The Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) is seeking to censor reality television shows and infotainment news on TV.

KPI chairman Dadang Rahmat cited complaints from several community groups about biased reporting that prompted the censorship plan.

“We will discuss this issue soon due to complaints coming from various parties,” he said at the end of the KPI four-day meeting, attended by its 28 provincial branches.

He added that complaints had come from media workers, observers and the public.

Dadang said KPI data showed that 35 percent of the 400 complaints received through text messages, telephone and email criticized the quality of infotainment shows and branded them as not being educative and violating journalistic ethics.

KPI said the infotainment and reality programs on television stations — apart from TV news channels such as TVOne and MetroTV — dominated the airwaves with an average of 40 percent of total airtime.

Dadang said the KPI would meet the Press Council to discuss the issue and seek a possible reclassification of reality shows and infotainment slots as being non-factual, compared to factual news.

This would mean both forms of programming would fall into the same category as soap operas and must go through the Film Censorship Board before being aired.

Infotainment has drawn controversy due the nature of the news, which many criticize for airing rumors rather than facts. Critics also say infotainment workers are not news journalists by profession.

The controversy peaked last year when Nahdlatul Ulama, the country’s largest Muslim organization, labelled infotainment programs as forbidden by Islam.

But the Indonesian Journalists Association (PWI) hit back, saying infotainment workers had the right to call themselves news journalists.

Dadang said the KPI had in the past year included infotainment and reality shows as factual pro-grams that could be aired without being censored in the hopes that private TV stations and production houses could improve the quality of programming to become more educational by including journalistic elements.

However, he said, both types of programs failed to meet journalistic standards and tended to be engineered and create public confusion.

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