Page 55 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

44 Jonathan Woodier
Sudrajat clearly reflected his President’s unease with the media. During her
time in office, Megawati Sukanoputri had a troubled relationship with the press.
She reacted to criticism with the rejoinder that journalists were lacking in profes-
sionalism and were ‘biased and irresponsible’ and that the responsibility of the
national press ‘rests in its ability to protect and promote national unity’(Reporters
without Borders 2004). In November 2003, the editor of the daily newspaper,
Rakyat Merdeka, which was particularly critical of the President, was sentenced
to six months in prison for libelling the president (Hantoro and Nurhayati 2003).
This was the first time since the fall of Suharto in 1998, that a journalist had been
convicted of insulting the President.
As the pressure on the media to toe the Megawati government’s line increased, a
new broadcast law went before the Indonesian parliament in November 2002. The
law was aimed at increasing regional programming and diversifying ownership
beyond Jakarta’s business elite and the Suharto siblings. It attempted to break their
influence by revoking national licences and restricting licences to a single province
(of which Indonesia has 32), forbidding cross ownership of newspapers and TV sta-
tions, and limiting the stake allowed to foreign investors in local media to 10 per cent.
Outside commentators were sceptical: ‘in a country where capitalists were all
cronies, business and politics are not so easy to disentangle’ (The Economist
2003: 56). But what was of greater concern for journalists was the fact that the
law also proposed the limitation of foreign programmes and allowed for the estab-
lishment of a new censorship board. According to those writing it, the new legis-
lation was aimed at tackling biased reporting of Indonesia and the promotion of
Western viewpoints, at the heart of which was Indonesia’s image in the interna-
tional media as a haven for Islamic militants and terrorists. For many in the indus-
try both inside and outside Indonesia, alongside the growing number of libel and
defamation cases, it marked another move to regain control over the media, and
mirrored similar efforts by governments across the region to stem the flow of
controversial news and entertainment products.

Security in the age of a globalised media
Like its neighbours, Indonesia has been swept up by global forces both economic
and political. New technologies and transnational corporations are ‘colluding to
make all national boundaries culturally permeable’ (Sen and Hill 2000: 2). The
fingers of the globalised media industry have even reached into the farthest
islands of this dispersed archipelago, with consequences for national security in
the post 9/11 world.
Indonesia is an imagined state, cobbled together for reasons of geographic
proximity and colonial history. The Suharto government, keen to maintain its hold
on power and hold this disparate nation together, kept a tight grip on local media con-
tent, forcing broadcasters, in particular, to turn to foreign providers to fill their air
time. As a result, more than half of the programming on Indonesian television was
imported from the US, Japan, Hong Kong and India, and a similar influence was
apparent in cinema, music, magazines and literature such that it is impossible to draw
a picture of the Indonesian media without reflecting on the world beyond its national