The American journalists I accompanied on a 2008 trip found plenty to admire about their Indonesian colleagues. They had camped out with guerillas in the jungles of Aceh, gone undercover to report on human trafficking in Kalimantan, been threatened and beaten up by police, soldiers, and hired thugs, been accused of inciting social and religious discord, faced lawsuits from politicians and business owners, and seen their organizations pressured by special interests and advertisers.
David Smith, a photojournalist from Cincinnati TV station WXIX, said that their experiences made his own daily concerns pale by comparison. “They’re facing real danger,” he said, “and we’re complaining about the parking situation at city hall.”
A decade after the fall of Suharto’s New Order regime, the journalists were still groping their way through a forest of shifting political and business alliances, balancing newfound freedoms against new pressures. They talked earnestly about the role of media in educating people, to make them aware of democracy and to serve as a watchdog on government and special interests. At the same time, they were conscious of the responsibilities that freedom brings in a diverse society.
“Before 1998, there was friendly persuasion,” Luki Sutrisni of the national newspaper Media Indonesia told us. “The censors would call and tell you to be careful about what you wrote on an issue. It wasn’t direct interference. We camouflaged how we felt and hid behind words.” Those who resisted faced economic and legal pressures; in June 1994, Suharto ordered the closure of the leading news magazine, Tempo, and two other weeklies.
Most formal restrictions on news were removed after Suharto’s fall, but old habits of media repression die hard. Political and religious groups, corporations, and the military still attempt to influence coverage and are not afraid to wield a range of weapons—from pressure on advertisers and expensive-to-defend libel suits to physical intimidation. Mobs have attacked newspaper offices, destroying equipment and injuring staff, and forced radio and TV stations to suspend broadcasting. “The enemy is faceless—you don’t know who you’ll offend when you cover a demonstration,” said Arief Suditomo, editor-in-chief of the TV network RCTI.
There is also a history of corruption, the so-called practice of envelope journalism, where reporters are paid to present stories with a certain slant. One reason is economic: journalists’ salaries, particularly in the provinces, are often very low. Culture is also a factor: in Indonesian society, it is considered rude to reject a gift. Many journalists who accept “the envelope” form close relationships with business and political elites. Those who refuse or criticize the practice have been harassed by the police and others in power.
Conflict coverage is particularly sensitive. A tried-and-trusted tactic by government and military officials to restrict coverage is to accuse the media of inciting violence through its reporting. “We try to avoid stories that could cause disorder,” one Metro TV journalist told us, while admitting that it was impossible to predict the impact of a story. “We try not to show footage of victims and bodies, and we identify combatants by their villages, not by their religion.” Another who had covered the conflict in Maluku said that he was able to provide balanced reports by traveling with two press cards: one identified him as Muslim, one as a Christian.
In his office in central Jakarta, we met the grand old man of Indonesian journalism, the modest, soft-spoken Jakob Oetama. Born into a middle-class Catholic family in Central Java in 1931, he worked as a teacher before becoming editor of a weekly newspaper. In 1965, he and a colleague, the ethnic Chinese P. K. Ojong, with the support of the Catholic political party, started the newspaper Kompas (Compass) to counter propaganda from the Indonesian Communist Party. A few years later, with Suharto in power and the Communists crushed, Kompas dropped its political affiliations to become an independent newspaper, or at least as independent as any could be under the New Order regime. Its daily circulation grew from under five thousand to more than half a million in 2015, making it the largest national newspaper in Indonesia. Oetama, now 87, manages the Kompas Gramedia empire, with at least fifty print publications, a TV network, and interests in the property sector. He is still active in journalism, campaigning for professional standards and independence.
“I am a Catholic, educated by Jesuits, but the newspaper is for general readers,” Oetama told us. “I believe in freedom with social responsibility. Freedom has its limits. We try to express this positively and when we cover religious issues, we are careful not to hurt any parties.” Oetama worries about his country’s fragile democracy and political institutions. “Democracy is in the making, in transition. I am concerned how it can survive with so many political parties and factions. Every issue needs to be discussed in parliament, so progress is slow. Our nation is a talking democracy—what we need is a working democracy.”
I wondered how, in such a volatile situation, Kompas and its sister media maintained their independence. Oetama smiled. “It’s simple,” he said. “We are not a publicly traded company. If we were, we would lose our independence.”
Another perspective on rights and responsibilities came at Republika, Indonesia’s largest mainstream Islamic newspaper. It was founded by Islamic scholars in 1993, with future Indonesian president B. J. Habibie as its first chairman. Although it has less than half the daily circulation of Kompas, its owners claim each copy is read by at last four people and is shared among students at pesantrens, the Islamic boarding schools. Today, Republika is part of a group that includes media for general and targeted audiences—TV and radio stations, a Mandarin-language newspaper, and sports magazines, including the Indonesian Golf Digest. As radical Islamic groups have gained strength, Republika has attempted to represent many views while ultimately serving as the voice of moderate Islam.
“Muslims must turn to Mecca five times a day to pray,” said then editor-in-chief Syaiful Syam, “but Republika needs to turn both right and left because of the diversity of the Muslim community. Our message is that every Muslim must create peace within himself. Islam should spread peace and protect every group in society.”
Syam said that there was little difference between Republika and secular newspapers in the topics covered—the usual mix of politics, business, culture, and sports—but the sources and perspectives differed. “We focus on the mainstream Islamic community while still providing a forum for liberal and fundamentalist views,” he said. In conflict reporting, Republika journalists avoid words that identify religious groups. But, as Syam noted, “it’s not easy to run an Islamic newspaper and offer balance.” He cited the example of polygamy, which is legal in Indonesia. “Modern Muslims reject polygamy, but if the newspaper does not support it, some leaders get mad and we have demonstrations outside the office.”