EYE ON ETHICS

Mr. Basorie teaches journalism at the Dr. Soetomo Press Institute, LPDS, in Jakarta, Indonesia. He has led workshops on covering sustainable development. Mr. Basorie can be reached at wariefdj@yahoo.com.
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Write a letter to the editor. Go to a press complaints office. Go to court. These are the three standard approaches in Indonesia for the public to respond to an objectionable news report.

Did a newspaper story annoy you? You were misquoted. The facts were not right. The story unjustifiably puts you in a bad light. Your good name has been injured. What can you do? First, you can use your right to reply. You write a letter to the paper’s editor explaining your grievance. If your point is well taken, a responsible editor will print your letter, won’t he?

The editor, however, does no such thing. You become adamant; you want your voice heard. You could contact a local media watch, a kind of media consumer’s advocate. It is not a law firm but an independent research center on media issues. Put your case to the media watch and it can raise the matter with the newspaper concerned and get the paper to print a response.

Failing that, inform the Press Council. Based on the 1999 Press Act, Indonesia’s Press Council (Dewan Pers) has functioned since 2000 as an independent press complaints office. It mediates public objections against the press.

The Press Council reviews a case to determine if a story has violated the journalism code of ethics. It further seeks to resolve the conflict between the public and the press, i.e. between the complainant and the medium in question.

What if you are so pained that you believe your best recourse is to file a lawsuit? Your right to go to court does not diminish after you talk with the Press Council. But weigh the consequences first. As your complaint will be filed as a civil lawsuit, you must be prepared to pay dearly for your high-priced lawyers. The court proceedings could also stretch over months, if not years, from district court, to an appeals court, and all the way to the Supreme Court.

Stick with the Press Council. It seeks a win-win solution at minimal, if not no, charge.

“By addressing your complaint to the Press Council, you can hope your case will be resolved in a week, at most within a month depending on the complication of the case,” Lukas Luwarso, executive secretary of the Press Council, told a 2007 media ethics seminar in Surabaya. Press people as well as representatives of firms that have been troubled by the media attended.

Since the year 2000 up to 2007, the Press Council has received 900 complaints mostly concerning press ethics. A fewer number of complaints come from the press relating to attacks on media offices, vigilante violence, and police harassment.

Meanwhile, the cases on press ethics relate to a news story, an editorial, a news photo, illustration or cartoon that got printed or went on the air. What comes under scrutiny are the facts in the story. Are they valid and correct? Who got hurt?

It is often the case that the facts are wrong due to negligence and not due to intentional malice. If the problem is negligence, it is best for the complainant to use his or her right to reply, Lukas said.

The complainant must file the complaint in writing and come to the Press Council. Its offices are on the top two floors of the eight-storey Press Council building on Jalan Kebon Sirih 34 in Central Jakarta. The media item in question that caused the complaint must be attached. The specific complaint in the item would then be referred to the relevant article in the Journalistic Code of Ethics.

The Press Council sanctioned an 11-article code drawn up by 29 journalists’ and media organizations March 2006. The Council will not process a complaint if the case has been filed to a court or reported to the police.

In general the Press Council resolves complaints through consensus. The complainant sits together with the media organization representatives in question. With Press Council mediation, the two sides discuss what went wrong and resulted in the complaint. Often the resolution takes the form of the injured party being interviewed by the media concerned to put the former’s points in print.

If no mediation is reached, the Press Council will issue a PPR (Pernyataan Penilaian dan Rekomendasi, Statement of Assessment and Recommendations). The PPR is the Press Council’s adjudication in deciding on a case. It calls on the media concerned to recognize the right to reply of the complainant. It will go so far as to demand that the media must apologize. The media concerned must print the PPR. Further the PPR is widely circulated. Public knowledge of the case serves as an ethical reproof for the media in question not to repeat its violation of the code.

From September 2001 to September 2007 the Press Council issued 20 PPRs. In one PPR issued Dec. 21, 2006, for instance, the Press Council decided that the fortnightly tabloid Investigasi had violated the presumption of innocence principle in Article 3 of the Journalistic Code of Ethics for passing judgment in a report that Religious Affairs Minister Maftuh Basyuni had misappropriated Rp80 billion from a ministry fund.

The Council recommended that the tabloid print an obligatory statement or that it allow the minister to reply to clarify the report. It also called on the minister to prepare a reply within one week of the issuance of the PPR and that the tabloid print the minister’s statement within two weeks upon its receipt. Minister Basyuni’s lawyers lodged his complaint Oct. 12 that year.

The bottom line is that the Press Council will look more quickly into a public complaint and reach a resolution much sooner and at less cost than if the complaint goes through the courts.