Press council yet to respond to Ical’s complaint

The Indonesian Press Council says they need time to verify former Coordinating Minister for People’s Welfare Aburizal “Ical” Bakrie’s complaint that certain media organizations wrongly reported he met with graft suspect Gayus H. Tambunan in Bali.

The council will ask the media organizations to apologize should they find the groups violated journalistic codes of conduct and ethics, Press Council head Bagir Manan said Wednesday.

“During the mediation process, we usually ask the concerned media to apologize if we discover they failed to adhere to journalistic standards in their reports, such as publishing rumors without covering both sides and doing cross-checks,” Bagir said.

The council’s recommendation would depend on the agreement made between the media organizations and Aburizal, he said.

Aburizal reported five media organizations to the Press Council through his lawyers. Those media are Kompas daily; Media Indonesia daily and its web site mediaindonesia.com; SCTV, its Liputan 6 program and its web site liputan6.com; Metro TV and its site metrotvnews.com and news portal detik.com.

Aburizal appeared in the media spotlight after Gayus was discovered watching a tennis match in Nusa Dua, Bali, when he was supposed to be at the Kelapa Dua detention center in Depok, West Java. Aburizal was in Bali at the same time.

Speculation was rife that Gayus had met Aburizal in Bali, as Gayus had previously stated that as a tax official he had accepted bribes from three Bakrie companies to falsify tax documents. Representatives from those companies have denied Gayus’ allegations.