Jakarta is heating up as more news breaks approaching the gubernatorial election early next year. But one question is hovering in my mind: Will Indonesian press remake the same mistakes they made during the last presidential election? As we all know, the last battle of Jokowi versus Prabowo in 2014 election was probably one of the most legendary political warfare in the modern history of the country. And too many people still remember how awful and biased the coverage could be at the time. Extremely horrible, I must say in terms of press neutrality and objectivity. And what made us more sickened was that all these were done blatantly and shamelessly in public, with no apology whatsoever. Big news outlets, such as Metro TV and TV One were so one-sided and profit-oriented they forgot the essence of journalism itself.
On top of this, the free press era craves its own offering: grassroots. After 1998 reform, press freedom was existent after decades of censorship and rigid regulations of the Suharto regime.
On the other hand though, there have been more and more journalists who abandon journalism ethics. These fake journalists are behaving in such a way that violates journalists' code of conduct. They are abusing their journalism status as a tool of taking advantage of grassroots. These people at the grass-roots level are quite clueless about sly tactics of the 'grey' journalists to get rich quickly.
One of my fellow journalists stated his growing concern over the issue recently. To us his colleagues, he recounted the massive scale of the problem. It is indeed a problem since journalist as profession is now increasingly losing respect from the public. Anyone can become and label themselves journalists. There is no need to take examinations. There is no tool of checking competence. The ability to type fast and write a 'captivating' piece of writing is ample. Pageviews and advertisers are new gods to these journalists. Readers, who were the reason why journalists work so hard to tell truth rather than lies, are now neglected.
He added,"In my village, people have no respect to people who earn a living as journalists simpy because they come to their home announced to ask for money or perks." If not given anything, these pseudo journalists might intimidate them, threatening to defame or run libelous news that murders their characters, he explained.
Not all grassroots prone to fall victim are uneducated. Some even are more educated than teh average Indonesians. Principals (head masters at rural schools) and naive village leaders can be their next preys.
Things are getting worse when people trust press credibility no more. This makes people act as citizen journalists. But their limitation (because they lack training in journalism) leads to unvalid, unverified, biased, opinionated 'news' found almost anywhere on the web. Speculation is prevalent; distortion is frequent; confusion prevails.
Some repressive factions in the country are currently trying to choke the freedom of press again by using the fact that unethical practice of journalism has been a source of national social and security issues. In a cladestine manner, they have been trying to revise Laws No. 40/ 1999 on Press in the House of Representatives.
In the next few months until February 2017, once again we will be witnessing more like ones we already saw in 2014. But this time, are Indonesian press going to act the same way it did?
Ikuti tulisan menarik akhlis purnomo lainnya di sini.
