The Indonesian press enters the election year with uncertainty as a growing number of less bonafide newspapers and untrained reporters come into the market while the election law is ready to send journalists to prison.
Because of Indonesia’s style of democracy – maybe this is the only country in the world which holds local elections on average every two days – lots of candidates find themselves locked in marriages of convenience with “editors” who would be very happy to print anything for money.
The Kompas editorial (Dec. 30, 2008) noted there were 139 local elections, for gubernatorial, mayoralty, and regent/ district chief levels, in 2008 alone.
At least 10 articles in the election law can send journalists to prison on top of the 35 articles of the draconian penal code — a legacy of the Dutch colonial period — which the police love to use, plus other laws including the Electronic Transaction Information Law.
The General Elections Commission (KPU) said more than 11,300 candidates from 34 political parties were competing in the national parliamentary elections in April vying for the 550 parliamentary seats. The presidential elections follow in July.
Before the fall of former president Soeharto in 1998, when a license was required to publish a newspaper, there were only 289 print media across the country. According to the Newspaper Publishers Association (SPS), there are now more than 800 print media; one half of them are its members.
However, that is only an approximate figure because some newspapers publish once or twice and then die, or they reappear weeks or months later under different names. So no one knows how many newspapers actually exist in Indonesia, maybe not even God.
Some tabloids are allegedly extorting money by blackmailing private companies or “dirty” officials in order to survive.
According to Leo Batubara of the SPS, only 30 percent of the print media in Indonesia are healthy, management-wise; of the remaining 70 percent, half are “sick” and the rest are waiting for their requiems. Since the number of “sick” newspapers is much, much higher than the mainstream media, the public, who mostly cannot see the difference between the two, often generalize and blame all newspapers as if they are all already kebablasan, excessive, overdoing it.
Despite the large number of “sick” print media, the biggest portion of Indonesia’s 19 million total newspaper circulation in 2008 was still provided by the mainstream, 7.1 million, according to the SPS.
The disobedience of some journalists to the code of ethics and the violations of the press law by a number of media outlets has angered sections of the public, who cannot see the difference between the mainstream and the gutter press. Strongest protests, particularly against pornography, came from organizations like the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) and the Anti-Pornography Society.
The Press Council finally urged the SPS to draft its own regulations in order to protect the public and itself. In late November 2008, many adult magazines began to put an extra sheet of paper or black plastic to conceal the “interesting” parts of their cover page.
During the Soeharto era newspapers were only published in the provincial capitals. Today every kabupaten (regency/district) capital has at least one or two regularly published dailies and between four and 10 irregularly published dailies or tabloids. Indonesia now has some 520 regencies, 90 towns and at least 55 administrative towns.
It is encouraging to see that newspapers have reached a much wider readership. The problem is what kind of information people get. It has become a common practice throughout the country that bupati (regents/district chiefs) have contracts with one or two of their respective local dailies or tabloids to publish two pages per issue about their regencies, at Rp 2 million per page. Thus in a month the tabloid earns Rp 4 million per issue, or Rp 16 million per month, and it could conveniently continue publishing every week without advertisements.
But with such a lucrative contract, could the particular paper still be expected to publish objective and impartial stories about their bupati or kabupaten? Could it still be expected to carry out its social control function? There is a saying in Indonesian which means, “A dog will not bite the hand of the person who feeds it”.
It is also a common practice among provincial governors and regents to allocate a certain amount of the local budget to finance their own media, generally managed and operated by their respective public relations officers as chief editors; and they issue press cards.
It is not strange, therefore, to see that those newspapers support their respective masters. And it is in such a condition the Indonesian press enters the election year.
The writer is chairman of the Public Complaint Commission of the Press Council and lecturer at Dr. Soetomo Press Institute.
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