has set up the Institute for the Study and Development of the Press (LSPP), which produces research publications on the media and stages workshops on basic journalistic skills.

Haryanto has just returned from a workshop in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, where he said the practice of government officials and companies giving reporters amplop -- or envelopes stuffed with money in return for positive coverage -- is widespread.

"Approximately 80 per cent of journalists in a place like Kupang take amplop -- and that is true for the rest of Indonesia," Haryanto said. "The problem is they are not paid enough -- a graduate journalist earns as little as Rp 200,000 (US$22) a month, so it's no wonder they are tempted," he said.

"It's really up to press owners to pay journalists decent wages -- otherwise their publications will never really be free or independent."

Haryanto found another problem in Kupang was teaching journalists the importance of balance.

"Often journalists don't think they have to get confirmation or comments from both sides of a story, and when it comes to reporting an issue like refugees, many journalists are simply biased against the refugees and describe them in disparaging terms. We teach them the importance of using language carefully in conflict situations, because tensions can flare up so easily."

Ati Nurbaiti, chairperson of the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), criticizes President Megawati Soekarnoputri's decision to ban "doorstop" impromptu press conferences for herself and Vice President Hamzah Haz.

"If the government allocated enough time for proper press conferences, like the President of the United States does, then we wouldn't have to doorstop her," Nurbaiti said.

"Megawati criticizes the press for being irresponsible but it would seem she only reads the sensational media, not the responsible press. If she judges the media on tabloid headlines, she is missing the point."

AJI is pushing for a guarantee of press freedom in the Constitution, and wants the government to drop its planned law on state secrecy and anti-terrorism.

Indonesia's foreign media community was shocked in March by the foreign ministry's decision to deny Australian reporter Lindsay Murdoch a new journalist's visa.

The foreign ministry described this as a "technical issue," but Murdoch's editors at the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age said he was being punished for alleging human rights abuses by Indonesian military.

Don Greenlees, chair of the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents' Club and Jakarta correspondent for The Australian newspaper, says his letters requesting an explanation for Murdoch's expulsion from Megawati and senior Cabinet ministers have been ignored.

"We've had concerns over the past four years about certain incidents when our members reporting in the field have come under some sort of duress -- but successive governments have been quite good in dealing with the foreign press and the domestic press," Greenlees said.

"Free press is an integral part of democracy -- in fact without a free press, you don't have democracy at all."