CAPÍTULO IV: RESULTADOS
4.1. Variable 1 Procesos de gestión
4.1.2. Gestión de formación humana personal docentes
Following the above discussion of the various forms of media-elite linkages as well as the commercial mainstream media’s high level of conglomeration, the assumption that the news media serve the public interest and fulfil the democratic functions assigned to it according to the liberal ideal is unsustainable. Indeed, empirical evidence has shown that “the media industry is becoming increasingly important as a business as well as a political tool within Indonesia’s democracy” (Sudibyo and Patria 2013: 274) and that media owners, regardless of their professional backgrounds, “regard news as a commodity with which to secure their
economic and political interests” (Haryanto 2011: 108).64 Nezar Patria, former
chairperson of AJI Indonesia and political activist during the New Order, explained his move from Tempo to vivanews.com, a Bakrie-owned news portal, in a similar vein. That is, it was a decision based on professional considerations and the way that the media work in a capitalist environment (The Jakarta Post, 4 May 2009):
It is an uncontested fact in the media industry that we will always work with businesspeople. Wherever you go, you will always come across the problem of ownership . . . I realize that there is no total independence and the owners always want to intervene.
Being emdeded in the free market capitalist structures the privately owned media organizations are primarily business companies and, as such, have economic interests. In Indonesia, as well as in other democratic societies, the commercial mainstream media are, essentially, business groups. For profit-orientated media, the primary goal is economic. Other goals, such as serving the public, producing a quality product, and achieving professional recognition, are built into this overarching objective (Shoemaker and Reese 2004: 34).
This assumption is supported by the following examples. First, during the inter-religious conflict in the Moluccas, Indonesia’s largest print media conglomerate, the Jawa Pos Group, funded two separate local newspapers in the conflict zone, with one directed at Christians (Suara Maluku) and the other newer venture (Ambon Ekspres) serving the Muslim community. The reason for the establishment of the second paper was that the established Ambonese newspaper
64 Since Haryanto’s sample is small and the informants remain anonymous his claim is not particularly
strong. However, it records what is commonly known and accepted: commercial media organizations are not a playground for idealists, they are business companies.
became increasingly biased in favour for the Christian community. Eriyanto (2002) argues that the Jawa Pos Group launched this Muslim newspaper mainly out of economic interest. Since the population of Ambon consisted of nearly equal numbers of Christian and Muslim residents there was an incentive to serve both markets to maximise profit. However, the establishment of Ambon Ekspres was also a result of the city of Ambon being divided across religious lines. It had becomeimpossible for Suara Maluku’s Muslim journalists to enter Christian- dominated areas for fact-checking to ensure the accuracy of their stories without putting themselves as personal risk, and Christian journalists faced similar risks entering Muslim-dominated areas (Widya Laksmini Soerjoatmodjo 2010: 183-5). Thus, one could argue that, in establishing the second paper, the Jawa Pos Group was not only upholding the ideal of press freedom by providing a means of mass communication for the Muslim community but also taking into account concerns relating to staff safety and survival.
As a second example, the Jawa Pos Group facilitated the publishing of media associated with newly established political parties65 in the run-up to the 1999
national elections. Namely, the daily Duta Masyarakat Baru (PKB), and the three weekly tabloids Amanat (PAN), Abadi (PBB), and Demokrat (PDI-P). Whereas the Jawa Pos Group provided funding and was in charge of management and marketing, the respective political parties were in charge of editorial policy and content (Hamad 2004: 152; Luwarso, 31 August 2000). By March 1999, less than half
65 In the Reform era, after the fall of Suharto in May 1998, more than 200 political parties emerged.
Eventually, 48 of them were allowed to participate in the June 1999 elections, the first free elections since 1955 (Crouch 2010: 51). In order to promote those newly established political parties and their program to the public numerous ‘partisan media’ emerged (Karim et al. 2004: 193).
a year after the establishment of Duta Masyarakat Baru and Amanat in late 1998, the Jawa Pos Group sold shares of these publications at substantial profit (SiaR, 10 March 1999).66 Both examples show that concentration of ownership does not
necessarily result in less product or content diversity. More likely it shows the superiority of economic interests compared to ideological interest (McChesney 2000).
For commercial media, advertising is the crucial source of income. As shown in Graph 1.1 advertising revenue in the media business has increased steadily and exemplifies the media industry’s ongoing profitability.
Graph 1.1: Advertising revenue television and print media67
66 The shares of Duta Masyarakat Baru and Amanat were sold for an estimated Rp 2 billion respectively
(SiaR, 10 March 1999).
67 All data are from Nielsen but compiled from various sources: 2000 to 2008: Jatmikasari, 5 November
2009: 20; 2009 and 2010: SWA (2 February 2011); 2011 to 2015 (Kompas, 11 February 2016). 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 R p tr ill io n Year
The annual advertising expenditure on television and print media has grown from Rp 7,12 trillion in 2000 to Rp 118 trillion in 2015.68 The government and political
organisations are among the top media advertising spenders. This is because of the mass media’s pivotal role as the central medium for political communication and marketing in post-Suharto Indonesia (Qodari 2010: 123).
Political parties and politicians have become more media-consciousness, and invest heavily in political advertisement in the run-up to the elections. Since the 1999 elections, the mass media have been the main information source for the electorate and the arena for competing political parties and candidates.69 Whereas
political parties and politicians place advertisements in order to compete for votes, the government uses advertisements as a means to inform and educate the voter. Their advertisement spending during elections has increased significantly over the years: Whereas government and political organisations spent Rp 97,24 billion70 in
1999 and Rp 494 billion71 in 2004, they spent Rp 2,15 trillion72 and Rp 4,58 trillion73 in
2009 and 2014 respectively.
Following the discussion above, it is argued that the mainstream media, due to their structural and personal linkages with the politico-business elite and their
68 Over the period from 2000 to 2009 there was little variance in the annual advertising expenditure by
media type. On average 66.4 per cent went to television, 28.1 per cent to newspapers, and 4 per cent to magazines and tabloids (Jatmikasari, 5 November 2009: 22). In 2012, 64 per cent went to television, 33 per cent to newspapers and 3 per cent to magazines and tabloids (Kontan, 6 March 2013).
69 Under Suharto's New Order, the campaign activities were described as pesta demokrasi and held in
the form of convoys and public meetings. The campaigning activities were subjected to strict restrictions and opposition parties had only limited access to mass media. They were neither allowed to place political ads in the media nor to hold a dialogue with the electorate through electronic media. (Hamad 2001: 56, Voionmaa 2004: 159).
70 Randini, 11 August 2008: 14. 71 Hicks, 14 July 2009.
72 Tempo Interaktif, 14 July 2009. 73 The Jakarta Post, 24 November 2015.
location within capitalist market structures, form coalitions of interest with the elite. Evidence that the mainstream news media are linked with the elite and primarily serve the latter’s interests can be found across a range of scholarly work (Bennett 1990; Blumler and Gurevitch 1995; Castells 2010; Gans 1979; Hallin 1986; Herman and Chomsky 1989; McChesney 2008; Mills 1959; Schudson 2002).
Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model (1988) is particularly useful for an understanding of how and why the mainstream media propagate elite interests in capitalist democracies. The model’s strength lies in its focus on real world conditions and the straight forward identification of five mutually interacting ‘filters’ that shape and constrain media content in the interest of the economic and political elite. The ‘filters’ are first, the media’s ownership and profit orientation; second, the commercial media’s dependence on advertising as a major source of income; third, the media’s reliance on information provided by government, corporate and associated ‘expert’ sources; fourth, ‘flak’ as a means of disciplining the media; and fifth, the ideology of free market fundamentalism.74 Only those news
items or information that can pass through these filters is going to be published. The filters, or forces, then cause the media to play a propaganda role. Since these filters are structural and derive from the dominant media’s place in the free market system, it is largely self-censorship rather than state-imposed censorship that causes the mass media to propagate elite interests. In other words:
74 In the original propaganda model the fifth filter was the ideology of anti-communism. In later work,
written in the post-Cold War era, anti-communism was replaced with free market fundamentalism as an ideology (Herman 1996: 125, 2000: 109).
[T]he mass media are drawn into a symbiotic relationship with powerful sources of information by economic necessity and reciprocity of interest (Herman and Chomsky 1989: 18).
By stressing the major media’s structural enmeshment with the interests of the political and economic elite Herman and Chomsky encourage an engagement with those forces that do have the power to influence media performance according to their interests. Indeed, several scholars – including those who did not utilize the propaganda model – have presented evidence for the mass media’s tendency “to manufacture consent for elite preferences, both in terms of domestic and foreign policy issues” (Mullen 2010: 678). Of course, there are different explanations and opinions of how the media serve elite interests and avoid democratic control by the public (Herring and Robinson 2002: 2).75 Nevertheless, the model explains how and
why a free press in a democratic regime can and does perform a propaganda function or, in other words, it explains the media’s involvement in processes of ‘manufacturing consent’.
The propaganda model has been applied to case studies that focus on the role of the news media in manufacturing public consent for US foreign policy. Within such a context, contestations within the elite are not important or not as fundamental as the common interest. However, Herman and Chomsky (1988: xii) do acknowledge that the media are not unified on all issues and that elite disagreements (which do not question the system’s overall existence) are reflected in media content. More specifically:
75 The authors argue further that “Herman and Chomsky’s analysis of the relationship view of US
media-elite relations is marginalized despite the fact that it is fundamentally mainstream”(Herring and Robinson 2002: 2).
[T]he U.S. media do not function in the manner of the propaganda system of a totalitarian state. Rather, they permit – indeed encourage – spirited debate, criticism, and dissent, as long as these remain faithfully within the system of presuppositions and principles that constitute an elite consensus, a system so powerful as to be internalized largely without awareness (Herman and Chomsky 1988: 302).
Paletz and Entman’s (1981: 21) observation that only “few elites disagree about the essential desirability and perfectibility of the system they control” also applies to Indonesia’s politico-business elite. But, as outlined before, there is fierce competition within the system, and members of the heterogenous elite compete with each other within the system’s boundaries. It is exactly here where the news media play a pivotal role. More specifically,
when elite sources conflict, the press will contain a diversity of views about issues, problems, events. . . . Elite conflict is a prime cause of the nature of the news reports of any event or problem: the more conflict, the more coverage, the more varied the views stories contain (Paletz and Entman 1981: 21).
With the Indonesian politico-business elite having realized the importance of the media in the new democratic circumstances, the competition over the news media has become a central element in intra-elite contestations. Indeed, as argued by Sudibyo and Patria (2013: 258), “the media industry has become an important site of political contestation in the context of a highly competitive electoral democracy”. In other words, the elite has, to differing degrees, harnessed the concept of press freedom by incorporating the media into intra-elite power struggles. Based on the fact that press freedom is guaranteed and that the mostly privately owned media companies “do not constitute a monolithic entity” (Van Belle 2000: 97), it is the
media that provide the means and the arena for intra-elite contestation. Crucially, the media are not only the arena for those power struggles but also an actor (McCargo 1999, 2003; Waisbord 2004: 1078). In their roles as actors the owners and practitioners of the media have their own strategic objectives that might reinforce or contradict the objectives of particular members of the contesting elite. But precisely, how can we conceptualise the relationship between the media and the elite at times of intra-elite contestation?