Jakarta Globe, 25 February 2011
Cabinet Secretary Dipo Alam, who caused a stir with his call to boycott certain media organizations, has agreed to mediation with the groups in question but has ruled out issuing an apology. At a discussion hosted by the Press Council on Thursday, the secretary said he had made the controversial statement this week to put media organizations in their place.
“I criticized the media so that they don’t become institutions that [think they] can do no wrong,” he said. Dipo said he was often asked by discouraged foreign investors about the social conflicts and political bickering widely reported in some of the country’s media outlets.
Cabinet Secretary Dipo Alam, who caused a stir with his call to boycott certain media organizations, has agreed to mediation with the groups in question but has ruled out issuing an apology. At a discussion hosted by the Press Council on Thursday, the secretary said he had made the controversial statement this week to put media organizations in their place.
“I criticized the media so that they don’t become institutions that [think they] can do no wrong,” he said. Dipo said he was often asked by discouraged foreign investors about the social conflicts and political bickering widely reported in some of the country’s media outlets.
“Does that kind of news reporting benefit all of us?” he asked the room full of journalists. He said the point of his criticism was that the media had not provided enough information to the public about what the government had achieved in spite the challenges it faced.
“This is for the nation’s own interests,” Dipo said, adding that his lambasting the media was not meant to please anybody. “I’m doing my task and my job and I’m not afraid of being reshuffled [as a consequence]. If it has to happen today, I’m ready.”
Dipo also used Thursday’s discussion to stress that a Twitter account set up in the wake of his controversial remarks, @dipoalam46, was a hoax and did not belong to him, saying “I’m not that tech-savvy.”
He further stated that no government ministries or institutions had actually taken up his call to boycott placing ads in the media outlets in question, or turned down interviews with their journalists.
“I’m not that powerful,” he said. “The public relations department of each ministry is answerable to the respective ministries’ management, and I can’t order them to [start a boycott].”
The dispute began on Monday when Dipo called on government institutions to begin an advertising boycott against media organizations that portrayed Indonesia as a “messy and dark” country.
On Tuesday, he accused TVOne, Metro TV and Media Indonesia newspaper of spreading hatred toward the government through their news reports.
TVOne is owned by influential tycoon and Golkar Party chairman Aburizal Bakrie, while Metro TV and Media Indonesia are the properties of media magnate Surya Paloh, a former Golkar heavyweight who now chairs the National Democrat social organization.
In the wake of the boycott call, Surya had demanded that Dipo apologize. However, a representative from TVOne, Agung Ruliyanto, said the broadcaster would take Dipo’s criticism as feedback and would not demand an apology from the cabinet secretary.
“We’ll just follow the mediation process being facilitated by the Press Council,” Agung said.
Press Council deputy chairman Bambang Harymurti, speaking at Thursday’s discussion, said he supported limiting government advertising in media outlets that failed to adhere to journalistic ethics.
“We don’t want the hard-earned taxpayers’ money to be spent on media organizations ignorant of the code of ethics,” he said.
Press Council member Ridlo Eisy said that while the press was independent of the government, each outlet’s reporting was not entirely free of the interests of the company that owned it.
“The press can boldly criticize the president, and in this case the cabinet secretary, but do they ever criticize their owners?” he asked.
“I guess it would be difficult to do so.”
He added that despite their main task of voicing public opinion, journalists should also understand the agenda set by the owners of their respective media outlets.
Bambang said the Indonesian public were growing increasingly media literate and could weed out news reports that were not credible.
“The public can always easily sympathize with the party [being unfairly covered],” he said.
Source: Jakarta Globe
