Media fortunes, changing times : ASEAN states in transition 9789812301550, 9812301550

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MEDIA FORTUNES ASEAN States in Transition

CHANGING TIMES

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Reproduced from Media Fortunes, Changing Times: ASEAN States in Transition, edited by Russell Hiang-Khng Heng (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available from < http://www.iseas.edu.sg/pub.html >

The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore was established as an autonomous organization in 1968. It is a regional research centre for scholars and other specialists concerned with modern Southeast Asia, particularly the many-faceted problems of stability and security, economic development, and political and social change. The Institute’s research programmes are the Regional Economic Studies (RES, including ASEAN and APEC), Regional Strategic and Political Studies (RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS). The Institute is governed by a twenty-two-member Board of Trustees comprising nominees from the Singapore Government, the National University of Singapore, the various Chambers of Commerce, and professional and civic organizations. An Executive Committee oversees day-to-day operations; it is chaired by the Director, the Institute’s chief academic and administrative officer.

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

MEDIA FORTUNES ASEAN States in Transition

CHANGING TIMES Edited by

Russell H. K. Heng

INSTITUTE OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES Singapore

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

First published in Singapore in 2002 by Institute of Southeast Asian Studies 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Pasir Panjang Singapore 119614 Internet e-mail: [email protected] World Wide Web: http://www.iseas.edu.sg/pub.html All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. © 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore The responsibility for facts and opinions in this publication rests exclusively with the authors and their interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or the policy of the Institute or its supporters. ISEAS Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Media fortunes, changing times : ASEAN states in transition / edited by Russell Hiang-Khng Heng. Papers originally presented to a Workshop on Media and Transition in ASEAN, 20–21 November 2000, Singapore, organized by Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and supported by Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. 1. Mass media—Asia, Southeastern—Congresses. 2. Mass media—ASEAN countries—Congresses. 3. Mass media policy—Asia, Southeastern—Congresses. 4. Mass media policy—ASEAN countries—Congresses. I. Heng, Russell Hiang-Khng. II. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. III. Workshop on Media and Transition in ASEAN (2000 : Singapore) P92 A9M491 2002 sls2002025523 ISBN 981-230-155-0 (soft cover) ISBN 981-230-193-3 (hard cover) Typeset in Singapore by Superskill Graphics Pte Ltd Printed in Singapore by CMO Image Printing Enterprise

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

CONTENTS Foreword

Wolfgang Möllers

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Acknowledgements

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Contributors Introduction

x Russell Hiang-Khng Heng

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Chapter 1

Media in Southeast Asia: A Literature Review of Post-1980 Developments Russell Hiang-Khng Heng

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Chapter 2

Cambodian Media in a Post-Socialist Situation Ham Samnang

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Chapter 3

Industrialized Media in Democratizing Indonesia Ariel Heryanto and Stanley Yoseph Adi

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Chapter 4

Indonesian Television and the Dynamics of Transition Kukuh Sanyoto

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Chapter 5

The Impact of Economic Transition on the Media in Laos Thonglor Duangsavanh

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Chapter 6

The Media and Malaysia’s Reformasi Movement Zaharom Nain

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Chapter 7

Myanmar Media: Meeting Market Challenges in the Shadow of the State Tin Maung Maung Than

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Chapter 8

Singapore: Media at the Mainstream and the Margins Cherian George

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Chapter 9

Offending Images: Gender and Sexual Minorities, and State Control of the Media in Thailand Peter A. Jackson

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Chapter 10 Vietnamese Media in Transition: The Boon, Curse, and Controversy of Market Economics Tran Huu Phuc Tien

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Index

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© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Foreword ASEAN has been undergoing a tremendous change in the last decade. Just as the region has diverse cultural and political systems, the Southeast Asian media scene is no different. It ranges from the very free in the Philippines to those strictly following party lines as in Vietnam, Laos and military-ruled Myanmar. Is the nature of the media industry highly dependent on the power of media practitioners or does the state have greater control over it instead? Although it is ideal to believe that the pen is mightier than the sword, in reality the governments in most of the ASEAN countries have greater control. However, media ownership and market dynamics also play a role in defining the position of media in the region. In some ASEAN countries, governments view media as a tool of national development. Yet in others, media practitioners are not protected and are constantly putting their lives in danger when they report what they believe to be true. In more press-liberal countries like the Philippines and Thailand, media has become a toy of the owners, usually big business groups or politicians who serve their private agendas. Sometimes the media itself lacks a clear concept and direction, making it unreliable, irresponsible and corrupt. The original ASEAN members who have experienced a higher level of economic development have better media technology, both print and satellite, and are now embracing multimedia. The newer members are still struggling with limited television and radio coverage in rural areas. New technologies pose new challenges for ASEAN governments. Direct satellite broadcasting has increased significantly and foreign-owned media broadcasts are easily accessible today. Technological breakthroughs together with public demand are making it difficult for the governments to restrict access to international information. The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, with the support of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, initiated the workshop on “Media and Transition in ASEAN”. This book, which analyses the position of media in a changing region, is a result of the contributions of eleven researchers covering eight countries. The position of the media in each country is unique and thus the results should be analysed bearing in mind the developments influencing the economic, social and political environment in the respective countries. Wolfgang Möllers Regional Representative Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung vii

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Acknowledgements The chapters in this volume began as papers presented at a workshop on “Media and Transition in ASEAN” organized by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore, in November 2000 and funded by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS). The idea of looking at how the media were faring in the respective countries of ASEAN was first broached by ISEAS Director, Professor Chia Siow Yue. It fell upon me to set down a framework for a workshop that would gather scholars who are familiar with the subject of the media in the ten ASEAN member states. Media and politics is at the core of my research interest, having previously been a media practitioner before researching intensively the politics of Vietnamese media in the past five years. My research bias, I confess, shaped the workshop agenda up to a point. A theme had to be found that would be broad enough to accommodate the many ways of looking at the media in the region without losing a common thrust in analysis. The theme also needed to provide a flexibility that allowed writers to steer clear of sensitive political issues if they were not comfortable with them. Talking about the media tends to lead to the matter of censorship and the democratic (or otherwise) nature of the regime behind it. Finally, the theme of “transition” was selected as a solution to this problem. The search for appropriate paperwriters was daunting. The pool of specialists was not large. In the final headcount, the workshop had papers covering 9 of the 10 because no suitable person could be found for Brunei. Each paper writer was allowed to make of the term “transition” what he would. Some tackled the politics head on, while others discussed politics rather more obliquely by looking at the impact of economic reforms on the media. One writer chose to explore the topic from a cultural studies perspective, by studying the media coverage of sensitive gender issues. When subject matters and the approaches used are syncretic, the publication risks giving the ultimate impression that it is theoretically diffuse or incoherent. Diffuse, yes, to a certain degree; but certainly not incoherent. There are reasons for not focusing on any one theoretical

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issue. For a start, this would not have been possible: the writers come from different professional backgrounds. Although the theme is about the media, there was never the intent to make this a gathering of masscommunication researchers. Among the participants are practising journalists and academics schooled in various disciplines. History and political science, not just media studies, inform many of the chapters. Hands-on journalistic experience and first-person activism are also obvious in some of the papers. The discussion at the workshop, apart from being stimulating and enjoyable, helped to tease out the common threads of intellectual concern running through the diverse papers. For that I want to thank the invited paper discussants and the observers. This book features ten of the thirteen papers presented at the workshop. For various technical reasons, I regret not being able to include all of them. I am grateful to the staff of the ISEAS Administration and Publications units without whose logistical support, the workshop and this published volume would not have been possible. Finally, I want to thank the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) again for their generous support, without which this whole project culminating in this published volume, would not have been possible.

Russell Hiang-Khng Heng

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Contributors Ariel Heryanto lectures at the Melbourne Institute of Asian Languages and Societies (MIALS), University of Melbourne, Australia His recent publications include “Intimacy with Post-colonial Violence: Notes from Indonesia”, in Humane Societies, ed. Janet McCalman (2001); Perlawanan Dalam Kepatuhan (2002); “Remembering and Dismembering Indonesia”, Latitudes 1 (February 2001); “Where Communism Never Dies”, International Journal of Cultural Studies 2 no. 2 (1999); “The Years of Living Luxuriously”, in Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia, ed. Michael Pinches (1999). Thonglor Duangsavanh began his journalism career in 1995 and is an Assistant Editor at the Vientiane Times in Laos. He holds a degree from the Pedagogical University of Vientiane. Cherian George is a Ph.D. student at Stanford University’s Department of Communication, and the author of Singapore: The Air-conditioned Nation (2000). From 1990 to 1999, he was a journalist at the Straits Times, Singapore’s main English-language paper, where he wrote mainly on politics and media issues and also served as editor for art and photography for three years. He is a founding member of the Roundtable, a non-partisan NGO that discusses national issues and advocates for the growth of civil society. He is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and Cambridge University. Russell Hiang-Khng Heng is a Senior Fellow at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. He received his Ph.D. degree in Political Science from the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at The Australian National University. His research interest is in media and politics in authoritarian societies. Recent publications include “Media Negotiating the State: In the Name of the Law in Anticipation”, SOJOURN 16, no. 2 (2001); and “Freedom of Information in Vietnam: Not yet a Right, Perhaps a Growing Notion”, in Freedom of Information — An Asian Survey, edited by Venkat Iyer (2001). Prior to his academic career, he was Features Editor at the Sunday Times (Singapore).

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Kukuh Sanyoto has been a journalist for more than 20 years, during which time he has worked for newspapers such as the Indonesian Observer and Jakarta Post, and at the state-owned Radio Republik Indonesia. In 1993, he joined the commercial television station RCTI and has hosted many talk shows on politics and international affairs. He helped to found the Indonesian Press and Broadcast Society in September 1998 to fight for press freedom, and left television work in January 2000 to become a full-time active member of the society. Peter A. Jackson is a Fellow in Thai History in The Australian National University’s Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. He works mainly on modern Thai cultural history, especially religion, gender and sexual culture, and has published numerous books and articles on these topics. He is currently writing two books: Gay and Lesbian Bangkok Make the News: 1960–2000, and Magic Monks, Royal Spirits and Chinese Gods: Religion and Capitalism in 1990s Thailand. Ham Samnang is Assistant Director of the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace. He was previously associate editor at the Cambodian Daily, where he began working as a senior researcher in 1996. During the Cambodian 1998 elections, he served as a media monitor for four months with the Cambodian office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. He has a degree in Mathematics. Stanley Yoseph Adi is currently a freelance reporter in Indonesia, and his work has been published extensively in books, magazines and newspapers. Since his journalism career began in 1990, he has been an editor of several publications, such as Jakarta-Jakarta and Signatura. He also holds office in many media-related organizations; for example he is the Director of the Institute for the Study of Free Flow in Information, and Commercial and General Director for PT Media Lintas Inti Nusantara (Melin), among others. He graduated from Satya Wacana University, Salatiga in 1989. Tin Maung Maung Than is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS). He obtained a Ph.D. in Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His research interests focus primarily on Myanmar political and economic

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developments and also cover issues relating to regional security, democratization and civil–military relations. His recent publications include, among others, “Myanmar (Burma) in 2001: A Year of Waiting”, Asian Survey XLII, no.1 (January/February 2002); “Burma: ‘The New Professionalism’ of the Tatmadaw”, in Military Professionalism in Asia: Conceptual and Empirical Perspectives, edited by Muthiah Alagappa (2001); and “Myanmar: Military in Charge”, in Government and Politics in Southeast Asia, edited by John Funston (2002). Tran Huu Phuc Tien has been a journalist since 1984, writing under the pen name Phuc Tien. He was the former Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Tap Chi The Gioi Moi (New World Times Magazine) of Vietnam. Currently, he is director of Viet Nam Centre Point Pte., an education and media services centre. He has a degree in History from Ho Chi Minh City University. Zaharom Nain lectures in Communication Studies at Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang. His areas of interest are the political economy of communication and cultural studies in an Asian context. He is coeditor of Communications and Development: The Freirean Connection (2001). His most recent publication is “The Structure of the Media Industry: Implications for Democracy”, in Democracy in Malaysia: Discourses and Practices, ed. Loh K.W. and Khoo B.T. (2002).

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

INTRODUCTION RUSSELL HIANG-KHNG HENG

Over the last 20 years, a sense of “transition” has dominated the affairs of the ten member nations of ASEAN — Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Transition does not just refer to changes in general. It comes about only when the magnitude of these changes points to a transformation of the status quo in significant ways. For some countries, it is the transition from authoritarianism to democracy. For others, the transition is from a planned socialist economy to a capitalist market model. Technological and lifestyle changes are also transforming societies in the region. Chapter 1 sets down these events in greater detail. Synergy exists among the various types of transition; the dynamics in one often trigger change-inducing forces in another. For example, market reforms in the state-controlled socialist economies — Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar — provide individuals with more options for work, a trend that facilitates greater independence from the state. They also enhance the connections between these societies and the rest of the world. These are liberalizing influences that must be given some leeway by the political leadership if the latter wants the market transition to be a success. In other parts of the region, thriving market economies have produced affluent and better-educated societies that will hanker for a more democratic political culture (the underlying assumption of modernization theory). Economic development has to reach a certain level for IT (Information Technology) to become widely available to the public. The IT-facilitated free flow of information needs a certain level of democratic allowance. When a society rides the crest of this IT revolution and allows its citizens considerable exposure to a wide range of international influence, it hastens socio-cultural transformation. This also generates more political space. These different strands of transition can be interwoven in any number of permutations to make up a rich and diverse tapestry of societal change; but as much as it is essential to acknowledge their connectivity, it is sometimes necessary to refer to the transitional trends as distinct and separate identities. This is because different countries place a different emphasis on each of them.

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This book, therefore, is an attempt to explore where the media are located within these forces of transition, rather than merely looking at the role of the media and whether or not they have contributed to the transitional processes. The media are so integrated into social-politicaleconomic changes that they are in fact part of the transition itself, contributing to as well as being shaped by it. All of these chapters seek to give a picture of how the media itself has been transformed by the various transitional trends. All of the authors in this book acknowledge that media in their respective countries have changed. Most significant is the move away from state monopoly in media ownership to private ownership, sometimes even entertaining foreign investment in the information sector. Apart from the question of ownership, the media, whether staterun or privatized, are also being made to compete on market principles. The chapters on Cambodia, Indonesia (in Chapter 4), Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam address these issues and illustrate how market dynamics have brought changes to the form and substance of the media. Running through these chapters is the theme of market forces as a liberalizing mechanism in media development. Cherian George, writing on Singapore, takes the issue beyond the market by raising the importance of the legal framework, the political economy within which the media operates, and the impact of changing technology. He identifies the key factor to be the actions of individuals and institutions — most importantly, the decisions a journalist makes “between the highway of least resistance on one side, and the legally- or politically-forbidden noman’s-land on the other”. Ariel Heryanto and Stanley Yoseph Adi, writing on Indonesia, also locate in the individual journalist a key factor in the dynamics of transition. For them, although the ancien regime in Indonesia has been removed, and the country, as well as its media, is undergoing great political changes, the typical Indonesian journalist is still saddled with a cultural mindset that hobbles his or her adjustment to this transition. Heryanto and Adi bring the debate into the area of culture of politics, although this is not made explicit. However, Peter Jackson’s chapter on Thailand is a more direct discussion of culture politics and its role in state–media relations. He has chosen the subject of media representation of homosexuality and transgenderism as a window to look at state– media dynamics in a country that has moved from long years of military rule to a dynamic multi-party democracy. In so doing, Jackson

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has broadened the debate from state versus media to one that considers society and the cultural values it forges over a long period of history. Historicity is quite evident in almost all the chapters. Each traces events over several decades, from the birth-pangs of independence to the present-day dynamics of transition. In this regard, Zaharom Nain’s paper on Malaysia stands out, by examining developments that are telescoped into one event — the controversy over the arrest of the country’s deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim in September 1998. For Nain, this event seems to have triggered fundamental changes in Malaysia’s political landscape, as well as in its media culture. Generally, the chapters in this book are empirically driven. Readers will not find any attempt by the writers to engage in some of the major theoretical debates that have emerged in the literature on the media in Southeast Asia. Russell Hiang-Khng Heng, in his literature review, identifies three paradigms that have pre-occupied scholars through the decades: development journalism, Asian theories of communication and public journalism. The country studies in this volume have not dealt with any of these concepts. However they do have a unifying thrust by engaging the theme of transition. When states or rather regimes are grappling with powerful forces of transition, they have to reinvent themselves. Many of the chapters in this volume are close-up examinations of how the political élites in various ASEAN states have had to reinvent themselves. In so doing, the state continues to want to manage the media even as it has to surrender some of its managerial powers. All the works have engaged, either entirely or partially, the following key questions: 1. Given a certain transition process (for example, from a centrallyplanned to a market economy, or the collapse of an authoritarian regime), do the media always have to be at odds with the state? 2. If there is room to negotiate, how do members of the media do so? Writings on state–media relations in situation where the media is controlled tend to focus on how control is exercised by the state — that is, a state-centred perspective. It would be useful, therefore, to approach the question from another point of view: how members of the media negotiate for more journalistic space. 3. Has the transition process resulted in a reconfiguration of state– media dynamics?

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What can the existing literature on the Southeast Asian media tell us about state–media dynamics during this period? Heng’s review in Chapter 1 notes that one feature has dominated the corpus of works: the dominance of the state. The issue has invariably been discussed as a case of the state losing or gaining control of the media. Evidently, there can be no denial that state power has shaped media behaviour in all ASEAN countries. However, the literature also warns against any simplistic assumption that the media is or wants to be the brave nemesis of an authoritarian state. The media can generate their own dynamics that do not improve journalistic content. State–media relations have collusive possibilities. Media dynamics, particularly, at a time when the media have to engage market forces like never before, can produce their own corruption within the profession. Most of the papers in this collection continue in this vein, reminding readers to look beyond a simple assumption that state–media dynamics are all about the media resisting state control. Theoretically, this poses interesting alternatives, such as a possibility that media-liberalizing changes can come from within the state. For example, George’s chapter on Singapore observes that the state is very conscious of the forces of transition that drive societal demands for a more liberal and open regime; the state then prepares for these challenges rather than be caught off guard. Sanyoto on Indonesia also draws attention to occasions when the Indonesian state, for a variety of reasons (some related to the market, some not) has let down its guard and allowed the media more space. The idea that these case studies raise is the possibility of liberal changes coming from within the state. Both George and Sanyoto suggest a mechanism for change that involves working from within the system and keeping cannily within the agenda imposed by the state. To a certain extent, the chapters on Myanmar by Tin Maung Maung Than, and on Vietnam by Tran Huu Phuc Tien, imply the same. In these countries, editors and journalists have harnessed the state’s market reform agenda to bring significant changes to a rigidly controlled media. This puts a different construction on a widely-accepted perspective that state and media are naturally locked in contention over state-control of the media. It is correct to say that the media often have to negotiate with the state for more editorial space, but the tactic of negotiation is a far more intriguing phenomenon, not always characterized by a headon clash between state and media. Often, it involves the media learning

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how to work within the confines of the state’s power structure and policy. The market as a liberalizing force in the media receives endorsement in several chapters, for example from Ham Samnang on Cambodia, Sanyoto on Indonesia, Duangsavanh on Laos, Tin on Myanmar, Jackson on Thailand and Tien on Vietnam. But even in the common refrain of how market produces diversity in media products, there are noteworthy differences in the political economy of the media in each country. For Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, the question becomes, how real is marketization in the media. In all three countries, state reluctance to liberate fully the media market betrays a deep-seated political fear that allowing market forces full play may see control slipping out of official hands. Sanyoto’s depiction of the situation in Indonesian television portrays a state that is tactical in its privatization of the media, putting media ownership in the hands only of those whom the state trusts. For Cambodia, international pressure has obliged the old political élite to suffer the replacement of state ownership by private ownership where the media were concerned. However, the political leaders continue to manipulate the rules in their favour as well as to ensure that the privatized media remain largely in their hands. Evidently, there are limits to the liberalizing impact of the market, and George on Singapore warns that it is fallacious to believe, as some do, that Singapore’s governing philosophy, anchored on one-party dominance, is incompatible with the needs of an advanced market economy. Zaharom Nain, describing the recent vicissitudes of the Malaysian media, leaves an impression that a media that is in private hands can still betray a singular bias for the state. Collectively, these chapters caution against unrealistic expectations of the ultimate liberating influence of market forces. One of the most prevalent claims of the times is the impact of IT on almost every sector of life, including the media. Many see in IT a greater scope for the free flow of information, relatively free of state control. Two chapters refer to this perspective. Nain describes how the political crisis in Malaysia has spawned the birth of a Web media functioning as an alternative to the mainstream media. However, he cautions that this may be a temporary phenomenon born of the mainstream media’s loss of credibility. George also accords importance to Singapore’s marginal media finding expression in cyberspace, but forecasts its impact to be in

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the long term. Other chapters have referred to existing media making an effort to launch Internet editions, even in countries where IT usage is very low, such as Myanmar and Vietnam. All in all, the interest in IT as a medium has taken hold in most ASEAN countries, but it is early days yet to speak of any clear outcome for this nascent trend. Collectively, the chapters in this collection, dealing with eight of the ten ASEAN member states, tell us that while the media have played a role in resisting state hegemony to deliver a more liberal media model, the media and the state are not always locked in contention over the state agenda. Sometimes it is tactical for the media to work within the parameters of the official agenda in order to gain greater editorial prerogative. To understand this better requires interest to be focused on the individual media practitioner. Finding ways to get round state injunctions requires conviction, courage and cunning of an editor or a journalist. Sanyoto, writing of the Indonesian media’s struggle to practise a more politically-engaged form of journalism during the Soeharto regime, gives his readers a flavour of this interesting dynamic of the individual negotiating the system. Unfortunately, no other chapter in this volume has taken up this theme. Given the density of transitional forces, how much have state–media relations been configured? My opening description of the interlocking dynamics of the four major kinds of transition risks giving a simplistic impression of a linear development of human societies between two ends of a spectrum. At one end are democracy, free market economics, socio-cultural liberties and IT at an advanced stage. At the other end are the negation of all four of these. Societies then are viewed as moving to or away from these two endpoints. Media also move along this spectrum between the two extremes, becoming either an exemplary free press to be prized, or a controlled press to be abjured. The chapters in this volume tell their readers that reality is never so neat. They suggest that serious thinking about media and politics should avoid the distinct black-and-white of binary outcomes. Collectively, these papers represent a small step towards a more nuanced understanding of media fortunes in changing times.

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Reproduced from Media Fortunes, Changing Times: ASEAN States in Transition, edited by Russell Hiang-Khng Heng (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available from < http://www.iseas.edu.sg/pub.html >

Media in Southeast Asia 1

1 Media in Southeast Asia: A Literature Review of Post-1980 Developments Russell Hiang-Khng Heng

WHY 1980 AND AFTER? Reviewing all the available literature on media in Southeast Asia risks cramming too much (both in quantity and diversity of topics) into the limited confines of a book chapter. It is likely to produce a long list of broad categories, too summarily treated to be of any analytical value.1 Thus, scaling the exercise down to more manageable proportions would be sensible and, in that regard, dealing only with what has been published after 1980 dovetails with the theme of “transition”. Beginning in the 1980s, the region saw the start of several major new trends that continue to shape political-economic-social reality till today. They are: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Increased forces of democratization Revising of old economic strategies Significant socio-cultural changes in tandem with 1. and 2. The challenges of information technology.

The 1980s saw the beginnings of a democratization trend in the region. The more dramatic manifestations of this trend were “people power” uprisings in Manila (which were successful) and in Myanmar (which were aborted). In the 1990s, people power again forced the demise of unpopular regimes in Thailand and Indonesia. Even politicallyplacid Singapore experienced a gradual but discernible process of

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2 Russell Hiang-Khng Heng

democratization with a changing of the guards in the top leadership in the 1980s and, with that, some relaxation of political control. At the same time, in Vietnam and Laos, authoritarian Communist governments introduced liberal reform programmes. In the 1990s, Cambodia turned from a one-party socialist state to a multi-party democracy, an outcome brought about through international negotiations. Every country in the region can sense that its political status quo cannot remain as it is, although some regimes may be putting on a front of having their power-sharing formula right. The changes were not just in politics. Another major trend beginning in the 1980s was economic transformation. The countries — Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar — turned from socialist state planning to capitalist market economics. At the same time, the non-socialist countries implemented aggressive economic development programmes, the results of which are still pending. Meanwhile, all these developments have produced great socio-cultural changes. The middle class expanded and sought more political participation. At a more visible level, consumerism grew, hastening the impact of globalization through the import of goods and lifestyles. A greater demand for more space in private lives gave birth to a new form of culture politics. Coinciding with all of these is a revolution in information technology that began in the 1980s. The aggregate of these forces has produced situations which differ from the concerns of the region in the 1970s and earlier. As such, a review of literature dealing only with post-1980 is not out of place, particularly as the chosen theme for this collection of papers is the phenomenon of transition in the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

SOME DISTRIBUTIVE FEATURES The physical statistics of the literature show that writings on the media have grown exponentially. The titles produced from 1980 to 1989 more than triple from 36 to 118 in the period 1990–2001 (see list of references at the end of this chapter). There is an unevenness in how the literature is distributed across the countries of the region. An overwhelming proportion of the literature is about media in the five founding members of ASEAN: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Of the 126 titles which are country-specific studies, only six were about new ASEAN members — Cambodia,

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Media in Southeast Asia 3

Myanmar and Vietnam. No titles were found for Laos or Brunei. The reason for this disproportion is partly a legacy of the past and partly the dearth of resources available to the new ASEAN members to generate or attract media research. But this paucity of research is also a result of the political difficulties involved in putting media under scrutiny in these places (with the exception of Cambodia in the 1990s). As a result, such a skewed corpus of works makes it difficult to generalize about media literature in the region.

MEDIA AND ITS POLITICAL MILIEU A significant strand of the literature concerns the media and the political milieu in which it has to operate. Issues raised or perspectives adopted include the control of media by the political élite, media as a barometer of democratic development, and the watch-dog function of media vis-à-vis authoritarian regimes. In the early 1980s, “freedom of the press” was one focus of research interest (Lent 1981). Two decades later, the concern is still alive (Williams and Rich 2000). Within this paradigm of a master–client relationship between the state and the media, people have looked at three main issues: firstly, how is censorship carried out; secondly, how do media practitioners react; and thirdly, how do media consumers respond to the products of such a system. The study of censorship comes with several perspectives. Some highlight the demerits of censorship, for example Anna J. Allott in her collation on Myanmar (Allott 1994) or Francis Seow in his relentless account of how the Singapore Government started emasculating the press from when it first came to power (Seow 1998). Others take a “study-aid” approach, an arguably neutral way of just telling readers what the press laws of a country are and how they can be interpreted (Ang 1998; Faruqui and Ramanathan 1998; Muntarbhorn 1998; and Teodoro Jr. and Kabatay 1998). Occasionally, bureaucrats also put pen to paper and provide the official perspective on the need for some form of censorship. The Singapore chapter in the collection edited by Achal Mehra (1989) is a classic example. All the three forms of literature are useful up to a point. These works are largely empirical–analytical accounts and some may feel that, in general, the literature lacks theoretical/conceptual sophistication. That criticism in turn raises the challenge: is it useful to pigeonhole an entire press system into theoretical models along the

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lines of the classic Four Theories of the Press.2 For instance, one study on Thailand did try to establish the characteristics of the Thai “authoritarian” media but ended up with mixed findings. While some classic symptoms of an “authoritarian” press system were found, on several other counts the Thai press did not fit the prototype (Sermcheep 1992). At any rate, theory-building or theory-testing works are just too few and far between in the bulk of descriptive–analytical writings to draw any meaningful conclusions. Recent attempts to think in terms of an Asian model of journalism and Asian theories of communication have not produced significant results (more of this in the next section). The authoritarian state is not always the only culprit in the manipulation of the media, as a few writers have observed. Patharapanupath (1985) argued that the Thai media intentionally or unintentionally helped to secure strict compliance with the norms of the social and political system. An Indonesian scholar charting media behaviour surrounding a dam-building controversy in his country found a coopted media with its own agenda that produced distorted information (Aditjondoro 1993). Indeed state–media relations are not always characterized by the media resisting a powerful establishment comprising the political/economic élite: they also have collusive possibilities. Generally, however, the dynamics of state–media collusion have not been sufficiently explored, compared to the amount of material which has been produced about the top-down action of the state in managing newspapers. The collusive side of state–media relations, however, is not always what it seems. As Heng (1999) has demonstrated, media practitioners in Vietnam rode on the back of their connections with the state in order to push the envelope and produce an outcome that was subversive of state power. This is a dynamic often observed in socialist politics, but of course the same dynamic can operate in any media system. Indeed, one may tentatively conclude at this stage that the amphibious world of the co-opted media practitioner deserves more study than it has received so far. The media’s lack of adherence to profession ethics is not always the result of state manipulation or command. The media is also capable of its own rent-seeking behaviour. Cheque-book journalism and other forms of corruption among media practitioners have probably always been around, but there is a feeling that it has increased to such a degree that media practitioners should themselves begin to tackle these

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problems among their own ranks. The research trend of looking harder at the shortcomings of journalism appears to be only just beginning, and therefore the literature is still sparse. (The work of FlorentinoHofilena (1998) on the situation in the Philippines media is one example.) Coronel in Coronel and Nordberg (1998: 7) has also put the problem in its larger politico-economic context by lamenting the fact that the media in the region did not provide enough information to warn of the 1997 financial crisis. She pointed out that it was not just the “muzzled” press of some regimes that failed to blow the whistle, “but even in countries where the flow of information was unhindered, what was emphasized too often was the sensational, not what the public genuinely needed to know”. This intellectual concern about the media having to check its own kind is only just beginning to be canvassed. But the broader message that comes from reading this small number of works is that for the media, being a player in the politics of democratic transition involves more than just shouting down political tyrants. Democratization brings with it a whole slate of other problems and any effort to understand the media requires paying more attention to them. The media environment is made up not just of state–media dynamics. The media consumer is also a factor in this equation. Specifically, is the consumer necessarily a victim of what he reads in the papers, hears on the radio or sees on television? Are there more effective ways of communicating ideas and changing attitudes? Nordin (1993) and Rahman (1993) are examples of such a line of intellectual enquiry. These are major issues in communication studies, dating back to Paul Lazarsfeld’s 1940 groundbreaking study of the impact of radio broadcast on voter behaviour in Erie County, USA.3 In the context of media and politics in Southeast Asia, students have framed their research in terms of how easily people are swayed by the state-managed propaganda of authoritarian regimes. Two studies (Sendjaja 1988; and Gunther and Snyder 1992) examined this issue in Indonesia and concluded that citizens of so-called authoritarian states were not so easily conditioned by media content. On balance, however, not much careful study has been made of media-influenced political behaviour. Mostly, they are anecdotal accounts or educated assumptions that media (television, e-mail and the Internet) play a role in some key political events in the country, for example Atkin’s (1995: 50–60) account of the impact of foreign satellite broadcasts on military–civilian confrontation in Thailand

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in May 1992. The answer is probably more complex than a simple “yes, it does” or “no, it doesn’t”. Much will depend on situational factors, as Adams (1996) found when he compared the impact of television on political events in the Philippines, China and the United States. He argued that the media affected but did not determine the course of events.

THE WESTERN BUGBEAR Whatever the media’s actual impact on public behaviour, political élites fear this unknown factor enough to want to control or manage media content where they can. Domestic media tend to be easier targets than foreign media. Leaders in the region (and in many parts of the developing world) are inclined to accuse the Western-dominated foreign media of being unfair when covering their domestic issues. The general complaint is that the Western media are interested only in bad news. This situation has spawned one of the great contentions in media issues. I shall call it the “Western bugbear”. A strand of the media literature is dominated by this debate, which is characterized by key terms such as “foreign correspondents”, “media imperialism”, “development journalism”, “New World Information Order” and “Asian communication theory”. However, it is not just political leaders who have a grouse with the allegedly insensitive Western foreign correspondent. Non-state actors have also charged the foreign media with being insensitive to local conditions and lacking balance. For example, Madrid (1999) concluded that Western journalists distorted the image of Islamic student activists in Indonesia, portraying them as extremists when they may have been forces of moderation. In Thailand, Suwanmoli (1998) took issue with the foreign correspondent’s propensity to highlight sex when writing about tourism, and postulated several reasons for this tendency. Extrapolating from a handful of such studies, the message is that it is not only the state that has interests that are at odds with those of the media: civil society too can disagree with media content. Increasingly one reads in today’s media reports of civil society elements taking the law into their own hands to manage media content to their liking. This problem is still relatively untouched by research literature on the regional media. Another facet of the Western bugbear is the charge of media imperialism, referring primarily to the charge that the global domination

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of Western, particularly American, television products leads to unwanted cultural influence on local communities. But research findings do not always substantiate this allegation. In his study of television offerings in Thailand and two other Asian countries, Mushtaq (1991) concluded that there was no domination by U.S. programmes, and imported programmes had only a limited impact on audiences. Such studies, pulling as they do in different directions, do not prove things one way or another, but serve more to underline a wariness of Western hegemony coming by way of a Western-dominated international media. The many concerns that make up the Western bugbear can be telescoped into a major theoretical concept known as “development journalism”, a brand of news reporting which is the developing world’s answer to what it perceives as an unhelpful and unhealthy Western form of journalism. This concept has a long and rich pedigree, with much written about it. It rests on the notion that the Western prescription of media as a watchdog of state behaviour leads to unnecessarily adversarial state–media relations, which can be too disruptive of any national development strategy, particularly in developing countries. Development journalism prescribes an alternative theoretical model of state–media dynamics which is cooperative in nature and serves the objective of national development above all else. The touchstone of development journalism is a consultatory and consensus-seeking, rather than confrontational, approach to relations with the state. Its detractors sum the notion up graphically as, “don’t ask tough embarrassing questions of powerful people”. Development journalism features in quite a few studies in the regional media literature. Most seem to have some reservations about it. Lee (1986), studying Singapore (plus three other places with a British colonial legacy), found no correlation between development journalism and economic growth. Another comparative study by Hidayat (1994), based on Indonesia and three other countries with wide-ranging degrees of press freedom, found weak evidence of a “developmental” agenda across the different political systems. Tamin (1992) said the Pancasila press of Indonesia was not “development journalism”, although it had appropriated the same high-minded objectives.4 The study also underlined many editors’ rejection of the “developmental” goals of the Pancasila press. Where Indonesian television is concerned, Tobing (1991) did not find the writ of “development journalism” strongly represented. While development journalism did not find many converts in Indonesia,

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Dunlap (1992) seemed to have found it very much in vogue on public and commercial television in Malaysia. On the other hand, a Philippinesderived perspective by Shafer (1987), based on a survey of the theory and practice of development journalism, argued that the concept was not helpful and was prone to abuse, as was the case under the Marcos regime. These studies on development journalism’s writ in the region convey an impression of scepticism and resistance to the idea. They warn the readers that development journalism is not much in use, is not living up to its own objectives or is being distorted for political convenience. What should be made of these views? First, one should accept that there is not going to be a final word in a debate that has been largely fuelled by ideological concerns. Furthermore, as with any prescriptive theoretical concept, there will always be a gap between theory and practice. It is more fruitful to examine the relevance of development journalism in an environment undergoing major transitional processes, such as that which present-day Southeast Asia is undergoing. Shafer (1987) made some cogent points when he warned that developing countries did not have the resources to train journalists to carry out development journalism properly. Furthermore, development journalism theory does not address the problems that rise from within the ranks of journalism itself, for example the growing problem of cheque-book journalism. Another question worth pondering is how development journalism — essentially a state-promoted vision — should deal with a situation in which the media is threatened by civil society elements that are also no friend of the state. In a nutshell, if development journalism wants to continue having a certain profile in media discourse, it is going to have to engage many of these new issues of the moment. The likelihood is that development journalism as an intellectual debate will slowly fade away. But waiting in the wings is an alternative notion, that there should be Asian theories of communication. This concept shares development journalism’s aversion to confrontational media, but it has so far remained rather amorphous as an intellectual force. This privileging of things Asian derives from the larger debate over Asian values and Asian democracy, in which a school of thought propelled by some Asian politicians and like-minded academics argues that Asians organize their political lives by an Asian set of values, distinct from European ones.5 Hence, it is believed, Asian democracy is and deserves to be different from Western liberal democracy.

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A few samples of intellectual discourse on this subject have surfaced. Yao (1994) identified an editorial pattern in the media of Malaysia and Singapore that privileged an Asian agenda over what was alleged to be an Western agenda that destabilized Asian cultural values and societies. He attributed this to the ambivalence that Southeast Asian countries were experiencing as part of their modernizing process. Low (1996), writing of the impact of IT, alluded to its challenge to Asian culture and values. Nain (1996), evaluating the Malaysian television’s response to globalization, argued that policy-makers promoting Asian values in media were seeking political mileage in their domestic constituencies. He noted that the pressures of the international marketplace frequently caused such anti-Western rhetoric to be pushed aside. Tay and George (1996) examined the behaviour of Asian media and elections with regard to how Asian political values may merit a different kind of democracy and media. They argued that even within the framework of Asian models, greater press freedom should be exercized during elections. Is there really an Asian style of journalism distinct from a Western one? All these writings come with subtexts that should not be ignored in this discourse. Some see the exercise of promoting Asian values in media as politically motivated, and seem to doubt its relevance. Others come at it from another angle, not wanting to deny the validity of the Asian-values claim, but highlighting instead the contradictions this will pose to regimes that want the economic benefits of a globally-connected world. Massey (2000a) attempted to provide some empirical grounding to the claim of a uniquely Asian approach to journalism. He analyzed how three newspapers — from Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore — covered the haze problem of 1997–98.6 He found the editorial approaches to have been characterized by the use of “non-confrontational” frames and the downplay of politically-sensitive issues, although some aspects of the coverage were consistent with Western journalistic routines. These observations dovetailed with claims that Asian societies do not share the adversarial style of Western public discourse. However, Wang (2000), in her review of the debate on the relevance of Western media theories for Asian journalism, pointed out that the search for Asian communication theories has not been fruitful so far. In all likelihood, this discourse will wind down in the foreseeable future because it took its momentum from a feeling among some Asian leaders of great confidence and pride (some would say hubris) in their national economic achievements. Since the 1997 Asian financial crisis has robbed the

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region of that confidence, talk about the supremacy and uniqueness of Asian values no longer seem valid or prudent. If “development journalism” and “Asian theories of communication” are going to be consigned to the remote corners of media history, a new paradigm that may enter the media discourse in the region is “public journalism”. Schaffer (1998) said the idea of public journalism emerged in the literature sometime in the 1990s. He explained it as a form of journalism whereby journalists actually organize citizens to address a community problem and write about it. Public journalism as a recognized paradigm has first taken form in the West. Merrill (2000) agrees with Schaffer that it is something which is emerging. It represents a move away from the traditional Western libertarian press model that has been indicted for pushing journalism towards social irresponsibility and even chaos. This new paradigm stresses social harmony. However, Schaffer (1998) in his work with Philippine journalists has warned that like development journalism, public journalism may be seen by practitioners as another form of intervention in their work. This early notification of an emerging paradigm rouses intellectual curiosity and prompts a series of questions. Will states be the ones that will promote the paradigm? Or are journalists going to be the ones who will welcome it as a new and better way model for their profession? Is it really going to amount to a new kind of media product that will captivate media consumers? All that can be said at this stage is it is early days yet to see what sort of profile public journalism will have in the ASEAN states.

MEDIA AND ECONOMIC TRANSITION The literature that examines the relationship between media and economic forces is not prolific. Dhakhidae (1991) is just about the only known major piece of work that addresses this issue. The question of economic changes having an impact on media takes on far more dramatic proportions in those countries that are emerging from a socialist-style planned economies: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. While ostensibly about the dollars and cents of publishing, the issue is strongly influenced by political dynamics. Essentially, as cash-strapped socialist governments cannot afford to subsidize the media, they must be given a measure of autonomy in order to ride market forces. In this is the complex enterprise of finding a happy compromise

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between the party line and the bottom line. Unfortunately, the literature on media in these socialist states is minimal and so the articles in this volume, such as the ones on Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, will make a small contribution to plugging this gap. Transitional economic forces in the region are not only about socialist planned economies embracing market reforms. The existing market economies of ASEAN, as in many parts of the world, have to embrace globalization and open themselves more to international competition. Many expect this to have an impact on the media. Nain (1996) pointed out that the pressures of the international marketplace tempered the Malaysian leadership’s disposition to regulate television programmes according to its anti-Western rhetoric. Hashim (1997) also examined the impact of privatization on the television industry in Malaysia. In Thailand, Siriyuvasak (1997) cast an eye on market liberalization in the television industry beginning in the 1980s, although he warned against expecting any straightforward liberal impact on censorship and programme quality. Siriyusak questioned if market liberalization had indeed made competition more fair and whether such reforms were actually in the public interest. He argued that deregulation had only allowed in a few more players, and these were the big corporations. One of the repercussions of this development is to see local programming suffer because of an influx of foreign programmes. Market deregulation in accordance with the globalization agenda risks cultural domination by more powerful global players. This is a view consonant with voices raised against the current international Zeitgeist of globalization and its merits. If the research literature ever gets round to it, there is a theoretical construct embedded in this topic which deserves more rigorous examination. Many assume, rather too readily, that the market is a liberating force in the media. To some extent this is true, but the reality is not always a straightforward positive process of market liberalization begetting media growth begetting greater media freedom. Hachten (1989), writing about how Singapore planned to promote media growth without substantively conceding control of the media, attempted to challenge this assumption. The debate deserves to be taken up by more people — after all, this is what the handful of authoritarian regimes in the region is doing: liberalizing economically while retaining political control in significant ways. Their experimenting effort may produce a reality that will challenge theoretical logic. Unfortunately, given the

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sporadic nature of the literature on media in Southeast Asia, no intellectual debate has emerged.

LIFESTYLE TRANSITION AND ITS POLITICS Political and economic transition begets lifestyle changes, and one of the media’s functions is to tend to the politics of changing lifestyles (I call this “lifestyle politics”). The involvement of journalism in social and cultural issues is not in itself new, but the issues are changing. In the last two decades, journalists in the region have had to concern themselves with issues such as gender politics, environmentalism and public health education, particularly concerning the Aids problem. All of these are phenomena that post-date 1980. The research literature has looked at how the media have or have not been conscientious in promoting gender equity (Mustafa 1985; dela-Cruz 1988; Tomagola 1990; Piyasin 1998; Van Fleet 1998; and Furnham and Mak 1999), addressing environmental issues (Friedman and Friedman 1989; Aditjondoro 1993; Keawkumnurdpong 1995; and Kershaw 1997) and promoting public awareness of Aids (Nishino 1995; Downer 1996; Nishino and Schunck 1997; and Wattanakul 1997). As with the issue of market and media, another assumption is embedded in this area of lifestyle politics and it needs to be re-examined. Many believe axiomatically that a free press goes hand in hand with more political democracy. Those who struggle for greater democracy and clamour for a free press have frequently been described as “liberals”, and their detractors as “conservatives”. However, people who are politically “liberal” may be socio-culturally “conservative”. People who want opposition parties in Parliament may not be supportive of nudist camps. Religious extremists agitating for their democratic right to enjoy political freedom may feel no compunction in proscribing dancing or dating … one can go on listing such inconsistencies. Media practitioners are part of these contradictions, although this issue has not figured prominently, if at all, in the literature.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT) REVOLUTION The literature has been addressing the transitional forces created by great technological innovations in the field of communications. Many works either directly or indirectly ponder the issue of how different

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countries have taken up the challenge, and the pace and scope of change that this has brought about ( Jussawalla et al. 1986; Kuo and Chen 1987; Hukill 1991; Jussawalla, Toh and Low 1992; Chan 1994; Hukill 1994; Atkins 1995; Adams 1996; Low 1996; Goonasekara 1997; Hashim 1997; Karthigesu and Ramanathan 1997; Ang 1999; Guioguio 1999; Thajchayapong and Changgom 1999; and Yabes 1999). Once again, assumptions are being made too readily which ask to be challenged. Many see IT advances as threatening authoritarian government. To some extent, this is true. At least, some authoritarian regimes are nervous and choose to tread carefully when opening up their countries to the Internet. Intricate laws are set up to regulate the demand and supply of Internet services; Low (1996) summed up these anxieties. However, it is important to note that the same political concerns for the risks posed by IT have produced very different empirical outcomes in places like Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Myanmar. Authoritarian regimes can preside over countries with relatively high IT penetration and easy linkages to the outside world, for example Singapore and Malaysia. The lack of economic capability to consume IT services is only a partial explanation of why countries like Vietnam and Myanmar lag behind in the usage of IT. State policy and, behind it, state philosophy and strategy in managing societies, are far more crucial factors. Rodan (2000), writing of the ruling People’s Action Party in Singapore, concluded that the party’s brand of authoritarianism is durable, but that the institutional frameworks within which advanced capitalism can operate remain varied. In other words, he has challenged the claim that an open information climate leads to open politics. Put another way, some societies like Singapore and Malaysia may find ways for their citizens to enjoy all the modern benefits of connecting with the world without the ruling regimes in both countries losing their significant capacity to exert authority. From an academic point of view, this means that old notions about “authoritarian” regimes, and how they have to control information tightly to preserve their hegemony, need to be examined more carefully.

CONCLUSION Media research has been focussed on the role of media in the four transitional trends that have swept through the region in the last two decades, dwelling more on some than on others. As a whole, the sum of

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the literature gives a strong impression that the media of a country is very much defined by the political regime under which it operates (some of the works that are most definite in this regard are Gonzalez 1988; Sussman 1990; Grigg 1991; Lau 1992; Allott 1994; Hill 1994; Palmos 1995; and Seow 1998). This is inevitable given that all of the media in the region have gone through (and many are still going through) experiences of political hegemony over the media. This may have driven some of the evident preoccupations that characterize intellectual discourse on the media. For example, is a free press a help or a hindrance to national development? Is the media a hapless victim of state authoritarianism, or is there a collusive relationship between them? Are the views of media consumers entirely vulnerable to state-managed propaganda? Should there be a kind of journalism that stands distinct and separate from the common Western practice of media serving as a check on state power? The most frequent intellectual approach is to write descriptive– analytical narratives which are usually empirically rich but not given to extensive theorizing. Works which are theoretically-engaged are rare, for example Juanillo Jr. and Scherer 1993; Librero 1993; Schaffer 1998; Wang 2000; and Merrill 2000. As such, readers of this literature would come away with a fairly detailed picture of media development and its key issues over the years, but the sum of these many parts has not coalesced into any coherent theoretical model. All that has been written of the various transitional trends in the region points to a common implication. The state is no longer the sole player in media management, and even in places where state power is still extensive, the state is losing some of its previous dominance in the shaping of the media agenda. Contending with the state is the ascendancy of market forces. An IT juggernaut is going to obliterate old ways of controlling the flow of information. Civil society is going to step up its role of engaging the media, a process that may be more disruptive than the old state–media tension. In looking at these issues, there may be a tendency to continue to be guided by old assumptions about the liberating influence of market, technology and civil society. But the sum of the literature also warns that enough changes have taken place to warrant a reconfiguration, but not rejection, of these assumptions.

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NOTES 1

2

3

4 5

6

This review covers only books and journal articles written in the English language. Newspaper articles on media developments are not included because the volume involved is too vast and scattered to collate. Mediarelated literature in the various languages of Southeast Asia is also omitted because of the lack of linguistic facility to read all of them. Even with the modest objective of reviewing only English-language academic publications, a comprehensive coverage cannot be assured. Countries in the region also publish in English but their products do not always find their way into major international indices and databases. Fred Siebert et al., Four Theories of the Press (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1956). This was a pioneer attempt at theorizing different press systems and explains how media are shaped by the larger ideological climate and economic environment. Lazarsfeld expected the Erie County project to find that the mass media had a direct powerful effect on voting behaviour in the Presidential election. He found the opposite. The media persuaded only a few individuals, who then had an impact as opinion-leaders when they interacted personally with others. For a concise account of this study, see Everett M. Rogers, A History of Communication Study — A Biographical Approach (New York: The Free Press, 1994), pp. 285–89. Pancasila was the official ideology of Indonesia promoted by the Suharto regime (1965–98). Some political leaders and senior bureaucrats of Malaysia and Singapore are the vocal exponents of Asian democracy. For a representative example of this school of thought, see Chan Heng Chee, “Democracy: Evolution and Implementation — An Asian Perspective”, in Democracy and Capitalism: Asian and American Perspectives ed. Robert Bartley et al. (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1993), pp. 1–26. The haze problem refers to large-scale forest fires in Indonesia that created a haze enveloping a large part of the region. This caused grave environmental problems for Singapore and Malaysia. The fires were caused by dry weather conditions as well as commercial burning of natural vegetation. Indonesia’s neighbours would like to see the country develop a more effective policy to curb the burning, but they were also wary of blaming the Jakarta government too loudly.

REFERENCES Abu Hassan, Musa bin. 1993. “Media Selection for Knowledge Transfer: Theory and Practice among Malaysian Agricultural Extension Agencies”. Ph.D. thesis, Florida State University.

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16 Russell Hiang-Khng Heng Adams, P.C. 1996. “Protest and the Scale Politics of Telecommunications”. Political Geography June, pp. 248–65. Aditjondoro, George Junus. 1993. “The Media as Development ‘Textbook’: A Case Study on Information Distortion in the Debate about the Social Impact of an Indonesian Dam”. Ph.D. thesis. Cornell University, . 1994. “The History of East Timor that Tempo Overlooked”. In East Timor — An Intellectual Speaks Out, Development Dossier no. 33, edited by George J. Aditjondoro. Canberra: Australia Council for Overseas Aid. Ahmad, Mansor bin. 1995. “Regional Co-operation in Mass Communication Development: The Prospect for ASEAN”. Ph.D. thesis, University of Minnesota. Alden, D.L. et al. 1993. “Identifying Global and Culture-Specific Dimensions of Humor in Advertising — A Multinational Analysis”. Journal of Marketing April, pp. 64–75. Alfian et al. 1982. Mass Media and Development in Indonesia. Jakarta. Alliance of Independent Journalists. 1994. Banning 1994: A Collection of Writings about the Banning of Tempo, Detik, Editor. Jakarta. Allott, Anna J. 1994. “Burmese Ways — A Report on Censorship”. Index on Censorship July/August, pp. 87–121. Ang, Peng Hwa. 1998. Mass Media Laws and Regulations in Singapore. Singapore: AMIC. Ang, Peng Hwa. 1999. “Information Highways — Policy and Regulation: The Singapore Experience”. In Media Regulations for the New Times, edited by Venkat Iyer, pp. 97–114. Singapore: AMIC. Annuar, Mustafa K. 1994. “The Malaysian Press and Representation of Minority Groups”. SOJOURN 9, no. 2 (October): 200–212. Armstrong, Robert. 1994. “Global Introduction: An Analysis of Singapore’s Initial Contribution on CNN’s World Report”. SOJOURN 9, no. 2 (October): 246–59. Article 19. 1994. The Press Under Siege, Censorship in Indonesia. London. Atkins, William. 1995. Satellite Television and State Power in Southeast Asia: New Issues in Discourse and Control. Perth: Edith Cowan University. Birch, David. 1993. Singapore Media: Communication Strategies and Practices. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire. Bonus, Caudal Enrique. 1990. “Communication Policy and National Development: A Comparative Analysis of Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand”. MA thesis, California State University, Fresno. Boulanger, C.L. 1993. “Government and Press in Malaysia”. Journal of Asian and African Studies Jan–April, pp. 54–66. Caldarola, Victor J. 1990. “Reception as Cultural Experience: Visual Mass Media and Reception Practices in Outer Indonesia”. Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania.

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Media in Southeast Asia 17 Chan, J.M. 1994. “National Responses and Accessibility to Star TV in Asia”. Journal of Communication Summer, pp. 112–31. Chang, T.K. 1999. “Reporting Public Opinion in Singapore: Journalistic Practices and Policy Implications”. Harvard. International Journal of Press-Politics, pp. 11–28. Communication Foundation for Asia. 1986. Philippine Mass Media: A Book of Readings. Confederation of Asean Journalists. 1985. Press Laws and System in Asean States. Constantino. 1983. Report of the National Press Club Seminar Committee on the State of the Philippine Press. Coronel, Sheila S. 1999. From Loren to Marimar, the Philippines media in the 1990s. Manila: Philippine Centre for Investigative Journalism. Coronel, Sheila S. and Olle Nordberg, eds. 1998. “The Southeast Asian Media in a Time of Crisis”. Development Dialogue 2. Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjold Foundation. Corotan, Gemma Luz et al. 1997. Uncovering the Beat: The Real-World Guide to Reporting on Government. Manila: Centre for Investigative Journalism. dela-Cruz, Pennie S. Azarcon. 1988. Images of Women in the Phillipines Media, from Virgin to Vamp. Manila. Dhakhidae, Daniel. 1991. “The State, the Rise of Capital and the Fall of Political Journalism: Political Economy of Indonesian News Industry”. Ph.D. thesis, Cornell University. Downer, Ann. 1996. “Mass Media and Public Health: Designing Persuasive Health Communication Campaigns”. EDD thesis, Seattle University. Dunlap, Lillian Rae. 1992. “New and Different or Simply New: An Intercultural Analysis of Government and Private Television News in Malaysia”. Ph.D. thesis, Indiana University. Emily, Judy. 1996. “The Singapore English Language Press: Its Role in Conflict Limitation in Singapore’s Relations with its Neighbours”. Hons thesis, National University of Singapore. Faruqui, Shad Saleem and Sankaran Ramanathan. 1998. Mass Media Laws and Regulations in Malaysia. Singapore: AMIC. Feliciano, G.D. 1981. “Principal series of Information in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia: A Critical Survey”. International Social Science Journal 33, no. 1: 176–86. Fisher et al. 1986. “Indonesian Press Coverage of Australia”. Australian Outlook 40, no. 3: 162–66. Florentino-Hofilena, Chay. 1998. News for Sale: The Corruption of the Philippines Media. Manila: Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. Friedman, S.M. and K.A. Friedman. 1989. “Environmental Journalism: Guardian of the Asian Commons”. Environment June.

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18 Russell Hiang-Khng Heng Furnham, A. and T. Mak. 1999. “Sex-Role Stereotyping in Television Commercials: A Review and Comparison of 14 Studies Done on Five Continents over 25 Years”. Sex Roles September, pp. 413–37. George, Cherian. 1989. “The State and the Press in Singapore: In the National Interest?”. BA (Hons) thesis, Cambridge University. Gonzalez, H. 1988. “Mass Media and the Spiral of Silence: The Philippines from Marcos to Aquino”. Journal of Communication 38, no. 4: 33–48. Goonasekera, Anura. 1997. “Asia and the Information Revolution: An Introductory Perspective”. Asian Journal of Communication 7, no. 2: 12–33. Graham J.L. 1993. “Content-Analysis of German and Japanese Advertising in Print Media from Indonesia, Spain and the United States”. Journal of Advertising 22, no. 2: 5–15 Grigg, Daniel Walter. 1991. “Mass Media Policies and Systems of the Marcos and Aquino Administrations: A Comparative Analysis”. MA thesis, Regent University. Guioguio, Reynaldo V. 1999. “New Information Technologies and the Philippine Regulatory Environment: The Communication Industry”. In Media Regulations for the New Times, edited by Venkat Iyer, pp. 88–96. Singapore: AMIC. Gunther, A.C. and P.H. Ang. 1996. “Public Perceptions of Television Influence and Opinions about Censorship in Singapore”. International Journal of Public Opinion Research Fall, pp. 248–65. Gunther, A.C. and L.B. Snyder. 1992. “Reading International News in a Censored Press Environment”. Journalism Quarterly Fall, pp. 591–99. Hachten, W.A. 1989. “Media Development without Press Freedom: Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore”. Journalism Quarterly 66, no. 4: 822–27. Hashim, Rahmah. 1997. “At the Crossroads of Transnational and Extraterrestrial: Whither Malaysian Television Broadcasting?” Asian Journal of Communication 7, no. 2: 34–56. Heng, Hiang Khng. 1990. “The Media and Democratic Development in Asia: A Perspective from Singapore”. Paper presented at the Media and Democratic Development in Asia conference in Taipei. Copy available in ISEAS library, Singapore. . 1999. “Of the State, For the State, Yet Against the State: The Struggle Paradigm in Vietnam’s Media Politics”. Ph.D. thesis, The Australian National University. . 2001. “Media Negotiating the State: In the Name of the Law in Anticipation”. SOJOURN 16, no. 2 (October): 213–37. Hidayat, Dedy Nur. 1994. “Newspaper Agenda Consensus as a Function of Press Freedom in Four Asian Developing Countries”. Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin — Madison. Hill, David T. 1994. The Press in New Order Indonesia. Melbourne: Murdoch University.

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Media in Southeast Asia 19 Ho, Chee Lick. 1998. “Representations of School in Singapore Teenage Magazines: A Linguistic Analysis”. Asian Journal of Communication 8, no. 1: 87–110. Hukill, Mark A. 1991. “Asean Telecommunications: Infrastructure, Investment and Regulatory Policies”. Asian Journal of Communications 1, no. 2: 19–40. . 1994. “The Protection and Regulation of Singapore Telecoms”. Asian Journal of Communications 4, no. 2: 121–31. Idid, Syed Arabi. 1985. “Mass Media and Malaysians’ Images of Foreign Countries: A Uses and Gratifications Perspective”. Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin — Madison. Jenkins, D. 1986. “Indonesian Government Attitudes Toward the Domestic and Foreign Media”. Australian Outlook 40, no. 3: 153–61. Jorgensen, Nicholas Edwin. 1995. “Media and Identity Creation in Contemporary Thailand”. MS thesis, San Jose State University. Juanilo, Napoleon K. Jnr, and Clifford W. Scherer. 1993. “A Paradigm Shift? Indigenous Media and Development in the Southeast Asian Context”. Asian Journal of Communication 3, no. 2: 1–29. Jussawalla, M. et al. 1986. The Passing of Remoteness? Information Revolution in the Asia Pacific. Singapore: AMIC. Jussawalla, Meheroo, Toh Mun Heng and Linda Low. 1992. “Singapore: An Intelligent City–State”. Asian Journal of Communication 2, no. 3: 31–54. Karthigesu, Ranggasamy and Sankaran Ramanathan. 1997. “Asian Social Values and Global Liberalism: Attuning State Policies to the Convergence of Telecommunication Technologies in Malaysia”. Asian Journal of Communication 7, no. 2: 75–85. Keawkumnurdpong, Jirapreeya. 1995. “The Thai Press Media Coverage of Environmental Issues”. MA thesis, United States International University. Kenny, J.F. 1996. “TV viewing among TV set owners and non-owners in a remote Philippine province”. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media Spring, pp. 227–42. Kershaw, Roger. 1997. Powers of Persuasion, the Malayan Media and the Pergau Dam Affair. Hull: Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hull. Kiatpinyochai, Paradee. 1990. “The Thai Television Broadcasting Industry: Its Economics and Politics”. MA economics thesis, Thailand: Thammasat University. Kuo, E.C.Y. 1984. “Television and Language Planning in Singapore”. International Journal of Sociology of Language 48: 49–64. Kuo, E.C.Y. and H.T. Chen. 1987. “Towards an Information Society: Changing Occupational Structure in Singapore”. Asian Survey 27, no. 3: 355–70. Kuo, E.C.Y. et al. 1993. Mirror on the War, Media and a Singapore Election. Singapore: AMIC. Lau, Lawson Liat Hoe. 1992. “The Technological City: 1984 in Singapore (Volumes 1 & 2)”. Ph.D. thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana — Champaign.

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20 Russell Hiang-Khng Heng Lee, P.S.N. and G. Wang. 1995. “Satellite TV in Asia: Forming a New Ecology”. Telecommunication Policy March, pp. 135–49. Lee, Paul Siu-Nam. 1986. “National Communication and Development: A Comparative Study of Four British Colonies: Nigeria, Guyana, Singapore and Hongkong”. Ph.D. thesis, University of Michigan. Lee, S.K.J. and Hoon T.H. 1993. “Rhetorical Vision of Men and Women Managers in Singapore”. Human Relations April, pp. 527–42. Lent J.A. 1980. “Press and Government in East Asia: An Overview”. Asia Quarterly no. 2, pp. 127–37. . 1981. “Freedom of the Press in East Asia”. Human Rights Quarterly 3, no. 4: 137–49. . 1982. “How broadcasting operates in the Asean countries”. Index on Censorship 11, no. 5 (October): 6–9. , ed. 1982. Newspapers in Asia: Contemporary Trends and Problems. Hong Kong: Heineman Asia. . 1984. “Restructuring of Mass Media in Malaysia and Singapore: Pounding in the Coffin Nails”. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 4, pp. 26–35. Librero, Felix. 1993. “Towards a Methodology for Problematique Analysis: A Philippines Experience”. Asian Journal of Communication 3, no. 1: 84–102. Low, Linda. 1996. “Social and Economic Issues in an Information Society: A Southeast Asian Perspective”. Asian Journal of Communication 6, no. 1: 1–17. Madrid, R. 1999. “Islamic Students in the Indonesian Student Movement, 1998–1999: Forces for Moderation”. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars July– September, pp. 17–32. Mag-Uyon, Madeline Guzon. 1984. “People’s Participation in a Community Newspaper: Experiences in a Philippine Village”. Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin — Madison. Marr, David, ed. 1998. Mass Media in Vietnam. Canberra: Department of Political & Social Change, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University. Martin, Dennis G. and Subir Sengupta. 1998. “Turning ‘Domino Theory’ Upside Down in Asia: Advertising and Singapore’s Cultural Evolution”. Asian Journal of Communication 8, no. 2: 148–67. Maslog, Crispin, ed. 1992. Communications, Values and Society. Philippine Association of Communication Educators. . 1994. The Metro Manila Press. Manila: Philippine Press Institute. Massey, Brian L. 2000a. “How Three Southeast Asian Newspapers Framed ‘The Haze’ of 1997–98”. Asian Journal of Communication 10, no. 1: 72–94. Massey, B.L. 2000b. “Market-based Predictors of Interactivity at Southeast Asian Online Newspapers”. Internet Research-Electronic Networking Applications and Policy 10, no. 3: 227–37.

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Media in Southeast Asia 21 McCargo, D. 1999a. “The International Media and the Domestic Political Coverage of the Thai Press”. Modern Asian Studies July, pp. 551–79. McCargo, D. 1999b. “Killing the Messenger: The 1994 Press Bannings and the Demise of Indonesia’s New Order”. Harvard International Journal of Press-Politics Winter, pp. 29–47. McCargo, Duncan and Ramaimas Bowra. 1996. Policy Advocacy and the Media in Thailand. Bangkok: Institute of Policy Studies. McDivitt, J.A. et al. 1997. “Explaining the Impact of a Communication Campaign to Change Vaccination Knowledge and Coverage in the Philippines”. Health Communication 9, no. 2: 95–118. Mehra, Achal, ed. 1989. Press Systems in Asean States. Singapore: AMIC. Mehta, Harish. 1997. Cambodia Silenced: The Press Under Six Regimes. Bangkok: White Lotus Press. Merrill, John C. 2000. “Social Stability and Harmony: A New Mission for the Press”. Asian Journal of Communication 10, no. 2: 33–70. Morris, R.C. 2000. “Modernity’s Media and the End of Mediumship? On the Aesthetic Economy of Transparency in Thailand”. Public Culture Spring, pp. 457–75. Muntarbhorn, Vitit. 1998. Mass Media Laws and Regulations in Thailand. Singapore: AMIC. Mushtaq, Elahi K. 1991. “Television Programming in Third World Countries: An Exploratory Study and Assessment of ‘Media Imperialism’ Claims and Assumptions in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Thailand”. Ph.D. thesis, New York City University. Mustafa, Hamima Dona. 1985. “Communication and Change: A Comparison of Malay Women in Three Squatter Villages”. Ph.D. thesis, University of Washington. Nain, Zaharom. 1994. “Commercialization and Control in a ‘Caring Society’: Malaysian Media ‘Towards 2020’”. SOJOURN 9, no. 2 (October): 178–99. . 1996. “Rhetoric and Realities: Malaysian Television Policy in an Era of Globalization”. Asian Journal of Communication 6, no. 1: 43–64. Nishino, Yoshimi. 1995. “Conversation about Aids and the Media Environment in Thailand: Mass Media Roles in Context Building and Content Providing for Interpersonal Discourse”. Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania. Nishino, Y. and M. Schunck. 1997. “Single Thai Women’s Interpersonal Communication and Mass Media Reception on Aids”. Aids Education and Prevention 9, no. 2 (April): 181–200. Nordin, Mohammed Zin bin. 1993. “The Relationship Between Perception of Cognitive Uncertainty, Knowledge Importance, Information Source Accessibility and Information Source Usefulness, and Information-Seeking Behaviour”. Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin — Madison.

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22 Russell Hiang-Khng Heng Palmos, Frank. 1995. The Vietnam Press: The Unrealised Ambition. Perth: Edith Cowan University. Parekh, V.A. 1996. “Indonesia: Cracks in the Wall”. Media Studies Journal Fall, pp. 75–83. Patharapanupath, Yuthawat. 1985. “Communication and Social Change in the Third World: A Critique From an Experience in the Development of Thailand”. Ph.D. thesis, Wayne State University. Philippine Information Agency, Media Studies Division. 1988. Mass Media Infrastructure in the Philippines. . 1996. Philippine Media Profile 1995–1996. Manila. Pineda-Ofreoneo. 1986. The Manipulated Press: The History of Philippine Journalism Since 1945. Metro Manila, Philippines: Solar Pub. Corp. Piyasin, Patcharaporn. 1998. “The Development and Use of Sexual Appeals in Thailand’s Television Advertising”. MA thesis, California State University, Fresno. Rahman, Muhamad Hasan. 1993. “Uitilization of Education Media and Technology Among Instructors of Teachers’ Training Colleges in Malaysia”. EDD thesis, Boston University. Ramanathan, Sankaran. 1996. “Urban–Rural Dichotomy in Malaysian Elections”. Asian Journal of Communication 6, no. 2: 65–91. Ramirez, Mina M. 1990. Communication from the Ground Up. Manila. Resource and Research Centre. 1990. Media Watch: The Use and Abuse of the Malaysian Press. Kuala Lumpur. Reyes, Ed Aurelio C. 1992. Press Freedom, the People’s Right, Assertion and Repression in the Philippines. Manila: Philippine Movement for Press Freedom. Rodan, G. 2000. “Asian Crisis, Transparency and the International Media in Singapore”. Pacific Review 13, no. 2: 217–42. Rodgers, Peter. 1982. The Domestic and Foreign Press in Indonesia “Free but Responsible”. Brisbane, Qld.: Griffith University. Rodgers, S. 1986. “Batak Tape Cassette Kinship Through the Indonesia National Mass Media”. American Ethnologies 13, no. 3: 23–42. Rodriguez, M.A. Lulu Alcasabas. 1993. “What People Get From the News: How Filipinos Understand Agrarian Reform”. Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin — Madison. Romano, A. 1996. “Keterbukaan and Press Freedom in Indonesia”. Australian Journal of International Affairs July, pp. 157–69. Rosario-Braid, Floranel. 1993. Social Responsibility in Communication Media. Manila. Salvilla, S. et al. 1991. Press Freedom and the Risk of Libel. Manila: Philippine Press Institute. Schaffer, Richard. 1998. “Comparing Development Journalism and Public Journalism as Interventionist Press Models”. Asian Journal of Communication 8, no. 1: 31–52.

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Media in Southeast Asia 23 Sen, Krishna and David T. Hill. 2000. Media, Culture and Politics in Indonesia. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Sendjaja, Sasa Djuarsa. 1988. “Social Reality and Television News in Indonesia: An Investigation of Young Indonesians’ Perception of the Television Portrayals of Three Development Program Issues”. Ph.D. thesis, Ohio State University. Seow, Francis. 1998. The Media Enthralled: Singapore Revisited. London: Lynne Rienner. Sermcheep, Siriwan. 1992. “Characteristics of the Press in an Authoritarian System: A Case Study of Thailand”. MA thesis, California State University, Fresno. Seth, S.P. 1994. “Clamp Down on Press in Indonesia”. Economic Political Weekly. 10 September, no. 2407. Shafer, Richard Everett. 1987. “Development Journalism: The Fragile Theory and the Acquiescent Practice in the Philippines”. Ph.D. thesis, University of Missouri — Columbia. Shah, H. and G. Gayatri. 1994. “Development News in Elite and Non-Elite Newspapers in Indonesia”. Journalism Quarterly Summer, pp. 411–20. Siriyuvasak, Ubonrat. 1997. “Limited Corruption Without Re-regulating the Media: The Case of the Broadcasting Industry in Thailand”. Asian Journal of Communication 7, no. 2: 57–74. Soesilo, A.S. and P.C. Wasburn. 1994. “Constructing a Political Spectacle: American and Indonesian Media Accounts of the Crisis in the Gulf”. Sociological Quarterly May, pp. 367–81. Soriano. Marcelo B. 1981. “The quiet revolt of the Philippine press, the struggle of the Filipino journalist against suppression, incensed by the false resignation of Mrs Letty Jimenez Magsanoc from the editorship of Panorama”. Weekend magazine supplement of Bulletin Today. Manila: WE Forum. Storey, J. Douglas. 1993. “Mythology, Narrative and Discourse in Javanese Wayang: Towards Cross-Level Theories for the New Development Paradigm”. Asian Journal of Communication 3, no. 2: 30–53. Sussman, G. 1990. “Politics and the Press: The Philippines since Marcos”. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars January–March, pp. 34–43. Suwanmoli, Marinee. 1998. “Foreign Correspondents in Bangkok and Foreign Media Coverage of Prostitution and Tourism in Thailand”. Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin — Madison. Tamin, Indrawadi. 1992. “Development Journalism in Indonesia: Its Policy and Practice in Three National Newspapers”. Ph.D. thesis, Florida State University. Tan, Teng Lang. 1990. The Singapore Press: Freedom, Responsibility and Credibility. Singapore: Institute of Policy Studies. Tan, Yew Soon and Soh, Yew Peng. 1994. The Development of Singapore Modern Media Industry. Singapore: Times Academic Press. Tay, Simon S.C. and Cherian George. 1996. “Asian Media and Elections:

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24 Russell Hiang-Khng Heng Frameworks in Human Rights and Media Systems”. Asian Journal of Communication 6, no. 2: 9–29. Teodoro, Luis V. Jr and Rosalinda V. Kabatay. 1998. Mass Media Laws and Regulations in the Philippines. Singapore: AMIC. Thajchayapong, Pairash and Gritsana Changgom. 1999. “Supervising the Internet in Thailand”. In Media Regulations for the New Times, edited by Venkat Iyer, pp. 115–24. Singapore: AMIC. Tickell, P., ed. 1987. The Indonesian Press: Its Past, Its Present, Its Problems. Melbourne: Monash University. Tobing, Sumita. 1991. “Development Journalism in Indonesia: Content Analysis of Government Television News”. Ph.D. thesis, Ohio University. Toh, Yim Seong. 1998. “A Study on Press Coverage of the 1997 General Election”. MA thesis, Nanyang Technological University. Tomagola, Tamrin Amal. 1990. “The Indonesian Women’s Magazine as an Ideological Medium”. Ph.D. thesis, University of Essex (United Kingdom). Turnbull, C.M. 1995. Dateline Singapore: 150 Years of The Straits Times. Singapore: Times Edition. Van Fleet, Sara Ernest. 1998. “Everyday Dramas: Television and Modern Thai Women”. Ph.D. thesis, University of Washington. Wang, Georgette. 2000. “East, West, Communication and Theory: Searching for the Meaning of Searching for Asian Communication Theories”. Asian Journal of Communication 10, no. 2: 14–32. Wang, Lay Kim. 1994. “Gender and the New Communication Technology in Malaysia”. SOJOURN 9, no. 2 (October): 213–25. Wattanakul, Siriporn. 1997. “Use of the Mass Media by High School Students in Thailand to Obtain Aids Information”. MA thesis, California State University, Fresno. Williams, Louise and Roland Rich, eds. 2000. Losing Control: Freedom of the Press in Asia. Canberra: Asia Pacific Press. Willnat, L. et al. 1997. “Foreign Media Exposure and Perceptions of Americans in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Singapore”. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly Winter, pp. 738–56. Wong, Kok-Keong. 1991. “Political Economy of Media and Culture in Peripheral Singapore: A Theory of Controlled Commodification”. Ph.D. thesis, University of Massachusetts. Yabes, Teodoro Y. 1999. “New Information Technologies and the Philippine Regulatory Environment: The Broadcast Industry”. In Media Regulations for the New Times, edited by Venkat Iyer, pp. 78–87. Singapore: AMIC. Yao Souchou. 1994. “The Predicament of Modernity: Mass Media and the Making of the West in Southeast Asia”. Asian Journal of Communication 4, no. 1: 33–51.

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Media in Southeast Asia 25 Yamane, H. 1983. “Development of Human Rights Teaching and Resources in Asia Toward a de-Ideologization Through Information”. Bulletin of Peace Proposals 14, no. 1: 45–52. Yehya, Riad Melhem. 1992. “The Role of Communication in Family Planning: The Case of the Philippines”. Ph.D. thesis. Youngblood, R.L. 1981. “Government-Media Relations in the Philippines”. Asia Survey 21, no. 7: 710–28.

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Reproduced from Media Fortunes, Changing Times: ASEAN States in Transition, edited by Russell Hiang-Khng Heng (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available from < http://www.iseas.edu.sg/pub.html >

The Media in Cambodia 27

2 Cambodian Media in a Post-Socialist Situation Ham Samnang

INTRODUCTION Cambodia has been experiencing a major transition through the 1990s from being run as a one-party socialist state to functioning as a chaotic polity trying to become a multi-party democracy. In such a major transition, many institutions will have to be reorganized and adjust to a new reality. The Cambodian media is one such example. This chapter examines the extent of the changes in state–media dynamics in the last ten years in the areas of media ownership, the law, state management tactics and the role of foreign players.

CURRENT PROFILE OF MEDIA Freedom of the press is guaranteed under the present constitution of Cambodia and the country has a relatively free press by regional standards. But many print media are prone to publish with little sense of responsibility. This can lead to the government threatening them with suspension or even closure, although the punitive measures of the state are not necessarily linked to irresponsible editorial output. On balance, there is no systematic repression of the press. Control is tighter vis-à-vis the broadcast media. All television channels are owned by the government or individuals intimately connected with the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), as are most radio stations. This produces a broadcast situation that urgently needs diversity and independence. The level of journalism education among Cambodian

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journalists is low and so is the quality of most media output. The level of education is not the only factor affecting the product. The country is poor, and consumers have little disposable income; this keeps media advertising revenues low, which depresses journalists’ salaries. Widespread illiteracy, limited access to the media in the provinces, and little coverage of what happens in the provinces are other concerns. Additionally, the limited transparency and unclear mandates of information officials within the state bureaucracy hinder journalists’ access to information.

POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE MEDIA Today’s media in Cambodia is born out of the country’s turbulent postindependence political experience.1 Before 1953, France, the colonial power, imposed its own restrictive media policy but it also introduced some Western media traditions into the country. After the French left Cambodia, the number of newspapers exploded, with many of them serving as the mouthpieces of different political parties that were jostling for power in a post-colonial situation. In the mid-1960s, top leader Prince Norodom Sihanouk consolidated his power and began to oblige the media to take a friendly approach towards his regime. He did this by alternating cash rewards with punitive action. He himself also ran a publication, the Kambuja Monthly, and entire issues of the magazine could be dedicated to burnishing his image. His relationship with the foreign media was testy, sometimes leading to the expulsion of foreign correspondents. A 1970 coup by Lon Nol toppled Sihanouk and Cambodia entered a second period of press expansion and relative freedom, which was quickly followed by far more severe government reaction and repression. The Lon Nol regime had to fight a civil war jointly waged by the Khmer Rouge, a popular name for the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), and supporters of Sihanouk, who was living in exile in Beijing. However, the number of newspapers remained high, with about 20 to 30 dailies in 1975, when the regime collapsed under Khmer Rouge military pressure. Thus ended any vestige of press freedom. During the four-year Khmer Rouge regime, extreme ideological indoctrination and regimentation gave rise to a press that was utterly docile; only Communist dogmas were published and a single radio station operated in Phnom Penh, broadcasting propaganda.

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The Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown in 1979 and replaced by the Vietnam-backed government known as the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). The leaders of the PRK were cadres who fell out with the CPK leadership and regrouped as the People’s Revolutionary Party (PRP), with the help of Vietnam. Vietnamese troops were to remain in the country until 1989. The years from 1979 to 1991 saw a civil war fought between the PRK and a coalition comprising the Khmer Rouge and two non-Communist Khmer groups.2 The latter were the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front (KPNLF), led by an émigré statesman Son Sann, and the United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful and Co-operative Cambodia (FUNCINPEC) which pledged allegiance to Sihanouk and was run by his son Prince Ranariddh. In the period 1979 to 1989, the PRK established a number of media outlets, but they, too, served as instruments for disseminating information and party propaganda. Key editorial personnel met once a week with the PRP Central Committee’s Department of Education and Propaganda to review their work and set future goals. Dissent was systematically repressed and information was monopolized by the regime. It was essentially a party-controlled socialist-styled media, far less radical than that of the Khmer Rouge, but driven by a similar monolithic ideology. Access to foreign broadcasts such as the popular Voice of America (VOA) was severely prohibited. The only foreign stations permitted were from Vietnam and the Soviet Union. In September 1980, the regime banned foreign journalists (that is, those from the non-Communist world) from the country. Four major papers circulated during the PRK period. The main party publication was the Pracheachun (People’s News) belonging to the PRP’s Central Committee. The capital Phnom Penh had a metropolitan weekly bearing its name. The army ran a military journal Kangtoap Padevoath (Revolutionary Army) to cover mainly military affairs. The fourth paper was the Kampuchean Weekly News that in name belonged to the government and not the PRP.3 There was also an official news agency called Sarpordamean Kampuchea (SPK). The agency produced daily news for distribution to the various domestic and foreign media organizations, government departments, foreign missionaries and international organizations. Kep Thong Heang, former chief of SPK’s Foreign Department, recalled, “As we worked for a state agency, we were well fed and given warm greetings wherever we went. We reported only the good news about the

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government. Any negative news we reported to the party central committee.” SKP was not given adequate resources. Access to Reuters and Agence France Presse were discontinued for want of regular subscription payments so the agency had to rely on services of the Vietnam News Agency, freely provided by the Vietnamese. The PRK spent heavily on radio and television services because it saw these media as a priority vehicle in its propaganda war against the Khmer Rouge and the latter’s non-Communist allies. Both the Soviet Union and Vietnam helped the PRK to re-establish the country’s television service. However, the PRK media was still rather under-resourced. The regime could not afford radio stations in all provinces and so many areas could not receive the national radio service signal. A loudspeaker network therefore had to be set up to relay propaganda. Most Cambodian journalists working during this period had only on-the-job training, though a small number of staff exchanges occurred between Cambodia, Vietnam and Eastern European countries. However, by the standards of a modern information age, they fell far short of the actual needs of the country. Despite the climate of tight control, there was some room for media scrutiny of social problems. According to Khieu Kanharith, both the Kampuchea News and the Phnom Penh were the most popular because, being government rather than party papers, they were given more scope to analyse policies and criticize bureaucrats for incompetence or abuse of power.4 The increased editorial space probably came in the wake of a 1986 liberalization policy. Around that time, liberal reforms were sweeping through the Communist world in the wake of Gorbachev’s glasnost policy in the then Soviet Union. Over in Vietnam, which was the PRK’s mentor, liberal reforms also began in earnest from 1986; and, in that year, the PRK lifted its ban on foreign correspondents visiting Cambodia.5 The watershed for both Cambodia and its media began with the withdrawal of the Vietnamese in 1989. The subsequent arrival of United Nations (UN) personnel changed Cambodian media drastically.

TRANSITION TO A POST-SOCIALIST MEDIA The UN brokered a peace agreement signed by the various parties to the conflict in October 1991. Following that, the UN Transitional Authority

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of Cambodia (UNTAC) came in with troops to ensure security for a free and fair election to take place. The UN-supervised elections in 1993 then gave Cambodia its present multi-party post-socialist polity. In October 1991, the PRP formally abandoned its Marxist-Leninist ideology and reinvented itself as the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), which continues to run the country till today. The 1993 election was won by FUNCINPEC but political exigencies required that power be shared between FUNCINPEC and CPP. Ranariddh and CPP strongman Hun Sen jointly became Prime Ministers in this elected government. Sihanouk was crowned King. From 1990, free market economics was also promoted to replace the socialist economic planning of the PRK. Taking advantage of the more liberal times and UNTAC protection, new publications could be started free of PRK control. Among the range of new titles launched at that time were the English-language Cambodia Times and the Phnom Penh Post. Khmer-language papers included Koh Santepheap (Island of Peace), Rasmei Kampuchea (Light of Kampuchea), and Sampanh Chanhak (Conscience), to name just a few. This new mood affected even media that were owned by the PRK regime. For instance, in 1990 Khieu Kanharith was suspended from his position as general editor of the Kampuchea News and forbidden to travel abroad for a year after he published an interview with Moscow Radio, which had made the point that sooner or later, Cambodia would have a multi-party system. However, the result of media liberalization was not consistently good. By the end of the UN mission, newspapers of questionable quality were proliferating in the capital. The UN made a significant contribution to the media scene by setting up Radio UNTAC to provide information on the 1993 elections. It was one factor behind the high voter turnout, playing a critical role in convincing the electorate that the ballots would, in fact, be secret. John Marston, who worked for UNTAC Cambodian News Media, said, “Whatever other transformations may have taken place in Cambodian society during the UNTAC period, the media clearly changed rapidly and dramatically between UNTAC’s arrival and departure.”6 What UNTAC has made possible is a greater number of media, and that legacy prevails today even after UNTAC has departed. Although the current CPPdominated government occasionally announces a crackdown, there is still a boisterous media scene where the distribution of information is

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no longer monopolized by the state. However there has not been, by any means, a steady progress in increasing the level of press freedom. The media environment is very much a function of Cambodia’s unstable and violent politics. Indeed, in July 1997, an outbreak of military conflict between rival political parties silenced many of Cambodian media organizations.

Media Ownership One major change in this transition to a multi-party democratic system is in the area of media ownership. It is no longer the monopoly of the state — and not only is private ownership of media possible, but foreign ownership is also permitted. However ownership, particularly of the broadcast media, still remains highly politicized. The number of newspapers increased from more than 10 in the 1992–93 period of the UN presence to more than 40 by late 1994. As of 2000, the number registered with the Ministry of Information was 227 newspapers and magazines, though many do not publish regularly. Ownership of the mass media in the post-socialist phase approximates the situation immediately after independence from France: the media are usually owned by a party or individuals who are sympathetic to a certain party. In broadcasting, the nature of the media allows political authorities more control over ownership. The state has the prerogative of allocating broadcasting frequencies because they are finite. Other than the national television and radio services, the Ministry of Information decided in 1993 not to grant licenses to political parties. However, that policy has been implemented in a discretionary partisan manner. Since the 1993elected government was in the hands of the CPP and FUNCINPEC, these parties easily obtained licences to run radio and television stations, although in name they were privately-owned. Prime Minister Hun Sen of the CPP owns Bayon TV/Radio FM 95 and the CPP owns Apsara TV/Radio FM 97. In addition to these, the CPP owns or controls the following “private” broadcast media: Radio FM95, TV3/Radio FM 103 and TV5/Radio FM 98. FUNCINPEC was also allowed to run a radio station, FM 90 PM, and a television station, CTV9. The only critical and non-partisan voice to have emerged in radio is Beehive Radio FM 105, established in 1995 by Mam Sonando. Its 1kW transmitter covers a radius of between 40 to 100 kilometres around

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Phnom Penh. This station is primarily a “call-in” music requests channel, but it relays a 40-minute news programme, five times a day, in between the other programmes. Beehive Radio has been given some leeway for its independent line although, according to Mam Sonando, its relationship with the Ministry of Information has had its share of tension.7 A major political event in 1997 disturbed this trend and demonstrated how the liberalized political and media environment was still brittle. The political rivalry between FUNCINPEC and the CPP broke out into open military confrontation, and Hun Sen, who had greater fire power, tried to arrest Ranariddh and his key supporters on 5–6 July. Ranariddh fled to France but a number of his aides and military commanders were arrested and killed, thus giving Hun Sen de facto control of the government. The conflict was only settled after the international community put pressure on Hun Sen to observe a semblance of due process. Ranariddh was allowed to come back and contest the 1998 national election. The CPP won that election but did not get a twothirds majority, the level of victory needed for it to affirm itself as the legitimate government without the support of elected candidates from the other parties. The party therefore entered into a coalition with FUNCINPEC which had won the second largest block of seats. Under this arrangement, another coalition government was formed, with Hun Sen Prime Minister and Ranariddh as Chairman of the National Assembly. The 1997 political upheaval disrupted the media severely. Opposition papers did not publish for nearly three months as editors feared political intimidation. Ou Sovann, who published the Samleng Yuvachun Khmer (Voice of Khmer Youth) said, “We resumed publication in late December after the donors and the international community put pressure on the coup government.”8 Beehive Radio had its equipment looted during and after the July 1997 military upheaval. The station did not start again till after the 26 July 1998 national election. However, the major casualty was the FUNCINPEC-owned media, as Hun Sen’s troops took over its radio and television stations. Hun Sen did not allow them to resume until after the election, thus denying FUNCINPEC access to crucial publicity when campaigning for votes. One opposition party, the KPNLF, only got its radio licence in May 1998, two months before the election.9 Another, the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP), failed to receive a licence to run a radio and television even after three applications in 1997, 1998 and 1999;10 the

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first two were rejected and the third had no reply by mid-2002. The government rejected these applications on the grounds that the FM radio frequencies were fully taken. However, Secretary of State Kanharith from the Ministry of Information has said that while the frequencies for nationwide radio broadcasts have been fully used, licences for smaller new stations in the provinces are a possibility. Recently, a number of licences for provincial stations have been granted and some test-runs of provincial stations have been initiated by the Ministry’s provincial offices. Kanharith has also said that more television stations may be possible if they go digital or use an ultra-high frequency. As the fallout from the 1997 conflict settled and opposition politicians returned to negotiate with the CPP, they had very little chance to regain their media access. Besides tactical political management, Hun Sen also used financial means to increase his control of opposition broadcast media. This was evident when he announced publicly that he has a big share in the FUNCINPEC television station CTV9 after the CPP and FUNCINPEC agreed in November 1998 to form a coalition government. According to Kanharith, since 1998 the CPP has been devoting its resources to acquiring broadcast media.11 Unlike publications, which influence mainly the urban élite, broadcast media, especially radio, can reach most parts of the country and sway an election. As a result, the government plans to spread FM radio into every province by 2005. Kanharith has presented this move, however, as a public education project to benefit the rural poor: “Radio provides quick education to a number of illiterate people. It’s cheap and can be used in all places. It is a great contribution to educating people.” The CPP is no longer very interested in financing newspapers and may not have as many supportive print media as FUNCINPEC or the Sam Rainsy Party. How the CPP-dominated government has treated the news agency SPK, a relic from the PRK years, is illustrative of this pragmatic attitude to deploy resources selectively to those media that could truly be useful. Today the SPK — renamed the Agence Kampuchea Press since 1993 — has a Director Kit Kim Huot, appointed in September 2000. It runs a largely ceremonial operation but still has offices in 10 provinces and a staff of around 300 — although very few turn up for work because their monthly salaries, ranging from 20,000 to 80,000 riel (US$5.50 to US$21), are too low. According to its deputy director, Tath Lyhok, SPK does not even have a proper budget to plan its activities

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The Media in Cambodia 35

because the Ministry of Information’s disbursements are irregular.12 A plan to resume operations, already submitted to the Ministry, was still waiting for a response as of September 2001.13 This situation suggests that the CPP does not accord a high priority to resuscitating the news agency, since it really has no role to play in today’s media. Although private ownership of media is still possible in Cambodia, the CPP enjoys a position of dominance, particularly in the broadcast media. This has led to a situation in which all radio/TV stations (except Beehive Radio) are pro-government to varying degrees and tend to highlight the positive results of government activities. Although the situation is still far removed from the old state-controlled socialist media that the CPP leadership used to enjoy, the party’s action so far points to their wariness of a free media’s challenge to their grip on power, and their desire to bring the media under more control.

Media Management System Since Cambodia’s political system has turned its back on Leninist-style socialism, the old media management system of the erstwhile PRK regime has also changed with this transition. As the socialist ideology is no longer an organizing principle of society, the old Ideology Department of the CPP cannot continue to play its role of guiding the media along socialist lines. Neither is it appropriate to have this party institution manage the many privately-owned media. The centre of management is now the Ministry of Information. While a non-socialist Cambodia is committed to a multi-party democratic system and is obliged by influential aid donors to observe the basics of a free and open society, the Ministry of Information has tried to keep the media in line. Kanharith himself has shown his impatience with the media in his custodial role as the Secretary of State in the Ministry of Information. For example Sonando, who runs Beehive Radio, has recounted how, before 1998, Kanharith had warned him several times against broadcasting anti-government views. Indeed, this political pressure had even driven Sonando to consider selling the radio station. However, things improved under a new Minister for Information after the 1998 election, and so Sonando continues to run his station.14 Kanharith himself has chosen to present the problems in state– media relations as the fault of both civil servants and media practitioners. He argued that, in the early 1990s, relations between the press and

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36 Ham Samnang

some officials were very tense because the media were beginning to be more aggressive in criticizing officials, sometimes irresponsibly. Adding that it might have been because journalists were poorly trained and inexperienced, he also blamed the officials for their lack of understanding of the role of the media. Sovann, whose Samleng Yuvachun Khmer was closed for three months after the 1997 military conflict in Phnom Penh, shares this view.15 He feels that the situation has improved as journalists are better trained and officials understand more clearly why they need not respond angrily to media criticisms. However, the perception that the CPP continues to use state power to manage the media to its political advantage persists and was highlighted by the tension surrounding the July 1998 elections. For example, the National Election Committee (NEC), which was dominated by the CPP, adopted a regulation which banned all private and state media from publicizing any of the 39 political parties on the airwaves. Instead each party was only allowed to speak for five minutes on the state-run radio and television. This drew many complaints from the opposition parties. The current information minister, Lu Laysreng, who had then represented FUNCINPEC, walked off the set in protest after saying, “Five minutes talking about party guidelines is too short. I can’t finish it.” Ou Sovann, publisher of Samleng Yuvachun Khmer and member of the SRP steering committee, also said, “They shut our mouth but they kept open their media’s mouth. They have more than us: radio, television and paper. We don’t. This is a suppression of press freedom and unfair management.”16 The UN report on the 1998 elections noted that private radio/television stations featured the CPP a total of 446 times in the first two weeks of July, while mentioning other parties only 25 times.17 It said Hun Sen got the most coverage, appearing 107 times on news broadcasts, followed by his wife with 71 appearances. The report also noted that state-run TVK and National Radio cut news coverage but provided relatively balanced coverage since the start of the official political campaign on 25 June 1998. Judging from this, it would seem the CPP tactic was to reduce political coverage on state-owned broadcast media for everybody, being seen to be scrupulously fair but taking advantage of the large number of private media it could actually control. Whether or not these private media actually violated electoral regulations by featuring Hun Sen and his wife so often is hard to say: incumbent political leaders usually do have the advantage of more media attention anyway.

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Media and the Law The media legislation passed in 1995 covers only the print press. This law guarantees Cambodians their constitutional right to freedom of expression. However, the law includes clauses which may still leave the door open for judges to send journalists to jail, even though there is no specifically mandated criminal jail sentence. Both Articles 12 and 13 of the press law have the potential to restrain the press. Article 12 prohibits the publication of information which is deemed to “affect national security and political stability”. Those violating this article may be fined from 5 million to 15 million riel. In addition, the law gives the Information and Interior ministries the right to confiscate the offending issue of the newspaper. It also allows the Information Ministry to suspend a publication for 30 days and transfer the case to the courts. Article 13 stipulates that the press “shall not publish or reproduce false information which humiliates or is in contempt of national institutions”. The fine ranges from 2 million to 10 million riel. Cambodian and foreign journalists and NGO leaders have voiced their concerns over Article 12 and urged the National Assembly and the Constitution Council to review the press law. Kanharith, in his defence of the Article, pointed out that every country in the world, including the United States, prohibits the press from printing state secrets that can affect national security. Critics have long complained that the existing press laws are so broad they give the government a free ticket to suspend newspapers and put its media opponents in jail. Current Information Minister Lu Laysreng has said, “All journalists are afraid of this. Of course it is a bomb for the government that they can [detonate at] any time, or a knife they can cut [with at] any time.”18 These Articles are not only vague; they also contain no reference to an obligation on the part of the authorities to identify the specific words allegedly in violation of the law, or to provide specific evidence to prove that the material published actually violates the law. The danger, of course, is that any excuse could be used to say a newspaper is in violation of national security, affecting political stability or humiliating national institutions. A long-awaited sub-decree has already been drafted by Ministry of Information officials and this may help clarify some of the vague

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language. However, as of mid-2002, there were no clear signs of when this sub-decree will be successfully enacted. In addition, many journalists and concerned NGOs think that other aspects of the sub-decree create as many problems as they solve. For example, some journalists consider the sub-decree unconstitutional on the grounds that it resurrects proposals already raised during the debate on the press law in 1995, which were rejected by members of the National Assembly at the time. Among journalists’ objections to the sub-decree are the requirements for educational certificates in order to open or run a newspaper — requirements which do not appear in the 1995 press law. Three qualification options are listed for those who would head newspapers: 1. A high-school graduate with a certificate showing completion of a one-year journalism training course 2. A university degree holder who has completed a three-month journalism course 3. Three years of editing and reporting experience, or five years of photography experience. In addition, there are requirements that the publisher has at least 2.5 million riel in a bank account and a health certificate showing that he or she has no mental disorders. In a meeting with journalists at the end of September 2001, Information Minister Lu Laysreng, while not disgreeing with these requirements, added that he was still weighing up whether the subdecree should be enacted. Cambodia also needs laws that cover the broadcast media as well. These will have to address some of the current concerns about the inequities of media ownership and fairness in coverage.

Extra-Legal Media Management Opposition journalists have more to fear than just the laws on libel or national security. Noting that he knew of at least six newspaper editors and radio commentators who were killed, wounded or thrown into jail, Ou Sovann has said, “We are worried [with] every step we take, because in Cambodia the powerful people would rather use weapons than lawsuits.”19

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Given that many of today’s CPP politicians were communist officials in the 1980s when repression against political opposition was the norm, it is hardly surprising to see their reluctance to come to terms with the press freedom of today. Most repression and intimidation of the media is directed by CPP elements against non-CPP journalists. However, the leadership of the non-Communist parties can also be equally intolerant of the media belonging to their detractors and rivals.20 Ou Sovann holds the view that the pro-government papers are relatively safe from such violent threats. Sovann’s Samleng Yuvachun Khmer saw its editor Noun Chan killed on 7 September 1994. Sovann has argued that violence aimed at reporters is usually by the state for political reasons because these reporters have been very critical of government officials. In most cases, the killings followed instances where the media published names when exposing official misconduct. Sovann contends that the state does not want to find the guilty parties because the latter will then reveal those who had hired them.21 Although the atrocities committed against journalists since 1993 are not as bad as those recently seen in countries like Algeria or Colombia, they are nonetheless distressing because not a single one of these incidents in Cambodia appears to have been brought to a just conclusion. Only once has a perpetrator been found: the second murder of a journalist after the 1993 elections ended with the arrest of Sat Suong, a powerful security official dealing with logging companies in Kampong Cham. Even then, after a US$5,000 bribe was paid, Sat Suong was acquitted.22 Thomas Hammarberg, as part of what he termed “the phenomenon of impunity in Cambodia”, reminded the UN General Assembly in 1997 that there have been no serious investigations leading to arrests or prosecutions in any of these cases.23 (Hammarberg was the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Human Rights in Cambodia.) Since 1995, at least five journalists have been killed. A recent death was that of well-known Canadian–Cambodian teacher and newscaster, Michael Senior. He was summarily executed in front of his wife on Phnom Penh boulevard while photographing looting near O’Russey Market in the wake of the military violence of July 1997. His murder followed the deaths, since 1993, of print journalists Thou Char Mongkol, Noun Chan, Sao Chan Dara and Thun Bunly.24 In addition, in May

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1997, a rocket attack on the national television station in Sihanoukville killed a senior television technician. There has also been a string of attempted murders, most notably attacks on Nguon Non, Ek Mongkul, and Cheng Sokna.25 The offices of the Damnoeung Pelproeuk (Morning News), Sereypheap Thmei (New Liberty) and Moneaksekar Khmer (Khmer Conscience) were attacked. On 30 March 1997, a record number of journalists were badly injured and one was killed outside the National Assembly during a rally led by Sam Rainsy. Four hand grenades were lobbed into the crowd and 25 media practitioners were among the casualties. Chet Duong Daravuth of Neak Prayuth (Fighter) newspaper was killed and 24 others were badly injured. The publisher of Koh Santepheap, Thong Uy Pang, was shot and seriously wounded in June 1998 at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Phnom Penh after the paper was extremely aggressive in its attacks on some public figures.

NGOs and Foreign Players Two foreign radio stations, Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA), play important roles in providing Cambodians with an alternative source of information and perspectives.26 Both radio stations broadcast twice a day, each giving a total of three and a half hours of programmes. Suspicion persists in the relationship between the CPP and the foreign media. The years since 1991, when foreign media started to enjoy a free run in the country, have seen a few instances of contention between them. The CPP, despite its dominance of power in Cambodia, however, cannot keep out the foreign media in the way that it could during its previous reign as the PRK. The Western donors that are sustaining Cambodia economically will bring pressure to bear. In the political upheaval of 1997, the presence of foreign radio stations like VOA and RFA meant that the CPP could not totally seal off information even though it had shut down the opposition broadcast media. According to Sok Serey, the manager of RFA, some commune chiefs had threatened and prevented people from listening to VOA and RFA during that tense period, accusing these stations of being enemies of the government. In December 1997, the pro-Hun Sen newspaper Chalna Thmei (New Movement) accused RFA and VOA of distorting Cambodia’s political situation by referring to the July 1997 factional

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fighting as a coup d’état and blaming pro-Hun Sen forces. The newspaper demanded that the stations be punished — which may explain why both stations were denied a licence to launch FM services inside Cambodia.27 Despite this, journalists and NGOs say the press situation has improved since the 1998 election due to pressure from donor countries and the international community. The situation today is quite unlike the tension before the 1998 election when newspapers were shut down and their editors killed. Lao Mong Hay, Executive Director of the Khmer Institute of Democracy, a private research organization, said, “The situation of freedom of the press now is much better. But the papers are still afraid because they cannot widely voice their view. They still use pen names and register with their fake office addresses.”28 There is a perception that the CPP government has currently switched tactics in media management by resorting more to using the law or its administrative powers. Presently, lawsuits have been filed against a few local papers that have allegedly insulted the monarchy and government officials. In July 2000, the Ministry of Information ordered a second 30-day suspension of the Kampuchea Bulletin after it published a story on succession to the throne, which the government claims insulted King Sihanouk. Some NGOs see these incidents as examples of state suppression of the media and have expressed their concern. For instance, Kek Galabru, president of the human rights organization Licadho, said the government’s suspension of the Kampuchea Bulletin was undemocratic and threatened freedom of expression, noting that the King, himself an advocate of free speech, would not agree with the closure. Many representatives of both print and broadcast media have jointly written to Sihanouk asking him to forgive the Kampuchea Bulletin.29 This case illustrates how the broad scope of Article 12 can be used by the state to curb the press. Sok Sam Oeun, director of the Cambodian Defenders Project, who has defended four journalists from criminal prosecution since the press law was passed in 1995, has said that the government uses the discretionary powers provided by Article 12 to suspend a newspaper, and then applies different laws when the case goes to court. Apart from civic groups voicing their concerns, journalists have also tried to form a professional body to represent their interests. An initial effort, however, has not turned out too well. In 1994, the Khmer

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Journalists Association (KJA) was founded with members from the entire political spectrum of the country. It received funding from the Asia Foundation among others, was dynamic and had a high profile. Many agencies were initially keen to conduct training within the KJA’s framework. However, the association eventually split into factions, and today KJA is only a name. A breakaway group formed the League of Cambodian Journalists (LCJ) in June 1995. The LCJ supports the CPP while KJA favours FUNCINPEC and the SRP. Another attempt by journalists to organize themselves took place at an Editors Forum sponsored by Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation in February 2000. Starting with an informal coordination group, the Club of Cambodian Journalists was finally formed with 24 Cambodian journalists working in national and international print media outlets.30 According to Pen Samitthy, the president of the group and editor of Rasmei Kampuchea (Light of Kampuchea), the club will defend journalists facing prosecution and act as an information-sharing network for participating newspapers and wire services. The club will also work towards increasing the professionalism of Cambodian journalists.

WHITHER THE CAMBODIAN MEDIA? The Cambodian local elections on 3 February 2002 provide the most recent test of how independent Cambodia’s media is allowed to be. This election offered the opposition parties a chance to gain a foothold in the CPP-monopolized local governments. In its preliminary election statement, the European Union Election Observation Mission reported that state television devoted more than 75 per cent of its pre-election coverage to the government and a further 12 per cent to the CPP, while FUNCINPEC received only 2 per cent of the coverage and the SRP less than 1 per cent. Coverage by private television stations showed a similar bias.31 The NEC imposed broad restrictions on media coverage of the elections. Originally, state-run television provided 70 minutes of daily airtime for the NEC to divide among the eight contesting political parties. The NEC decided against it and ordered state-run television not to cover the hustings. It also refused to provide the necessary paperwork enabling private stations to do so. Private stations were also too intimidated to challenge the restrictions. Some NGOs had tried to rent television time to broadcast political debates but a manager of a major

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radio/television station admitted privatedly, “Accepting these programmes to air is like burning one’s own home.”32 The problems of the state–media relationship during the elections are but a microcosm of a larger long-term picture that has no immediate solution. This is a picture of political transition and how state, society and media are interacting to find a new workable relationship. As it stands, the picture is fraught with imperfections, according to its various players. For some, it is the skewed coverage of key political issues by state-owned and state-related media in favour of a CPPdominated state. Others appreciate that Cambodia’s media are enjoying considerable liberties after years of the PRK socialist regime. Under these circumstances, the media have been able to perform as a public watchdog and to highlight social, economic and political problems. However, there is a sense of impotence too, a feeling that the media have not been able to effect meaningful change for society beyond exposing the country’s many problems. As editor-in-chief Thong Uy Pang of Koh Santepheap observed, the authorities remain indifferent to media criticism. “Our press has no power,” he stressed.33 From the official perspective, as represented by Secretary of State Kanharith, there has been an improvement. As he sees it, the Cambodian media have raised awareness of human rights issues and drawn attention to abuses, which has a deterrent effect. But he has cautioned that most of these media reports have benefited only literate urban people and not the rural poor who have little access to information. Kanharith’s solution to Cambodia’s state–media problems is to urge for more dialogue. The purpose of this dialogue will be to enhance both the state’s ability to accept criticism and the media’s professionalism when delivering that criticism. However, Kanharith simplifies the issue. State–media dynamics is not a simple equation of a CPP-dominated state versus an opposition press. The media have been politicized by the country’s fractious political culture and media practitioners are not always independent professionals wanting to report the news in the most objective way. And professionalism is only one aspect of the problem. Another important factor is the volatility and fractious nature of Cambodian politics, which is something that has to be settled in the political arena. State–media dynamics in Cambodia are now influenced by a foreign community of international media, NGOs and donor countries. Even if the CPP state does not like it, it will have to learn to adjust to these

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points of pressure. Cambodian media practitioners who want to resist the encroachment of the state on editorial liberties will seek the support of foreign players. Post-socialist dynamics have demonstrated the tenacity of the old socialist regime to cling on to power. The regime has also reinvented itself and adopted new tactics to adjust to the new challenges. The media in Cambodia will have to adjust as well, and will need to work out their own set of tactics to deal with this new situation. NOTES 1

For a detailed account of Cambodia’s media history, see Harish C. Mehta, Cambodia Silenced — The Press Under Six Regimes (Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 1997). 2 The Cambodian civil war was part of the global Cold War between the superpowers. The Soviet bloc and Vietnam supported the PRK while the West and China supported the coalition. Although a ceasefire was announced in 1991 for a peace settlement to be negotiated, fighting erupted again when the Khmer Rouge rejected the peace agreement. However, the fighting capacity of the Khmer Rouge dwindled through the 1990s, as the group became no more than a band of thugs in remote areas of the country. 3 In reality, all government and social organizations were controlled by the PRP, and the media they ran would come under party supervision as well. This is a key feature of media in a communist country. 4 Interview with Khieu Kanharith in February 2000. Kanharith, a CPP member, was general editor of the Kampuchea News in the PRK regime. Presently, he is Secretary of State for the Ministry of Information and widely seen as the spokesman for the CPP. 5 Britt-Louise Edman, “Trapped in the Past, Seeking out a Future — A Study on the Cambodian Media Sector”, A study commissioned by Sida (Swedish International Development Agency) and Forum Syd, 12 May 2000. 6 Sek Barisoth, “Cambodian Media: A Young Plant Growing on an Eroded Soil”, paper presented at a conference Communication in the Asia-Pacific Region: Towards the 21st Century, 26–29 April 1999, Bangi, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. 7 Interview with Mam Sonando in September 2000. 8 Interview with Ou Sovann in September 2000. 9 KPNLF ran its radio for a while but it has since passed into private hands. 10 Sam Rainsy is possibly the most high-profile and aggressive opposition leader today. He previously headed the Khmer National Party until he was deposed by an internal rebellion in July/August 1997. He formed the Sam Rainsy Party the following year.

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15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23

24

25

26 27 28 29 30

31

Interview with Khieu Kanharith. See note 4. Interview with Tath Lyhok in October 2001. Interview with Kit Kim Huot in October 2001. Lu Laysreng of the FUNCINPEC replaces Ieng Mouly as Minister of Information. Mouly was originally with the Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party. He was made Information Minister after he broke with his party and sided with the CPP. Interview with Ou Sovann in September 2000. Ibid. “King’s Plan To Sue Still Firm”, Cambodia Daily, 24 July 2000, p. 12. Alex Devine, “Critics Say Laws Leave Media Vulnerable”, Cambodia Daily, 1 August 2000, pp. 1 & 13. Interview with Ou Sovann in September 2000. Edman, op. cit., p. 9. According to Edman, ever since FUNCINPEC shared power in government with the CPP from 1994, it has done its share of suppressing the media unless the opposition has stemmed from the party itself. Interview with Ou Sovann in September 2000. Edman, op. cit., p. 9. James Kanter, The Future of the Media in Peacebuilding in Cambodia, Distinguished Lecture Series issue no. 3, Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, December 1997. Kanter was editor-in-chief of the Cambodia Daily. Thou Char Mongkol, editor-in-chief of Antarakum (Intervention); Sao Chan Dara, journalist photographer of Koh Santepheap; and Thun Bunly, editorin-chief of Udom Kate Khmer (Khmer Ideal). Nguon Non was editor-in-chief of Damnoueng Pelproeuk (Morning News); Ek Mongkul was an announcer working for the FUNCIPEC radio station; and Cheng Sokna was editor of Kumnit Koun Khmer (Khmer Children’s Idea). Radio Free Asia is funded by the U.S. Government and its agenda is to promote democracy. VOA currently operates an AM service and RFA, a short-wave unfixed frequency service. Interview with Lao Mong Hay in September 2000. Kevin Doyle, “King Story Gets Paper Suspended”, Cambodia Daily, 17 July 2000, pp. 1 & 2. The club’s nine-member board of directors consists of journalists from Rasmei Kampuchea, Reuters news service, Koh Santepheap, Indradevi, Popular Magazine, Moneakseka Khmer, Samleng Yuvachon Khmer, Kyodo News service and a representative of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. The 2002 Cambodian Commune Council Elections, “Working to Strengthen

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46 Ham Samnang and Expand Democracy Worldwide”, published by National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, 20 March 2002. 32 Personal interview in January 2002. 33 Interview with Thong Uy Pang in September 2000.

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Reproduced from Media Fortunes, Changing Times: ASEAN States in Transition, edited by Russell Hiang-Khng Heng (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available from < http://www.iseas.edu.sg/pub.html >

Industrialized Media in Indonesia 47

3 Industrialized Media in Democratizing Indonesia Ariel Heryanto and Stanley Yoseph Adi

INTRODUCTION The close of the twentieth century has witnessed one of the most profound transformations in the history of the mass media in Indonesia. This, in turn, may open the way for a new era in the country’s political history. We do not refer to the widely-discussed and often over-estimated social change brought about by information technology in general and the Internet more specifically. While Indonesia is not immune to some of the symptoms of the Internet fever, another series of developments has taken place in the mediascape, one which has been much less noted by observers inside and especially outside the country. We refer to the social tensions that have accompanied the recent rapid industrialization of the mass media. This chapter examines a major transition that the Indonesian mass media has been undergoing under the New Order regime (1966–98) and beyond. Crudely, the media’s transition can be described as one from personifying an idealist force of “truth-seeker” that is subjected to constant state repression, to an increasingly autonomous, professionally managed, and essentially self-serving industrial empire. However, our main interest is not in that broad and too familiar phenomenon. Like all transitions, the case at hand is full of contradictory elements, movements and tendencies. The ensuing discussion will describe and analyse the various details of tensions among old and new forces that constitute the case in its specific contexts. The main agent of change in the process is neither the abstract state apparatus, nor any specific state

47

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agents, nor crusading journalists either. It is the whole network of industrial capitalism at global, national and local levels that has been responsible for the transformation of the media as an institution, as well as its relations with other institutions, including the state. For many decades the relation between the state and the institution of mass media in Indonesia, as in most of its neighbouring countries, has been one full of suspicion and tensions. The state has both sponsored and controlled media developments as part of the consolidation of nation–state building and modernization. Today, the Indonesian state has lost nearly all of its paternalistic control of the mass media. And, comparable to situations in neighbouring Thailand and the Philippines, state officials and institutions have been regular targets of criticism and derision by the press. Of course this does not mean that Indonesian journalists have attained full liberty and maturity. New adventurous and sensationalist presses have emerged, while the old big companies maintain dominance. Overall, however, journalists have found themselves in no more secure situations than in the past, due to pressures from two non-state forces: market competition and vigilante groups. In purely economic terms, journalists working for a media company are industrial employees. However, “purely economic terms” do not exist in the real world. In the context of contemporary Indonesia, both in ideas and in practice, the status of journalists as industrial employees of a corporate body is something quite novel, and is currently one of the most pressing controversies in the country. This chapter discusses why for a long time the idea of journalists as industrial employees has been denied or misrecognized by many and often opposing camps; and why such recognition has now become practically unavoidable. It also briefly examines a similar and related phenomenon with reference to other urban sections of the middle-class intelligentsia in today’s turbulent Indonesia. While industrialization of the mass media is by no means new in Indonesia — in fact it has been part and parcel of the entire history of the press in this society from the very beginning — recent developments in industrialization have reached a scale that has engendered qualitative transformation. For the first time in modern Indonesia, following the fall of the New Order regime, the state has clearly lost once and for all the old paternalistic and monopolistic control of the mass production and mass circulation of words and images across the nation. While the

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state continues to retain some power in regulation and licensing, it has to share, negotiate, and compete with new forces in calling the shots in mass media developments. These new forces are not reducible to the new legislature and the familiar categories of capital and capitalists. Increasingly significant is the emergence of a new generation of journalists. At more or less the same time, the Indonesian state has also been losing control over several other institutions, including the educational, artistic, and religious, as well as the NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and political parties. While journalists, along with other sectors of the intelligentsia, have always occupied strategic positions in the context of Indonesia’s body politic, contemporary social conditions have eroded the old bases of such privileged positions and material benefits, forcing them to imagine, reformulate and seek to establish new ways of surviving, and to wield new sorts of power. The main story that follows, therefore, is not so much about the rise and fall of companies in numerical terms, institutional bodies, titles of publications, size of circulation, advertisement revenues, financial turnovers, or capital gains that have predominated sociological and political economic analyses of the industrialization of the mass media. Rather, it is a narrative account of social history and cultural politics in the specific contexts of an industrializing and democratically-aspiring Indonesia, which seeks to: (a) analyse the nature of these challenges to Indonesian contemporary journalists; (b) compare their situations with other urban middle-class activists, especially the more academicallybased or -inclined counterparts; (c) examine some of their radical responses; and (d) assess the significance of these developments to the discussion on Indonesia’s road to democracy. To appreciate the historical significance of recent events, it is absolutely necessary to first conceptualize the formation of the socially-endowed power that these journalists have had and the nature of their authority, as well as to examine what industrialization has done to these privileges.

DEMOCRACY AND LITERACY IN POST-COLONIAL SOCIETIES Typical of many colonial and post-colonial societies, the press (which includes print mass media and books) in Indonesia carries a moral authority and political weight not seen in many industrialized First

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World countries. This partly explains why there has been a lot more censorship and there have been many more “prisoners of conscience” in the formerly labelled Second and Third World countries than in the First World “liberal” societies. There is nothing essential and permanent about the qualities of journalism or its practitioners in pre-industrial societies. These qualities are culturally signified values, products of particular social histories, and are susceptible both to social changes from within and to external forces. In certain conducive moments, the culturally constructed authority of the press can be converted into material gains that are exchangeable in the financial world market. Rapid expansion of industrialization, especially in its early stages, constitutes one such moment. It is important to recognize both the distinction and the convertibility between cultural, political and economic values, as well as between the local and the global contexts. Until very recently, one of the important bases of this authority was the relatively low level of functional (as opposed to nominal) literacy in a modern phonetic writing system in societies like Indonesia.1 This can be contrasted with the situation in many highly literate societies where mass-produced and secular printed materials have been widely consumed and taken for granted. Printed messages in Indonesia, even when they are purged of their religious aura, tend to be endowed with more prestige and more authority. The social and cultural costs that go with the making of such a scarce and élitist instrument and the competence to read it render significant social respect for the medium, messengers, and messages. In many important ways they are comparable to the phenomena related to computer literacy and the uses of multi-media gadgets in seminar presentations during the late twentieth century. Understandably, printed messages often claim more credibility, too, than the spoken word. In some of these situations, power begets truth, or at least is perceived as such. Functional literacy and the privileged access to mass print messages in Indonesia, like elsewhere, have not been and cannot be fully monopolized by the autocratic state or its official proxies. There is usually a division of labour between those who run the country and those who dominate the production of authoritative writings on the affairs of that country. Consequently there have been potential and actual tensions between the two, dating back to the tension between aristocrats and court scribes before the many islands along the equator were transformed into the Indonesian nation–state. In contemporary

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settings, similar tensions have involved state agents (holders of bureaucratic capital) and intellectuals and artists (owners of cultural capital).2 This media-centric perspective is intended to counterbalance the dominant politico-economic ones that usually fail to take into account the dynamic relations between media and their messages. Political economic analyses usually concentrate on the content of mass communication, institutional repression and the resistance of selected journalists. In so doing, these sociological and politico-economic analyses render the media as dead instruments in the hands of powerful agents that can do what they like with them. For these reasons, Paul Tickell’s critical problematization of relationships between freedom of speech, democratization and media in Indonesia is highly innovative and relevant.3 Tickell shows the importance of distinguishing between freedom and democracy, and the problematic correlations between the two. Tickell argues that the widely perceived unfree press of Indonesia in the 1990s under the authoritarian regime of Soeharto’s New Order was not any more undemocratic than its counterpart during the liberal and parliamentary democracy of the young Republic in the 1950s. The press in the 1950s was remarkably élitist by virtue of its much smaller circulation numbers, the lower levels of literacy in society at large, and the public’s general lack of familiarity with the newly adopted national language (Bahasa Indonesia) in comparison to the press and its audience in the 1990s. If open and civilized participation as well as contestation of ideas are indispensable elements of democracy, functional literacy and acquisition of the national language (and public education more generally) are prerequisites for engagement in public fora in a modern nation–state, usually through the mass mediation of the press and, more recently, radio, television, and the Internet. Because of these culturally and historically specific values of the print media in Indonesia, by definition the press — as with the Internet in its initial presence — has inescapably been biased towards the urban intelligentsia, especially in the most industrialized island of Java. It has been widely noted that the press determines what is news, regardless of its smaller readership in comparison with the electronic media audience.4 This is even stronger in the case of countries like Indonesia.5 Despite being small in number, the urban intelligentsia in post-colonial societies like Indonesia enjoy more moral authority and political power than is

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usually understood by political economists and quantity-oriented social scientists, especially foreign observers from the industrialized countries, where the urban middle class is bigger in size but politically powerless and ideologically mystified by the rhetoric of individual liberalism, the façade of liberal democracy, and the ostensibly rational and fair market competition in everyday life.6 To suggest that the urban intelligentsia in post-colonial societies hold so much political power and moral authority does not imply that such privileges are necessarily well-justified or that they have been consistently put to use for a good cause. For many years there has been a general attribution of mythical “special virtues” to the urban intelligentsia, along with high expectations that they live up to this myth. Although there is plenty of evidence to the contrary, until recently this myth has remained strong. Undoubtedly the urban intelligentsia are only too happy to help reproduce the familiar myth, and to perpetuate their self-mystification. As with other ideologies (or journalistic reports for that matter), what is at issue in the myth of the virtues of the urban intelligentsia is not its substantive validity, but its effectiveness in the formation and reproduction of social relations. Analysts in and of the industrialized West have argued about the importance, in varying degrees and with different qualifications, of the urban middle classes’ acquiescence in the maintenance of the status quo in a given regime.7 Despite their small size, the middle classes have the resources, and occasionally the interest, to challenge the status quo, more so than those who benefit most or least from it. In Indonesia, the myth of the heroic, justice-reinforcing and truth-seeking intelligentsia occasionally gives them the commanding authority to mobilize public opinion. It has also been strong enough to intimidate successive regimes, prompting them to attempt to co-opt, control or repress the urban middle-class intelligentsia. All dominant narratives of the rise of the nation in Indonesia are inseparable from the history of the press. Key journalists and leading nationalists were closely associated, and they were often one and the same. There has been a sustained reproduction of a romanticized mythology of writers, intellectuals and journalists as agents of pers perjuangan (the “press of the struggle” for truth and social justice) in public rhetoric and imagination throughout much of the twentieth century. However, as with many slogans and ideological statements, in

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reality neither the material working conditions nor the practice of journalism necessarily conforms to that idealized image.8 During the first 25 years of Soeharto’s New Order regime (roughly 1966–90) the press was stripped of its political power, tightly controlled, and blatantly co-opted. It was depoliticized, except in matters such as providing support for the ruling government and justifying the latter’s use of repression. Most media workers who survived this period learned how to operate in a business enterprise, in a new environment that was characterized by expansive industrialization and crony capitalism. The number of licensed publishers was limited to 289. Bans and repeals of licences took place periodically, in tune with the political climate of the day. Dissidents who challenged the government’s decisions on matters related to the press were harassed, prosecuted, or murdered. However, as has been already well-documented, this period actually institutionalized the press, giving birth to a new type of print media.9 A few media companies became industrial empires that were too big for the New Order government to control and suppress with ease. Though largely images of the lost past, the ideals of and nostalgia for pers perjuangan remained strong in the imaginations of journalists and sympathetic observers alike. The appeal of the mass media as a supposedly progressive and modernizing social force persisted precisely because of, rather than in spite of, the repression that prevailed under the New Order. In the absence of any credible venues for political participation and popular representation through formal institutions (political parties, parliaments, the courts), the press, along with other public intellectuals (students, academics, artists, religious leaders, and NGO activists), identified with and spoke for the aggrieved segments of the population. Although not without qualification and occasional reservations, these aggrieved people often welcomed this urban middle-class support. Nevertheless, journalist activism had been little more than romanticized fantasy until June 1994, when the old and valorized activism of journalists was forced to confront fatal challenges. At this time, journalists found public support immediately following the last and most dramatic banning by the government of three Jakarta-based weeklies — namely TEMPO, Editor, and DëTIK. The 1994 banning drew international attention and provoked angry reactions in Indonesia on an unprecedented scale.10 Thousands of people from different walks of life took to the streets across the country in

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protest. For several months the government became the target of criticism, and for the first time it quickly promised to reinstate the revoked licences, albeit conditionally. Instead of accepting the apologetic gesture that the government offered, TEMPO journalists filed a lawsuit against a government that had won all previous legal disputes. In more or less the same period, a new oppositional association of journalists, AJI (Aliansi Jurnalis Independen, or the Alliance of Independent Journalists), was established in defiance of legal prohibition to challenge the existing sole and officially-sanctioned PWI (Persatuan Wartawan Indonesia, or Indonesian Journalists Association). Membership in AJI later resulted in the dismissal, demotion or removal of journalists from their positions in several media. The 1994 bans have also become a milestone in the history of Indonesia’s mass media in another little-recognized dimension. It is likely to be the last time an authoritarian government in Indonesia closes down a media company with the single stroke of an official’s signature, thereby revoking the company’s publishing licence. Soon after Soeharto stepped down in May 1998, TEMPO regained its licence and commenced republishing in October 1998. The transitional government of Habibie abandoned the notorious licensing regulation, making it possible for the number of licensed print media to grow in a matter of few months from 289 to more than 1,000. Soon after the newly elected government of Abdurrahman Wahid and Megawati Sukarnoputri assumed power in October 1999, it closed down the Department of Information which had become the main institutional body of state propaganda, surveillance and intimidation vis-à-vis the press during the New Order. As the state relinquished its century-old paternalistic control of the mass media in 2000, the 1994 bans and their aftermath are probably the last case of a major public confrontation between the Indonesian state and the mass media. From now on journalists will have to take care of their own affairs vis-à-vis the media industry. In the dramatic disappearance of long-term and well-defined common enemies, namely the military and the State Department of Information, journalists and publishers have begun to be exposed to a host of internal problems and contradictions within their own ranks and institutions. Many of these problems are greater and more complex than most journalists are prepared to confront, or even to admit.11 The subsequent sections in this chapter will examine more closely a couple of cases that

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demonstrate the new challenges that the Indonesian media industries have to face. Well-trained professionals in journalism find themselves in new and contradictory positions. On the one hand they are entering a new period equipped with strong legacies of activism, new political consciousness, professional pride and a cosmopolitan lifestyle. On the other hand, they have no effective professional association to consolidate their positions in any official and institutional terms, and no institution to accommodate their aspirations or represent their corporate interests in the rapidly growing media industry with the end of the familiar period where coercive apparatuses of the state were the main threats to both the industry and the profession. The two cases that are examined here are the experience of TEMPO, the leading news-magazine that was banned in 1994, and the fatal conflict of another weekly, the glossy news-magazine, Jakarta-Jakarta. The subsequent section then focuses on eminently comparable events that have affected the non-journalist urban intelligentsia, namely academic and NGO activists. The concluding section considers how the arrival and rapid spread of the Internet has had some initial bearings upon and complicated further the political roles and agendas of Indonesian journalists.

THE CASE OF TEMPO The 1994 banning of TEMPO, along with Editor and DëTIK, was remarkable for several reasons, not least for the reaction it provoked, especially among a wide range of middle-class urbanites. There were no less than 170 reported demonstrations in the months immediately following the bans in towns and cities in the islands of Java, Bali, Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Sulawesi.12 In the entire New Order’s history, no single controversy had forged such broad-based civil protests, cutting across religious, ideological, ethnic, linguistic, gender and geographical differences. Unlike previous social upheavals, this had no central organization, leadership or agenda. The immediate historical contexts of the phenomenon need to be understood. The bans and the public protests took place soon after Megawati Sukarnoputri was elected the new Chair of the PDI (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia) in the party’s congress in Surabaya in late December 1993, in direct defiance of the blatant interference of the

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state apparatus and objection from President Soeharto. The 1994 banning and its aftermath also took place not long before the government decided to oust Megawati from leadership in July 1996, brutally raiding her party’s headquarters after an extended stand-off with her supporters. By this time, Megawati was just too popular for the ruling party Golkar to be assured of continued victory with a majority vote for the upcoming election of 1997. In short, the banning and the public outcry that it provoked took place amidst a series of political upheavals that eventually led to the fall of the New Order regime. From 1994, anti-government sentiment and movements steadily built up and gained momentum, while the moral and ideological, then economic and political apparatuses of the state collapsed.13 Politically, the nation was seething, and state power was fatally divided. Against this backdrop it is not too difficult to understand why many journalists and administrative staff of TEMPO decided to take the unprecedented action of confronting the government’s ban with a legal battle, while thousands of sympathizers took to the streets to express support, including a peaceful demonstration in Jakarta that encountered a violent response from the security forces. This was despite the government’s unprecedented offer of conditionally reinstating the revoked licence to the banned publication. More than a few highranking state officials of the New Order expressed public criticism of the banning and support for the protestors. Judges at both the state administrative court and higher administrative court that investigated the case declared the 1994 ban illegal, and the plaintiff (journalists and editors of TEMPO) won the legal case before the Supreme Court overturned the decisions. While all of the above have been well documented, another series of related events has largely escaped the attention of analysts. Even though the momentum of resistance to New Order authoritarianism was growing rapidly, and the possibility of overthrowing the regime had become a real possibility, around half of those who had been in charge of the production of TEMPO had decided to disavow their colleagues’ effort to challenge the dying regime. Instead, they opted to accept the government’s conditional offer of a new licence and to publish as a new publication under a different name, GATRA — whose logo, layout and styles, however, are exactly identical to those of TEMPO. Mohammad Bob Hasan, one of the New Order’s notorious

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cronies, provided fresh funds to be invested in the “new” press, holding more than 50 per cent of the company’s shares. The establishment of GATRA was seen by many as an unequivocal act of blatant treachery. With considerable success, a number of highprofile figures launched a nationwide campaign for boycotting GATRA (whether as readers, subscribers, interviewees or columnists). Journalists from GATRA were met with indifference or hostility at various social gatherings and official functions. At one press conference with highranking government officials, attending journalists demanded that the officials choose between ordering the journalist from GATRA to leave the room, or seeing the rest leave and boycott the event. During the first few months of its appearance, GATRA became a defenceless target of attack from various directions. To make things worse, various articles in the pages of GATRA were strongly critical of the pro-democracy groups and other critics of the government, prompting many to designate it pers intel (press of the state intelligence office) — particularly as some of this coverage immediately preceded state-security actions against pro-democracy activists. The founding of GATRA raises issues beyond ethical questions or ideological conflicts. Legally, the establishment of GATRA indirectly undermined the lawsuit that TEMPO had already filed. The progovernment spokesperson wished to see it as a formal acceptance (at least by half of the legitimate victims of the banning of TEMPO) of a reinstatement of TEMPO’s revoked licence, which would render the ongoing legal challenge to the ban and TEMPO’s demands redundant. As we have seen, however, both the state administrative and higher administrative courts rejected such logic. Instead they passed down decisions in favour of the plaintiff and the public at large. It would be a mistake to analyse the decision of those journalists who opted to join GATRA merely on moral grounds. It is not possible to understand the division within the TEMPO personnel without considering the broader context of national economic growth, particularly in the cities of Java, during much of the 1980s. As Indonesia acquired the status of a newly-industrialized nation, several mass-media companies became big industries.14 In related but distinguishable developments, a new generation of journalists had come to acquire new and very different profiles, ambitions, personal and corporate agendas,

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and had encountered new challenges and engaged in new social relationships with their employers. In contrast to the veterans who used to work under what, in retrospect, appeared to be very poor working conditions but which earned them professional gratification, dignity and high self-esteem, the new recruits were children of the first generation of urban petty bourgeoisie (sometimes loosely and conveniently called the middle classes) to have benefited from the New Order’s industrialization. They had many more resources to work with, not only in comparison to their predecessors in the past but also to other of their contemporary professionals. They enjoyed handsome material rewards but lived in environments in which the cost of living was high, and they worked under the greater pressures of market competition. This new generation held university degrees, some even postgraduate qualifications, but unlike the former generations of passionate journalists, they did not necessarily have years of practical apprenticeship in or emotional dedication to journalism. In their late twenties to early thirties, and in the burgeoning consumerist environment of Indonesian cities, they wore smart clothes, dined in fancy restaurants, drove cars (their own or their company’s), carried business cards and mobile telephones, and invested in housing, especially during the property market boom of the 1980s. Some of them were well-travelled internationally, and they conducted interviews with some of the richest or politically most influential people in Asia during the height of the “Asian economic miracle” propaganda. In one final and important contrast to their predecessors, the new generation of journalists was increasingly linked to their institutions primarily for economic reasons. Indonesia, and perhaps several other Asian nations, had not seen or even imagined this new phenomenon before. Significantly divorced from political activism, for more and more practitioners journalism became a little more than just employment. For some this was not a cause for regret, but a fact of life. While economic rationality may have been an important factor in the decision of those who abandoned the struggle for TEMPO and opted to work for GATRA, the heroic-sounding struggle for justice and democracy among TEMPO supporters does not operate purely on moral or political grounds. It also has its own significantly economic basis and material interests at stake, to an extent greater than is usually admitted by these activists or noted by their observers.

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However, it would be equally mistaken to equate industrial capitalism with reckless economic opportunism, selfishness or grossly materialistic greed. In December 1998, in the wake of the Reformasi period, around 100 GATRA journalists resigned in protest against what they perceived to be the unfair dismissal of their senior directors on 20 November 1998 by the board of shareholders. Many of these aggrieved journalists argued that the dismissal was a retaliation for the controversial coverage in GATRA’s edition dated 8 June 1998 of the ill-gotten wealth of Soeharto, the former president and Mohammad Bob Hasan’s patron.15 In this and several other instances, the idealism of pers perjuangan, the dull compulsion of economic compromises, and sheer opportunism are not separate and static entities, inherently belonging to one or another social agent or institutions. The process of transition is indeed a messy one. In any case the banning of TEMPO, and the public reaction it created, are inseparable from the economic growth of the nation. No less than 30 other bannings had taken place during the New Order. However, one of the factors that distinguishes the 1994 bans from their predecessors is their economic significance. In all previous cases, the bans mainly attested to the state’s unchallenged power to suppress critical voices. While political reasons were present in the 1994 bans, especially in the case of the banning of Editor and DëTIK, cases of banning in the past have unfortunately overshadowed the perspective of analysts of the 1994 incident, blinding many to the difference and thus reducing the 1994 event to being considered primarily as yet another case of political repression and resistance.16 The 1994 bans, especially that of TEMPO, are economically significant. This is not only because it was preceded by TEMPO’s coverage of the internal political and economic conflicts within the New Order élite over the purchase, at too high a price, of German ships by B.J. Habibie, President Soeharto’s protégé and then Minister for Research and Technology. But what also set it apart from the previous victims of the government’s banning was TEMPO’s substantial economic assets in 1994: it was one of the biggest tax-paying publishers in the country.17 Indeed, so economically successful had TEMPO been in the 1980s that it ran into difficulties managing its financial success in the face of its increasingly professionally-inclined journalists and editors. The old and amateurish dedication to pers perjuangan had already dissipated by 1987. The internal conflict was so deep that a good number of the most

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talented journalists and key figures left TEMPO in 1987 and established a rival news-magazine, Editor, which would later be a fellow-victim in the 1994 banning. The 1994 banning of TEMPO had enormous financial (and not primarily or only moral) repercussions unseen in previous bans, leaving thousands of people jobless and agitated. One of the conditions that came with the government’s offer of reinstating TEMPO’s licence was the creation of a new management and a new composite of shareholders in the company; thus there was more than just pressure for purely political compliance. This led to the strong suspicion among observers that an economic takeover by external parties might constitute part of the motive and expected outcome of the banning. During more or less the same period, the crony capitalists of the New Order were aiming at obtaining shares of major media companies.18 Since the 1987 friction within TEMPO, media companies have learned how to respect employees better. The management of post-1998 TEMPO strengthened its commitment and secured ideological cohesion among its staff and viability for the institution by allocating 30 per cent of its ownership shares to its employees collectively under an independent in-house trade union. TEMPO is one of the first of Indonesia’s media companies to be well-prepared to confront further challenges of industrialization in a democratizing Indonesia. In contrast to TEMPO is the case of the Jakarta-based weekly Jakarta-Jakarta.

THE CASE OF JAKARTA-JAKARTA While TEMPO was revived soon after the collapse of Soeharto’s authoritarian New Order, Jakarta-Jakarta ceased to exist on 23 November 1999. This was at a time when press freedom flourished to an unprecedented degree and the number of newly-licensed publications rocketed to around 1,600 from 289 for the last few decades (though this was immediately followed by the collapse of about half of them due to various reasons, mainly financial difficulties and poor management).19 Significantly, unlike TEMPO, the involuntary martyr of the 1990s, JakartaJakarta was closed down by its owners, the Kompas Gramedia Group, the biggest media conglomerate in the country and publisher of Kompas, the largest circulation quality daily in Southeast Asia.20 This media company is one of the largest tax payers in the country.21

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In order to survive in the thorny environment of crony capitalism under the New Order authoritarianism, those directly responsible for the publication of Kompas have been prepared to make many compromises and are obliged to woo a broad range of social forces. In the end, however, Kompas could not make everyone happy. Too often associated with the conservative minority Catholic factions and individuals during its early years, the daily has been a consistent target of attacks from several directions, especially from Islamic militants who came to prominence in the 1990s after Soeharto courted them for political expediency during the last and most difficult years of his reign. In addition, leftist activists considered the newspaper a coward or worse.22 While TEMPO has been one of the most successful media companies in respecting their employees by distributing editorial as well as managerial responsibilities, Jakarta-Jakarta is one of several cases of failure. An unresolved industrial dispute had led 31 aggrieved staff of Jakarta-Jakarta to found Indonesia’s first official union of media employees to be registered with the Department of Labour in November 1999. This union made several demands to the Kompas Gramedia Group management in response to the unilateral closure, with threats of litigation should the demands be not satisfactorily met. As part of the tussle, in May 2000 the newly unionized employees of Jakarta-Jakarta threatened to launch a mass strike that found sympathetic followers from other media companies within the conglomerate. In response the management of the Kompas Gramedia Group quickly raised the salaries of all employees across the board, by increments of 30 to 100 per cent. To gauge the magnitude of the potential impact of the industrial dispute, it is necessary to consider a number of points. We will proceed with a consideration of the possible motives for the decision to close down the news-magazine. The cited reason for the closure was financial rationality; the management claimed that it could not afford to continue to subsidize the publication of a small circulation but “prestigious” periodical that showed no prospect of reaching break-even point. The affected journalists, as well as informed observers, rejected this official reason, raising at least two major sets of counter-arguments. First, they argued, the Kompas Gramedia Group is one of the most successful industries in the country. It was one of the publishing companies least affected by the 1997 monetary crisis. Even if one

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accepts that the publication was running a deficit, this has not and will not seriously affect the Kompas Gramedia Group’s financial standing. In fact among journalists working for the Group’s 33 print media companies, there has been a general understanding of the distinction between those sales-oriented and profit-making presses and others whose function is to boost the corporate image, prestige and credibility, of which Jakarta-Jakarta was only one. This second category of publications (called “premium” within the Group) is characterized by glossy pages, better quality and more expensive newsprint, generous colour pages, high sale prices, small circulation and rather élitist contents. The company appeared to have no intention of closing down other deficitrunning publications, except for another glossy magazine, Tiara (see more below). The Group has also invested enormous funds into Kompas Cyber media with no expectation of profit in the near future. Secondly, the aggrieved journalists find the financial argument unacceptable in the face of two other developments. First, thanks to the profile of the magazine and its target audience among Jakarta’s young professionals, advertising revenue had been sufficient to cover the overhead costs of Jakarta-Jakarta’s production. British American Tobacco’s Lucky Strike cigarette company alone had reportedly been willing to sign a long-term contract with the news-magazine, to promote its commodity on the magazine’s premium-prized back cover and inner cover, as well as in its middle pages, beginning March 2000.23 Other major businesses that expressed strong interest in promoting their products in the pages of Jakarta-Jakarta included Toyota, Mild Seven, Swatch, Oris, and Christophe Arden. Furthermore, if the Kompas Gramedia Group management had wished, Jakarta-Jakarta could have been financially more profitable by aiming for a wider circulation and sales, as attested by its performance in the late 1980s and early 1990s. For instance, Jakarta-Jakarta reached a large circulation of approximately 35,000 when it published much sought-after coverage of politically sensitive events, such as the killings of East Timorese youths during a peaceful rally at the Santa Cruz cemetery on 12 November 1991. However, such coverage provoked the Armed Forces and in a show of deference to the military, the management removed three senior editors who were held responsible for the sensitive reports, and demoted them to less significant and less rewarding positions. Soon afterwards, the management also decided that JakartaJakarta had to be radically reformed. Under the leaderships of several

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successive chief editors, Jakarta-Jakarta stayed away from political issues and concentrated on entertainment, sex, consumer cultures and Jakarta’s celebrities. Just before the actual closure of Jakarta-Jakarta, the management had in fact supervised a special project to revamp further its format, including the production of dummy copies, giving no indication of any impending decision to close down. The decision to close Jakarta-Jakarta was so abrupt, it may have been hurriedly made by the management following the flabbergasting discovery that its employees had gone to the Department of Labour to officially register a newly-founded union. A new chapter in Indonesia’s history had begun. Although the idea of unionizing journalists had been discussed or attempted at a preparatory level by a few journalists from other media for several years, it did not materialize officially until these 31 journalists from Jakarta-Jakarta took the first step in November 1999. The founding of this union was a development in the long-standing struggle and protracted industrial dispute with the management on the part of the journalists. By the end of 2000 the struggle ran out of steam; one by one the fledging unionists accepted monetary compensation, demoralizing the rest. Despite the anti-climax, the event throws some light on critical and complicated issues that have thus far remained largely denied or hidden, namely economic interests and industrial relations. To these crucial issues we must now turn our attention.

THE DILEMMA OF THE INDUSTRIALIZED MEDIA Until the fall of the New Order in 1998, the mass media were under the supervision and strict control of the Department of Information. The Ministry of Information Decree no. 1/1984 required that all print media companies must apply for and obtain SIUPP (Surat Izin Usaha Penerbitan Pers, or a Press Publication Enterprise Permit).24 Article 16 of the Decree stipulates that in order to complete its application for SIUPP, a publishing company must allocate a minimum of 20 per cent of ownership shares to its employees as a collective. With extremely few exceptions (such as found in the post-1987 management of TEMPO), none of the media companies has complied with this regulation in earnest. In some media companies, representation of employees has been restricted to selected compliant high-level employees. Recently a few have even opted to sell shares to the public. In most cases, however, a

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“foundation”, “collective”, “group” or “association” is invented unilaterally by the management, rather than being put forward by the employees. Directors or other high-ranking managerial officials within the company are usually appointed to the leading positions in these associations or foundations.25 The management then reports the establishment of the ostensible employees’ union to the Department of Information, which has little interest in ensuring the report’s validity. Although such unions officially have the power to represent employees in negotiations with management, most often the employees are not even aware of the existence of such bodies. This is what happened with Jakarta-Jakarta. The newly unionized journalists of Jakarta-Jakarta (Serikat Karyawan Jakarta-Jakarta, SKJJ) claimed that for seven years their names had been misappropriated by the so-called Yayasan Kesejahteraan Karyawan Jakarta-Jakarta (The Foundation for the Jakarta-Jakarta Employees’ Welfare) founded unilaterally by the management. The style of management in Jakarta-Jakarta reflects the rule rather than the exception in Indonesia’s media industry, though protests against such practices have emerged in other media companies.26 However, the response from journalists affiliated with Jakarta-Jakarta was one of the first in independent Indonesia. For the greater part of its history since the new editorial reforms in the early 1990s, JakartaJakarta (like TEMPO and several other publications) accommodated some journalists-cum-political activists. It went through a series of internal conflicts and restructuring. When Jakarta-Jakarta’s sister publication Tiara was closed down unilaterally by the management in December 1998, there was no negotiation with employees — who officially held the legal right to own 20 per cent of ownership shares, and consequently the right to be consulted in any deliberations leading to the publication’s closure — nor was there any challenge from the journalists affected. There was not even any formal letter of termination of that publication. Journalists and administrative staff of Tiara were transferred to several less attractive posts within the same management of the giant holding company, Kompas Gramedia Group. To be sure, the standard practice of non-compliance with the legal stipulations concerning the rights of employees in media companies is neither entirely a case of criminal fraud, nor of simple pragmatism on the part of the management. This is not a case of complete ignorance and helplessness on the part of the employees either. The stipulation of employees’ rights to have access to the company’s shares is stated, if

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ambiguously, in the documents to be co-signed at the beginning of employment. Yet employees do not usually take this very seriously. The fact that until very recently, thousands of employees in hundreds of media companies had raised no questions about such organizations, and made no demands for transparency and effective representation, is highly instructive of the circumstances under which they work. The following five related reasons may have been responsible for this general acquiescence and inattention to their rights by employees. First of all, at the most practical level, the stated stipulation is too ambiguous to be taken seriously by recruits. Secondly, at the other end of the wide range of reasons, unionization in post-1965 Indonesia was strongly demonized by the anti-left militarist regime of the New Order. Only recently has working-class politics and unionization entered the public imagination.27 In 1988 a tiny group of idealistic journalists in Kompas proposed the forming of an independent and union-like in-house organization to represent employees. While this enlightened group received a frosty response from its own ranks, the management was so terrified that it severely penalized them.28 Unfamiliarity with unionism is especially acute among the younger generation of the urban middle-class intelligentsia who grew up in a depoliticized Indonesia, where “the Asian familial style of deliberation and consensus” was prescribed by the state as the only legitimate procedure for conflict resolution. (Ironically, the very same state abused the prescribed norm. In official rhetoric, nonetheless, it is propagated as a genuinely Indonesian way of life as opposed to the supposedly conflictual and confrontational style of the West.) Thirdly, as Indonesia’s economy was only beginning to grow and show promise since the 1980s, new recruits were usually grateful enough to be employed in the newly-expanding industry, and prepared to accept irregular management and mistreatment unless the situation were to become critical. After all, journalism under the New Order regime was much more rewarding socially and financially than ever before. Furthermore, the media industry was buoyant with experimentation, new experiences, excitement and a sense of unexplored possibilities. In situations where industrial disputes become severe, journalists would usually opt to leave their current employment and seek a new position, rather than to pursue justice by confronting the management. Collective struggle was too costly financially and emotionally, politically suspect, or simply unimaginable.

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Fourthly, a number of financially successful companies had in fact been both willing and able to placate occasional expressions of dissatisfaction from employees with a wide range of rewards, compensations and bonuses, but on an ad hoc basis. As noted earlier, the Kompas Gramedia Group resorted to a large-scale financial concession — a substantial salary increment to all its employees — in its attempt to defuse the challenges from the unionized journalists of Jakarta-Jakarta. All four factors outlined above point to the seriously weak position of employees in the media industry, as in other industries in Indonesia, vis-à-vis their companies. These factors are serious, and it will take an extended period of time to overcome them. However, we consider the next and the fifth factor to be the most important. It is less tangible, but more insidious, as it is deeply rooted in the public consciousness and that of individual journalists. We refer to the long-standing romanticization of the “journalist-as-activist” persona. Pers perjuangan promotes the notion of the pursuance of various moral virtues supposedly inherent in the journalistic profession (being unselfish, honest, intelligent and truth-seeking) and proscribes any activities that can be construed to be a pursuit of material gain. It rejects categorically the politics of unionism, whose agenda is to maximize their collective worldly interests. Compounding the problem is the pride of class (un)consciousness that is part of this mythologized persona. Even when confronted by real situations of victimization in industrial relations, and exposed to a rational proposal for some sort of union activism, many journalists reject the idea of collective rights and struggle, because they conceptualize “unionism” as something downgrading, characteristically belonging to manual wage-labourers. Discursively, they call themselves kaum profesional, genteel and gentrified “professionals” just like doctors, lawyers or engineers, which is worlds apart from pekerja or karyawan (workers), or buruh (labour). Many would even feel reluctant to regard or refer to themselves as pegawai (an employee). Far from being simply self-inflation or something that exists purely in the mind, this sense of hierarchy has been reinforced for years by the social structures and practices of everyday life. They have enjoyed this status and wish to retain it. Industrialization, and not intellectual enlightenment, is the process that has effectively undermined the existing hierarchy and long-standing privileges of these intelligentsia.

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The disadvantaged position of Indonesian journalists under the current situation became obvious in the industrial disputes, termination of contracts and dismissals that followed the self-dissolution of particular publications.29 Too often in such situations the management treated them as employees, and accordingly offered them meagre compensation or transferred them to less desirable positions (as in the case of Tiara), or worse. This is ironic when one considers the legal stipulation that recognizes employees of media companies as shareholders who have the right to be represented and heard in deliberations as serious as those determining the dissolution of the company and the various measures of compensation for employees. In 1995, when the afternoon daily Suara Pembaruan dismissed ten journalists for their critical views of its management, seven of them challenged the decision. Partly because of the persistence of these journalists, the Department of Labour, the court and more tacitly the Department of Information surprisingly sided with them, forcing the management to retract the decision and to renew a series of negotiations with the journalists. However, under the circumstances of that time, the company defied the court decision. The central issue of dispute was editorial responsibilities and autonomy, but the dispute grew to include the issue of the employees’ right to own 20 per cent of the company’s shares. Indeed, the question of a union did not come very prominently into the picture — and this is what distinguishes the 1995 case of Suara Pembaruan from that of Jakarta-Jakarta in 2000. It is also different from the industrial dispute following the self-initiated closure of the newsmagazine Detektif & Romantika, another highly-politicized publication under the New Order, on 25 January 2000. In this case, the number of journalists who persisted in the radical challenge to the decision was only two. The other 80 dismissed employees accepted the unilateral decision and the material compensation. The demise of the Department of Information in March 2000 further complicated the matter. For many years the Department of Information represented state repression, being the number-one enemy of the freedom of expression that the mythologized journalist-as-activist was supposed to epitomize. Paradoxically, this state department is also the only existing agency that has the power and willingness to protect the material interests of journalists-as-employees vis-à-vis the corporate management of media companies. Although the Department never actively enforced

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the 20 per cent share requirement, in one or two cases, such as the 1995 dispute of Suara Pembaruan, it chose to protect the interests of aggrieved employees in industrial disputes. Consequently, journalists were profoundly ambivalent towards the now defunct Department of Information and the legally questionable standing of the Ministerial Decree no. 1/1984 that stipulated the mandatory 20 per cent share ownership. As conscientious professionals, they resented the Department’s far-reaching restrictions and censorship, but in industrial disputes with their employers they had resorted to the Department’s stipulation. Likewise, these journalists are keen on the material rewards that Indonesia’s industrialization offers, but reluctant to demand these rewards if such an act requires taking the position of being an employee, or organizing their demands collectively as employees. They would seek recourse in the Department of Information when demanding their rightful industrial positions and material entitlement, but to do so, they have to disavow their prestigious status as public intellectuals and political activists. The demise of the Department of Information did not put an end to the legal rights of media employees collectively to own 20 per cent of the company’s shares. While the old legal stipulation is still in effect, a new, but even more ambiguous, formulation of the same statement has found expression in the new Laws on the Press (no. 40/1999).30 With the Department of Information no longer around, politicallyconscious journalists will have to go to the Department of Labour when it comes to registering a union to engage their employers in collective bargaining. In this new arrangement, the entitlements that used to be recognized by the Department of Information hold no currency. Thus, dealing with the Department of Labour has a mixture of advantages and disadvantages. For the media companies too, although for different reasons, the Department of Labour is a double-edged sword. This department does not require them to give 20 per cent of the company’s shares to their employees, but on the other hand its regulations will oblige them to accept union activities, which they do not like.

NEW MONEYED MOVEMENTS, NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS Indonesia’s industrialization has given rise not only to the so-called urban middle classes, of which the new generation of journalists are a

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part, but also to new social conflicts.31 Very similar situations to the one discussed in the previous section have in fact occurred in more or the less the same period but in different and seemingly separate places and institutions. One such comparable case that drew nationwide attention in the early to mid-1990s was the three-year conflict at Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana in Salatiga (Central Java), where more than half of the faculty members and student population held a total strike for eight straight months in 1995. The event was triggered by a disagreement over the election of the university’s rector in 1993, and the basis of the collective action was both moral and industrial. Just as TEMPO and Kompas have been two of the most prominent and financially-successful media companies since the New Order came to power, so too Satya Wacana was one of the most successful academic institutions in the country until the fatal conflict, which was largely a dispute over administrative issues between the incumbent administration and its academic and administrative staff. The institutional growth of Satya Wacana that came along with its academic credentials, bringing political clout and material benefits, generated two major opposing groups. Significantly, neither group had been anticipated by the founders of this private university in 1956, nor had their presence been noticeable until the mid-1980s when Indonesia took major steps in industrialization. The first of the two groups was a loose collective of pragmaticallyoriented bureaucrats, administrative officials and academic-cumconsultants. They worked industriously and intimately with various private as well as state enterprises in development projects, reaping lucrative benefits. Very quickly, under its ambitious and energetic administration, Satya Wacana came to prominence for its academic achievements and resources, as well as its involvements with diverse social activities far beyond the campus compound. The second group, as found in many other societies undergoing major industrial transformation, consisted of somewhat romantic, socially-committed and politicized academics. While both groups were beneficiaries of the New Order’s industrial policies and projects, the latter made themselves critics of these projects at global, national and local levels, including their immediate working environment. Given the long history of intellectual activism (of which pers perjuangan was a part), and the heavy-handed governance of the New Order and its industrial projects, these activist-cum-scholars had no difficulty finding supporters in the

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increasingly divided Indonesian society and international communities after the Cold War was over. It is not surprising that the 1994 banning of TEMPO, Editor and DëTIK was met with a wave of angry response from many Indonesian academics, including those affiliated with Satya Wacana. Significantly, one of the advocates of the anti-GATRA campaign was Arief Budiman, a lecturer at Satya Wacana and a central figure in the university’s conflict. While the conflict in Satya Wacana had no direct links with those of TEMPO-GATRA or Jakarta-Jakarta, the parallels between them were very striking. One such parallel is of immediate relevance to this chapter, and the perceived similarities provide additional context to the questions of industrialization and democratization that are the focus here. In popular discourses these internally divided institutions were seen to be commonly torn by conflicts between those representing the new forces of industrial capitalism and those defending the old legacies of intellectual perjuangan and pers perjuangan. Within this framework, antigovernment activists of non-governmental organizations that flourished in the 1980s found an easy place within the broader and looselystructured alliance of pro-democracy movements that challenged Soeharto’s authoritarianism. Together they constituted what many have described as part of the global phenomenon of internationally-linked, loosely-structured, issue-oriented and urban middle-class-based New Social Movements. From the point of view of this chapter, what was most significant in the case of Satya Wacana was the novel struggle over redefining the nature and future direction of the institution, as well as reconceptualizing the status and nature of academics: either as independent-minded and truth-seeking intellectuals, or as employees of a modern institution within an industrialized setting. Despite the pain and material loss that it brought to the institutions and individuals involved, the conflict at Satya Wacana was a tremendous learning process for all parties. The administration reluctantly had to give up the old paternalistic mode of leadership and organization, as the bureaucracy imploded, and faculty members were no longer exclusively attached to the institution. It had to learn new ways of managing a modern institution that involve respect for the rights of the new generation of proud and confident professional scholars — strikingly similar to the strategies that the management of TEMPO

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has successfully adopted, and which the Kompas Gramedia Group is now reluctantly learning to implement. What shocked the administration of Satya Wacana most was the fact that faculty members (including deans) and many students in such a prestigious institution could have taken the industrial action of a strike, which until then had been associated with the Left and had been demonized by the militarist regime at the time. Likewise, many of these faculty members at Satya Wacana had had to accept (however painfully) their new status as a little more than salary-earning employees. They came to understand that pressures from intellectuals towards the university administration in non-violent ways could no longer unequivocally convey a purely moral message, deserving an equally moral response. They were now seen as an industrial challenge, and had been responded to accordingly with punitive measures, including termination of employment or salary suspension. While such basic industrial terms and practices were conceptually familiar to many of them, only a few had anticipated that these could become a reality in their immediate environment. Worse still, outside the academy and publishing companies, an increasing number of passionately dedicated pro-democracy NGOs had been entangled in very similar challenges, and only a few managed to overcome them to the satisfaction of those affected.32 Immediately before and after the economic crises of 1997 and Soeharto’s resignation in 1998, enormous sums of foreign aid flowed into Indonesia. NGOs were clearly some of the most credible recipients of this explosion of international sympathy and assistance. However, many of these NGOs were founded only recently in haste and out of emotional reactions to the deteriorating conditions in Indonesia. Under the spotlight of national and international media, many of them received financial aid larger than their organizations were prepared or able to manage. The situation created splits among activist ranks over the questions of programme priorities, divisions of responsibilities and material rewards. Worse, it also dramatically transformed the nature and meaning of participation in supposedly activist organizations, rendering most activities paid “work” and “labour”. Voluntarism has become anachronistic. More and more fellow activists begin to demand material remuneration for every contribution. They and those who assume administrative power within their organizations also adopt employee– employer relationships in ways similar to those that regulate the running

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of TEMPO, GATRA, Jakarta-Jakarta or Satya Wacana. Yet because these NGOs were never intended to be corporate-like bodies, the temptation to operate like professionally-paid organizations was never fully developed or pursued. As a result, many of the tensions and internal conflicts remain disguised, aired only in whisper and gossip, and remaining unresolved in a confusing situation.

THE EARLY SPREAD OF THE INTERNET The quantitative development of the Internet in Indonesia, as elsewhere, is notoriously difficult to capture for any in-depth and serious analysis. This is due to the sheer rapid pace of these developments at this stage. The scholarly apparatuses of the social sciences are just too slow and inequipped to deal with these developments, let alone measure their social impacts.33 One tempting response to this overwhelming social phenomenon is to leave it uncommented upon, or wait and assume that there will be a better time when developments are more stable and predictable, and thus analysable. Against all these odds, we attempt a few remarks that run the risk of being obsolete very soon. We will also speculate on the potential relevance of current developments to the core issues discussed in the previous sections. We began with the argument that highly functional literacy in a largely orally-oriented society generates significant power for the critical minority of the intelligentsia. Indonesia’s industrialization since the 1980s has, paradoxically, boosted this power and has also problematized it. Industrialization of the mass media has generated a much greater demand for skilled labour in the urban and modern sectors, with handsome rewards, both material and non-material. The dramatic growth in all levels of formal schooling has, to a considerable extent, supplied both the demand for labour and the consumers for mass-mediated messages. Under the New Order, however, these developments have taken place with severe restrictions to the flow of information, and are enmeshed in crony capitalism that, in the later part of the New Order, included a monopoly on distribution and domestic production of newsprint. Journalists here enjoyed some benefits from the recent developments, but only up to a certain point, beyond which they have discovered a ferocious process of reduction in their roles and functions, making them unprotected elements within the productive machinery of the information industry.

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The arrival and rapid spread of the Internet have had some important effects on the existing situation. They have eroded both the effectiveness of state restrictions on the flow of information, and the dependence on the monopolistic distribution of newsprint. By this time, the number of speakers of Bahasa Indonesia, as well as English, has multiplied several times since the early years of the twentieth century when newspapers and magazines were first introduced to the archipelago. Contrary to the wishes of the nationalists of the Revolution and the 1945 Constitution, foreign investment has now become a reality in the electronic media network, which is appealing for some but appalling to others. However, what difference the Internet makes to the political and economic positions of journalists remains unclear. When the Internet made its entry to Indonesia in the 1980s, its use was restricted to the Ministry of Research and Technology, led by B.J. Habibie, and a few top state universities. It was not available to the public as a commercial commodity until May 1995, when Radnet became Indonesia’s first Internet service provider (ISP). Soon afterwards, other companies followed suit. Ironically, none of them were as “socialistic” and “democratic” in practice as the government’s Post Office, which was to establish nationwide ISPs in all the provincial cities in 1996 for the purpose of accumulating commercial profit. State ministries of the New Order were in direct opposition to each other in outlook and practice in response to the power of the Internet. Sen and Hill compare the activities of the Department of Information, which was keen on controlling and limiting the flow of information, and those of the Department of Industry and of Trade, which saw the press as a domestic industry.34 A more important comparison is between the Department of Information and that of Tourism, Post, and Telecommunication that spawned the popular Internet stalls (warnet), now in the hundreds, and the earlier facsimile and long-distance telephone stalls (wartel) across the archipelago.35 In mid-2000 there were approximately 13,000 wartel across the nation and around 400 warnet. Warnet users account for 60–70 per cent of the total Internet users in the country.36 There is no way of knowing for sure the number of Internet subscribers, not to speak of the actual users, but it would probably amount to one or two million in 2000, which is “up from 400,000 the year before and in 2002 may escalate to 13 million-plus”.37 However, this is not a very large figure when one considers that the total population of the country is 202 million.

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Most commentators speak favourably of the democratizing power of the Internet, fax and, to some extent, mobile telephone with reference to the overthrow of authoritarian regimes in Southeast Asia, including what happened in Indonesia in 1998.38 There is some truth in what they say, especially the point about the wide spread of information regarding the abuse of power by the ruling regimes and the activities of pro-democracy movements to challenge the status quo. In the absence of any clear unifying organizations or leadership of social movements, the public discourse that focussed on popular resentment against the authoritarian regime served as an effective rallying point. Nevertheless, with regard to Indonesia, what we find more interesting and important for their relevance to the concerns of this chapter are selected events prior and subsequent to the 1998–99 actual successions of governments. A few months following the 1994 banning, several of the affected journalists from TEMPO revived their occupation, but this time on the Net, through their Tempo Interaktif website. The style of journalism, and the personnel behind the production of news reports and analyses on this popular website, are strongly characteristic of the banned TEMPO. This news-online service is the earliest public demonstration of the ineffectiveness of the old repressive measure of press banning and censorship. In fact, collections of articles from Tempo Interaktif were periodically published in volumes as books of clippings, and were made available in most bookshops in big cities. Unlike newspapers and magazines, book publication does not officially require any permits similar to the notorious SIUPP. In 1995, a popular televised talk show, Perspektif, was banned. The programme host, Mr Wimar Witoelar, continued the show in various forms, from travelling presentations in hotels and campus halls to radio and regular columns in the print media, before finally getting back on television again. The above suggests that, prior to the eventful economic crises of 1997 and the rapid collapse of the New Order regime in 1998, the electronic media had already allowed pro-democracy movements and the public at large to see that mass communication was possible, and in a remarkably more participatory mode, irrespective of the government’s decisions and permits. It is also significant that around the same time the government banned TEMPO, Editor, and DëTIK, the early spread of the Internet was taking place in Indonesia, with virtually no restrictions from the government to say the least, and in some important respects with the sponsorship of the more economically driven state ministries.39

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As late as May 2002, there had been no laws that specifically regulate the uses of the Internet, despite serious deliberations and amendments of laws pertaining to the press and broadcasting that have taken effect. Two years after the euphoria of Reformasi and government succession have dissipated, the Internet has evolved and turned into something more and simultaneously less than simply a democratizing force or agency. Resonating with the activist journalism of the banned DëTIK in 1994, detik.com pioneered the first Indonesia “real time” on-line journalism. Established on 1 July 1998, detik.com was the first to distinguish itself from other print media, whose websites only posted copies of what appeared in their print news. Detik.com reports on the news almost hourly. Reflecting its technological savvy and entrepreneurship, detik.com managed to cover its production costs almost exclusively from advertisement revenue.40 Relying on its ability to produce the earliest news of importance to the borderless cyber world, it grew from an enterprise with one reporter, one tape recorder and one desk to a big corporation in 2000 with 46 staff. In February 2000, detik.com transformed itself into a portal offering free e-mail, chatroom and directory facilities. This new development was made possible by the injection of US$2 million from techpacific.com, which had bought 15 per cent of detik.com’s public listing. In the same month several other foreign investors set up new portals, for instance Astaga.com, Catcha.com, Satunet.com. The longterm commercial impact of these portals and other on-line journalism on existing print media and the hopeful democratization process in Indonesia is far from clear.41 Its immediate tangible impact in February 2000 was more easily gauged. When Astaga Internet Konsulindo invested US$7.5 million to establish Astaga.com (launched on 9 February 2000), 78 of its reporters had previously resigned from prestigious media companies such as Kompas and RCTI (Rajawali Citra Televisi Indonesia), the first private television station in the country. Joining the new Internet company allowed many of these reporters to earn more than triple their previous salaries.42

CONCLUSION We have noted that the prominent status of the intelligentsia in Indonesia has its basis in the special status of literacy and modern

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production of knowledge. Independent governments sponsored major developments of the mass media as an instrument of modernization and political propaganda. Until recently, the growth of the mass media was under the severe control of successive authoritarian regimes. Of late, industrial capitalism in general, and the electronic mass media more specifically, have altered the situation in several fundamental ways. They have helped transform a few mass-media companies into giant industries on a scale larger than the state was able to control. Industrialization has also dramatically increased the number of citizens with the skills and accessibility to participate in public debates. The recent spread of the Internet has further removed the ability of the state to retain its old monopolistic control of mass-mediated communication. Admittedly, however, it remains to be seen what long-lasting social consequences the Internet industry will bring to Indonesia and to its fledgling post-1998 liberalism. None of these developments has yet indicated any significant improvements in journalists’ working conditions vis-à-vis the general public that often take justice into their own hands. Journalists have often been targets of assaults by members of society who are unhappy with what appears in the media.43 Nor have their positions within the industry of news and information been better protected from the growing corporations. Jose Manuel Tesoro, Asiaweek’s journalist based in Jakarta, depicts the post-1998 predicament of his Indonesian colleagues succinctly when he writes:44 The Indonesian media is now unfettered. But it is also unprotected. Government restrictions and direction have vanished. But what is left is disturbingly ill-defined. Indonesian journalists and editors have to find out for themselves how far their communities will let them be. For the future, journalists are likely to give top priority to enhancing their sense of security, both when they go about doing their jobs and in the terms of employment offered by their companies. This, in turn, will have far-reaching implications in the dynamics of Indonesia’s democratization that remains urban and middle-class based. NOTES This article was first published in Contemporary Southeast Asia 23, no. 2 (August 2001). The authors gratefully acknowledge the comments and editorial

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Industrialized Media in Indonesia 77 suggestions from Angela Romano, Atmakusumah Astraatmadja, David Hill, Hong Lysa, Miriam Lang, Lucas Luwarso, Mary Zurbuchen, Peter Mares, Vedi Hadiz and Russell Hiang-Khng Heng. The shortcomings that remain are, of course, solely the co-authors’. 1

2

3

4 5

6

7

8

For a discussion of the potentially different implications of these writing systems, see Jack Goody and Ian Watt, “The Consequences of Literacy”, in Literacy in Traditional Societies, edited by Jack Goody (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 27–68. See Gouldner’s concept of critical discourse capital in Alvin Gouldner, The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Middle Class (New York: The Seabury Press, 1979) and Bourdieu’s cultural capital in Pierre Bourdieu, Towards a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); see also the critical comparative analysis of both by Bill Martin and Ivan Szelényi, “Beyond Cultural Capital: Toward a Theory of Symbolic Domination”, in Intellectuals, Universities and the State in Western Modern Societies, edited by Ron Eyerman, Lennart G. Svensson, and Thomas Söderqvist (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 16–49. While we acknowledge some problems with the terms, they are useful for the present purpose. Paul Tickell, “Free from What? Responsible to Whom? The Problem of Democracy and the Indonesian Press”, in Democracy in Indonesia 1950s and 1990s, edited by David Bourchier and John Legge (Clayton: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1990), pp. 182–89. Krishna Sen and David Hill, Media, Culture and Politics in Indonesia (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 51. In July 2000 there were reportedly 1,470 print media titles, of which only 600 were active and printing around 16 million copies per issue (Kompas, 2000). Ariel Heryanto, “Public Intellectuals, Media, and Democratization: cultural politics of the middle classes in Indonesia”, in Challenging Authoritarianism: Connections and Comparison between Indonesia and Malaysia, edited by Ariel Heryanto and Sumit K. Mandal (forthcoming). Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”, Essays on Ideology (London: Verso, 1971), pp. 1–60; and Noam Chomsky, “The Responsibility of Intellectuals”, American Power and the New Mandarins: Historical and Political Essays (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967), cited on p. 6 of Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, “Knowledge, Morality and Hope: The Social Thought of Noam Chomsky”, New Left Review 187 (May/June 1991): pp. 5–27; Nicholas Abercrombie and Bryan S. Turner, “The Dominant Ideology Thesis”, in Classes, Power, and Conflict, edited by Anthony Giddens and David Held (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1982), pp. 396–414. The epithet perjuangan (struggle) has been central to the rhetoric and

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9 10

11

12

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imagination of the Indonesian public for the greater part of the twentieth century, despite various discursive practices under the New Order regime that ran counter to this. In May 1998, the respected news magazine Panji advertised a number of key positions, including editor, reporter, photographer, and promotional manager. The heading of the advertisement reads: “Dicari: Pejuang Kebenaran Tanpa Kompromi” [Wanted: patriots (who struggled‚ or truth with no compromise] (Kompas, 1998). Perjuangan has acquired the status of a keyword in Bahasa Indonesia that finds no easy equivalent in English, making it difficult to translate the name of the victorious political party in the 1999 general election, Partai Demokrasi Indonesia — Perjuangan (Indonesian Democratic Party — Struggle). In 1996 Soeharto ousted Megawati from the leadership of Partai Demokrasi Indonesia, and made the compliant Surjadi the party’s new chair. After Soeharto stepped down in 1998, in order to register for the 1999 general election, Megawati’s party had to adopt a new name in order to distinguish it from its misnomer under Surjadi. The attached qualifier Perjuangan came almost naturally to the name of the old PDI. Sen and Hill, op. cit.; and David T. Hill, The Press in New Order Indonesia (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1994). For details of the scale and political significance of the public reaction, see Yasuo Hanazaki, “Crossroads: Banning, June 1994 and the Aftermath”, Chapter 6 of “The Indonesian Press in the Era of Keterbukaan” (Dissertation, Department of Asian Languages and Studies, Monash University, Australia, 1996), pp. 199–252; and Ariel Heryanto, “Indonesian Middle-class Opposition in the 1990s”, in Political Oppositions in Industrialising Asia, edited by Garry Rodan (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 241–71. See three articles by Stanley Yoseph Adi: “Media: Antara Euforia dan Demokrasi” (Media: Between euphoria and democracy), in Almanak Parpol Indonesia, edited by Julia Suryakusuma (Jakarta: API, 2000), pp. 91–98; “Amplop-isme dan Moralitas Wartawan” [Bribery and integrity of journalists], Amanat 2, no. 75, (30 March 1999): 18–19; and “Organisasi Pekerja Pers Indonesia: Antara Idealisme dan Kepentingan Praksis” [Indonesia’s Organization of Journalists: Between idealism and practical interests], unpublished paper for the seminar Evaluasi Organisasi Jurnalis, on the occasion of the 6th anniversary of AJI, Jakarta (7 August 1999). These demonstrations took place at least in 21 cities and towns, according to one estimate (Atmakusumah Astraatmadja, 2000 Ramon Magsaysay award winner for his contribution to journalism and chairman of an independent Press Council in Indonesia, personal communication on 12 November 2000). It is indeed curious that most foreign media coverage and scholarly analyses by foreign observers could portray the fall of Soeharto as a surprise,

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14 15

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17

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19 20 21

unexpected, or a rapid process. For more accounts of the broader political circumstances of the time see the following: Heryanto, “Indonesian Middleclass…”; and Ariel Heryanto, “Indonesia: Towards the Final Countdown?” Southeast Asian Affairs 1997, edited by D. Singh (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1997), pp. 107–26. Sen and Hill, op. cit., pp. 56–64. detik.com, “Majalah Gatra Pecah; Direksi dan Pemred Dicopot” [Gatra magazine split: Director and chief editor dismissed], , 25 November 1998. An important exception is Daniel Dhakidae, “Membunuh Modal, Membunuh Kebudayaan” [Murdering capital, murdering culture], Bredel, edited by Ayu Utami et al., pp. 48–61 ( Jakarta: Aliansi Jurnalis Independen, 1994). Goenawan Mohamad, chief editor of TEMPO, claimed that TEMPO paid annual tax of as much as Rp. 5 billion (US$2.27 million) to the Indonesian Government; see Utami, Ayu and Santoso, “Goenawan Mohamad: ‘Saya Tidak Percaya Revolusi’ [Goenawan Mohamad: I don’t believe in revolution], an interview”, Forum Keadilan 3, no. 7 (21 July 1994): 32–36. Details of the political and economic conditions for the reinstatement of TEMPO’s permit within days of its banning, and the complicity of the First Family, are exposed in the editorial of TEMPO’s first issue after its rebirth in 1998; see TEMPO (1998) “Surat dari Redaksi” [Letter from the Editor], 12 October 1998, p. 7. For more on this issue, see Sen and Hill, op. cit., p. 60. Private and separate conversations with senior editors and journalists during this time have also led us to believe that there were more attempts at these forced share acquisitions than the actual successful outcomes. P. Bambang Wisudo, “Bulan Madu Pers Telah Berakhir” [The press honeymoon has come to an end], Kompas, 9 February 2000. Sen and Hill, op. cit., p. 57. Jakob Oetama, one of the co-founders of the Kompas Gramedia Group, is its single most important executive officer. According to a magazine article, “Orang Kaya Terus Bermunculan” [More new rich emerge], SWA 12, no. 7 (9–29 May 1996): 14–22, in 1994 Jakob Oetama owned private assets of US$35 million and business assets worth Rp. 600 billion (approximately US$273 million). This would rank him as the 82nd largest individual tax payer in the country. His rankings in previous years were 78th (1993), 135th (1992), 147th (1991), 148th (1990). While there are various reasons for questioning the accuracy of these reports and the credibility of official tax reports in general, they still suggest something of relevance and cannot be totally dismissed. The Kompas Gramedia Group under Jakob Oetama’s leadership employs 10,000 people in around 50 of its diverse companies, which include book publication, book export and import, hotels, Internet

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shops, aquaculture, a major bookshop chain, department stores, travel agencies, property, banking, insurance, radio, heavy equipment distribution, gas exploration and film distribution. The most spectacular case to illustrate the point was the protests by various Islamic groups against the editor, and later against the tabloid Monitor in 1990 for allegedly defaming Islam. The television-guide tabloid had published the result of a poll of its readers’ most admired figures. President Soeharto came first, and the Prophet Mohammad eleventh, one below that of Monitor’s chief editor, Arswendo Atmowiloto. Leading figures of the nonmonolithic Islamic communities in Indonesia were divided over the issue. Under strong public pressure, the Kompas Gramedia Group closed down the tabloid and another publication, Senang, for allegedly printing some other proscribed images. The tarnished judiciary tried Atmowiloto and sentenced him to five years imprisonment. More than once the rightist militant Komite Indonesia untuk Solidaritas Dunia Islam (KISDI) claimed that Kompas had repeatedly run news reports that discredited Islam. In July 1998 KISDI threatened to sue Jakarta-Jakarta for reprinting a report on the mass rape of Chinese women in Jakarta in May 1998. See “Soal Tulisan di ‘Jakarta-Jakarta’, KISDI akan Gunakan Jalur Hukum” [On the Jakarta Jakarta piece, KISDI will file a law suit], Kompas, 1 August 1998. For further discussion on the diversity of Islamic communities in Indonesia, of which KISDI is a part, see Robert W. Hefner, “Islam and Nation in the Post-Suharto Era”, in The Politics of Post-Suharto Indonesia, edited by Adam Schwarz and Jonathan Paris (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1999), pp. 40–72 and Robert W. Hefner, Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). For attacks against NGO activists and any investigative reports that exposed the crimes against humanity and women in May 1998 in Jakarta, see Ariel Heryanto, “Rape, Race, and Reporting”, in Reformasi: Crisis and Change in Indonesia? edited by Arief Budiman, Barbara Hatley and Damien Kingsbury (Clayton: Monash Asia Institute, 1999), pp. 299–334. Riant Nugroho, “Salah Urus di Gramedia Majalah” [Mismanagement at Gramedia’s Magazine Division], Suara Serikat 2 (20 March 2000), p. 12. Although this permit is officially intended to control the quality of the company’s management, any information or opinion in the pages deemed undesirable by the government or military often caused the cancellation of the permit, as happened in 1994 for TEMPO. For a list of profiles of the directorships of several bodies claiming to represent the media employees within the Kompas Gramedia Group, see appendixed table in Stanley Yoseph Adi, “Organisasi Pekerja Pers Indonesia: Antara Idealisme dan Kepentingan Praksis” [Indonesia’s Organization of Journalists: Between idealism and practical interests], unpublished paper

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for the seminar Evaluasi Organisasi Jurnalis, on the occasion of the 6th anniversary of AJI, Jakarta, 7 August 2000. For a review of recent cases, see Cahyani, Setiyardi Wicaksono and Hakim “Wartawan itu Buruh atau Bukan?” [Journalists: Are they workers or not?], TEMPO, 14 December 1998, p. 65; for a review of the earlier years, see Angela Romano, Journalistic Identity and Practices in Late New Order Indonesia, (Unpublished thesis, Queensland University of Technology, Australia, 1999), p. 127. For more on recent working-class politics in Indonesia, see V. Hadiz, Workers and the State in New Order Indonesia (London: Routledge, 1997); and V. Hadiz, “Changing State-Labour Relations and the Unravelling of Indonesia’s New Order”, in Challenging Authoritarianism: Connections and Comparison between Indonesia and Malaysia, edited by Ariel Heryanto and Sumit K. Mandal (forthcoming). One of the earliest and most active advocates of unionization for journalists under the New Order is Dhia Prekasha Yoedha; see Dhia Prekasha Yoedha, “Profesionalisme dan Kinerja Organisasi Jurnalis” [Professionalism and performance of journalists organizations], unpublished paper presented at Seminar Evaluasi Organisasi Jurnalis (Jakarta: Aliansi Jurnalis Independen, 7 August 2000). Romano, op. cit., pp. 108–9. By September 2000, hundreds of print mass media titles had been closed down by their own management, officially for financial reasons. For further reports and discussions on the fate of employees affected under these conditions, see P. Bambang Wisudo, “Bulan Madu Pers Telah Berakhir”, Kompas, 9 February 2000; and articles in the first issue of Suara Serikat ( Jakarta: Serikat Karyawan Jakarta-Jakarta, 2000). Article 10 of the Law reads in rough translation as “The press enterprise provides social welfare to journalists and other press employees in the form of share ownership and/or net dividends, and/or other forms of benefits”. The term “middle classes” has been widely debated. For a further discussion of such a debate with reference to Indonesia in the 1990s, see Ariel Heryanto, “Public intellectuals, media…” Many of these cases remained unknown to the public. We feel obliged to keep their anonymity and protect the innocent. Sen and Hill, op. cit., is one of the latest books on the media in Indonesia, with one chapter fully devoted to the Internet. The book was a product of long laborious research in the 1996, when three new Internet stalls (warnet) had just opened in Yogyakarta. This book provides a special section on the event (pp. 198–99). When the book was launched in Melbourne in July 2000, Yogya had almost 100 warnet. In September 2000, the number had jumped to almost 200. By April 2001, it had grown to 350; see Farida Farid, “350 Warnet Lengkapi Kota Yogya” (350 internet stalls serve the city

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34 35 36

37 38

39

40

41 42

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of Yogya) Ibid., p. 62. Ibid., p. 203. The wartel figure is from Sigit Widodo and Farida Farid, “Kualitas Internet di Indonesia Buruk” (Quality of Internet in Indonesia is Poor), detik.com, 19 June 2000, ; and the warnet figure is from Onno W. Purbo, “Asosiasi Warnet dan Perjuangan Ke Depan” [Association of Cyber-cafe Shops and the struggles forward], 26 May 2000, . Dan Murphy and Margot Cohen, “Cyber Dreams”, Far Eastern Economic Review, 6 April 2000. According to Sen and Hill, op. cit., p. 194, “[i]f radio was the communication medium of Indonesian independence, then the Internet might well vie for top billing in the fall of Suharto”. See also Margot Cohen, “Acid Test: The Media Corrode Soeharto’s Legitimacy”, Far Eastern Economic Review, 28 May 1998, pp. 18 & 20. The headquarters of the Armed Forces is apparently the only state apparatus to have attempted any serious measures to counter the outburst of antigovernment information on the Net. Rather than imposing any legal restrictions which was characteristic of the pre-Internet regimes, the Armed Forces set up its own website, or infiltrated Internet discussion groups and propagated ideas more sympathetic to the ruling government. For more accounts of the success story of detik.com see “Portal-portal di Medan Laga” [Portals in battle], SWA 16, no. 4 (24 February–8 March 2000): 32–38; and “Berdagang dari Njuwok ke New York” [Doing business from Njuwok to New York], TEMPO, 12 March 2000, pp. 63–69. Murphy and Cohen, op. cit. According to a survey of 250 journalist respondents conducted in May and June 1999 by the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), the salary distribution is Rp. 250,000 (5%), Rp. 500 thousand to Rp. 1 million (35%), Rp. 1–2 million (30%) and above Rp. 2 million (8%); see “Rendahnya Gaji Wartawan Indonesia (Gramedia Majalah) [The low salaries of Indonesian journalists (Gramedia’s Magazine Division)]”, Suara Serikat 2000 ( Jakarta: Serikat Karyawan Jakarta-Jakarta), p. 7. Wajah Pers Indonesia 1995 ( Jakarta: AJI [Aliansi Jurnalis Independen] 1996); Sen and Hill, op. cit., pp. 67–69; and Jose Manuel Tesoro, “Indonesia: Learning the Ropes of Press Freedom”, UNESCO Courier 2 (February 2000), pp. 43–45. Tesoro, op. cit.

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Reproduced from Media Fortunes, Changing Times: ASEAN States in Transition, edited by Russell Hiang-Khng Heng (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available from < http://www.iseas.edu.sg/pub.html >

Indonesian Television 83

4 Indonesian Television and the Dynamics of Transition Kukuh Sanyoto

INTRODUCTION This chapter traces the role and challenges of the electronic media, particularly those of television, at various key junctions in Indonesia’s political history. It also examines the status of television today as Indonesia grapples with its difficult transition to democracy. Political leaders habitually seek to manage the media. They can enforce a regimen of control for a certain period of time, but the process is fraught with political tension and harbours a great potential for crisis, conflict and chaos. Although press freedom and freedom of expression are basic human rights acknowledged in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 19), as well as in Indonesia’s 1945 Constitution, the implementation of these rights has had a chequered history. For more than 50 years after Indonesia’s Independence (1945–1998), freedom of expression and press freedom were very much controlled by the rulers, except during two “honeymoon” periods.1 In the present post-Soeharto period, press freedom and freedom of expression are safeguarded by an August 2000 amendment of the 1945 Constitution, the People’s Consultative Assembly Decree no. XVII/1999 on Human Rights, and the Press Law no. 40/1999. However, written statutes alone cannot safeguard press freedom. Having the appropriate laws is important, but a free press will only thrive if it becomes part of a larger democratic culture within the country. Unfortunately, a democratic system and its values are not well-established yet in Indonesian society. Many individuals or groups are already complaining

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that press freedom in the current liberal climate has gone too far. On the other hand, there are those who do not understand that freedom should be tempered by a strong sense of responsibility. The shifting dynamics of media politics are contained within a nexus of activism, media and political power that is a prevailing motif in the history of the Indonesian nation. In the twentieth century, Indonesia’s political history was shaped by popular activism.2 The media played a central role in raising public consciousness and galvanizing people into action. Politicians therefore understood the importance of the media in seeking and maintaining power — and this realization informed an official media policy that sought to control, while at the same time make allies of, the media.

TELEVISION’S PENETRATION According to the Bureau of Statistics’ 1995 survey, Indonesia had nearly 20 million television sets and over 30 million radio receivers. Assuming that each television set is watched by 8 people, than the audience penetration totals around 160 million or nearly 80 per cent of the 200 million population. Radio also has a significant penetration. If each radio is listened to by 5 people, there will be around 150 million listeners.3 If the same assumption of 5 readers for each newspaper is made, then print media captures only 66.8 million people, or 33 per cent of the population.4 These comparative statistics place the electronic media well ahead of print in terms of audience penetration.

THE STATE-RUN MONOPOLY PHASE Since television rapidly became the most “penetrative” media in the country, those in power made a particular effort to control or own it. In August 1962, Indonesia’s first television station TVRI (Televisi Republik Indonesia) was launched in conjunction with Indonesia’s plan to host a major international event at that time, the Games of the New Emerging Forces or GANEFO. The New Emerging Forces was Sukarno’s (the then President) rallying call to the Third World to resist superpower domination of international affairs. That foreign policy stance gave him a significant role on the world stage. TVRI was founded through a Presidential Decree and was called Yayasan Televisi Republik Indonesia, chaired by Sukarno himself. This meant he directly controlled the

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station, and therefore editorial policy was not independent. Indeed, the editorial content was dogma-driven and given to highlighting Sukarno’s plans to modernize and make Indonesia one of the “great nations of the world”. In 1965, when Soeharto removed Sukarno in a coup d’état, he ended Sukarno’s control of TVRI. Television then joined the radio service, RRI (Radio Republik Indonesia) as a unit under the Ministry of Information. The Ministry issued guidelines and policy for broadcasting which are then implemented by a Dirjen RTF (Directorate General of Radio, Television and Films). All staff of TVRI and RRI are public employees under the supervision of the Dirjen RTF. During Soeharto’s New Order regime, RRI and TVRI were the only electronic media permitted to operate in the country. Soeharto’s policy obliged all media to fulfil their role as “agents of development”. This meant supporting the developmental policies of the state as well as promoting law and order, security and the unity of the nation. There was a ban on coverage of Communism. The media also had to be hostile to dissidents and critics, and to portray them as detrimental to state security. The state maintained a stringent check on political views to ensure they were supportive of the official agenda. Political campaigns were only allowed during the official period for election campaigning, and the authorities scrutinised them carefully. All campaign materials intended for broadcasting had to have prior approval from the General Elections Council. In 1966, Soeharto brought in media legislation in the form of Press Law no. 11/1966. This and its by-laws and regulations (issued by the Ministry of Information) imposed extensive restrictions on the media. It formalized many regulatory measures related to media such as the licensing system and government control over the Press Council, dictating which topics were out of bounds and managing the right to practise journalism and be active in journalists’ associations. With this Press Law, the number and circulation of the print media came under tight control because the government could censor content, revoke licences or even send journalists to prison. Very few would challenge the authorities, and those who did ended up either without a licence or in jail. TVRI enjoyed a monopoly of operation until 1989, giving the station a high number of viewers. Being state-funded, both TVRI and RRI did not have to be profit-oriented, and they did not carry commercials. This

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state of affairs started to come apart, however, when the government allowed commercial television.

IMPACT OF COMMERCIAL TELEVISION The first commercial television station, Rajawali Citra Televisi Indonesia (RCTI) was officially launched on 24 August 1989. The official explanation for introducing a commercial television was the state’s desire to extend services to Indonesian viewers and to provide a venue for businesses that wanted to advertise on television. But there were other realities which may have propelled the decision to allow commercial television. First, and perhaps foremost, was the arrival of satellite technology. The use of satellite dishes became widespread, not only in big cities, such as Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya and Medan, but also in remote areas where reception of TVRI was very poor or not available. Indonesians with satellite dishes were tuning in to foreign broadcasters, so the state probably saw the need for Indonesian stations that could compete with them. In addition, Soeharto’s family and cronies saw commercial television as a very lucrative business which they wished to add that to their business empires, and this may have been the catalyst in the decision to allow private television. RCTI was a subscription channel and reception was by decoder. Notwithstanding the availability of this new channel, television broadcasting was still a monopoly controlled by Yayasan TVRI, because the latter issued the licence for RCTI. Controversy surrounded the licensing of RCTI, however. From a legal aspect, the issuance of the licence by Yayasan TVRI and the existence of a television channel other than TVRI were not in line with the many laws and regulations surrounding the media industry. That one of Soeharto’s children owned the new channel intensified the public feeling of impropriety. Nevertheless, people generally welcomed the new television station merely because they were tired of watching one particular channel. At first, RCTI obtained the right to broadcast locally for Jakarta and its surrounding area. Later, licences were also issued for SCTV (Surya Citra Televisi) in the Surabaya area, ANTEVE (Televisi Andalas) in the Padang area, and again RCTI in the Bandung area. All of these new television stations were owned or partly owned by Soeharto’s children and cronies. Unlike the first licence for RCTI, licences for these other stations were issued by the Ministry of Information as the sole holder of

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broadcasting rights. There was no transparency in the issue of the licences and no one, including the media, was aware of or dared to question the decision. Meanwhile, the general public welcomed these new television options, which were all services available through a decoder. Another major change came when one of Soeharto’s children obtained a special licence to set up a television channel for education — TPI (Televisi Pendidikan Indonesia) — that was available nationwide without requiring the use of a decoder. TPI uses TVRI’s facilities, broadcasting in the morning and afternoon prior the broadcast operation hours of TVRI. The new television channels were allowed to broadcast entertainment only, in the form of television serials and movies, most of which were American. Only a few local production houses were allowed and they produced mainly drama series, comedies or quiz shows. No one dared to produce “talk shows”, particularly those engaging social and political themes, as these were risky to manage. The channels had to contribute 12.5 per cent of their net profit to TVRI, since they were considered a “complement” to TVRI. They had to relay simultaneously and instantly TVRI news bulletins, particularly those during TVRI’s prime time slots of 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Sometimes TVRI’s “special reports” were also aired, but it was at the discretion of the authorities whether commercial television stations should relay these simultaneously and instantly. On occasions, such programmes could be recorded and broadcast later. These special reports were usually about the President’s state visit to foreign countries, state ceremonies and important announcements. Thus, the commercially-owned television stations were drafted to serve a state strategy that sought to influence public opinion in a particular way. A parallel regime of control existed for radio. Commercial stations could only entertain their listeners and had to relay news and other broadcast material of the RRI. The Ministry of Information and Ministry of Communication jointly issued radio licences, but lack of procedural transparency was a problem. Nevertheless, a public that was growing increasingly tired of one official version of news and editorial opinion was generating a media market for alternative sources of information and points of view. RCTI decided to supply what this market demanded by producing a news feature programme “Seputar Jakarta” (Around Jakarta) that focused on human interest issues in Jakarta. The thrice-weekly program was quite

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a success, not because of its quality, but mainly because it dared to present happenings at the grass-roots level, such as issues dealing with workers, street vendors and street children that the state’s TVRI would never cover. Some may deem it remarkable that RCTI was pushing the envelope despite its connection to the ruling regime. But it can also be argued that precisely because of this connection, RCTI was allowed to experiment at the fringes. This highlights the complex dynamics of media and society in transition, which cannot be reduced into a solitary paradigm of media wanting to be independent of the state. Many factors are involved. RCTI was living up to its commercial instincts by identifying a market demand and moving to meet it for the earnings that this would bring. At the same time, some journalists were willing and able to test the limits. Their experimentation would require the tacit consent of the station’s powerful owner, who would have to decide how far to countenance the initiative before it became politically untenable. It was an interactive balance of risk-taking, caution and official sufferance. Still, there were over-riding parameters that could not be transgressed. “Seputar Jakarta” would not engage issues that were overtly political, nor would the show foment social discontent or criticise the government.

GROWING MARKET FORCES Since commercial television was only available to those who could afford the service, critics charged that it discriminated against the poor. In 1992, the government eventually liberalized the television market and allowed commercial channels to offer free-to-air services that covered the whole country. To what extent criticisms of social inequity were instrumental in this change of policy is not known. RCTI and the other commercial stations welcomed this. While their income from subscriptions would stop, they could now tap into the entire viewer market of Indonesia. Eventually, all the television stations decided to move their proposed local operations in other cities to Jakarta and start nationwide broadcasts. This market liberalization had an impact on programme content. Take RCTI’s “Seputar Jakarta” as an example. The show expanded to become “Seputar Indonesia” (Around Indonesia), which meant it no longer just focused on the capital but also covered issues anywhere in

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the archipelago. The reporters and producers of the programme felt that there was a high demand for news on a more diverse range of issues. They gradually moved from merely reporting culture and human interest stories to touching on social and political issues. They started to cover public disputes on land appropriation, wages, social welfare and corruption. Liberalized market conditions seemed to be promoting a creeping politicization of television content. The programme became very popular and commercials started to pour in. The success drove the editorial team to test censorship limits even further. Herein lay the dilemma: journalism was caught in the dynamics of transition to a more competitive and open media environment. From a purely commercial perspective, controversy and daring raised the ratings, which would be good for the fortunes of the television stations; but the risks were clear to those in senior positions. For example, Chris Kelana, chief editor of “Seputar Indonesia”, had to caution his staff that pushing too hard against censorship limits might backfire. For the front line reporter, the dilemma involved having to live up to professional standards while staying within the boundaries of permissible journalism. Some subjects were clearly taboo, such as criticizing the President or causing problems for his family and cronies, but censorship issues were not always as simple and straightforward as this. Grey areas tested judgement and, on many occasions, the owners of media companies, the authorities or their “friends” would summon chief editors, news producers or even reporters themselves to express their “disappointment” over a news item. Sometimes their disappointments had nothing to do with sensitive political issues or content that might seem critical of the regime. For example, a well-known conglomerate owner held a big party for the wedding of his daughter. There were thousands of guests, including the President, Vice President, ministers, generals and other high ranking officials and businessmen. The event was covered by one of the networks. Executive producer Adolf Posumah edited the news and added the amount of money spent on the wedding; he was grounded for over a month. Still, it was a time for innovation. RCTI developed several new programmes, including talk shows, a format which had been proscribed for so long. Another development was the setting up of a production house called PT. Sindo Citramedia. Again, connections with the powerful was a significant factor. Among the shareholders were Halimah Bambang Triadtmodjo (Soeharto’s daughter-in-law), and a number of

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the family’s business cronies. Setting up a production house provided television stations with a safety device. In the event that a programme roused the ire of the establishment, the production house could take the blame and be closed down rather than the television station have its licence suspended. Later on, SCTV and Sindo’s shareholders decided to expand the services of Sindo Citramedia to SCTV. Sindo’s “Seputar Indonesia” and other programs were relayed simultaneously on both RCTI and SCTV. The successful formula of “Seputar Indonesia” prompted SCTV to produce its own news show, “Liputan 6”, that tried to best the competition by being more daring than “Seputar Indonesia”. Some Indonesian viewers preferred the provocative content of “Liputan 6”. The programme became popular, especially among younger audiences, and its hours were extended. In the wake of the initiatives by RCTI and SCTV, all the other TV stations followed with their own news programmes. The confluence of these several factors — market liberalization, political patronage, business competition and journalists’ determination to test the limits of censorship — changed the medium of television radically in the few short years since commercial television first arrived on the scene in 1989. By 1996, Indonesians enjoyed the presence of four commercial television channels, which gave them a wide selection of programmes such as drama series, quiz and talk shows, news, and variety shows. Viewership was increasing. The economy was booming with an average annual GDP growth rate of 8 per cent. Advertising revenue grew, and a buoyant commercial mood energized the industry. The change in television offerings had serious political implications. The old injunctions against questioning official policy, the President, his family and their cronies remained, but journalists were taking a hard look at socio-economic problems. They started to cover cases of corruption and injustice in the lower end of the administration, such as bribes paid to local governments, human rights abuses by local officials and unfair wages paid to workers. These media changes were producing a better-informed public to whom policy-makers had to pay more attention.

MEDIA AND ELECTORAL MANIPULATIONS Despite the growing sophistication of both the media and their consumers, manipulation of the media by the Soeharto regime for

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political advantage can still be peremptory. The saga of Megawati Sukarnoputri’s leadership of the PDI (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia) provides a case study of how the political leadership manipulated the media profiles of competing political parties and opposition leaders.5 The ruling Golkar alliance controlled by Soeharto was wary of Megawati’s leadership of the PDI because her popularity might result in impressive electoral gains for her party in the 1997 elections.6 Golkar was then chaired by the information minister Harmoko. His goal was not only to win for Golkar but also to obtain at least 70 per cent of the seats in the House. For this he would use any means available, including the media. As the then information minister and owner or shareholder of several media organizations, Harmoko had little difficulty getting down to his task. In 1996, the government helped to oust Megawati from the PDI leadership post by tacitly supporting Soerjadi, her challenger within the PDI. At a PDI congress in Medan in June 1996, Soerjadi was elected as the new chairman. Megawati’s supporters, however, rejected the outcome of the Medan congress and protests broke out. Government support for Soerjadi extended to promoting his media image over that of Megawati. The Ministry of Information reminded journalists that Soerjadi was the “recognized” leader of the party. As a result, Soerjadi frequently appeared on television, but this television promotion was discordant with the reality on the streets of several cities where Megawati’s supporters — predominantly young people — were rallying in large crowds. Journalists did try their best to circumvent the political pressure and restore some balance to their coverage. They abided by the political instructions for two or three days before gradually resuming coverage of Megawati’s activities again. Tensions rose when Megawati’s supporters occupied PDI’s Jakarta headquarters and organized “free speech forums”. Huge numbers attended these forums which were mostly critical of the government. The authorities tried to discourage the press from carrying stories saying that the events were acts of public disorder. Circulars and phone calls from the Ministry of Information, and sometimes even from the headquarters of the armed forces, warned television stations not to give coverage. Again, journalists used the tactic of humouring the authorities for a few days and then reverting to reporting on these political developments, because their magnitude and public impact were such that failure to report them would lose the television stations their credibility.

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The military authority then called up the editors for a meeting, and charged that the Communists were behind the free speech forums. The editors, on their part, responded that it was difficult not to publish or broadcast anything at all when people in the streets could witness these meetings. However, pressure on the media came not simply from censorious state organs. Sometimes journalists had to face real hostility on the ground because of the media’s pro-regime bias. For example, on one occasion PDI supporters threatened a RCTI reporter and cameraman at a free speech forum, questioning their purpose of recording the event when it was unlikely to be aired. Finally, the authorities understood that it would be counter-productive to impose a media blackout on the forums. They modified their injunction to allow coverage, but prohibited direct quotations from the forum that could incite public disorder. This gave the censors great discretionary power to decide the appropriate news angle. Once more, journalists did not acquiesce readily. They resorted to interviewing and quoting what public figures and academicians said about the free speech forum, thereby technically adhering to the directive of no direct quotations from the forums while still giving full coverage of the event. Things came to a head on 27 July 1996, when some 200 Megawati supporters were ejected from PDI headquarters. While the official line maintained that rival PDI supporters were responsible for the sacking and that the security forces only moved in to maintain law and order, many suspected the army was behind the clash. Some eyewitnesses said that those who attacked Megawati supporters wore crew-cut hairstyles and appeared to be well-trained. During the violent incident, anti-riot security forces and the police showed their partiality for the attackers by allowing them to do what they wanted. This incident had happened in the wake of a 22 July 1996 threat by General Feisal Tanjung, commander of the armed forces, to clamp down on the activists in the PDI headquarters because the occupation “disrupt[ed] public order” and was “unconstitutional”. Since the event became one of the worst riots in years, television could not avoid covering it. Despite any editorial slant the authorities tried to put on the coverage, the television images focussed the public’s mind on the PDI saga and the government’s role in it. When the election was announced in January 1997, Megawati’s name was not on the slate of candidates. However, the strife within the PDI was only one strand in a larger tapestry of electoral machinations

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in Jakarta. In the months running up to the May 1997 election, the state machinery geared up on many fronts to muster votes for Golkar. Conventionally, all civil servants, state and public enterprise employees were automatically members of Golkar — including employees of the state-controlled TVRI and RRI. In addition, employees of commercial television stations were also encouraged to become sympathizers, if not members of, Golkar. Several newscasters, producers and chief editors were urged to become the party’s campaign spokepersons. Long before the official campaign, the media were already promoting Golkar’s election agenda. Almost on a daily basis, talk shows presented Golkar’s policy or featured Golkar leaders. In some television stations, the owners suggested that producers use the yellow colour of the Golkar party as much as possible for set decorations. Instructions went out to presenters not to wear red or green as these colours represented the two opposition parties. Journalists protested the unfairness at many meetings within the media organizations they worked for. Apart from issues of journalistic integrity and credibility, they also raised the matter of the public threats and danger they risked because of the evident bias of the media. Members of the public had accosted them on the streets and accused them of unfairness. Criticisms and threats also reached the newsroom via phone or fax, and some even threatening to stage protests outside the television stations. This combination of pressures from public activism and journalists themselves forced the state to moderate its manipulation of the media. At stake for the various media companies were credibility and popularity, key factors in a competitive market situation. Altogether these forces raised the quality of political coverage in terms of diversity and by daring to surpass the limits of existing restrictions. It was a dynamic situation, with the authorities and the media constantly locked in negotiation. Occasionally, the media would be asked to explain why certain stories, news items or talk shows were published or aired. Verbal or written warnings were issued, but journalists would pay heed for a duration and then test the limits again. Golkar won the election and its chairman, Harmoko, called the results an affirmation of legitimacy for the Soeharto government.7 But the 1997 election was considered to be the most violent in Indonesia’s history, involving clashes between party followers/sympathisers and security forces, rioting and arson. The death toll during the 1997

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hustings was nearly 300, far in excess of the 8 in 1992 and 12 in 1987. What was perceived during and after the election was a rising resentment against the Golkar alliance. The regime’s old policy of control and management was no longer very effective at managing these forces of transition. Excessive political manipulation of the media was one manifestation of the misfit between policy and reality. Each effort to get the media to ignore or play down a darker reality, which was plain for all to see, only raised the level of public resentment. Such a media situation formed the background of the eventual demise of the Soeharto regime in 1998.

REGIME COLLAPSE AND TELEVISION A regional financial crisis precipitated the fall of the Soeharto regime in 1998.8 As it unfolded, Indonesians watched with anxiety wondering if their currency would also suffer the same fate as other plunging regional currencies. Some analysts and the business community warned that Indonesia could be hit at any moment, yet the government insisted that Indonesia’s economic fundamentals were solid. The media also saw the danger, and some tried to expose the problems in the banking system and the heavy foreign debts of the big corporations. However, these efforts were promptly discouraged by the authorities, so, by and large, the media purveyed the government’s hopeful reading of the situation. Then the currency crisis broke in Indonesia. When Soeharto had to give in to the IMF’s demands for financial discipline in January 1998, the television image of him having no choice but to sign the agreement removed some of his aura of unquestioned power. In March 1998, when he was re-elected as President by the MPR (People’s Consultative Assembly), voices of discontent were raised in the house to attack the corruption, cronyism and nepotism that the man had been associated with. The media used the momentum to call for more openness and transparency. Commercial television and radio stations produced news bulletins and talk shows with a frequency never experienced before. Legislators, politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen and academics became more vocal in articulating the problems faced by the country. Interference from state authorities and media owners appeared to ease. While public discourse focussed on the need for reform and the establishment of a new government through peaceful and constitutional

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means, public anger at the re-election of Soeharto for his seventh term spurred open demonstrations. These were organized by university students, supported by a broad spectrum of social classes including labourers, academics, bureaucrats and former ministers and generals. The political crisis was escalating on an unprecedented scale. Television tried cautiously to provide a forum for these voices of protest. In a live televized interview at SCTV’s “Liputan 6”, Sarwono Kusumaatmadja, a vocal critic of the regime and also a former environment minister, likened the political situation to a “toothache”, claiming that the only remedy was to “pull the tooth out”. Many interpreted “the tooth” to mean President Soeharto. Given that Soeharto was still in power, this was a courageous statement, and viewers gave credit to “Liputan 6” presenter Ira Kusno for daring to draw such a statement from Sarwono.9 On the night of 12 May 1998, security forces clashed with students at the Trisakti University, killing four students. Within the next two days another died, thirteen others were injured and seventeen went missing. This event aroused great public distress and it was impossible for the media not to report on it. The morning after the shooting, RCTI opened its 6 a.m. news with a statement of mourning for the dead students. The producer and editor kept the item very short, having been reminded to treat the item cautiously, but the weatherman used his slot to eulogize the students, calling them “heroes of the reform movement”. Later that day, rival station SCTV’s news programme at noon went much further and carried a full account of the incident. This made reporters and some editors at RCTI furious because they had not been allowed to do so. Prior to that evening’s primetime news bulletin on the “Seputar Indonesia” programme, RCTI journalists held a meeting among themselves and decided to carry a full account of the shooting incident without the consent of the board of directors or the chief editor; and they were prepared to face the consequences for their initiative. However, nothing happened to them. There were no phone calls from the board or the authorities. Instead, members of the public and other journalists called in to support the station. As was the practice in Indonesia, the television treatment of the killing of the students then provided a signal to the print media that it was alright to report the incident fully and fairly. As a result, this shooting event pushed the Indonesian media deeper into the activist mood of the times.

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Meanwhile, chaos erupted around the country. Students clashed with anti-riot police. Mobs wreaked havoc and confronted the military. Since Jakarta came virtually to a standstill, most people stayed home and watched television or listened to the radio. The electronic media was their only source of information of what was happening. For example, Radio Sonora, which usually broadcast information on Jakarta’s traffic, probably became the most popular because it updated listeners on the location of the riots and road blockades, as well as advising them on how to avoid them. The media’s importance as a source of up-to-date information in a chaotic situation contributed to the breakdown of the old censorship system. Media owners and the members of boards of directors kept in constant contact with their newsrooms, no longer to supervise the news but more to hear from journalists what was happening on the ground. They were confused and would rather sit nervously and watch. Under such circumstances, nobody would dare to take a clear stand on the unfolding events and direct the news. For example, RCTI’s president, M.S. Siregar, visited the studio one evening while “Seputar Indonesia” was on air and tried to get the producer to take a line that would calm the public. He intimated that he had to protect the station and did not want it to get into trouble with the authorities. But the producer and other senior journalists responded that it was no longer possible to control the public mood, which was calling for the removal of President Soeharto. At this, Siregar’s only answer was: “Well, you guys should know”.10 Soon it became evident that the power élite — ministers, senior bureaucrats, generals, politicians and prominent community leaders — was wavering in its support for Soeharto. Their public statements vacillated from one interview to another. For example, armed forces commander General Wiranto, who had earlier warned that he would clamp down on student demonstrations, said that the military sided with the people and the students. Twelve of Soeharto’s cabinet members resigned. Finally, on 21 May 1998, Soeharto resigned and his deputy B.J. Habibie was installed as Indonesia’s fourth president.

RECONSTITUTING STATE–MEDIA RELATIONS Habibie conducted his presidency according to a democratization agenda. He promised a free general election, freedom to form political parties

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and other social organisations, respect for human rights, and freedom of expression. He also agreed to the release of political detainees. Within this rubric, the Habibie government contributed to the reconstitution of state–media relations. Just days after being sworn in, Habibie held a press briefing with chief editors of the nation’s media. In contrast to his predecessor, he promised to make himself accessible to the media. Given the new liberty to organize, the MPPI (Indonesian Press and Broadcast Society) was established to struggle for more press freedom and freedom of information. The new information minister, Yunus Yosfiah, removed media licensing, page quotas and censorship and promised more accessibility to the media. Given that former president Soeharto hardly conducted press briefings, the ready access to senior leaders marked a significant change in the media culture. Under the new political climate, hundreds of newspapers, weekly and monthly magazines, tabloids and other publications mushroomed throughout the country. According to statistics from the SPS (Indonesian Newspaper Publishers Association), in 1998, the number of publications almost tripled from less than 300 at the time of the May 1997 election to nearly 900. Circulation rates increased by approximately 15 per cent. Part of the media liberalization agenda included legislation to strengthen press freedom. The MPR issued a human rights decree that had two articles guaranteeing freedom of information:11 Article 20 states that “Every person has the right to communicate and to obtain information in order to develop his or her personal and social environment”, while Article 21 states that “Every person has the right to seek, obtain, possess, hold, process, and convey information through any type of means available”. Subsequent to the MPR decree, the DPR (House of Representatives) provided more legal protection for press freedom by passing Press Law no. 40/1999 on 23 September 1999.12 This new law highlights the rights of the media, instead of their obligations. The list includes the right to seek and obtain information, and to be free of censorship, banning and any oppressive regulation. Licensing has been replaced with a technical registration system under which a registration certificate must be issued within fifteen working days of an applicant sending in the appropriate forms. Significantly, the law establishes an independent Press Council with members selected by journalists and media organisations rather than by the government. The law gave the print media another spurt. Hundreds of new publications emerged

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within a couple of months, with the number of titles doubling from 871 in 1998 to 1687 in 1999.13

BROADCASTING: A MESSY SITUATION The transition to democracy did not remove the old restrictions on the broadcast media as dramatically as it did with the print media. A 1997 law enacted by the Soeharto regime continues to apply to the electronic media. Although the post-Soeharto government had wanted to pass a new law that would cover all forms of mass media, popular opposition scuttled that attempt. Critics of the proposed multi-media law argued that it retained too many of the old restrictions and allowed the government too many opportunities for discretionary decisions. The new journalist grouping MPPI also lobbied against the bill and provided its own drafts to treat print and broadcast media separately. This explains why by mid-2002 the old Law no. 24/1997 still applied to the broadcast media. Being a relic from the Soeharto years, the law bears his authoritarian imprint.14 It does not have a single article which guarantees press freedom or freedom of information, and it prescribes an array of government controls such as licensing and content censorship. In total, it has 57 administrative sanctions and 25 criminal sanctions, ranging from a minimum fine to licence withdrawal to a tenyear prison term. The law also has some outdated clauses that smack of dogma. Article 5 states that “Broadcast carries the function of a media of information and dissemination, education, and entertainment, to strengthen ideology, politics, the economy, social culture, and defence and security”; while in Article 6, paragraph b claims that [broadcasts are directed for the purpose of] “transmitting public opinion which are constructive to the life of the society, the nation, and statehood, and to increase the active participation of the people in development”. Some clauses in Law no. 24/997 are becoming harder to implement because they are not compatible with the more democratic media environment of the present. For example, Article 35 obliges all commercial stations to relay the news programmes of the state-run television and radio. This practice gives an impression that the state still monopolizes information or, at least, wants to impose an official version on any issue. A number of television stations have begun neglecting to

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broadcast the TVRI news bulletins. The government has not responded to this non-compliance, signalling that the law, while technically still active, is actually not in operation. The complexity in the broadcast media situation does not just involve the delineation of state power. New forces are emerging during this transitional phase where the old rules are no longer enforceable and the new rules have not caught up with the shifting dynamics of the situation. To cite an example, certain individuals and groups in Indonesia have been observed to be buying time on all the commercial channels simultaneously to run one particular show. A 30-minute television talk show “Indonesia Baru” was one such case.15 A number of organizations, including MPPI, criticized the practice as restricting the choice of viewers. The show has since stopped monopolizing the commercial channels and is now broadcast by the state-run TVRI.

A NEW BROADCASTING ORDER To be sure, when Abdurrahman Wahid (also known as Gus Dur) took over as President in October 1999, he tried to establish a new regulatory regimen for the broadcast media. However, Gus Dur was replaced by Megawati in July 2001 and it is too early to assess state–media relations under the Megawati presidency. In general, however, a few major factors shape this process. Firstly, given the “people power” dynamics that brought about the post-Soeharto era, any attempt to regulate the media must be in keeping with the democratic spirit of the times. Secondly, power has become diffuse in Indonesia and competing interests within a more pluralistic political process make consensus and forceful action difficult. Thus the Gus Dur government had not had much success in carrying out this task. Two major attempts have been made: one was to institute administrative reorganization through cabinet decrees; another was to legislate through the DPR. When Gus Dur assumed the presidency, the Information Ministry was abolished. The demise of the ministry put to an end to the old BP3N that had considerable power over broadcasting.16 He then tried to set up a new Directorate General of Broadcasting in the Ministry of Communication in January 2000, that would inherit the duties and prerogatives of the defunct Directorate General of Radio, Television and Film.17

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A number of professional media organizations such as the MPPI, the IJTI (Ikatan Jurnalis Televisi Indonesia, or Indonesia Television Journalists Association) and the HPPI (Himpunan Praktisi Penyiaran Indonesia or Association of Indonesia Broadcasters) issued a joint statement on 28 February 2000 rejecting the establishment of this new regulatory body. The statement argued that the decision harked back to the authoritarian ways of the Soeharto regime. On 8 March 2000, the protesting organizations followed up their statement by meeting with the Speaker of the DPR Parliament. Since then, the government has shelved its plan but may not have dropped the idea altogether. Under the Megawati government, the Ministry of Communication is still intent on having a Directorate General of Broadcasting but by mid-2002, whether it has or will set up such a unit remains unclear. Media associations, empowered as they have never been before by the new democratic climate, have sought to shape legislation to give the media more power to decide its own professional issues. The MPPI and like-minded groups have actively lobbied the DPR to consider passing a new broadcast law based on a draft they have put together. This proposed legislation has one controversial feature, calling for the setting up of an independent broadcast regulatory body which will be accountable to the elected house rather than to the executive wing of the government, and which will also administer television and radio frequencies. However, the Gus Dur presidency, which had earlier been obstructed in its attempt to set up a Directorate General of Broadcasting, was reluctant to support this bid to shift control of broadcasting from the executive wing of the government to the legislature.18 The commercial television stations are also unenthusiastic about the establishment of this independent regulatory body. They already have a familiarity with those running the current system and do not want to have to deal with the complexities of an unknown new entity which is completely independent. From their perspective, it is easier to continue dealing with the president-centred executive wing of the government, which needs them in a strategic alliance in order to continue to govern.

CONCLUSION The following key features characterize the Indonesian media: a proactive media which does not give in readily to government decrees; public associations actively involved in redefining state–media relations to

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reflect society’s transition to democracy; weak political institutions that could no longer impose a strong level of control; and an administrative gridlock that cannot implement regulations competently. These characteristics underline the level of freedom enjoyed by the media today, but also raise the question: what will emerge from this unstable situation? Given that, in its recent history, the country has had similar periods of considerable press freedom that proved to be very brief, the present liberties are not to be taken for granted. They are by no means strongly consolidated, and the laws that protect press freedom still do not go far enough, especially in the area of broadcasting. Another unfavourable trend is a weakening market, as Indonesia’s economic crisis shows little signs of improving. If growing market forces earlier contributed to the development of the media, the present situation of declining circulation and public disenchantment with the media holds grave dangers. In February 2001 the secretary general of the Daily Publishers Association, Leo Batubara, said that daily circulation had dropped by 40 to 50 per cent.19 The proliferation, particularly in the print media, has meant that competition for advertising sales has become more fierce, causing editors to publish anything that will keep the business running. The reaction of media consumers to this situation has been multi-faceted. There is a growing backlash against the increasing sensationalism, with some complaining that the media have become kebablasan pers (out-of-control press) instead of kebebasan pers (free press). For others, there is growing weariness of political news. A number of radio producers have confessed that their audiences are becoming “tired” of listening to political talk shows and prefer programmes on lifestyle and other forms of entertainment. Television station owners and producers are reluctant to admit the possibility that their news audience is dropping, saying that the ratings of the newscasts remain unaffected. There has also been a decline in journalistic standards as a result of the exponential increase in all forms of media in such a short period of time. Qualified and professional journalists have become a scarcity. If this trend is not arrested, public apathy or antipathy to media may grow — and this will raise the possibility of the media coming under tighter state supervision again. Despite the many changes, the media remain very much in the control of élites with the power or money to manipulate their content. Whereas these élites were run by one authoritarian figure in the Soeharto

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era, power is now more fragmented and diffuse. There have even been accusations that individuals or groups have paid certain media outlets to run stories. After the activism that overthrew an unpopular authoritarian regime, the media seems to be neglecting its public duty and veering more towards servicing the ambitions of the power élites. However, the trends that threaten the newly-gained freedoms of the Indonesian media take place within a larger global environment where technology has made it harder to control the flow of information. Media players and manipulators in Indonesia will also have to ride these new dynamics. Resorting to old-fashioned means of tight control can only raise the level of conflict and political tension. Also, political forces have been released in Indonesian society that make it harder for autocrats to subject the media to the same old authoritarian control. It is also fallacious to understand politics and media as purely a matter of the state and the media negotiating a single issue of how much control is exerted by the state. As this chapter has shown, the forces of transition have operated in a more complex manner to shape state–media relations. NOTES 1

2

3

The first honeymoon began with Independence in 1945, but the Sukarno regime became increasingly autocratic until it was replaced by the New Order regime of Soeharto in 1966. The second honeymoon period followed in the wake of that change in power, but Soeharto then imposed his own authoritarian controls, which ended when he was toppled in 1998. To give a flavour of the many popular movements in Indonesian history, I provide a brief account, including some of the well-known personalities and key events. In the early 1920s, young men like Multatuli and Dr Wahidin Husodo initiated a sense of nationalism through what was known as the National Awakening Era. The Youth Congress followed in October 1928, resulting in the Youth Pledge (the recognition of One Nation, One Race, and One Language: Indonesia). Then Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta proclaimed Independence in August 1945, which was followed by the fierce struggle led by a young Bung Tomo and his friends in Surabaya against the Allied Forces in 1948. Youth and students of “Generation 66” agitated and helped to overthrow the Sukarno regime and brought in Soeharto’s New Order regime — and 32 years later, it was again student mobilisation that brought an end to the Soeharto regime. The assumptions that television audiences comprise 8 viewers for every set and radio audiences 5 listeners for every set come from the MPPI (Masyarakat Pers dan Penyiaran Indonesia, or the Indonesian Press and Broadcast Society).

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5

6 7

8

9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16

17

The assumption that every newspaper is read by 5 people comes from the SPS (Serikat Penerbit Suratkabar, or Indonesian Newspapers Publishers Association). Megawati derives her popularity from her late father, the charismatic Sukarno, who fought for Indonesia’s independence and became its first president. In the 1997 General Election only three political parties were recognised, namely The United Development Party (PPP), the PDI and Golkar. Golkar had a record 74.3 per cent of the votes, compared to its 68.1 per cent five years ago. The PPP notched up 22.64 per cent, while Soerjadi’s PDI only had 3.05 per cent. The international media covered these events extensively. Foreign currency traders first raided the Thai baht, and followed with similar runs on the currencies of Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. The drastic decline of the Indonesian rupiah increased the country’s international debt exponentially. In order not to default, the Soeharto regime had to seek an IMF (International Monetary Fund) bail out. An IMF-imposed package of reforms undermined Soeharto’s authority, contributing, along with the widespread social chaos at that time, to his ultimate demise from power. According to sources in “Liputan 6”, Ira Kusno paid a price for this by being grounded. This writer was present when the incident happened. Decree no. XVII/1998 on Human Rights. The 500-member DPR comprises elected members, except for 38 military appointees. These 500 representatives also sit in the larger MPR which has 200 more members representing regional and functional interest groups (for example women, religious groups or intellectuals). The DPR passes laws while the MPR appoints the President, amends the constitution and issues state guidelines that set down broad principles of governance. SPS, op. cit. Law no. 24/1997 was initially turned down by Soeharto and had to be rewritten to get his presidential assent. The program is privately funded, possibly by foreign NGOs. Currently, TVRI is paid to air the program. BP3N, or Badan Pertimbangan dan Pengendalian Penyiaran Nasional, is the National Broadcast Guiding and Control Agency operating within the Ministry of Information. This body makes recommendations to the minister on all matters related to broadcasting. The secretary of BP3N was also the head of the Directorate General of Radio, Television and Film, one of two directorates in the Ministry that supervised the media. The other directorate dealt with the print press. See Article 47 of Ministry of Communication Decree no. 4/2000 issued on 26 January 2000.

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104 Kukuh Sanyoto 18 In the Indonesian system, the President can directly hire and fire cabinet ministers who are executive appointments and not elected representatives. This gives him or her more power over the executive than the legislative wing of government. Even through there has been a change in the presidency from Gus Dur to Megawati, as of mid-2002, the DPR was still considering the draft bill for broadcast media and had not passed it. 19 Leo Batubara said this at a meeting between founders of MPPI and President Gus Dur on 7 February 2001. At the press conference after the meeting, Leo Batubara also refuted the argument that the drop in circulation was to do with people having less money due to economic bad times. He pointed out that if this was the case, consumers spending for tobacco would not have remained the same, which it had.

REFERENCES Ade Armando. 2000. “Posisi Media Watch dalam Kemerdekaan Media” [Media Watch’s position in media independence]. Seminar paper presented at Menuju Reformasi Penyiaran: Mengembalikan Pengelolaan Informasi kepada Masyaraka (Towards Broadcasting Reforms: Returning Ownership of Information to the People), organised by Televisi Transformasi Indonesia on 31 August 2000 in Jakarta. Andi Muis (lecturer at Universitas Hassanudin, Ujung Pandang). 1999. “Laws and Norms Governing the Press”. Paper presented at the seminar on The Press and Government: In Search of Solutions, jointly organized by the Ministry of Education and Culture and UNESCO, on 23–24 March 1999 in Jakarta. Hinca Panjaitan, SH, MH. 1999. “Memahami Penyelenggaraan Penyiaran Menurut UU no. 24 tahun 1997” [Understanding the operations of broadcasting according to the law UU 24 of 1997]. Internews Indonesia, August 1999. Hinca Panjaitan, SH, MH. 2000. “Regulasi Penyiran di Indonesia” [Broadcasting regulations in Indonesia]. Internews Indonesia, August 1999. Seminar paper presented at Penyiaran 2000: Aspek Regulasi dan Kebijakan [Broadcasting 2000: Aspects of regulation and policy], organized by Universitas Indonesia, Program D-3, on 27 January 2000. Jakarta Media Center, Jakarta. Ishadi S.K. (former head of TVRI and director general of radio, television, and films). 2000. “Menata Kembali Regulasi Penyiaran Indonesia, Memasuki Milenium Baru” [Reorganizing broadcasting regulation in Indonesia into a new millennium]. Paper presented at the seminar Penyiaran 2000: Aspek Regulasi dan Kebijakan, organized by Universitas Indonesia, Program D-3, on 27 January 2000. Jakarta Media Center, Jakarta. Laws & Regulations: Law No. 24/1997 on Broadcast, Law No. 11/1966 on Press, Law No. 40/1999 on Press, and Law No. 36/1998 on Telecommunication.

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Indonesian Television 105 Government Decree No. 36/2000 on the Establishment of TVRI Corporation, and Minister of Communication Decree No. 4/2000 issued on 26 January 2000, on Directorate General of Broadcast. Mann, Richard. 1998. Plots & Schemes that Brought Down Soeharto. Toronto: Gateway Books. Mendel, Toby (head of law program, ARTICLE 19, London). 1999. “Developing a New Press Law”. Paper presented at the seminar on The Press and Government: In Search of Solutions, jointly organized by the Ministry of Education and Culture and UNESCO on 23–24 March 1999 in Jakarta. Muhammad Ridlo Eisy (senior journalist and member of the Indonesian Press & Broadcast Society, MPPI). 2000. “Komnas Penyiaran, Tawaran Alternatif” [National Commission for Broadcasting, Alternative Option]. Paper presented at the seminar on Menyoal Kebijakan Lembaga Penyiaran [Questioning the Policy of a Broadcasting Body] on 17–19 April 2000. S. Leo Batubara (secretary-general of the Indonesian Daily Publishers Association, SPS). 2000. “Perkembangan Bisnis dan Prospek Media Cetak di Era Internet” [Business expansion and print media prospects in the Internet era]. Paper presented at the seminar on Implikasi Teknologi Informasi Terhadap Pers [The Implications of Information Technology for the Press], organized by SPS on 13 April 2000 in Jakarta.

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Reproduced from Media Fortunes, Changing Times: ASEAN States in Transition, edited by Russell Hiang-Khng Heng (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available from < http://www.iseas.edu.sg/pub.html >

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5 The Impact of Economic Transition on the Media in Laos Thonglor Duangsavanh

INTRODUCTION In the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (LPDR), the media plays the important role of acting as a bridge between the government and the people, by providing information through a system of two-way communication to promote and protect national interests. The Lao media carries out these duties within the framework of a socialist press that is owned by the state and managed by state-appointees.1 A major event in the LPDR’s recent history that has a great impact on Laotian society in general, and the media in particular, took place in 1986. That year, the Lao Government started to open the country to the world. Laos’ social, economic and human resources have developed dramatically since then. The government now actively encourages private investment, both foreign and domestic, by offering incentives to investors such as the reduction of corporate taxes, duties and turnover taxes on imported capital equipment and inputs to production.2 Foreign investments can come in the form of fully-owned foreign companies or of joint ventures with local partners. As a result of the encouragement of private investment, Lao people have the opportunity to choose from a wider range of jobs and to increase their incomes. Investments after 1986 initially came from family businesses and were mainly in light and medium industries. Within this positive economic climate, some newspapers, magazines, radio stations and television channels were launched. They steadily grew through the widening of friendly relationships and economic

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cooperation with foreign countries and international organizations. As the government steadily opened the country, journalists have played a more active role in reporting developments in the country. From 1986 to 1993, economic and media reforms were still carried out with great caution. This caution arose because during this time formerly socialist countries, especially the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries, underwent a total change in their political system from socialism to capitalism. Some of these countries have since experienced civil war or have had conflicts among political parties and minority groups. The dislocations these countries experienced have hindered social and economic development. Laos has avoided such radical changes and its socio-economic development has moved gradually forward while its political system has remained stable. From 1993, the LPDR increased the momentum of its reforms programme, and this had its impact on the country’s media. Media organizations had to start earning the necessary revenue by themselves; the government did not want to subsidize the print media anymore. On 19 June 1993, the politburo of the ruling Laos People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) promulgated Resolution 36, which provided guidelines for the country’s media as they faced the changes ahead. Resolution 36 took into consideration media activities that had evolved since 1986, and then identified the tasks that the country’s media needed attend to in the short and long term.

PROFILE OF THE MASS MEDIA Laos has three daily newspapers in the local language, Pasason (People’s Daily), Vientiane Mai (Vientiane News) and Pathet Lao (Lao Nation). Both the Pasason and Vientiane Mai have separate weekend editions known as Pasason Van Ar-thit and Vientiane Thourakith (Vientiane Business and Social). Two other large print-media organizations are the Lao news agency Kaosan Pathet Lao (KPL), and the twice-weekly Vientiane Times, the first English newspaper of the LPDR. The following features of the Lao print media give an idea of the scale of the industry. The range is small and none of the publications has a circulation of more than 10,000 (see table 5.1). This may seem very modest but it has to be seen in the context of a country with a population of only five million, with high levels of poverty and illiteracy,

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Table 5.1 Newspaper circulation in Laos Owner

Circulation

Length

Price per copy

Pasason

LPRP

7,000 copies 4 pages

500 kipb

Vientiane Mai

Vientiane municipality

3,700 copies 8 pages

700 kip

Pathet Lao

Ministry of Information 2,000 copies 12 pages 650 kip and Culture

Publicationa Dailies

Semi-Weeklies/Weeklies Vientiane Times (twice weekly)

Ministry of Information 3,000 copies and Culture

4,000 kip

Le Renovateur (a weekly French newspaper)

Ministry of Information 2,000 copies 16 pages 4,000 kip and Culture

Vientiane Thourakith (a weekly)

Vientiane municipality

3,700 copies 8 pages

Pasason Van Ar-thit (every Sunday)

LPRP

600 copies

Kong Thap (Military) (a weekly)

Ministry of Defence

2,500 copies 4 pages

Thourakith (Commerce) (a weekly)

Ministry of Commerce and Tourism

2,000 copies 16 pages 1,500 kip per issue

1,000 kip

20 pages 2,000 kip 200 kip

a In addition, the Lao News Agency (KPL), which is owned by the Ministry of Information and Culture, issues daily news bulletins (in Lao, English and French) and publishes the Pathet Lao monthly magazine (in Lao and English). b Exchange rate in 2002: 10,000 kip = US$1.

scattered over a landmass of 236,800 sq km. Its capital city Vientiane, which provides the main market for the print media, has a population of only 500,000. Poor transport infrastructure also hampers the circulation of print media outside Vientiane. In addition, a number of state institutions, such as the Ministry of Interior, and mass organizations, such as the Lao Federation of Trade

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Union, Lao Youth Union and Lao Women’s Union, have their own publications, some of which are published monthly. Outside the capital of Vientiane, only three large provinces, Vientiane, Savannakhet and Champassak, have been able to publish magazines.3 Since the print media cannot reach many provinces, radio is still very much the principal means of carrying news, information and messages to rural communities. Radio broadcasts can be received in 58 towns, comprising 5,900 villages inhabited by more than 2.4 million people; this still covers only 59 per cent of the national population. In addition, there are 16 television channels in both central and provincial areas. The medium broadcasts to 26 towns and 2,500 villages, but reaches only 31 per cent of the population. However, television is increasing its popularity and audience size in both the urban and rural areas.

IMPACT OF REFORMS Print Media One of the most significant impact of Resolution 36 is to allow all forms of media greater opportunities to earn money from advertising and selling their products at prices that take into consideration the publishing cost. In the past, the media could not advertise private products, and newspapers had to be sold at a price that did not cover production costs, making it difficult for magazines and newspapers to improve themselves. In 1994, the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) began the process of accepting the Indochinese countries and Myanmar as members, beginning with Vietnam. This offered Laos the opportunity to join the grouping, and the LPDR government began in earnest to prepare for membership. As part of this preparation programme, state officials, especially those of the younger generation, trained and upgraded their knowledge in institutes and universities in ASEAN and developed countries. Integrating with the outside world required Lao institutions and societies to change some of their old ways. In 1994, the Lao Government initiated a pilot project that encouraged local papers to generate their own revenue from advertisements and subscriptions, which they could use independently. However, the government capped advertisements at

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no more than one-third of the total pages in a publication. In tandem with this plan to make the media financially more independent, the government also cut the state subsidy to some of print-media organizations.4 As a result, some weekly and monthly magazines and newspapers were closed down because their circulations were too small, combined with the fact that they lacked advertisers and subscribers and their printing cost was very high. For instance, Kao Thourakit (BusinessSocial), owned by the Ministry of Commerce, had to close down because the paper could not cover its printing cost. In addition, another reason for the closure of some publications was their lack of the editorial skills needed to improve their product for the readers, as well as their lack of marketing skills. The government’s economic reforms affected even the country’s most important paper, the party daily Pasason. From 1986 to 1994 it published 10,000 copies a day, a portion of which was distributed internationally to diplomatic missions overseas. Today it prints about 7,000 copies daily and subscribers include government departments and private companies. Its overall circulation does, however, depend upon customer demands. The paper started with four pages. After the Lao Government introduced its policy of allowing revenue to be earned from advertising in 1994, Pasason also began to carry commercial advertisements, but initially only on one page. Today, it has eight pages, three of which are advertising pages. Presently, Pasason is not wildly popular among readers because its content is not attractive enough and it cannot provide useful information on subjects such as science and technology. In addition, its presentation of daily life is not diverse or detailed enough. The paper is uncritical and mostly publishes articles which project a good impression and avoid negativity. Journalists are still afraid to criticize and to suggest ways to improve social problems. However, to meet new demands in the information era, Pasason has tried to improve its content by examining social problems while continuing to fulfil its political duty to the Party. It must try to attract a readership — this is the new target of journalism in the LPDR. From 1975 to 1993, Vientiane Mai was fully subsidized by the Vientiane municipality, and its circulation depended on subscription by organizations under the Vientiane municipal authority. Within this period, its fortunes depended on the availability of state subsidies

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leading to a drastic fall in circulation in the difficult years of 1979– 1980. The beginning of reforms in 1986 saw its circulation bouncing back;5 however, like other publications, it had to exercise more financial and market discipline under the 1994 government policy. Circulation has since dropped to its present level of 3,700 copies, reflecting the actual market demand, but the paper is not yet self-sufficient. It does not have its own printing house, yet it does not earn enough revenue from advertisements to pay for private printing outside; and the salaries of its journalists have to be subsidized by the local government. Presently, Vientiane Mai is widely read in Vientiane and other large provinces because its stories cover various angles, including the activities of the government and private companies. It has 8 pages with a circulation of 3,700 copies per day, and costs 700 kip per copy. The majority of subscribers are in the Vientiane municipality. Economic developments in the 1990s also led to the upgrading of the KPL news agency. Established in 1968, it used to rely on the telegraph to transmit news across Laos. Beginning in the 1990s, facilities were upgraded to include short-wave transmission, and computer and facsimile technologies. E-mail has also recently been introduced as a means for domestic and international transmission of news and information. Computerization is under way within KPL and authorization has been granted for the use of Internet resources. Established in 1994, the Vientiane Times is another sign of how the Lao media scene has changed. The semi-weekly English newspaper started as a weekly of 16 pages and a circulation of 1,500. It filled a niche market as more foreign people came to live in Laos as part of the open-door economic policy. Two years later, the paper expanded its operations to twice a week, with 20 pages and a circulation of 3,000 copies; and it now has subscribers from over 30 countries around the world. In addition, in 1999, the Vientiane Times put out a French weekly, Le Renovateur, which has 16 pages and a circulation of 2,000 copies. The Vientiane Times has successfully managed itself as a print media business. The paper pays for its operating equipment, publishing and staff costs with revenue from advertising and subscriptions. The advertising rates are cheap compared with other international newspapers. The paper uses the latest technology and has its own web site, http://www.vientianetimes.la.

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One feature of media reform is its increased role in exposing corruption. For example, the Vientiane Times reported that some teachers of English at the National University of Laos accepted bribes from students who sat English entrance exams in September 1998. A few months later the bribed teachers faced legal action. In another case, both the Vientiane Times and the weekly Van Ar-thit reported on difficulties experienced in using the Internet via the Lao telephone system, due to the inability of the state-owned Lao Telecommunication Company to provide enough telephone lines.6 Two months later, on 23 November 1999, the Vientiane Times reported on the overloaded telephone system. This report exposed the poor planning and complex irregularities within the state-owned monopoly, that led to the limited supply of telephone lines. As a result, a few months later, the telecommunication company was investigated for its lack of transparency. Exposing official corruption and incompetence is one of the most difficult areas of journalism today. The Lao government is committed to make state bureaucracy more transparent, and it issued an anticorruption decree in January 2000 which gives journalists a measure of protection against corrupt government officials who abuse their power.

Radio Laos launched its first radio station in the 1950s; presently, it has 18 radio stations. Three of them are located in Vientiane, including National Radio 200 and 5 Kw FM Station. These two stations are managed by the Ministry of Information and Culture and broadcast almost 24 hours a day. Another station is managed by the Information and Culture Service of the Vientiane municipality and its programmes focus mainly on current news, education and entertainment. Other radio stations are located in the 18 provinces around the country, and each of them has their own editorial board. They broadcast programmes in both the national and minority languages. Presently, however, an average of only 60 per cent of the population is able to receive these programmes clearly. Lao people are also able listen to foreign stations run by Vietnam, Thailand, France, China and the British Broadcasting Corporation.

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Radio broadcasting is particularly important in Laos because the print media cannot reach its readers in remote areas, due to the poor road system and illiteracy. Since 1994 the government has allowed radio stations to advertise private products on entertainment shows, which make up 70 per cent of the daily programmes, at both central and provincial radio stations. However, there are regulations against misinformation in advertisements. As in print media, there is also a quantitative restriction: advertisements should not take up more then 10 per cent of the total time in each programme.

Television Television began in Laos in 1983 with a three-hour daily telecast limited only to the capital city. Since then it has been technically upgraded with foreign aid and investment — for example, the Japanese government has donated equipment to increase the strength of transmitting signals. As with the other media, state economic policies in 1994 had an impact on television. That year, Laos launched its second national-level television channel, which was initially called the IBC channel. It worked as a business enterprise run by IBC, a joint-venture company with Thai interests. The IBC channel produced different kinds of programmes and broadcast 10 hours a day, 60 per cent of which was transmitted via ASIASAT satellite to provincial stations. When, in 1994, the government began to allow advertising in media, television also benefitted from this policy. To facilitate the market economy, the government has allowed an increase in the number of private companies operating in Laos, and the resulting growth of private businesses has contributed to increased advertising revenue for the mass media as a whole, including television. In 2000, the joint-venture IBC television station reverted to stateownership and changed its name, to give Laos its present two stateowned national channels. Some provinces also have their own television services. Presently, television is broadcast 17 hours a day and 70 per cent of the programmes are also broadcast via satellite to different parts of the country. However, Laos is still a broadcast-poor country and Lao citizens listen to radio or watch television and Internet programmes broadcast from outside the country. At present, satellite dishes are burgeoning in the

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country, usually owned by affluent families. They can view television channels from around the world, such as BBC, CNN, NBC, HBO and UBC.

THE ADVENT OF THE INTERNET Laos started using the Internet in 1996. It was first connected to the World Wide Web via Internet service providers Loxley, KSC and IBM in Thailand. The following year, the satellite service provider Globe Communication Electric (Globe Com) started to provide Internet services under a pilot project approved by the Lao government. The company provided materials and technical assistance to help KPL to operate Internet services in Laos. KPL now has its own Internet service provider, Laonet Service Centre, which is managed by the Ministry of Information and Culture. The customers of Laonet Service Centre are government ministries, media organizations, private companies and NGOs. Now Laonet has more than 1,000 Internet subscribers around the country, and provides web sites hosting both government and private companies. Laonet connects to Internet servers in the United States and is the gateway to Laos. Since then, two other Internet service providers have begun operations in Laos. The Lao Telecom Company (LTC) officially launched Lao Link Internet Centre, its Internet service provider, in August 1999. The LTC is expected to have its Internet subscribers use about 800 to 1,000 telephone lines in a few years; it connects Internet users with SingTel (Singapore Telecom) and has its gateway in Singapore. The third Internet service provider is the Science Technology and Environment Organization (STENO), which started by providing only e-mail accounts in 1996. STENO has about 400 e-mail subscribers around the country. It can now connect Internet users with SingTel and also has its gateway in Singapore. Currently, tourists can check their e-mails at Internet cafés while they are in Vientiane and some other large provinces. The cost is about 200 kip per minute. Individuals, companies and organizations can subscribe to e-mail from Internet service providers in Laos. The e-mail fee is about US$20 per month per account, and full Internet access is about US$25 per month. The number of web sites, hosted locally and overseas, increases every day. At present, there are about 5,000 Lao and foreign Internet subscribers around the country.

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CONCLUSION Economic transition in the LPDR has had a great impact on its mass media, in terms of both how the media is made economically reliant and also the editorial content. The Lao media now enjoys greater technical sophistication and is more connected to the outside world, and all of these trends are expected to continue. The Ministry of Information and Culture has proposed in its 2000–2020 plans to develop the mass media. These plans adhere to the LPRP’s philosophy of producing socio-economic and human resource development. They include the expansion of print media and electronic media and the provision of higher quality news and feature stories, by using modern tools to deliver information and to reach readers and viewers around the country. However, to achieve this plan Laos requires funds to upgrade the national communication infrastructure in all fields and to develop human resources. NOTES 1 2

3

4 5

6

The state provides the media with its operating philosophy, the details of which can be found in the Politburo Decree 36 of 1993. The main laws governing the promotion of investment are the Law on the Promotion and Management of Foreign Investment (1994), the Law on Domestic Investment (1995), the Business Law (1994), the Customs Law (1994) and the Tax Law (1995). In addition to the listed daily, weekly and semi-weekly press, Laos has 10 monthly and bi-monthly (once every two months) magazines and 26 yearly magazines. Despite this, no daily and weekly newspapers are able to run their businesses today without some form of state support. From 1975 to 1978 Vientiane Mai printed 12,000 copies per day; from 1979 to 1980 the paper printed only 1,600 copies per day; and then from 1985 to 1987 it printed 13,000 copies per day. Vientiane Times 6, no. 76 (24 September 1999): 1.

REFERENCES Goonesekera, Anura and Ang Peng Hwa. 1999. Information Highways in ASEAN: Policy and Regulations. Singapore: Asian Media Information and Communication Centre and School of Communication Studies, Nanyang Technological University. Mass Media Department, Ministry of Information and Culture. Newspapers and Magazines statistics 1950–99.

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National Radio Annual Report 1999. Pasason annual report for 2000. State Planning Committee National Statistics Centre Yearbooks 1975–2000. Vientiane Mai annual report for 1999. Vientiane Times.

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Reproduced from Media Fortunes, Changing Times: ASEAN States in Transition, edited by Russell Hiang-Khng Heng (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available from < http://www.iseas.edu.sg/pub.html >

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6 The Media and Malaysia’s Reformasi Movement Zaharom Nain

INTRODUCTION The economic and political crises besetting the region as a consequence of the “Asian meltdown” in the late 1990s has seen the emergence of new groups and new demands among the peoples of numerous ASEAN countries. The majority of these demands are related to an apparent desire to reform woefully outdated systems of governance and to make governments and corporations in the region more transparent, accountable and democratic. The media, as has often enough been acknowledged, play a pivotal role in defining social consciousness. Aware of this crucial role, governments and large corporations all over the world have been quick to attain control of the media through a variety of means, in order to enable the media to work in tandem with their needs and motivations. By looking at this relationship between the media, the state and commercial interests in the context of Malaysia, this chapter attempts to locate the role played by the mainstream media during this period of transition. The principal aim is to provide a preliminary assessment of what the Malaysian Reformasi movement asserts itself to be and how the movement has thus far been depicted by the mainstream media. This study confines itself to a qualitative analysis of the mainstream Malay and English-language media, principally the print and broadcast media.

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THE REFORMASI MOVEMENT: OLD ISSUES, NEW CONVERTS In the heady days of late 1998, the streets of Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, reverberated with chants of R-E-F-O-R-M-A-S-I. Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets almost weekly, demanding changes, including justice (especially for Anwar Ibrahim, the sacked former Malaysian deputy prime minister, who was later detained, beaten up by Malaysia’s top policeman, charged in court, and, predictably, convicted and sentenced to 15 years incarceration), greater transparency and accountability on the part of the government of the day. More personally, many urged Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad to resign. It was, to borrow from Charles Dickens, the best of times and the worst of times. The Asian economic crisis, which began in mid-1997, had started biting the Malaysian economy. Many businesses were facing bankruptcy while other, more privileged ones were being bailed out by the regime. Words like “transparency” and “accountability” were being bandied about by the likes of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank, and were becoming popular among Malaysian citizens. These same citizens in the main were beginning to ask awkward questions (awkward for the government) about why the bubble had burst, and why the Malaysian “economic miracle” had now become a debacle. Suddenly, it seemed as though social and political consciousness had replaced decades of political apathy, and civil society was finally starting to assert itself. But of course it was not as simple as that. On 2 September 1998, barely a week after they shared the same platform in Penang, celebrating Independence Day on 31 August, Mahathir sacked his deputy and finance minister, Anwar, amidst widespread — and widely reported — sleazy allegations of sodomy, adultery and abuse of power. Anwar, a former Islamic student leader and a fiery orator, decided to go on the offensive. He initially held daily gatherings at his residence — reportedly attended by thousands, although realistically, the number was probably closer to a few hundreds — explaining why he was sacked from office, detailing corrupt practices within the regime he was once a member of and alleging that he was the victim of a top-level conspiracy, headed by Mahathir. The situation, to all intents and purposes, indicated a power struggle between the two men.

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As if aware that he needed to get across to a wider audience, more so because mainstream Malaysian media had blocked out reports of the gatherings at his residence, Anwar’s next move was to go on a nationwide campaign to explain his side of the story, and to tell people at the grass roots about the continuous abuse of power by powerful ministers in the regime. Taking his cue from the Indonesian experience that forced the resignation of President Soeharto, Anwar and his supporters began to popularize the terms, Korupsi, Kronisme, Nepotisme.1 Through his campaign, Anwar detailed cases of nepotism (especially those allegedly involving Mahathir’s family) and cronyism involving business friends of the prime minister and the previous finance minister, Daim Zainuddin (Daim subsequently replaced Anwar as finance minister until the former’s resignation in early June 2001). On 12 September 1998, Anwar made his Permatang Pauh Declaration in his parliamentary constituency of the same name, and launched a national movement of political and social reform, more popularly termed Reformasi. His nationwide campaign was a success, gathering thousands to listen to him at each stop he made. Under Malaysia’s draconian laws, all of these gatherings were illegal. However, possibly not wishing to attract negative international publicity, especially with events such as the Commonwealth Games and the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum) conference to be hosted later in 1998 by Malaysia, the regime did not clamp down on these gatherings. But the security forces were, nonetheless, waiting, and the opportunity presented itself on 20 September 1998. Thousands had gathered at the National Mosque after the obligatory Friday prayers to listen to Anwar. After delivering his speech, he led these thousands through the streets of Kuala Lumpur on a demonstration of a size never before seen in Malaysia; a demonstration which ended at Independence Square, a landmark of political significance. This action seems to have breached the threshold of acceptability for Anwar’s detractors. That same night, as he was giving yet another press conference to the international media at his residence, heavily-armed balaclava-clad policemen broke down the main door, grabbed Anwar and drove off into the night. This sudden but predictable arrest was made in the name of the allencompassing Internal Security Act (ISA).2 He was only publicly seen again nine days later — bruised and with the now-famous black eye, inflicted by the highest-ranking police officer in Malaysia, the inspectorgeneral of police. Malaysian politics has not quite been the same since.

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Anwar’s arrest, his subsequent black eye and the trial created splits, especially within the Malay community, the likes of which Malaysia had not seen since the 1987 Operasi Lallang crackdown on opposition politicians, NGOs, religious leaders and journalists. Another impact of the Anwar saga was to galvanize civic groups into forming a loose coalition, Gerak, which demanded widescale reforms in the system of governance. With Anwar as its symbol, and his arrest, trial and convictions as illustrations of many things that had gone wrong with the Mahathir regime, the Reformasi movement thus picked up momentum. But calls for reform did not just begin with the Anwar saga. Such calls were already being made in the 1970s. One of the high-profile groups agitating for reforms was Aliran, Malaysia’s first multi-ethnic reform movement “dedicated to justice, freedom and solidarity” (Aliran Online). Aliran was launched in August 1977 in Penang by seven concerned Malaysians led by Chandra Muzaffar, then a university lecturer. Aliran, over the past 23 years, has become a national reform movement, with members, friends and supporters from different parts of the country. Chandra moved on to become Deputy President of Keadilan or the National Justice Party, formed in the wake of the Anwar saga, and recently, evidently disillusioned, left the party to get back to doing NGO work. Aliran has consistently and continuously fought for reforms, principally through its monthly magazine, Aliran Monthly. Indeed, the organization has persistently highlighted cases of abuse of power, corruption and government mismanagement, particularly during the 19 years that Malaysia has thus far been under the Mahathir regime. The critiques provided by Aliran unfortunately have not gained much support, principally because its appeal and support base were — and still are — among the English-speaking middle class, and also because for much of the past decade Malaysia’s economy was booming, with average growth rates of more than 8 per cent. Equally, the Malaysian public has not been renowned for being supportive of activists. But the Anwar case somehow seemed to have changed all that. Suddenly, it would seem, the very people whom a group like Aliran had unsuccessfully spent years trying to rouse had now woken up and were demanding reforms. It could have been Anwar’s charisma. But more than that, there appears to have been “an overwhelming feeling that something had gone wrong with our country — and [a] determination for change in the future” (Sabri 2000, p. 191). Looking at how ruthlessly

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a top political leader like Anwar was dealt with once he had fallen from grace, many Malaysians had to confront the fact that “rights and freedoms which they once took for granted can be so easily taken away, ignored or abused. They have seen how easy it is to misuse the institutions that are supposed to protect our freedom and turn them into tools to repress, silence and curtail that freedom” (Sabri 2000, p. 192). More specifically for the Malays, a community whom Mahathir’s party, UMNO (United Malays National Organisation), depends on totally for support, the episode went against the grain of a deeply-held cultural tenet of their race; “a race whose ancient Annals, the Sejarah Melayu, have decreed that ‘if subjects of the ruler offend, they shall not, however grave the offence, be disgraced or reviled with evil words’ ”. (Sabri, 2000: 192). Prior to the emergence of the Reformasi movement, Mahathir was talking in the international arena about the need for reforms. However, the reforms he was talking about were not social and political reforms on the domestic front, but reforms in the international financial and capital markets. Badly burnt — arguably personally, but definitely as the political head of an affected country — by the Asian economic crisis, and possibly anticipating criticisms and attacks against his regime similar to the volatile anti-regime attacks in South Korea and Indonesia, Mahathir spoke of threats from foreigners such as George Soros, the IMF, the Jews and the World Bank.3 At the same time, he attempted to whip up nationalistic, jingoistic sentiments, especially among the Malay community. This has continued right through the Anwar episode to the present day, more so prior to the September 11 attacks on New York, when Mahathir and his administration were aware that support for UMNO was virtually at an all-time low. These momentous challenges are remaking Malaysia’s political culture; but in this political transition, the country’s media industry on the whole has been compliant and apologetic on behalf of the state. There are reasons for this.

THE MALAYSIAN MEDIA — BIG, STRONG, UNFRIENDLY In mid-1998, a year into the economic crisis and on the eve of the political crisis, the editors of Malaysia’s leading national language newspapers, Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian, evidently resigned from their positions within two weeks from each other. Soon after, a very

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senior executive of TV3, Malaysia’s first commercial television station, left. In the midst of these resignations, the Malaysian mainstream media acted as if nothing had happened. True, Malaysians got short reports here and there, but there was no discussion of the resignations, no query, not a squeal of protest. Instead, splashed across the pages of the New Straits Times and the Star were reports of Mahathir calling on journalists to “focus on their responsibility to society”, denouncing “negative reporting”, urging the people to unite as one to face the present crisis, and to ward off “rogue speculators” and “evil Others”. Irrationality and the absence of logic appeared to be the order of the day, at least as far as the media were concerned. To be sure, none of the departing editors were brave defenders of journalistic freedom, ideals and integrity. Perhaps the kindest thing that could be said about them is that, like many other Malaysians, including journalists, they cari makan (were earning a living). However, what was unfortunate for them was the fact that they were seen as the appointees of Anwar, the soon-to-be-removed deputy prime minister. They were merely pawns, sacrificed in the wider game of political chess that Mahathir was then playing with his deputy. The removal of these senior media executives is a clear illustration of the links between the Malaysian mainstream media industry and the political élite, and the importance the latter places on the media. Many print and broadcast media in Malaysia are privately owned but the pattern of ownership has kept these media organizations within the orbit of the state. As has been indicated in detail elsewhere (Zaharom and Mustafa 1998; Zaharom 1994; and Wang 1999) all of the major Malaysian broadcasting organizations — TV3, MegaTV (shut down in September 2001 owing to financial reasons), ntv7, MetroVision (currently being ‘revamped’) and the satellite broadcaster, Astro — and mass-circulation newspapers such as Berita Harian, Utusan Malaysia, New Straits Times, Star and Shin Min Daily News are owned and controlled by parties in the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition or those closely associated with these parties.4 To a large extent, this allocative control helps to explain why these media organizations rarely — if ever — break ranks. This pattern of ownership, with major political parties in the BN coalition owning chunks of the media industry, became the norm with the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) after the inter-racial riots of May 1969. The NEP, with its two-pronged objective

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of eradicating poverty and redistributing the corporate wealth of the country more evenly between different ethnic communities, provided the government with the opportunity to intervene more directly in the Malaysian economy. Under the NEP, the government designed numerous five-year plans that emphasized economic growth as well as redistribution of economic opportunities to the Malays. Various government agencies, such as the trust organization, Majlis Amanah Rakyat (MARA, which roughly translated means The People’s Trust Agency), were created to invest in the economy on behalf of the Malay/Bumiputra community.5 It was the NEP spirit and also the desire to increase Malaysian participation in the national economy, that prompted dominant political partners in the ruling coalition to invest in the country’s major newspapers to justify their corporate manoeuvres, and, at the end of the day, to exert control or influence over the newspapers they own (Loh & Mustafa 1996, pp. 101–104). For instance, the governmentowned trading company, Pernas, acquired 80 per cent control of the Straits Times which was originally held by investors from Singapore (Means 1991, p. 136). Later a majority of the shares was transferred to Fleet Holdings, an investment arm of UMNO. The transfer of ownership was then followed by a change of name to the New Straits Times Press (NSTP). Fleet Holdings subsequently set up an investment company called the Fleet Group that oversaw its subsidiaries, including the NSTP. Such a corporate move was of great political significance because the take-over involved major mainstream publications in the NSTP stable, including the New Straits Times, New Sunday Times, Malay Mail, Sunday Mail, Berita Harian, Berita Minggu, Business Times, Shin Min Daily News, Her World, Jelita and Information Malaysia. Likewise, in this drive to “Malaysianize” media ownership UMNO now has ownership of the Utusan Melayu newspaper group through a combination of shareholdings by individuals widely recognised as UMNO members and affiliates, and through shares held by nominee companies which are esssentially UMNO’s investment companies. Despite suffering a drop in circulation over the past couple of years, the array of major newspapers in the Utusan Melayu stable has a wide appeal among the Malay-speaking readership, in particular in UMNO constituencies. Utusan Malaysia, indeed, still has the widest circulation in the country. The MCA (Malaysian Chinese Association), another partner in the ruling BN coalition, also became involved in the newspaper industry at

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this time. It has a major stake in the popular tabloid, the Star, a business rival of the established New Straits Times (Lent 1982, p. 262). Currently the Star is the widest-circulating English language newspaper in Malaysia. In addition, in mid-2001, amidst a blaze of publicity and much controversy, MCA also acquired two major Chinese newspapers, the Nanyang Siang Pau and the China Press. As it is with the print medium, so is it with broadcasting. When television was introduced in Malaysia in December 1963, the initial setup comprised a single channel national network run by the Department of Broadcasting or Radio Televisyen Malaysia (RTM). RTM was one of three departments under the control of the Ministry of Information. In October 1969, the Ministry of Information launched a second channel, guided by the same directives as those that governed the operations of the first channel. After almost two decades of virtual state monopoly of the television airwaves, a commercial television station, TV3, was allowed by the government to begin operating in 1984. It was initially hailed as a station that would “provide newer, better quality and better choice of programmes”.6 However, developments a decade later such as the drastic increase in broadcast time beginning on 1 March 1994 and the emergence of new commercial television stations, indicate that the hunger for something new has remained unsatiated. These developments are related to the government’s policy of “privatization”, particularly the privatization of what were once regarded as “public services”, including broadcasting. The choice is often simplistically assumed to be between state-controlled media and the market — the latter being seen as preferable, based on the naive notion that the logic of the market will lead inevitably to plurality of choice, freedom and independence. Unfortunately, this has turned out to be untrue (Loh and Mustafa 1996; Zaharom 1994; and Zaharom 1996). Instead, what is clear in Malaysia is that the privatization exercise as regards broadcasting has resulted in the concentration of ownership of the new broadcasting institutions in the hands of BN party affiliates and their business partners. The latest commercial television, ntv7, launched in April 1998, also has strong links with the state. Its original chairman, Mohd Effendi Nawawi, served as managing director in the Sarawak State Economic Development Corporation (SSEDC) and is a member of the BN coalition (Cheong 1993, p. 57). After the 1999 General Election he was appointed the minister of agriculture.

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Malaysia’s first pay-TV or subscription service, MegaTV, which began operating in the third quarter of 1995, was run by a consortium using the company name Cableview Services Sdn. Bhd. The largest shareholder in the consortium, with a 40 per cent stake, was Sistem Television Malaysia Berhad or TV3. The Malaysian Ministry of Finance had a 30 per cent stake while Sri Utara Sdn. Bhd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Maika Holdings Bhd. (the investment arm of the Malaysian Indian Congress [MIC], another component of the BN coalition) had a 5 per cent stake. In the period since it began operation, MegaTV was able to extend its reach to virtually all the states in Peninsular Malaysia (Zaharom and Mustafa 1998). It ceased operating in 2001, a casualty of the economic downturn. As for satellite broadcasting, on 13 January 1996 Malaysia’s first communications satellite, the Malaysia East Asia satellite (Measat-1) was launched from Kourou, French Guyana. Measat-1 is owned by Binariang Sdn. Bhd., which in turn is owned by trusts associated with three Malaysians, most prominent of whom is manufacturing and horse-racing tycoon, T. Ananda Krishnan. Ananda has been politely referred to by one Malaysian daily as “a businessman who enjoys the confidence of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad”.7 The chairman of Binariang’s board of directors is a former inspector-general of the Malaysian police force, Hanif Mohamad Omar. Up until mid 1998, Ananda’s holding company Usaha Tegas held a 50 per cent stake in Binariang, while Denver-based US WEST owned 20 per cent.8 However, when the Malaysian government raised the ceiling for foreign ownership in telecommunications firms to 61 per cent, British Telecommunication bought over one third of the share at a price of RM1.8 billion (US$0.5 billion) on 24 July 1998.9 Hence, as far as television — including the cable and satellite services — is concerned, what Malaysia has is an ongoing exercise of selective privatization by the Malaysian government. There is, for example, no competitive open tender system when bids are made for projects which the government is privatizing. The decision to award tenders often lies in the hands of the minister whose ministry is privatizing a project. As a consequence, the tentacles of the ruling coalition and its cronies are extended even wider across the Malaysian economy, adding economic domination to what is already virtual political domination. Some naively entertained the notion that with the introduction of satellite broadcasting, the government would adopt an “open sky”

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policy. However, the announcement by the Minister of Information in 1996 must have put paid to such a notion. Amendments to the 1988 Broadcasting Act to enable satellite broadcasts to start operating was tabled in Parliament on 14 October 1996. However, the amendments in no way led to an open-sky policy. Instead, they paved the way for tighter government control on signals reception, since under the amendments only 0.6-metre parabolic dishes can be used by consumers, which receive signals from only the Measat-1 satellite. Indeed, under the amendments to the Act it is an offence for anyone to use bigger parabolic dishes — and the penalty for such an offence is a hefty fine of RM100,000 and a three-month jail sentence.10 Aside from control of the media industry through direct and indirect economic ownership, the BN government has a slate of laws at its disposal — the Printing Presses and Publications Act, the Control of Imported Publications Act, the Internal Security Act, the Sedition Act, and the Official Secrets Act, to name a few — to control the media. Mahathir’s regime has not been slow to utilise these laws. At no time has this been more obvious than during the Anwar political crisis, as we shall see further in this chapter. Economic and legal controls notwithstanding, the Malaysian media have generally been compliant because Malaysia has a profoundly conservative education system which preaches conformity and compliance. This becomes particularly obvious when formal media education in our local universities is examined. Here the emphasis is very much on form rather than substance; the focus is on teaching students — often badly — how to twiddle with knobs and how to write intros rather than why they are writing what they write (Zaharom et al. 1994). At the end of the day, while there may be journalists who have thus far escaped the web of socialization and who continue to try to come up with critical reports, the multi-layered nature of controls at the day-to-day, operational level of news production invariably prevents such reports from seeing the light of day. Hence, the vicious circle continues. Taking all these points into consideration, we begin to understand better the dynamics behind the behaviour of the mainstream Malaysian media. In short, it is a question of structures and socialization. Malaysia’s situation stands in contrast to those of many other Asian countries, where the emergence of a more educated, socially-aware middle class has created more political space. Malaysia also experienced the rise of a relatively wealthy middle class during the boom decade

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beginning in the mid-1980s. However, many accounts have convincingly argued that the middle class that emerged was not one that could be considered a socially-aware, socially-active, liberalising force. Indeed, what emerged during this period was a middle class that, on the one hand, was caught up with consumerist pursuits and values and, on the other, sought spiritual or religious salvation. Thus, as Abdul Rahman (1995, 50) puts it, “(S)trong materialistic values exist side-by-side with spiritual values, and attempts are made to reconcile the two”. Such attempts at reconciliation indeed spilled over into their perceptions of what was seen as “moral” and “immoral” in Malaysian society generally and, in particular, in terms of cultural practices and behaviour patterns. “Morality” invariably became more concerned with patterns of dressing and what was deemed “acceptable” behaviour, and less of a concern with, say, corrupt political practices and the abuse of power. And while Islamic resurgence became commonplace and more pronounced, the non-Muslim communities invariably became more fearful of the implications for their own cultures and beliefs. More than that, it is apparent that there was an almost defensive retreat to their own cultural and religious roots, leading to a revivalism of sorts. As Chandra (1987:99) puts it, with Islamic resurgence, the religious and cultural revivalism among non-Muslims and non-Malays also tends to give prominence to forms and symbols, rituals and ceremonies. This revivalism is obsessed with identity, with the distinguishing character of one’s religion. Hence, there has been greater emphasis on the family and religious values within the family and the wider society, and less emphasis on domestic political developments. There was — and still is — immense concern for the young, especially the youth of the country, during a period in which rapid development has resulted in greater pressures on the so-called “traditional Malay/Muslim family”.11 “Foreign” cultures and ways of life for quite some time have been seen as contributing very much towards these tensions in a period of change, and they are easier to blame than, say, development strategies which have gone awry. Just as the growing Malaysian middle class was obsessed with material gain and spiritual salvation, so was the regime single-minded in maintaining its control, using a “sophisticated combination of draconian

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laws, controls on civil liberties, with social and economic policies favouring élite and middle-class sectors” (Wong 2000, p. 118). Somehow, however, while the controls have remained, there has been a perceptible change in certain segments of the middle class: those which were at the forefront of Reformasi.

CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS? THE MEDIA AND THE REFORMASI MOVEMENT For decades, Malaysian political leaders have had a tendency to act condescendingly towards their citizens, on the pretext of protecting them. Hence, for example, laws have been created to prevent Malaysians from discussing issues deemed “sensitive” — issues, it is often asserted (particularly during election campaigns and moments of crisis) which can and will result in ethnic disturbances or riots akin to those of May 1969. In this way, Malaysians are conditioned not to get too “excitable” for fear of destabilizing the country. As part of this conditioning exercise, media institutions are expected not to publish or broadcast “sensitive” information, without any clear definition of what is to be deemed sensitive. The flip-side to all this “protection of sensitivities” is the concealment of information — or, quite simply, censorship. This is not to assert, however, that the contemporary mainstream media do not cover at all a range of social issues which may be unpopular with the state. Indeed, critical issues on the environment, the privatization of public institutions and services such as health and education do get discussed in the media. However, such editorial spaces are mainly available only at “non-critical” moments for the government (such as just after a general election), often in the inside pages or supplements of newspapers; and, more importantly, coverage is guided by the dictates of the official discourse. Such ‘openness’, in other words, is relative. Throughout the economic crisis and the political crisis that followed, official denial and media censorship seemed to be the order of the day. Policy decisions by the regime to address the crisis — such as pegging the value of the Malaysian Ringgit to the American Dollar, the imposition of capital controls and, equally controversially, the government bailout of selected companies, particularly those belonging to Mahathir’s children and friends — were never discussed, let alone criticised by the

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print or broadcast media. The editorial template appeared (and still appears) to be to provide extensive coverage of government policies and programmes in order to stimulate public interest and opinion in line with the official agenda. This boils down to two types of news to be found in the mainstream media: “feel good” news and “blame it on Others” news. The former comprises news reports and features about achievements by Malaysians which, in turn, are meant to make all citizens proud to be Malaysian. The propaganda generated revolves around the phrase Malaysia Boleh (Malaysia Can), dreamt up much earlier when the Malaysian economy was booming. Apart from erecting expensive skyscrapers and claiming world records for these, the regime was also involved in sponsoring team expeditions to climb Mount Everest and to reach the South Pole, and a single-man boat ride around the world using an obscure route — all in the spirit of Malaysia Boleh. Equally silly, but widely publicised nonetheless, were culinary record attempts, such as having the longest buffet line. One of the most famous “public service” advertisements aired on television at the height of the economic crisis was entitled “Bullish on Bouncing Back”. Sponsored by major Malaysian corporations it depicted a Malaysia that had quickly overcome the crisis, where the measures taken by the regime had been hugely successful. Not surprisingly, in many circles it was retitled “Bull**** on Bouncing Back”. The “blame it on Others” news replayed the familiar refrain of penjajah baru (new colonialists). Taking their cue essentially from Mahathir, the media were quick to blame “external forces” and the international financial system for Malaysia’s woes. They went on to play up the issue even more when the political crisis began and thousands of Malaysians took to the streets of Kuala Lumpur. The first strategy of the media was quantitative in nature; that is, they provided limited coverage of the demonstrations and rallies. The second, more qualitative, strategy was to provide negative coverage of the demonstrations and to stereotype the demonstrators as thugs, hooligans, troublemakers, rabblerousers and even as naive individuals influenced by “evil foreigners”. Hence, when (then) US Vice-President Al Gore made his infamous speech on 12 November 1998 at the APEC dinner in Kuala Lumpur, praising the supporters of the Reformasi movement as “brave Malaysians”, the mainstream media were quick not only to condemn Gore for interference in Malaysia’s domestic affairs, but also to link the

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movement to “foreigners”. The third strategy adopted by the media was to evoke the potential for large-scale societal violence. Hence, wire reports and images of ethnic violence, particularly in Indonesia, were constantly played up by both the print and broadcast media. The clear message was: “Let not Indonesia happen here”. The reporting lacked balance on two counts: it ignored the fact that the demonstrators on the streets of Kuala Lumpur were multi-ethnic in nature, and it shied away from reporting state violence against the demonstrators. And state violence there certainly was, as evidenced by the report of the government-created Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (SUHAKAM), released in mid-2001, which blamed the Malaysian police for perpetrating acts of violence on those demonstrating on the Kesas Highway in the state of Selangor. Visual images of violence were also used to condition voters’ perceptions during elections. In the 1999 Sabah state elections, the BN “resorted to playing a video on racial riots and armed conflicts in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Kosovo” as a scare tactic.12 This tactic was used even more frequently during the November 1999 general elections. In the campaign period leading up to polling day, full-page advertisements in the major newspapers had images of mob violence with bold headlines warning, “Don’t Let Mob Rule Lead Us”, “Don’t Let Anarchy Rule” and “Don’t Let Violence Triumph”. Champions of Reformasi — and the united opposition parties — were thus depicted as the very people who would destroy the country. More recently, in May and June 2000 the media began reporting a spate of willful destruction of public property which senior politicians, especially Mahathir, alleged were the actions of agent provocateurs — implying oppositional political groups. The media did not challenge or examine these allegations; instead, the media voice was raised to call for greater control, greater discipline and greater respect for law and order. There was little effort to assess rationally these latest incidents as symptomatic of wider failures, such as the possibility of failures in the education system. A climate of “moral panics” — where a group of people emerges and becomes defined as a threat to societal values and interests — was thus created, allowing for greater policing and legitimising greater recourse to draconian measures, such as a crackingdown on the Reformasi movement. The current behaviour of Malaysia’s mainstream media has led political commentator and opposition politician Chandra Muzaffar

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(cited in Wong, 2000: 133) to observe that, “wealth, culture and social stability have conspired to thwart the emergence of … courageous and principled journalists in this country”. But this has not always been the case in Malaysian history. A raft of restrictive legislation and internal security measures (see Wang, 1999, Zaharom & Mustafa, 1998) has played a crucial role in muzzling the media, at least since 1987. In October 1987, the Mahathir regime, in what is often referred to as Operasi Lallang, cracked down heavily on oppositional forces, including opposition politicians, NGO heads, religious leaders and other social activists. Altogether, the government detained without trial more than 100 individuals. The crackdown on the mainstream press was equally hard, with three newspapers, including the masscirculation English paper, the Star, being shut down. As Wong (2000: 134) puts it Virtually overnight, a tentative culture of inquiry was cowed and eventually disappeared, as a generation of journalists left the trade taking their skills and experience with them. And not all of them were from banned newspapers; there were also refugees from other dailies…

IF YOU CAN’T BEAT THEM ... GET ON THE INTERNET Virtually immediately after the November 1999 general elections, the crackdown on dissent began. First, there was a clampdown on the alternative media, with the arrest of the editor of the hugely popular Harakah, the then twice-weekly newspaper of the PAS, the Islamic party of Malaysia. In the November elections, the PAS became the biggest opposition party in parliament, winning numerous seats in what were previously safe UMNO constituencies. At the height of the political crisis, Harakah boasted a circulation of more than 350,000, easily making it the best-selling newspaper in Malaysia. Both Harakah’s editor and printer were arrested under the Sedition Act, purportedly for publishing seditious material. Two prominent opposition politicians were then also arrested under the same Act — one, Anwar’s lawyer, Karpal Singh, for allegedly uttering seditious words in court in the course of his duty as Anwar’s counsel. The government later dropped the case against Karpal while the other opposition politician, Marina Yusof, was found guilty and fined RM5,000.

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A variety of other pro-Reformasi and pro-opposition publications (Detik, Al-Wasilah, Eksklusif) had their printing permits revoked.13 On 1 March 2000, Harakah had its publication frequency slashed from twice a week to twice a month. This prompted Aliran president, P. Ramakrishnan (2000: 15), to describe the action as “a decision prompted by fear that Harakah will further undermine Malay confidence in UMNO, which has already suffered a sharp erosion in support from the Malay community”. Facing all these restrictions, and aware that their options as regards the mass media are pretty limited, opposition parties and IT-savvy Reformasi groups have shifted their attention to the Internet. Indeed, despite the fact that computer penetration is still low among the Malaysian public, and despite the fact that access to and usage of the Net are even lower presently, Reformasi groups have nonetheless opted to utilise it, possibly because they are aware of its potential. This is also because the regime has thus far promised to keep the Internet relatively free and unregulated in an attempt to attract foreign investors to one of Mahathir’s major projects, the Multimedia Super Corridor. Hence, almost immediately after Anwar was detained, pro-Anwar and Reformasi websites spread rapidly over the Net. At their peak, these websites numbered more than fifty, although the quality and credibility of the news provided by many of these sites were as questionable as those provided by the mainstream media. Run mainly by amateurs with little or no journalistic training, many of these sites thrived on rumours and innuendoes and had relatively short shelf lives. Of those that have remained, many owe their continuance to the resilience of their web masters more than to the quality of their reports. Onto this scene has arrived Malaysia’s first web-based daily newspaper, Malaysiakini. Launched on 20 November 1999, just prior to the general elections, Malaysiakini was initially funded largely by the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA). It describes itself as “an Internet media project featuring independent news coverage, investigative journalism and in-depth news analysis … conceived by journalists unhappy with the sorry state of our mass media.”14 Within a year of its launch, Malaysiakini received rave write-ups in international newspapers and magazines such as the Far Eastern Economic Review, The Wall Street Journal and The Australian and won numerous international awards, the most recent being the International Press Freedom Award which was awarded to its editor, Steven Gan.

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By March 2000, Malaysiakini had hit 30,000 daily readers (which crashed their servers). By July, the number had risen rapidly to 100,000; and on 8 August 2000, the day the verdict of the Anwar trial was reached, Malaysiakini’s readership reached an all-time high of 319,000. As of late 2001, its daily readership lies at a constant 116,000 — a very decent figure, given the scale of computer use and ownership in Malaysia and given the fact that Malaysiakini is still a relatively young entity. Even more recently, in early 2002, Malaysiakini started a subscription service to meet its increasing operating cost. Hence, while readers can still access for free the website and certain daily news items and the popular letters section, they would need to pay a subscription fee in order to access a variety of other services, including Malaysiakini’s editorial, archive and special columns. Other Reformasi-inclined news websites have also emerged to supplement Malaysiakini. The emergence of these new news/information providers needs to be understood within the context of widespread disenchantment with the mainstream media. Recent figures disclosed by independent auditors indicate that the sales of major, established, mainstream newspapers, such as the New Straits Times, Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian, have fallen quite substantially over the year. And although the circulation of the Star has risen recently, when compared to 1999 figures it becomes clear that the Star’s circulation has been steadily declining over a period of years. While the evidence remains largely circumstantial, it still cannot be denied that the past three years has seen the mainstream media losing much of whatever credibility they may have had among Malaysians. The way the Anwar saga was conducted by the regime offended many; the way it was so uncritically reported angered many more. These factors, coupled with the fact that UMNO’s hegemony over the Malay community has now been broken, help to explain — even if partially — why the circulation rates of these established conservative newspapers have fallen. Whether this is a temporary phenomenon or whether more people will switch to other media such as the Web, especially with the regime providing incentives for Malaysians to purchase computers, remains to be seen. At best, there is a glimmer of hope, with reform movements like Aliran now embarking on a citizen’s campaign to reform the media. Mainstream journalists, too, have expressed some fears regarding their loss of credibility; and in 1999 and 2000 a group handed to the Malaysian home minister petitions urging for a repeal of the Printing

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Presses and Publications Act, signed by a total of more than 900 local journalists. (The home minister has been slow in responding, however.) Despite this restiveness within the journalist profession, state actors have remained focussed on tightening their control of the media. Indeed, in May–June 2001 the second-largest party in the ruling coalition, the MCA, which already owns the Star, bought two Chinese language newspapers, the Nanyang Siang Pau and China Press, through its investment arm, Hua Ren Holdings. Prior to this, the government had also been sending out warning signals in the media that it was drawing up measures and legislation to regulate Internet content. This followed continuous attacks on Malaysiakini and its personnel by the governmentowned and -run RTM, and the commercial television network, TV3, for purportedly being funded by Mahathir’s supposed nemesis, George Soros, and for being headed by “trouble makers”. It would seem, therefore, that the battle for media and information control is set to take on a new dimension due to the impact of Web newspapers such as Malaysiakini. It is still uncertain what the outcome will be, but the spark has been lit. The losses that UMNO and the BN suffered during the 1999 general elections, despite hanging on to their two-thirds parliamentary majority, were losses too huge to dismiss. Fortuitously for the regime, its recent clampdown on what the mainstream media have called “religious extremists”, aided by the events of September 11, 2001, appear to have worked to its advantage. Indeed, a number of by-election victories by the BN in 2001 and 2002 suggest that the pendulum has swung back in the coalition’s favour. These developments notwithstanding, it would be foolhardy, nonetheless, for the mainstream media to disregard the ongoing discontent among Malaysians who not only wish for greater transparency and account-ability from the regime, but also a more independent form of journalism from the country’s media. NOTES Funding from SIDA, Sweden, for the research on which much of this paper is based is gratefully acknowledged. I also wish to thank Russell Heng and numerous other participants at the ISEAS Workshop on Media and Transition in ASEAN, Singapore, 20–21 November 2000 for their invaluable comments on an earlier draft. This one’s for Jackie, Aril and Elayna. 1

These terms had been uttered earlier, when Anwar was still in office, at the 1998 UMNO General Assembly, in an attempt to embarrass Mahathir.

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2 3

4 5

6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13

14

Unfortunately for Anwar, Mahathir had anticipated this move and, at the Assembly, revealed a list of Anwar cronies and family members who were alleged to have received financial and business kickbacks. Equally damaging for Anwar was the circulation of copies of a book, 50 Dalil Mengapa Anwar Tidak Boleh Menjadi Perdana Menteri [50 reasons why Anwar cannot be the prime minister] together with the official literature at the Assembly. Although the initial arrest was under the ISA, Anwar was subsequently charged in court and stood trial for sodomy and abuse of power. George Soros, a billionaire American businessman who has offered himself as the champion of “open societies”, is reknowned as a currency speculator and as someone whom Mahathir alleges inflicted heavy damage on regional economies during the 1997–98 Asian currency crisis. The BN coalition government groups together several political parties and is led by UMNO. Under the NEP, Malaysia’s population was divided between the bumiputra (literally meaning “the princes of the soil”), comprising the Malays and some indigeneous groups, and the non-bumiputra (Chinese, Indian and other Malaysians). “Enter the Stereo Channel”, Malaysian Business, 1 June 1984, pp. 11–13. “Ananda — a man of vision and means”, Star, 9 January 1996, Business Section, p. 10. “SingTel Decides to Take Up 40pc Stake in Binariang”, New Straits Times, 30 May 1998, p. 19. Berita Harian Online at . “Oct. 14 Tabling for Broadcast Bill”, Star, 12 September 1996, p. 4. In the mid-1990s, there was evidently a period of “moral panic” when the authorities (religious and political) focused on how youths were hanging out at shopping malls and other places, apparently wasting their time. This lepak (loafing) “problem” was then linked to criminal behaviour, such as drugs, stealing and prostitution, and as a result there were calls for greater enforcement by the religious authorities and police force. “Barisan Resorts To Racial Scare Tactics in Sabah”, Aliran Monthly 19, no. 3 (April 1999): 30. Under the Printing Presses and Publications Act (1984), all publicly sold newspapers must apply for a yearly printing permit from the Ministry of Home Affairs. The decision of the ministry to approve or revoke a permit is final. The website address is .

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Reproduced from Media Fortunes, Changing Times: ASEAN States in Transition, edited by Russell Hiang-Khng Heng (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available from < http://www.iseas.edu.sg/pub.html >

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7 Myanmar Media: Meeting Market Challenges in the Shadow of the State Tin Maung Maung Than

INTRODUCTION As in any other country, the media — encompassing the print, broadcast and electronic versions — has played an important but ill-defined role in the interface between state and society in Myanmar.1 This role is influenced by the social, economic and political environment. Advocates of liberal democracy have argued at length about the importance of press freedom. Nevertheless, in practice the best that can be achieved is perhaps a form of embedded autonomy within the social milieu in which the media operates. As such, one should avoid “extracting and reifying” the media into a monolithic “institution” that stands apart from the “host society”. The extent to which media act as a communication “medium” is largely determined by the groups that have control over them.2 In the case of Myanmar, this control has been the state’s prerogative for nearly four decades, since the military coup of 1962. Some discussion of the changing social, economic and political settings, as well as the evolution of the Myanmar media in a historical perspective, is also necessary in order to be able to appreciate the complexities underlying the current challenges faced by the media and the latter’s attempt to cope with them.

139

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MYANMAR STATE AND SOCIETY Myanmar is a multi-racial, multicultural and multi-religious society. The political system of Myanmar has changed four times during the twentieth century. In 1948 it changed from a British colony that allowed limited “home rule”, to a parliamentary democracy system along the lines of the Westminster model. After the military coup of 2 March 1962, the military Revolutionary Council (RC) ruled Myanmar by decree. The RC formed the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) in July 1962 and, after drawing up a new state constitution that instituted a one-party socialist state in January 1974, it handed over power to the BSPP. From early 1974 until the coup of 18 September 1988, a one-party socialist system under the regime was in place. This system changed when a military junta named the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) took power through a coup on 18 September 1988. The junta holds executive and legislative powers while devolving judicial authority to the courts of law after initially exercising martial law. A 19-member junta called the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) replaced the original junta (SLORC) in November 1997, putting the country under direct military rule. The SPDC has promised to establish a multi-party democratic political system and it can be said that Myanmar is in the process of establishing the rules for electoral politics in a multi-party democratic setting. The military leaders in the SPDC are fashioning a new political order that would institutionalize the military’s role in national politics. It is also managing a transition from a closed dirigiste economic system to an open market economy. On account of her party’s election victory in May 1990, the 1991 Nobel peace laureate and leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, challenges the military’s vision for the future. The junta’s refusal to transfer power after the election resulted in a political impasse in which some Western governments and liberal-democracy advocates have taken the NLD’s side. The United States, the European Union and some Western governments have imposed investment bans, trade sanctions, arms embargoes and visa restrictions as punitive measures for alleged human rights violations and suppression of democracy activists and the NLD. Western pressure has also prevented the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank from giving loans to Myanmar and has deterred resumption of official development assistance (ODA) by Japan, the largest donor during the 1980s.

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All of these actions and the adversarial rhetoric directed against the junta have produced a situation in which the security imperative overrides other considerations in almost every public issue of significance. This is very much reflected in the state’s control and censorship of the Myanmar media.

THE ECONOMY AND ECONOMIC REFORMS The media is embedded in and influenced by the macroeconomic environment. At the national level, the ruling junta has stipulated four economic objectives: 1. Development of agriculture as a base, and all-round development of other sectors 2. Proper evolution of a market-orientated economic system 3. Development of the economy, inviting participation in terms of technical know-how and investments from sources inside the country and abroad 4. The initiative to shape the economy to be kept in the hands of the state and the Myanmar people.3 In essence, Myanmar is an agriculture-based transitional economy in which a mixture of state economic enterprises (SEEs), private firms and a small cooperative sector operates under a plethora of rules and regulations.4 According to official data, the growth rate of GDP in constant prices rebounded to an impressive 10.5 per cent in 1999/2000, after decelerating from 7.5 per cent in 1994/95 to 5.6 per cent in 1998/99. Nevertheless, the nominal value of per-capita income (equivalent to US$155 for the year 2000 at market exchange rates) is still low by international standards. Although Myanmar’s private sector was not allowed to play a significant role in the national economy during socialist rule, agriculture was never communalized and private business continued to survive in the large informal sector. The latter expanded steadily in response to deprivation caused by excessive controls and extensive restrictions in the formal economy. The introduction of market-oriented reforms since late 1988 has brought about very little change in the ownership structure. Indeed, the figures in Table 7.1 shows that it has only brought about the marginalization of the cooperatives sector.5

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142 Tin Maung Maung Than Table 7.1 Structural Change of GDP by Ownership (at constant prices)

State sector Cooperatives sector Private sector

1987/88

1999/2000

23.5

22.3

6.9

1.9

69.6

75.8

Source: Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development.

However, this apparent lack of major gains by the private sector in the macroeconomic picture belies the fact that the introduction of reforms has opened up substantial opportunities for employment and livelihood. This has profoundly affected the population at large. The rapid expansion of the private sector is most evident in the services, trade and construction sectors. In annual investments, the share of the private sector increased from around 40 per cent in the fiscal year 1988/89 to about 66 per cent in 1999/2000. Registered private commercial establishments that did not exist before 1988 numbered 35,000 by the end of the year 2000. This rapid growth of private commercial establishments in the last decade provides many opportunities for Myanmar’s media industry, especially in advertising and information dissemination. On the other hand, since the mid-1990s, Myanmar’s economy has been facing problems associated with persistent trade and budget deficits, inflation, foreign exchange shortage, a widening gap between the official and “market” exchange rate with the US Dollar, energy shortages and a drastic reduction in FDI (Foreign Direct Investment).6 The government’s efforts to secure much-needed FDI were seriously impaired by the East Asian financial crisis, as the major investors were from the affected countries. Most analysts attributed the economy’s failure to realize its considerable growth potential to a lack of sustained and comprehensive economic reforms by the military leaders, despite their efforts to break away from the old socialist proclivities since 1988 and run an “open door” economic policy.7 Problems associated with poor macroeconomics fundamentals, especially the foreign exchange scarcity and a low national income, have affected the development of the media industry in the

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current reform period by imposing both supply and demand constraints on its modernization and expansion.

THE NATIONAL MEDIA IN MYANMAR (1948–88) This chapter8 examines the three major types of media: the print media, comprising newspapers, journals and magazines (respectively jarnei and magazin in the Myanmar language);9 broadcast media, including radio and television; and the recently introduced electronic media (video and the Internet). All are subjected to a strict regulatory environment embedded in what may be termed “the culture of censorship”.

Print media In 1947, Yangon had thirty-nine newspapers. Those that survived after independence in 1948 enjoyed a high degree of press freedom, though there was some harassment by the government and the occasional detention of writers and journalists under internal security laws. A feature of the media culture at that time was a tendency for newspapers to take sides in political conflicts, and many showed some bias towards one political party or the other. After 1962, the RC promised press freedom, but this came with many conditions attached. The junta was determined to control tightly the print media in general, and newspapers in particular. The Printers and Publishers Registration Act of August 1962 set the scene for extensive state control over the print media for the next three decades. A central registration board for printers and publishers was established and the annual licensing system to grant a printing permit was introduced. At the same time, the Press Scrutiny Board (PSB), established under the Ministry of Information (later moved to the Home Ministry), and prepublication censorship of book manuscripts was introduced. Magazines were scrutinized after printing but before distribution, and editors had to excise offensive material from their pages at great cost in time and money. The authorities had broad powers to interpret press guidelines and to mete out punishment for transgression. Under these circumstances, self-censorship became the order of the day. In October 1963 the government established its own newspaper called the Lokethar Pyithu Neizin (Working People’s Daily). Three months

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later, an English edition was published. A sharp rise in taxes caused several private newspapers to fold; while others became defunct when their editors and publishers were arrested and jailed for breaching national security laws. The total circulation of two top Myanmar language newspapers in 1963 was estimated to be over 70,000. The first of the remaining five newspapers to be nationalized was the Kyemon (Mirror) in September 1964.10 The last was Myanma Alin (New Light of Myanmar, hereafter NLM), in 1969, which was the oldest newspaper at that time.11 Five Chinese, two Hindi, one Tamil, one Telegu and one Gujarati newspaper stopped publishing in January 1966 because no publishing licences were issued to them. Foreign news agencies were allowed to continue operating, but they were required to appoint local correspondents who also exercised self-censorship before sending off reports. All the contents of state-owned newspapers were vetted (one day ahead) by a board comprising chief editors of all dailies, subject to final approval from the information minister himself. Editors and journalists earned their living under the sufferance of the powers-that-be. Editorials resorted to the regurgitation of speeches by the leadership, government statistics and celebrations of commemorative events. Reporting was confined to factual descriptions of events, lists of attendance at public functions, reproduction of government handouts and official speeches, and trivia. This trend continued throughout the RC and BSPP period. Essays with safe topics were common fillers. Columnists usually wrote pieces in support of socialist endeavours and government activities, patriotism, culture and traditions, and public awareness on health and education. The price of newspapers was relatively cheap and, owing to the scarcity of imported paper, a substantial portion of the subscription fee could sometimes be recovered through the sale of old newspapers for recycling. Moreover, newspaper vendors were profitable small-scale enterprises because the socialist economy offered few opportunities for legitimate private business. Consequently, newspaper selling became a form of reward for individuals who had rendered services to the state. Although they were not nationalized, the situation for journals and magazines in the post-1962 period was not much better, for several reasons. Financial constraints came in the form of high production costs, scarcity of rationed imported material, lack of advertising revenue in the autarkic socialist economy and the low disposable income of

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the people. The onerous rules and regulations, and the technical problems associated with antiquated production machinery, also worked against the publishers. This resulted in gradual attrition as many of them (mainly literary magazines) folded, and the RC government’s moratorium on new publishing licences retarded any further growth of the industry. Given the extent of censorship, the media avoided political and controversial topics. Myanmar’s strict neutrality in its foreign policy was interpreted as avoiding any comment on most issues in international affairs. When reporting undesirable news about neighbouring countries, names were not mentioned. In general, the West was seen as decadent, wasteful and hegemonic. In 1963, new regulations proscribed all types of mass organizations that were not affiliated to the BSPP. The old writers’ and journalists’ associations became defunct. In 1980, the Literary Workers’ Organization was formed by the BSPP for writers and journalists. In mid-1975 the Home Ministry issued new guidelines on media content. Eleven points were considered taboo, including, inter alia, those items detrimental to the socialist ideology, state, party, government, national unity, morality or culture, as well as those deemed inappropriate, crass, violent or libelous. Even after the introduction of reforms in 1988, the military junta maintained these guidelines in their tenor and thrust, with the exception that references to the Party and socialism were no longer relevant (see Appendix 1 at the end of this chapter).12 In the late 1970s and the 1980s, the BSPP government relaxed its entry restrictions on the print media and awarded licences to select private individuals (such as retired senior military officers, famous intellectuals, literati and artistes, and prominent ex-politicians) and BSPP-affiliated organizations (such as war veterans, literary workers and those in the performing arts) for periodicals that dealt with sports, literature, popular culture, astrology, music, cinema and science. Officially recognized religious organizations were also allowed to publish periodicals in the Myanmar language. Commemorative magazines of tertiary institutions, government agencies and locality-based fraternity associations (usually as annuals) also appeared on the scene in much greater variety than in the past. Although all exercised careful selfcensorship, and strictly adhered to the 1975 guidelines, some managed to become financially successful despite the restrictions of the austere socialist environment.

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Broadcast media The broadcast media has always been under state control since independence, and the Ministry of Information is responsible for both radio and television broadcasting. The state radio broadcasts in short and medium waves in the Myanmar language, in English and in some of the ethnic languages such as Shan and Kayin. Radio was supplemented by colour television in 1980. Broadcast content during the period 1948–88 usually reflected the political and social agenda of the regime in power. Even entertainment programmes had to conform to and support the prevailing ideology and norms. During the pre-1963 parliamentary era, programmes promoted democracy, peace and development. Following this, the RC and the BSPP regimes stressed socialism, national unity and selfreliance. Foreign news items were heavily edited. The same ethos of self-censorship and strict adherence to the guidelines observed in the state-owned print media also applied to the broadcast media. In television, the preference was for delayed (and edited) broadcasts rather than live broadcasts, given the pitfalls for editors of the latter in a system fraught with the dangers of swift retribution for editorial mistakes. Television offered some foreign entertainment programmes, mainly comprising cartoons and old Western detective series such as “Kojak” and “Colombo” — partly due to the scarcity of foreign exchange to buy the latest offerings. During the pre-1963 parliamentary era, a media professional headed the government agency responsible for broadcasting, while under military rule, the position was usually given to serving or retired military officers. Most people at this time could not afford imported television sets. The limited number of locally-assembled sets (which soon became obsolete) was barely enough to be rationed among senior public officials. Short-wave radios were relatively affordable on the black market, and Myanmar language broadcasts from the British Broadcasting Corporation and Voice of America became a source of alternative information that was frowned upon by the authorities. A clandestine radio operated by Communist rebels in the northeast was intermittently on air during the 1970s and 1980s, but its limited range and unsophisticated anti-government propaganda probably did not have much impact on the majority of the population. The military also operated a radio station with limited coverage from the l960s, as

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part of the psychological warfare operation aimed at the multiple insurgencies confronting the regime.

Electronic media The electronic media was virtually non-existent in Myanmar until the 1990s, although personal computers (PCs) were introduced earlier (more for their novelty rather than their utility value). The video industry began in the 1980s, and rapidly expanded to challenge the movie industry due to its lower costs, shorter production period, simpler production logistics and higher rates of returns. Despite piracy and the same censorship restrictions as in the movie industry, the video industry quickly surpassed the movie industry in terms of scope and size as the major form of public and private entertainment. While the number of movies produced annually declined from around 100 to 20 or less, the number of locally-produced (MTV-style) music videos and video movies featuring established artistes as well as newcomers (catering only for the small screen) proliferated, together with hundreds of low cost commercial video halls in urban Myanmar. By the mid-1990s, the video entertainment culture had penetrated into the rural areas as well.

Exports and imports The Myanmar authorities exercised a strict censorship on imported print media from the early years of RC rule. Partly due to the nationalization of all imports, but mainly due to the concern for cultural integrity and political dissent, the import of foreign books, magazines, journals and newspapers were greatly restricted. Another important factor was the scarcity of foreign exchange. The state-owned trade agency imported a small amount of fiction (mainly thrillers, romance and classics) and non-fiction (general knowledge books) annually. Readers Digest was allowed until someone decided that it contained material detrimental to the socialist way of the state. Times, Newsweek, Life and later Discover (a science magazine) were available to a small group of subscribers who managed to take up the initial offer that was rarely repeated. Asiaweek and the Far Eastern Economic Review were made available to an even more limited number of senior officials in the government. Imports of books by individuals entering the country or

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sent by post had to undergo a tedious censorship process. Nevertheless, a wide variety of old books and fairly current magazines, ranging from Aviation Week & Space Technology to the Economist, were available in the sidewalk second-hand bookshops in the city’s centre.13 Individuals who wished to bring any book, audio tape or video tape out of the country had to submit it in advance to the relevant scrutiny boards and pay a service charge. Only after the item was returned in a sealed (by red wax) package, together with an authorization document, could the person get past Customs, which would otherwise confiscate it.

THE MEDIA AFTER THE 1988 UPHEAVAL Revival of the private print media In the upheaval of August–September 1988 that led to the demise of the BSPP government, hundreds of publications exploded on the scene in many forms. They all advocated the “democracy” movement and “peoples’ power” while criticizing and ridiculing the BSPP, its leaders and the authorities in general. Even the state-run newspapers and the broadcast media turned critical in the last days of the ancien regime. It was a short-lived affair and was abruptly terminated soon by the military coup of 18 September 1988. Some publications continued for a while in samizdat form, but the resulting military crackdown effectively prevented them from gaining a foothold in Myanmar society. Occasional attempts to smuggle in underground newspapers published abroad by exiled groups and students came to naught, as the authorities managed to intercept them. Under the present regime the private print industry has considerably expanded, both qualitatively and quantitatively, to cater for the demands of the market economy. Over 100 journals and magazines, as well as some 30 comic titles, are regularly published.14 Even a Chineselanguage news journal has been allowed to be published.15 Moreover, a new genre of magazines and journals that focus on economic matters proliferated in the early 1990s, in line with the opening up of the economy. Government agencies dealing with trade, commerce and tourism also produced similar publications. However, by the year 2000 only a few survived. In the private sector, there are three prominent magazines dealing with economic topics: Dana (Wealth), Myanma Dana (Myanmar’s Wealth), and Kyawnyar hnint Zeiwei

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Lanhnyun (Advertising and Shopping Guide), popularly known as “Living Color” (which is the English title on its masthead and the name of the boutique identified as its publisher). The officiallyregistered print runs of these magazines are quite low, with the first two at 500 and the third at 1,000. In general, officially-registered print runs for books and magazines are only in the hundreds or low thousands. Cover prices (mostly in the range of 200–500 kyats for books, 80–220 kyats for magazines, and 200 kyats for comics) are rather steep when compared to the wages of urban white collar workers (ranging from 5,000 to 8,000 kyats monthly for non-professional executive staff).16 Their main clients are the ubiquitous rental shops that have thrived since the socialist era. On the other hand, the second-hand bookstalls that characterized central Yangon during the BSPP era still persist, albeit concentrating on out-of-print and older “classics” as well as (mainly) English language books and magazines.17 In line with the market orientation of the economy, dedicated publishers of business directories and guides, “yellow pages”, tourist guides and city maps also emerged in the 1990s.18 If a comparison is made of the average number of books published annually in the two periods 1984–1987 and 1994–1997, the increase is from 2,065 to 3,381 titles, or about 64 per cent over a decade. This shows that the book industry did register some growth after the changeover from the socialist command economy to a market-oriented one. Nonetheless, the growth in the number of published books stagnated in the late 1990s, following substantial increases in 1989 and 1990. It almost doubled from 1,775 in 1988 to 3,450 in 1990, and reached a peak of 3,854 in 1994 before dropping to 3,030 in 1997.19 This was probably due to the high costs and low profit margins in book publishing caused by the rise in printing and material costs as well as the affordability constraint on cover prices. For example, in 2000, a typical 160-page book with a print run of 1,000 required an investment of nearly 140 kyats per copy, and could fetch a cover price of some 225 kyats. After deducting about 100 copies which were needed for promotion, and if he or she could sell the entire print run in 15 months, the publisher would make a profit of some 30–35 per cent. However, there is of course no certainty that any publisher can sell all copies of a book, even when the print run is so small. One major publisher indicated that only 40 per cent of the books made a profit, with 30 per cent losing and another 30 per cent breaking even.20

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The previously moribund advertising industry became a money spinner in the competitive market environment. Indeed, advertising revenues have become a major source of income for privately-published magazines and journals. For example, advertising revenue earned per copy is three to five times the cover price for the two popular economic magazines, Dana and Myanma Dana, and 20 times the price for the topselling Living Color magazine.21

Writers, journalists and publishers in Myanmar Professionals in Myanmar’s print media may be classified into four categories: writers, journalists, printers and publishers. With the advent of military rule in 1988, the Literary Workers’ Organization (LWO) of the socialist era was re-established as a non-governmental organization (NGO), called the Myanmar Writers and Journalists Association (MWJA), in the following year. Its institutional structure remains essentially the same, with a central executive committee at the national level elected by a quadrennial conference. Township executive committees (ECs) are formed throughout the country.22 As of November 1997, out of a total of 324 designated townships, 147 had MWJAs with executive committees, another 6 had them at the stage of organizing committees and the total membership was 4,878.23 The Association’s principal aims are to develop literary works and dissemination, to promote solidarity among writers and journalists and to contribute towards nation building.24 The MWJA conducts talks and seminars on literary matters, but there is no evidence of it offering any systematic training for aspiring writers and journalists. The tertiary institutions in Myanmar do not offer journalism or media-related courses. Although the Ministry of Information occasionally conducts a four-month course in journalism, private media personnel are not included.25 Given such a lack of training opportunities, it is not surprising that no formal criteria exist for employment as a journalist in the private sector, where learning on the job appears to be the usual practice.26 Since the Socialist era, no foreigner has been allowed to reside in Myanmar as a foreign correspondent, though there have been a number of Myanmar nationals stringing for news agencies such as AP and Reuters. When SLORC came to power and started opening up the country to the international community, the Ministry of Information

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encouraged the founding of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Myanmar in 1989. This was probably part of the regime’s attempt to enhance its image in relation to its ending of the isolationist policies of the Socialist era, while at the same time co-opting this important segment of journalism with its links to the external media. Members of the Club must be an officially accredited representative of one or more foreign media organizations, should be at least 21 years old and be a Myanmar national. In 1997, there were 18 members: 13 worked for Japanese media organizations, one for the Xinhua News Agency of China and four for Western news agencies (AP, AFP, Reuters and UPI). These journalists are usually invited to government news briefings and guided tours, and they generally file factual reports based on the government’s version of events, provide additional background material and do not engage in Western-style investigative reporting.27 As a continuation of the policy of regulating the printing and publishing industries instituted by previous governments of Myanmar, different permits from the Ministry of Information are currently needed for printing and publishing. Each renewable (usually annual) permit is extended to the individual, who is held responsible for any transgression of the existing rules and regulations.28 The Myanmar Printers and Publishers Association (MPPA) looks after the interests of the privatesector entrepreneurs, within the bounds of government rules and regulations, and constraints imposed due to the scarcity of foreign exchange for importing quality paper and modern equipment.

The emerging electronic media The video industry has grown rapidly as the number of television sets and video players escalate with the proliferation of commercial video halls. By the year 2000, video CD had begun to supplement the video cassette in the commercial sector, in forms such as karaoke CDs and music videos. As television advertising became the most prominent medium for commercial products, the associated infrastructure in the form of video production for advertising purposes on national television also blossomed, establishing links with the nascent fashion industry and the traditional movie–video production enterprises. Entrepreneurs in Myanmar who can recognize commercial opportunities in media are moving with the times, and video clips featuring popular models and artistes have become de rigueur for promoting products ranging from

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traditional medicine to men’s sarongs (known as longyi), and from jewellery to paint. Since the early 1990s, desktop publishing and computer typesetting have become viable, and there has been a proliferation of small establishments. These are locally registered businesses that produce items such as advertisements, business and invitation cards, pamphlets and reports for religious and fraternal associations, and technical reports at prices that are competitive in relation to those of established printers. Production of Myanmar-language fonts and multimedia production and advertising has come of age with the use of imported technology and advanced computer knowledge.29 In the late 1990s, Myanmar IT (information technology) entrepreneurs, encouraged by the government, began their foray into cyberspace. In November 1998, www.myanmars.net, a commercial web site, was launched by the private sector to promote the tourism industry. This was followed in early 1999 by www.myatmyanmar.com and www.myanmarpyi.com in October 2000 as privately-run commercial web sites. By 2001, the latter provided “Intranet” services within Myanmar. In November 2000, Bagan Cybertech began its limited web browsing service (access limited to “safe” sites dealing with information technology) on a membership basis, in conjunction with its domestic Intranet facility. In May 2001, its Intranet network became accessible to e-mail account holders of MPT as well. Several other IT companies (such as Inforithm Maze, Myanmar Information Technology and KMD) also provide commercial services for posting web pages on the Intranet.30 It seems that despite its concerns about IT’s potential for subverting state control of information flows, thereby threatening the security and legitimacy of the regime, the government is prepared to respond, albeit gingerly, to the economic logic of globalization. This means allowing a gradual expansion of electronic media services by select private companies seen as trustworthy and loyal supporters of the government’s IT agenda.31

Expansion of the state media: From print through multimedia to cyberspace The three government newspapers, now with over 400,000 copies in circulation, are supplemented by two local newspapers published by the municipal authorities of Yangon and Mandalay. The government printing and publishing agency has, since the late 1980s, churned out

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thousands of copies of publications depicting the regime’s achievements, explaining its policies, pointing out the weaknesses and insincerity of the opposition groups, and “revealing” the plots and machinations of these groups and their Western allies. Economic factors have also been taken into account. Since the mid-1990s, state-owned newspapers in the Myanmar language have produced two to four-page inserts for advertisements (on poor-quality recycled paper) at least once a week, while devoting more columns for advertisements in the main body as well. Occasionally, full-colour (art paper or high-quality white paper) inserts for a single advertiser (such as cigarettes, liquor, airlines) are also produced. Advertising reportedly accounts for about 25 per cent of newspaper content.32 It is not possible to ascertain whether the stateowned newspapers are still being run on a subsidized basis, but it is possible that the subsidy has been reduced through advertising revenues.33 The number of television channels has doubled to two with the establishment of the military-run Myawadi Television station in 1995, which began public transmission in 1997.34 National television, with two satellite earth stations and some 109 relay stations, can be received in 266 out of 324 townships. Both television stations have been running advertisements since the early 1990s. By the year 2000, advertisements had become part of the entertainment provided on television. Anecdotal evidence suggests that slick advertising segments (for products such as textiles, gold and jewelry, consumer durables, construction materials, traditional medicine and snacks) featuring popular artistes, movie stars, hip fashion and pop music have become quite popular.35 Arrangements with CNN and NHK (Japan) have also allowed Myanmar TV to broadcast select satellite news. A number of international organizations, commercial establishments (mainly hotels and inns), chosen government officials and private citizens are now able to use satellite dishes under licence. However, many of the over 20,000 satellite receivers in Myanmar are believed to be unauthorized, and the government has recently taken steps to regulate them more effectively.36 In October 1996 the government’s Myanmar Information Committee (MIC) began disseminating news (typical sources include the NLM, occasional press briefings, government press releases and postings by Myanmar embassies abroad) on the Internet, under the caption

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“Information Sheet”. This is believed to be a countermeasure against the ‘cyberwar’ waged by expatriate opposition groups and dissident individuals against the government. The government web site is called “The Golden Land Myanmar”, and it is also produced in German, French and Japanese editions. Established in early 1995, the site (located at www.myanmar.com) has links to a number of government publications, newspapers, select private Myanmar-language magazines and journals, and offers official information on infrastructure, business, tourism, culture, religion and politics, as well as links to the web pages of important government ministries (such as Foreign Affairs) and Myanmar embassies. The government is also believed to have been sponsoring a electronic mailing list called “MyanmarNet”, which appeared in 1997 to counter the widely popular dissident electronic news service “BurmaNet” that was launched in 1993. Individuals, whom the opposition believes are government agents, also take part in newsgroups such as , defending government positions and posting “true facts” as well as attacking dissident groups and opposition figures.37 In addition, in the late 1990s, the Myanma Posts and Telecommunications (MPT, a government agency) introduced e-mail for select individuals and approved commercial enterprises in the tourism, trading and production sectors. By mid-2000 the number of subscribers had reportedly reached some 3,600.38

A modified form of control and censorship Censorship has to be modified to meet the challenges of the 1990s, although its main modalities remain essentially the same. Financial penalties for the print media have been revised to a level commensurate with prevailing costs and earnings in the industry and foreign media access to Myanmar is still closely regulated. In general, transgressions of existing laws, rules and regulations and any contempt or denigration of state leaders and the government are not tolerated. The overarching set of national objectives established by SLORC that has become the overall guiding principle is as follows: 1. Non-disintegration of the Union 2. Non-disintegration of national solidarity 3. Perpetuation of national sovereignty.

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The particular challenge of the 1990s lay in the innovations in communication technology that became available to most parts of the world, including Myanmar. This globalization challenge in the context of Myanmar’s economic transition required new laws to supplement the existing regulations on censorship. A new law for the television and video industry was introduced in 1996 to replace the 1985 Video Act. This requires compulsory registration at the Ministry of Communications, Posts and Telegraphs (MCPT) for television sets, video recorders and satellite dishes. A central video censor board was established under the Information Ministry, and stiff penalties of up to three years imprisonment and a fine of 100,000 kyats were authorized for those who violate censorship regulations. Separate licences are required for any commercial venture to produce, film, edit, copy, distribute, rent or show video films. The authority to grant such licences is vested in the state and division level authorities. The Computer Development Law of 1996 was also an attempt to establish state control over the rapidly changing information and communications technology (ICT) environment, with its vast potential for greater freedom and access and its removal of individual dependence on the state, unlike in the past. Under this law, one needs a licence from the MCPT to import, possess or use computers with networking or communicating facilities, or to set up a network. Fax machines also come under these restrictive rules. The law also stipulates that it is an offence to use any IT facilities to undermine the culture, national economy, state security, national unity, prevalence of law and order, or peace and tranquility of Myanmar. All these offences are punishable under the law by imprisonment of 7 to 15 years and an unspecified fine, along with confiscation of the associated equipment. With the introduction of e-mail towards the end of the 1990s, the MCPT introduced regulations for the users of Internet services to safeguard national interests and the integrity of the network, and to prevent Net abuse (see Appendix 2 for details). The use of the Internet by opposition groups has escalated since the early 1990s, and has made the current regime more aware of the medium’s potential for undermining its legitimacy and authority. The regime itself has employed ICT in a counter-offensive by using highly sophisticated signals intelligence and computer facilities geared towards information operations.39 This entails monitoring the electronic medium and information flows to and from suspected nodes.40

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Imports and exports Import and export restrictions remain almost unchanged from the Socialist era, with some modifications that entail identifying as undesirable those publications associated with political ideologies in general, and with Western liberalism and decadent culture in particular. On the other hand, on 6 November 1998, permission was given for the distribution of the Shijie Ribao (Universal Daily), a Chinese-language newspaper published in Thailand, to subscribers. 41 Meanwhile, commercial imports of books, magazines and newspapers (such as Singapore’s Business Times) are now allowed for a few select jointventures between Myanmar entrepreneurs and regional distributors. However, these titles are usually confined to education, economics, business and technology. A few news-magazines have also been allowed. Due to the extremely high exchange rate for the US Dollar, these publications are selling at prices beyond the reach of the general public. Foreign video-tapes and CDs or VCDs have to undergo similar censorship procedures.

THE PRIVATE MEDIA INDUSTRY: SEIZING NEW OPPORTUNITIES The major differences that distinguish the private media industry now from that of the 1980s are: 1. The scale and the scope of the media have increased considerably since 1988 2. The potential financial gains and losses involved are much larger 3. Economic factors have become important in terms of content, costs and profits. These points are illustrated by two cases: the journal publication scene, and a unique publication that is modelled on a Vietnamese newspaper.

Myanmar journals42 The new era for Myanmar journals began in 1996, when the government liberally accepted and approved new applications for publications of this genre after a hiatus of over twenty years. The “waiver of pre-

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publication censorship”43 for these periodicals made the regulatory regime less onerous than that for books and magazines. Furthermore, the financial needs for a start-up are much lower than those for books and magazines, making it easier for entry into and exit from this line of business. At the beginning of 2000, there were some 50 journals (mostly weeklies).44 Table 7.2 shows the share of different titles. The categories, “pop” (a genre broadly defined as popular items of interest covering a hodge-podge of items on religion, astrology, fashion, celebrities, music, film, scandals and so on), “international affairs”, “crime” and “economics” are new and not found among the few journals of the 1980s, which carried only items on sports, cartoons and general interest. Though the “pop” category had one-third share of the titles, the circulation figures in Table 7.3 suggest that the most popular Table 7.2 Journals by Category in 2000 (share of total titles) Category Pop General Sports Economics International affairs Cartoons Crime

Percentage share 34 18 16 10 8 8 6

Source: Saw Kyaw Myat Nyein, “Jarnei hnint Kyawnyar” [Journals and advertising], Living Colour, February 2000, pp. 22–33.

Table 7.3 Share of Overall Circulation by Category Category Sports Pop Crime Cartoons International affairs Economics General

Percentage share 35 18 14 12 11 6 4

Source: Saw Kyaw Myat Nyein, “Jarnei hnint Kyawnyar” [Journals and advertising], Living Colour, February 2000, pp. 22–33.

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journals were those dedicated to sports, which commanded a combined share of 35 per cent of the total circulation (of all 50 journals).45 This is also a significant development compared with the past, when sports journals were patronized by a much smaller clientele, mainly comprising football fans.46 The pop genre was a distant second, with a share of 18 per cent out of the overall circulation of some 554,000 (see Table 7.3). The circulation figures of more successful current journals are also significantly higher than those in the 1980s, which hardly exceeded four digits (see Table 7.4). It seems that all the journals rely on advertising revenues, as the cover price is generally kept low to be affordable.47 According to the industry’s “rule of thumb”, for a 16-page journal of average quality, income from sales can cover printing costs only when the sales volume exceeds 20,000 copies. If associated costs for salaries, rentals, writers’ honoraria and other incidental costs are taken into account, the breakeven volume is nearer 30,000.48 As can be seen from Table 7.4, some 88 per cent of the journals had an average output below that threshold. However, if it manages to secure around 30 per cent of advertising space, the same journal will make a monthly profit of some 100 per cent even without selling even a single copy — and that profit will double if all copies are sold. Thus, most journals have concentrated on selling advertising space to the extent that it is not unusual to have two-thirds of the staff strength in the advertising department.49

Table 7.4 Share of Journals by Volume of Production Range Over 50,000 40,001–50,000 30,001–40,000 10,001–30,000 5,001–10,000 2,001–5,000 Below 2,000

Percentage share 2 4 6 26 20 14 28

Source: Saw Kyaw Myat Nyein, “Jarnei hnint Kyawnyar” [Journals and advertising], Living Colour, February 2000, pp. 22–33.

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However, advertisers prefer journals with large sales volumes, and many journals that have to depend upon advertising revenues tend to overstate their circulation figures. This practice is reportedly widespread in the journal community, and even established high-end journals (printed on quality paper and in colour; 32 pages or more) have resorted to this tactic. For such journals, the production and other associated costs are higher; even with advertising, their profit margins will fall after they have crossed a certain threshold, as their unit cost per copy comes to about twice the selling price. Thus, inflated circulation figures appear to be the favoured marketing ploy to attract advertising in the journal business.50 However, in the long run this tactic can backfire, as clients may find out about such dishonest behaviour. In general, it can be said that the current crop of journals are qualitatively different from those in the Socialist era, in that advertising has become the determining factor in the viability of such publications, and they are now characterized by publishers actively seeking advertising revenues, even unscrupulously. This brief survey of the journal scene at the turn of the new century indicates that the publishing industry in the 1990s increasingly reflected the transition dynamics of the overall economy from “command” to “market”.51

The Myanmar Times Touted as the first independent private (English language) newspaper in decades, the journal popularly known as the Myanmar Times (MT) was launched in February 2000, with the “Special Launch Edition” carrying a masthead dated “March 6–12, 2000”. Although the masthead advertises the publication as a weekly journal, the 24-page publication closely resembles a newspaper in form and content. Besides offering local and foreign news, the journal has a “Time Out” section devoted to the cultural and social scene (4–5 pages); listings of transport schedules, hotel, cuisine, entertainment and services, and buying guide (usually 3 pages); a sports section that offers a wide coverage of international sporting events; and 2 to 3 full pages of advertisements. The attractive design, international-standard layout, high quality (white) paper and lavish use of colour photographs and illustrations set it apart from all other local journals and government newspapers. The journal also has a modified free Internet version.

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The MT appears to be modelled on a Vietnamese business paper, the Vietnam Investment Review (VIR), launched in 1991. The latter was the result of a joint venture between Vietnam’s State Committee for Cooperation and Investment and foreign investors. VIR was run by an Australian, Ross Dunkley, who is also a founding managing director of the MT.52 The MT is said to be a joint venture between an unnamed foreign investor and a Myanmar entrepreneur who is well known for his success in multimedia business and his close contacts with high-up government officials.53 As of March 2001, it was registered as a division of Myanmar Consolidated Media Co. Ltd. (a little-known private company that does not seem to have any other business). Its listed executives are relatively unknown newcomers to the Myanmar media establishment. Like other journals, it operates under a publishing permit that is renewable periodically. The initial cover price of 2 FEC (foreign exchange certificate, issued by the government for local use as a US Dollar equivalent) was about 150 times dearer than the governmentowned daily NLM. As of early 2001, the MT was produced by a team led by Dunkley, which comprised his deputy CEO and a staff of 27. Besides Dunkley, there were two other foreigners working to produce the MT.54 The presence of foreigners in the editorial staff is a unique arrangement for the Myanmar print media. Its inaugural issue, with a reported print run of 30,000, stated that it “will portray itself as the nation’s most polished English language publication and will rest its reputation on independence, authority and integrity”.55 It also claimed that it would “appeal to government leaders, local businessmen, foreigners and an emerging white collar class”.56 In a March 2000 telephone interview with the Voice of America (VOA), Dunkley explained that “the balance of reporting out of [Myanmar] … has been so one-sided that putting a little bit back into the equation is probably well called for at this moment”.57 Later, while attending the seminar, The Role of Media for Promoting a Civil Society, held on 31 August 2000 in Bangkok by the British Broadcasting Corporation to commemorate the corporation’s sixty years of covering Myanmar, he stated that the MT’s policy was to stay away from politics.58 In a feature article carried by the MT (11–17 September 2000), Dunkley said that it took him about nine months of negotiations with his local partners and the government to finalize the venture. He was quoted as saying that:

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I was assured that apart ‘from time to time’ of having to run materials of ‘national interest’ that we would be more or less free to publish anything provided it was not in violation of national security … To date, we have received very little interference … There has never been a time when the paper has been jeopardised or in danger of being closed.59 Citing the United States’ State Department’s human rights report on Myanmar for the year 2000, an op-ed piece in the NLM stated that the MT “occasionally reported on criticism of Government’s policies by the UN and other organisations”.60 The journal has covered potentially sensitive topics such as attempts by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to travel without the authorities’ consent; foreign reports on narcotics and HIV/Aids issues; International Labor Organization (ILO) sanctions on Myanmar for alleged forced labour practices; and the February 2001 confrontation on the Thai-Myanmar border.61 However, the MT’s reporting of such issues has been sympathetic to Myanmar’s position or stand, and is characterized by a positive approach to the perceived problem.62 Six months into production, Dunkley admitted to losses, although he claimed that he expected to break even in two or three years. Employing foreign professionals, running a modern IT-heavy newsroom and producing a high-end publication that requires imported material suggest high overheads and production costs. Advertising seems to be the way to profitability, but the availability of advertising space in the MT does not appear to be substantially rising in the one year since its inception. Indeed, the generally bearish business environment since the Asian financial crisis does not seem to be conducive towards increasing the demand for advertising space. Nevertheless, the parent company of the MT launched a Myanmar-language edition in March 2001 (cover price 195 kyats) while, at the same time, announcing the reduction of the cover price of the original English edition to only 400 kyats.63 Dunkley explained that “the company is now in a much stronger position and pleased to be able to offer this new, discounted price”.64 Thus far, it appears that this innovative newspaper (which is officially not a newspaper at all) is blazing a trail through hitherto uncharted territory for the private print media. Whether this is a harbinger of a new media phenomenon remains to be seen.

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CONCLUSIONS The media in Myanmar has followed a meandering path since the country gained independence in 1948. In the twenty-first century it is employing new technologies to expand its horizons and penetrate society further than ever before. The resulting media scene exhibits the following characteristics: 1. The nature of the dynamic market economy in which the private sector is expected to play a major role requires a freer flow of relevant information, and this becomes increasingly at odds with the security imperative for control and censorship 2. New technologies that expanded the media from print and broadcast to the electronic spectrum affect the calculus of regulations 3. Globalization, and the state’s reaction to it, have had a considerable impact on the media 4. The media has become a battleground for the conflict between the regime and the opposition. It follows that the imperatives of the open market economy not only affect the media in its internal dynamics, but also greatly influence the media as a communication conduit for the different parts of the economic system. As such, accuracy, “real time” data, high volume traffic, and “undistorted” and “smooth” flowing information have become more and more important, as are critical commentary and alternative inputs. The more advanced the economy, the more important the transparency and credibility factors. Myanmar’s economy is not yet advanced enough for these factors to become critical, but the current climate of heavy censorship and overwhelming state control may inhibit future growth in a highly competitive world, and may also impede the enhancement of regional economic co-operation that is needed for a higher, more productive phase.

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APPENDIX 1 Government Guidelines for the Media (July 1975) Unacceptable Content in Print 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Anything detrimental to the Burmese Way to Socialism Anything detrimental to the state ideology Anything detrimental to the Socialist economy Anything harmful to national unity Anything harmful to security, rule of law, peace and public order Incorrect ideas and opinions not in accordance with the times Unsuitable facts in the present context and circumstances Obscenity Anything that encourages crime, cruelty and violence Any non-constructive criticism of government agencies Libel or slander of any individual.

Source: Allot, op. cit., pp. 6–7.

APPENDIX 2 Myanma Post and Telecommunications (MPT) Regulations for the Users of its Internet Service 1. Any writings detrimental to the Union of Myanmar are not to be posted. 2. Any writings, directly or indirectly, detrimental to the current policies and secret security affairs of the Government of the Union of Myanmar are not to be posted. 3. Writings related to politics are not to be posted. 4. Only the person who is given the Internet account is to use the Internet; no other person is allowed to use the Internet. 5. The person who is granted the Internet account is held responsible for all Internet use on that account.

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6. A person with an Internet account is prohibited from hacking the Web and entering and destroying the security system of MPT. 7. Hacking the Web and entering and destroying the security system of other Internet users is prohibited. Persons who hold an Internet account are forbidden to misuse the account of other Internet users. 8. Internet users are to inform MPT of any threat on the Internet. 9. Internet users are to obtain prior permission from the organization designated by the state to create web pages. 10. Applicants for an Internet account are held accountable for the veracity of facts contained in the application form. 11. MPT has the right to amend and change regulations on the use of the Internet without prior notice. 12. Applications can be filed for compensation for any damage or loss. 13. Internet use will be terminated and legal action will be taken for violation of any of these regulations. Source: Translated text of broadcast by TV Myanmar on 20 January 2000, attributed to the BBC Summary of World Broadcast. Posted on the Internet at by the BurmaNet editor, 20 January 2000.

NOTES 1

2 3 4

5

Under the new nomenclature, the word Myanmar connotes the state, the official language spoken by the majority and the people of the country (previously known as the Burmese). The largest racial group (Burman in the old usage) is called Bamar. The capital city previously called Rangoon becomes Yangon, and a host of place names and street names were changed to conform to the Myanmar pronunciation. Vicky Randall, “The Media and Democratisation in the Third World”, Third World Quarterly 14, no. 3 (1993): 626. The term “national peoples” may be interpreted as referring to all members of the indigenous races of Myanmar. The government has imposed licensing requirements for both imports and exports. Foreign currency is strictly controlled and the local currency (kyat) is not convertible under normal circumstances. There is believed to be a large informal sector that escapes the tax net, reputedly involving illegal transactions as well. In Myanmar, the co-operative sector comprises credit, trading, producer and consumer co-operative societies formed under the Cooperative Societies Act. In 1988 there were nearly 23,000 such societies with over 3 million members.

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7 8

9

10 11

12 13 14

In terms of commitments, a decline from an average of US$1.3 billion in the preceding four years to US$777 million in 1997/1998, and to US$30 million and US$56 million respectively in the next two years. Asian Development Bank, Asian Development Outlook 2000 (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 104–6. This section on print media draws mainly from the following sources: U Thaung, A Journalist, a General, and an Army in Burma (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1995); and Anna J. Allot, Inked Over, Ripped Out, A PEN American Center Freedom-to-Write Report (September 1993). The terms “journal” and “magazine” refer to two types of commercial periodicals produced in Myanmar. The former refers to the genre broadly defined as publications utilizing the tabloid format, produced weekly or fortnightly and containing up to 32 pages. The latter category comprises those which are published monthly in a smaller 23.5 cm × 17.8 cm format and which usually offer around 120 pages of text. Magazines are subject to more stringent censorship and regulatory procedures than journals. The Kyemon (Mirror) continues to this day as a state-owned newspaper. Myanma Alin was revived in both Myanmar (Myanma Alin) and English (New Light of Myanmar or NLM) versions by SLORC. Together with Kyemon, they constitute the three national newspapers currently published by the Ministry of Information. Both the English and Myanmar versions of the Working People’s Daily were discontinued by SLORC when NLM was reintroduced. References to the Party and socialism were irrelevant because the ruling BSPP was dissolved after the 1988 coup. These publications came largely from diplomatic missions and international aid agencies. All publications now carry the text of the three “Main National Causes”, identified by the junta as, “Non-disintegration of the Union”, “Nondisintegration of National Solidarity” and “Consolidation of National Sovereignty”, together with other slogans such as the twelve objectives (four each for political, economic and social objectives) and the “People’s Desire” (which denounces both internal and external “pessimists”, “interventionists” and “destructionists”). Almost all publications are characterized by poor paper quality (recycled paper or low quality newsprint), fuzzy photographs and features lifted from foreign publications. Most feature a horoscope (based either on the Myanmar zodiac or the Western zodiac, or even on tarot cards). Apart from traditional literary magazines there are also those which focus on a wide range of subjects, including modern lifestyles, culture, fine arts, sports, health, commerce, crime, law, philosophy, education, science and technology, and even the occult and astrology. Most Myanmar journals appear to take the form of thinly disguised

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15

16

17

18

19 20 21

22

tabloid newspapers. There are also some specialized publications, such as those on electronics and computers, that use the term “journal” in their titles but which for official purposes are regarded as “magazines” . According to the Thai newspaper Nation (25 November 1998), the first local Chinese-language weekly (more of a newspaper than a journal), named Mian Dien Huo Bao (Myanmar Chinese News), was published with a print run of 5,000. It concentrated on business, culture and social issues, and coverage of the activities of overseas Chinese communities. However, it cannot be ascertained whether it is still in print. The comic genre also has low print runs, ranging from 500 to 5,000. Generally targeted at the child and teenage/youth markets, comics offer action, romance, cartoons and renditions of folk tales. They come under less stringent constraints than magazines and journals, though depictions of extreme violence, sex, bigotry and blasphemy are taboo. See Lin Wai Myaing, “Comics”, Living Colour (October 1998), pp. 65–69. In early 2000, there were about 150 such stalls in Yangon, of which around 40 per cent were concentrated in a small downtown square between two short streets. The prices of second-hand books have also increased proportionately with those of newly-published books. Correspondingly, start-up costs have risen from a few thousand kyats in the 1970s to about 100,000 kyats at present (“Book Sellers Facing Rising Demand for New Stocks”, Myanmar Times, 24–30 April 2000, p. 4). The official rate of exchange is US$1 = 6.7 kyats. This is grossly overvalued. The market rate of exchange is US$1 = 740 kyats. Figures cited are valid as of end of 2001. Many directories and guide books are in English, aimed at the foreign business community and tourists. The magazine, Living Colour (March 2001, p. 116) listed some 13 such publications. These data are drawn from the government publication, Statistical Yearbook 1998 (Yangon: Central Statistical Organization, 1998), p. 377. Kyi Naing, “Sarmu hma Saroke, Saroke hma Zaykwek” [From Manuscript to Book and Book to Market], Myanma Dana (June 2000), p. 44. The estimates were based on December 2000 issues of all three magazines. The revenue per copy was computed by adding up the estimated revenues of all advertisements that appeared in the magazine and dividing this number by the stated figure (appearing in the publisher’s statement inside the front cover) for the production run. The advertising rates published in the Myanma Dana were applied to all three. In practice the rates may not be uniform, as discounts are usually given. The MWJA appears to be closer to a GONGO (government organized NGO) than to an NGO in the spectrum of voluntary organizations, because its structure is like that of its predecessor the LWO, which was classified as a “class and mass” organization under the BSPP. It is interesting to note that

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23

24 25

26

27

28

the first conference was held only in December 1993. Prior to this, the MWJA functioned, more or less, on the same basis as the LWO. Nation Building Endeavours Vol. III, Historic Records of Endeavours made by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (from 1 April 1995 to 14 November 1997) (Yangon: Printing and Publishing Sub-Committee, 1999) p. 445. The 1997 figures bear some comparison with 1985 figures provided by Pyinsama Akyein Parti Nyilargun Tho Tinthwin Thi Baho Kommiti Ei Naiganyei Asiyinkhanzar [Political Report of the Central Committee to the Fifth Party Congress] (Rangoon: Burma Socialist Programme Party, 1985) p. 495. In 1985, the LWO had executive committees in 122 townships, organizing committees in 26 townships and a total membership of 4,762. The 1997 figures do not seem to have increased markedly despite the expanded role of the private print media in the 1990s. It may be that the increased private publication sector is largely confined to the capital city. Media professionals writing for private publishers may not be compelled to join the MWJA, and thus do not add to the membership. The MWJA also has a less appealing status than that of the LWO which was seen as a privileged organization during the socialist era. Ibid., pp. 443–45. According to a news report entitled “Ministry of Information opens Journalism Course No. 1/2000” in NLM (11 October 2000), there were 45 trainees from the Home and Information ministries, as well as the Union Solidarity and Development Association (a nation-building hierarchical organization sponsored by the junta). This is based on observations made by the author during his trip to Yangon in December 2000. More often than not, the editors and senior journalists that supervise journalists have some formal training, mainly through their previous employment in the state media. In the late 1990s, a few writers and journalists (mostly established personalities) benefitted from resident fellowships offered by media institutions in Japan and the United States. On the other hand, according to the advertisement that appeared in NLM (10 April 2001, p. 9) inviting applications for junior reporter positions, a university degree was required of the applicants for the post, whose salary scale was comparable to that of a junior civil servant. In fact, they take great pains not to be seen as too critical of the government; “Reuters News Agency Ducks Flak over False Labour Report”, Myanmar Times, 28 August–3 September 2000, p. 3. In the case of commercial publications by government agencies (mainly magazines and journals produced for the service personnel welfare fund) the permit is issued to a designated official of the agency concerned. Different nomenclatures for permits are used according to the genre (book, magazine or journal) and publisher (private, corporate sponsor, or welfare

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29

30

31 32 33

34

35

association of a government agency). Although this is not a new phenomenon, it has become more complex with the market economics of the post-1988 era. Because of the proliferation of publications and publishers, the regulatory authorities have to devise new registration procedures to keep up with the changing nature of the publishing industry. Computer graphics and colour separation technology became commercialized in the mid-1990s with the help of foreign expertise and imported digital equipment (“Pre-presses in a Roll”, Myanmar Times, 30 October– 5 November 2000, p. 8). Myanmar multimedia companies that appeared in the second half of the 1990s have been confined to producing CD-ROMs (mainly of business directories, dictionaries, religious and educational features, and encyclopaedia) as no private commercial web sites were allowed up to the year 2000. (Tun Aung, et al. “Myanmar Naingan Ei Ti Zeigwet Anargat” [The Future of the IT Market in Myanmar], Living Colour, September 2000, pp. 36, 39, 40). See K.K.N., “Myanmar Naingan Ei Phuntphyo Toetet Larthaw Web site Wunhsaung Hmu Myar Hnint e-business Alaralar Myar” [Development of web site services and e-business potential of Myanmar] Living Colour, August 2001, pp. 42–49. See for example, Thet Khaing, “Subtle Pressure from Business for Greater Internet Access”, Myanmar Times, 4–10 June 2001, p. 5. See Moe Zaw Myint, “Mandalay and Surrounding Areas to Get Daily News, Days Earlier”, Myanmar Times, 19–25 March 2001, p. 8. The pricing of state-owned newspapers provides some clues to the level of subsidy. Their prices are still very low when compared with those of privately owned journals. For example, 120 kyats will pay for a monthly subscription to a state-owned 16-page daily newspaper, when 30–40 kyats is needed to buy a single copy of a 16-page private journal. Interestingly, the advertising rates of state-owned newspapers for local clients (advertising space for diplomatic missions and trademark notices are charged in US dollars) were raised by more than 100 per cent from May 2001, with a promise of a more efficient service. See “State Newspaper Ad Prices Up”, Myanmar Times, 18–24 June 2001, p. 6; and “Business News” no. 73, Living Colour, June 2001, p. 10. Both stations featured the extremely popular English Premier League soccer matches and a Chinese drama supplied by Thailand’s BEC-TERO Entertainment, which had secured the rights for Myanmar from the producers (“ ‘Bang Rajan’ Makers March into Burma”, Nation, 5 March 2001, p. B1). This is based on personal observations made during the author’s trip to Yangon in December 2000 and interviews published in Dana ( July 2000, pp. 19–25).

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The Media in Myanmar 169 36 “Satellite Dish Owners will be Okay, Says DG”, Myanmar Times, 26 February– 4 March 2001, p. 3. 37 See William Ashton, “Myanmar boosts cyberwar abilities”, Defence Reporter, October 2001, pp. 20–21. 38 Yan Min Aung, “Myanma Sipwayei Lokenganmya Eekommerz Htei Akha Mei Win Yauk Hnaing Gyin” [Free access of Myanmar economic enterprises to e-commerce], Dana, August 2001, p. 80. 39 This did not prevent radical opposition “cyber-warriors” from hacking into the government web site, www.myanmar.com in early August 2000, resulting in its shutdown for a short period (“Myanmar Web Site Shut Down by Hacking Attack”, posting on the newsgroup , 2 August 2000). 40 Desmond Ball, Burma’s Military Secrets: Signals Intelligence (Sigint) from 1941 to Cyber Warfare (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1998), chapters 6 and 13. 41 “Burma Allows in Daily”, Nation, 25 November 1998. 42 This section is based on Saw Kyaw Myat Nyein, “Jarnei hnint Kyawnyar” [Journals and advertising], Living Colour, February 2000, pp. 22–33. 43 Soe Myint, “Positive developments of the year”, NLM, 16 March 2001, p. 5. 44 There are a number of journals published by government agencies (usually sub-contracted to or sponsored by a private publisher) as a means of raising funds for the employees’ welfare. For example, the Zeiygwet (Market) journal is published by the Employees’ Welfare Association of the Industrial Development Bank; and the Weithu Seitkyaik (Buyer’s Choice) automobile journal is published by a private car-trading company for the welfare fund of the Minister’s Office, Ministry of Home Affairs. 45 It was reported in October 2000 that the top sports journal and the top football journal reached circulation figures of 58,000 and 27,000 respectively (“Business News” no. 66, Living Colour, November 2000, p. 19). 46 Based on personal communications in Yangon, December 2000. 47 For example, in the 15 December 2000 issue of the aforementioned Zeigwet journal, which is a high-end (in terms of format and content) 48-page weekly, roughly one-third of the space carries monochrome (black and white) advertisements, while another one-fifth comprises multi-colour advertisements. 48 This estimate was based on information provided in Saw Kyaw Myat Nyein, op. cit., p. 24. 49 Ibid., pp. 23, 25. 50 Ibid., pp. 28–29. 51 See also, Hmaing Hset, “Yanei Ponnhate Media Lokengan Acheianay Hnint Alaralar” [Current situation of the print media industry and its potential], Living Colour, October 2001, pp. 57–58. 52 Roger Mitton, “Read This, You Dinosaurs”, Asiaweek, 18 February 2000,

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53

54

55 56 57

58 59

60 61

p. 23. The format is similar to that of the Vietnamese weekly, whose cover price was also US$2. Both publications had similar sections, such as “Street Talk” (interviews on current issues with people on the street) and “Time Out” (a listing of arts, culture and social events). Some regional publications alleged that the Office of Strategic Studies (OSS, believed to be a think-tank for the military intelligence), whose head is the secretary-1 of the ruling junta as well as director of the defence services intelligence, was instrumental in the journal’s genesis (Mitton, op. cit., and “OSS Eager to Show New Face of Myanmar”, Irrawaddy 9, no. 1 [January 2001]: 2). A female Australian was first listed as production editor in the issue dated 14–20 August, 2000. A foreign male name was first listed as the sub-editor in the issue dated 29 January–4 February 2001. According to Dunkley speaking at a public forum in Bangkok in September 2000, the MT’s circulation stood at 10,000. “Welcome to the ‘Myanmar Times’”, Myanmar Times, 6–12 March 2000, p. 1. “VOA: Newspaper Starts Up in Burma”, posted on the Internet by BurmaNet News, 10 March 2000. Every issue of the paper carries a boxed item on the second page that reproduces the 12 national objectives (three each for political, economic and social objectives) established by the ruling junta. See “Foreign Editor Walks a Careful Line in Burma”, Nation, 3 September 2000. Posted on newsgroup , 4 September 2000. “What Role Can the Media Play in Developing a Civil Society?”, Myanmar Times, 11–17 September 2000, p. 7. It is interesting to note that, with regards to the theme of the seminar, Dunkley’s views on the development of Myanmar civil society were: “They, the grass roots of society, go about their lives as best as they can, without weeping in despair or crying out for democracy”, and that “the government is committed to that goal [of establishing a strong civil society]” (ibid.). In “Asian Strategies”, Myanmar Times, 2–8 October 2000, p. 19, the MT’s avoidance of issues impinging on “national security” is illustrated by its feature on a seminar on Asian security appearing in the social “Time Out” page instead of in the regular news section. The feature did not mention the organizations involved or the title of the seminar and offered no details on the papers presented. It merely said, “Many interesting topics were discussed but as this is a matter of security it would not be appropriate to relate them on this page”. However, it carried photographs of some Myanmar academics and officials at the meeting. Soe Myint, op. cit. In the case of the controversy over the ILO sanctions, the journal came up with an “editorial” comment (the first of its kind) on its cover page which,

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The Media in Myanmar 171 inter alia, stated: “Like many local and regional observers, Myanmar Times finds the decision lamentable”. It drew the conclusion that “what lies behind this development is political chicanery”, while pointing out that “China, India and Indonesia”, which “constitute more than one third of the world’s population”, “were prepared to actively support Myanmar” (Myanmar Times, [27 November–3 December 2000]: 1). 62 Some illustrative examples are “Synthetics Shaping Global Drug Trade, Warns Substance Fighter”; ‘NLD Disruptive Says Govt.”; “NLD Wastes Govt. Conciliatory Gesture”; “British Say ‘Yes’ to Travel Despite UK Lobby Group Snub”; and “Talks Step Up as UN Envoy Leaves Yangon: UN Head Calls on World to Support Dialogue” (Internet editions of the Myanmar Times, 16–23 October 2000, p. 6; 4–10 September 2000, p. 3; 18–24 September 2000, p. 3; 28 August–3 September 2000, p. 1; and 15–21 January 2001, p. 1, respectively). 63 The market value of the FEC increased dramatically from around 300 kyats in early 2000 to over 450 kyats in February 2001. If the latter value is taken, the discount given would amount to a whopping 55 per cent. 64 “National News: MT Price Cuts to K 400”, Myanmar Times, 26 March– 1 April 2001, p. 1.

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Reproduced from Media Fortunes, Changing Times: ASEAN States in Transition, edited by Russell Hiang-Khng Heng (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available from < http://www.iseas.edu.sg/pub.html >

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8 Singapore: Media at the Mainstream and the Margins Cherian George

INTRODUCTION Singapore’s media system has been extraordinarily stable through a period of revolutionary change and seismic reforms elsewhere. While new players and technologies have entered the scene, the underlying structure has shifted only gradually. The most obvious reason is the continued hegemony of the ruling PAP (People’s Action Party), which is the single most important determinant of media developments in Singapore. This, however, is only a partial explanation. Governments do not always get what they wish for; so the fact that the PAP has been able to maintain a firm grip on media policy cannot be explained solely by its desire to do so. An additional critical factor was its early adoption of pro-market policies. By ensuring that the national press was commercially secure and successful, it gave media corporations a vested interest in preserving the status quo. Another factor was its technological awareness, such that it has not been caught completely unaware by the Internet revolution. The PAP has thus been able to respond to changing conditions at least partly on its own terms. Stability, however, is not to be confused with stasis. This chapter reviews the established press system, and offers an overview of ongoing and impending changes to media, society and government. I argue that while these changes may be subtle and evolutionary, they contribute to a real and discernible long-term trend towards greater democratization. This trend can be analysed in terms of a transition from a mode of social organization called “enterprise association”, to one of “civil

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association”. These terms, borrowed from Michael Oakeshott, have been applied to Singapore by James Cotton.1 Enterprise association is an organizing principle marked by a society-wide adherence to a shared undertaking. In civil association, the shared commitment is to rules regulating conduct, rather than to common ends. Singapore under the PAP has been characterized by enterprise association, the common purpose being the struggle for national economic competitiveness. All institutions and policies, including the news media and press laws, are judged on their contribution to the chosen national enterprise. The rule of law, of primary importance in civil association, is relegated to a supporting role in enterprise association. The Asian financial crisis has not shattered the PAP’s belief in the merits of national goal-setting; it has only persuaded the government of the need to sharpen the nation’s focus on the needs of the market. Other industrializing Asian states crashed because their centralized political and economic co-ordination could not prevent — and may have actively encouraged — the tendency for key institutions and policy-makers to grow corrupt and take short-cuts. The PAP, thanks to a strong anti-corruption system and hard-headed technocratic management, has continued to keep faith with the overriding goal of economic competitiveness. The government has said that, in the search for success in the New Economy, it is in the mood for “creative destruction” of old ways; but these claims should be read in the context of a regime that remains confident of its own leadership role.2 Thus, for example, it concluded that the stability of Singapore’s financial system through the crisis was due to firm control, not the lack of it. As Lee Kuan Yew writes: “Our cautious approach helped us weather the 1997–98 East Asian financial crisis. Our banks were sound and not overextended. No bubble puffed up our stock market.”3 Garry Rodan notes that, contrary to the deterministic expectations of liberal theorists that free markets need free media, the government has not had to reform its media policies fundamentally in its bid to build Singapore’s financial sector. Rodan has found that the financial industry’s need for transparent and timely economic and official data can be met without liberalizing political debate, for example. Investments have been undeterred by Singapore’s lack of media freedom, and the PAP’s brand of authoritarianism is thus more durable than some assume.4 These preliminary remarks should address the common and simplistic claim that the PAP’s governing philosophy is in all respects incompatible

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with an advanced market economy. Economic forces certainly shape state behaviour, but we need thicker accounts of this relationship. After sketching the established model of government–media relations, I will proceed to examine media, society and government as seedbeds of change. The common effect of these changes is to dilute or challenge the PAP’s ability to maintain the sense of shared purpose it has been accustomed to. Enterprise association may therefore give way over time to civil association. The media system will evolve in tandem, with the single greatest change being the development of new media on the margins of the system, embodying the values of civil association.

PREVAILING PRESS SYSTEM Freedom from the press Singapore’s mode of enterprise association makes the press, along with other institutions, subordinate to a common purpose, of which the government is the ultimate oracle. The model thus carries with it an illiberal twist to the principle of press freedom. In the classic liberal formulation, the press is seen as a pure expression of democracy. Thus, in the United States, the First Amendment of the Constitution protects the press from the government, which, despite having been elected democratically, is assumed in American political culture to harbour undemocratic tendencies. In the Singapore model, the formula is reversed. The elected government is positioned as the embodiment of democratic expression. It must be protected from the unelected press, which is prone to being swayed by private commercial interests, narrow ideological missions, or, at the very least, the hubris of journalists’ inflated egos. In liberal democracies, it is all about freedom of the press from government; in Singapore, it is about the government’s freedom from the press. History helps to explain the subordinate position of the press in the Singaporean enterprise. The press had a record of being out of step with the historic nationalist project that saw Singapore emerge from colonial rule, through messy merger, to full independence. The Chinese and Malay media were slow to adjust to the new realities of a sovereign, multi-racial republic: they sometimes acted with immigrant, diaspora instincts, instead of media with a national vision. As for the English press, the Straits Times made the strategic error of, first, treating the PAP

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in opposition as communist-leaning troublemakers, and then transferring its headquarters to Kuala Lumpur in preparation for the union with Malaysia. The newspaper’s initial anti-PAP stand and its thirteen years in Kuala Lumpur, from 1959 to 1972, meant that it could not draw on the prestige of having played a leading role in the republic’s early nationalism. The Straits Times is remembered by Lee and the Old Guard as a “bird of passage” that fled Singapore at a difficult time.5 The label is unfair, given that Kuala Lumpur was the capital of the federation that the PAP itself had worked for. But the paper’s failure to Singaporeanize itself promptly in 1965 shows that it, like the Chinese and Malay press, grossly underestimated the resolve and ability of the PAP to wrest Singapore out of the past and establish it as a modern, independent, multi-racial society. The PAP view of journalists in Singapore is, not unreasonably, that it succeeded in spite of them. Lee said in his memoirs: “My early experience in Singapore and Malaya shaped my views about the claim of the press to be the defender of truth and freedom of speech. The freedom of the press was the freedom of its owners to advance their personal and class interests.”6

The legal framework The PAP’s press system is maintained in part by watertight legal controls. These operate at two levels. The first, which is the older and more common internationally, is made up of a panoply of licensing and national security laws. Press laws inherited from the British require all newspapers to be licensed; licences can be revoked at any time. Journalists must also beware the ISA (Internal Security Act), under which they can be detained without trial. They can be fined or jailed if they breach laws on the contempt of court or contempt of parliament. The OSA (Official Secrets Act) deters them from being on the receiving end of leaks. Libel laws compel writers to take extreme care with any comments that could be claimed to hurt officials’ reputations. Unlike in the United States, for example, where it is much harder for politicians than for private individuals to sue for libel and win, Singapore has no legal tradition of privileging criticism against public figures. The government wielded these punitive powers most aggressively in the 1970s, when the licence of the Singapore Herald was withdrawn and four Nanyang Siang Pau pressmen were jailed under the ISA.7 The 1990s were less traumatic. The OSA prosecution of Business Times editor Patrick

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Daniel and correspondent Kenneth James, together with three other individuals, was apparently not intended to crush either the journalists or the paper but to signal to civil servants that leaks would not be tolerated. Daniel and James returned to work after being found guilty and paying a fine. One magazine was suspended: Woman’s Affair ran a feature on the PAP’s female Members of Parliament (MPs) that included a few critical comments, and was judged to have strayed into political commentary in contravention of the aims stated in its licence.8 This first level of laws provides the government sweeping powers to punish journalists and their publications when they cross the line of acceptability, including the power to silence them completely. One problem with using these powers, however, is that the public is bound to notice, and could levy some political cost. Besides, the PAP has never been content to have national institutions that are merely cowed into submission: it wants them to support positively its policies and programmes. The government’s second level of control addresses precisely this point. More than twenty-five years old, it has been so effective in fulfilling its objective of behind-the-scenes control that most Singaporeans are not even aware of it, even though it is the main instrument shaping how the press operates. The law in question is the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act. Enacted in 1974, after the Herald was closed, it empowers the government to determine the composition of a newspaper company’s board of directors. Newspaper companies must be locally-owned and publicly listed, and their shares divided into ordinary and management shares. The government can select who holds management shares, enabling it to name the company’s chairman and directors, and through them to ensure that that the journalists appointed to senior gatekeeping positions are trustworthy. With this mechanism in place, the government needs neither to post its officials directly into top newsroom positions, nor to nationalize the press. In this respect, its control of the press differs from the way it has managed, say, the trade union movement or the universities. The Straits Times thus remains a newspaper edited by professional journalists and published by business people, as it has been for more than 150 years. Contrary to folklore, the newsroom does not receive daily instructions about what to publish, and sensitive articles are not submitted to government officials for vetting. Like all major newsmakers, government officials try to influence coverage of their particular portfolios through

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a mix of persuasive tactics, from offering the inducement of greater access to dangling the veiled threat of legal action. Of course, the government is not just any newsmaker: it has more power than most to affect the livelihoods of editors and journalists. But, for the same reason that it amended the press laws in 1974, it has not been trigger-happy in the use of its almost limitless firepower. The most senior figures in the leadership prefer to have editors who independently come to the right conclusions — even if they occasionally do not — than to replace them with mere functionaries. As members of the establishment, newspaper editors are expected to have an instinctive grasp of Singapore’s national interests and how to protect them. They interact regularly with cabinet ministers to keep these instincts honed. Most of the time, they get it “right”; but not always — which is why the press is the single establishment institution that is regularly chastised by government leaders for not being supportive enough of national goals. The basic strategy employed to manage national newspapers has been adapted to suit other news media. National broadcasting has been the least problematic for the ruling party: because television was introduced to Singapore by the state and originally operated by a government department, the PAP did not have to contend with a preexisting tradition of independent broadcast journalism. The foreign press has been subject to an ingenious amendment to the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act that empowers the authorities to restrict the circulation of offshore newspapers and weekly news-magazines deemed to be “engaging in the domestic politics of Singapore”, which has been taken to mean refusing to grant the government the right of unedited reply. In 2001, the Singapore Broadcasting Act was amended to extend this approach to foreign providers of television news — such as the BBC, CNBC Asia, and CNN — that access Singaporean homes via the government-linked cable service, Singapore CableVision. Since most of the international media organizations operating in Singapore are able to enjoy a profitable existence there, they have tended to become more observant of the government’s feelings.9

Ideological consensus Singapore’s press system is sustained not just by coercion, but also by consent. At the corporate level, publishers can hardly complain about the PAP’s press model. Lee Kuan Yew has understood perfectly that the

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media business is, first and foremost, a business: that a press allowed to make money out of a system will support that system; and that publishers value their bottom line more highly than they do their editorial freedom. The news media industry’s regulatory barriers to entry may frustrate consumers and would-be competitors, but Singapore Press Holdings and the Media Corporation of Singapore have not been at the forefront of opposition to the lack of competition. SPH, partly as a result of its near-monopoly in the daily print market, is one of the most profitable newspaper companies in the world.10 Its stable includes not just its cash cow, the Straits Times, but also the once-wobbly Chinese-language press. The government put the Chinese dailies on a secure financial footing through a forced merger with the profitable English-language press. In the 1960s, the Chinese press was a headstrong and unpredictable institution; in the 1990s, it was the Chinese division of SPH that dreamt up the idea of publishing Lee Kuan Yew’s memoirs in both book and compact disk format, which became best-sellers and sparked a miniindustry of publications on and by the leader. Support for the ruling party and its programmes may not be as strong in the newsrooms as it is in the boardrooms, but it is significant and genuine. Editors see the press as having both a contributing role and a vested interest in Singapore’s success. In keeping with the national ideology, success is defined primarily in economic terms. The link to economic growth is tangible and personal. With attractive pay and bonuses, and one of the earliest stock-option schemes in the country, senior journalists in the national press have little incentive to jump ship to an anti-government vehicle (even if one existed). The editorial positions of the national press have been described variously as prostitution and self-censorship, but editors believe they are practising responsible and intellectually-honest journalism.11 They point to the PAP’s record of good government, and say that it does not warrant the kind of negativity and cynicism that is second nature to journalists in many other countries. Unlike many other authoritarian regimes, the PAP does not suppress the press in order to cover up corruption or gross mistakes. The PAP did not just deliver on its threats; it also delivered on its promises. It did not stop at silencing dissent; it went on to persuade the public of its ability to govern, delivering decades of high economic growth with social equity. Its press controls are based on the conviction that the press has a narrow and short-term view of the public interest, and that this can obstruct good government.

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Although Singapore’s newspapers did not help the PAP much in the party’s early years, they have since made up for it. The New Guard leaders have been able to count on a press that, in keeping with Lee’s vision, is pro-establishment enough to serve as a reliable partner, and professional enough to remain profitable. Opposition politicians complain of unfair coverage, not without some justification. The press does not seem to subscribe to the theory that the opposition is an indispensable pillar of democracy, and therefore inherently newsworthy regardless of its quality. Instead, opposition politicians must satisfy editors that they are offering serious and credible ideas, before they are deemed worthy of more than minimal coverage. Also at work is the very Singaporean bias in favour of pragmatic ideas of immediate instrumental value, and an impatience with political ideals such as democracy and human rights. Since opposition politicians deal mainly in the latter, they are easily dismissed as saying nothing new or of substance. The press has also suggested that its unsympathetic treatment of the opposition is a fair reflection of public opinion, as expressed during general elections. This claim carries some weight between elections, but is somewhat suspect during the campaign. The point of an election being to determine the people’s wishes, media bias in election coverage cannot be justified by an as-yet-unknown popular will, and indeed can be criticized as undermining the freedom and fairness of the poll. Editors defend their pro-PAP bias by pointing out that even newspapers in the West take sides during elections. Readers’ complaints that SPH, as a monopoly, has a moral obligation to be fair in its election coverage have not succeeded in changing editors’ minds. The editor of the Straits Times has acknowledged, and tried to address, the obvious concern: “Of course, the danger for the ST is that working with rather than against the establishment can become such a habit of mind that it would not recognize the need to break ranks even when that stares it in the face. And, yes, the status quo can become so comfortable that there would always be the temptation to rationalize itself out of doing anything which might upset it. It may or may not happen this way. But I would like to think that should the establishment turn rogue, the ST will not be found wanting. It will do its duty.”12 There is pathos in this promise, for it assumes that editors who choose to “break ranks” can get away with it long enough to make a difference. It ignores the fact that the largely consensual character of

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government–press relations in the 1990s continues to be girded by one-sided legal powers.13 When consensus fails, the government can, if it wishes, instantly switch to the two levels of coercive control described above. It can remove editors overnight, and replace them with individuals possessing the proper understanding of their “duty”, detain offending writers without trial, and close down the entire newspaper, all with complete legality. “The press laws and political culture are such that the Government, with a vast array of powers at its disposal, will not countenance the press taking any determined stand against it on any issues that it considers fundamental,” ST’s editor, Leslie Fong, has also said. Nevertheless, editors’ assurance that the newspapers will try to serve as a watchdog is not entirely delusionary. Singapore’s hegemonic system of press control is based on the existence of newspapers that have a vested interest in the national enterprise led by the PAP. Conversely, however, the PAP has a vested interest in the continued success of the national news media as conduits for its messages. The press can play this card to negotiate for more space. Editors are able to argue privately to PAP leaders that they do not have a captive audience; that Singaporeans can turn to informal or foreign sources of news and opinion, or turn off entirely and attend only to the entertainment media; and that to stand a chance in this competition for eyeballs, the national media must be free to use the tools of its trade to create compelling products. Persuaded by this argument, the government has allowed editors to follow their news judgements instead of official taste in much of their day-to-day decision-making. This in turn opens up some room for journalists to pursue a more independent brand of reportage and commentary, if they wish. The fact that there are real limits to press freedom does not negate the fact that there is also real space. How journalists make use of this available space becomes an especially interesting question as society, government and the media itself undergo important transformations in the coming years.

SOCIETY IN TRANSITION: THE GROWTH OF CIVIL SOCIETY Trends within Singapore society can be expected to strain the organizing principle of enterprise association, and to push it towards the civil association mode. Although Singapore’s formally enunciated “shared

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values” include an emphasis on “consensus not conflict”, this is more an expression of official wishful thinking than of immutable values. Granted, there is a strong streak of conflict-avoidance in Singapore’s political culture. This has its origins in a long tradition of non-competitive politics that dates back to colonial times and was interrupted only briefly by the upheavals of the late 1950s and 1960s. It has also been attributed to Confucian values, which predispose the majority of Singaporeans towards accepting paternalistic government. In addition, however, Singapore’s depoliticization has been actively and systematically cultivated by the PAP. The process was detected as far back as a quartercentury ago by Chan Heng Chee in a classic critique. [I]t is clear that a conflict and bargaining ethos is discouraged; rather, a petitionary one is nurtured as the way to approach a paternalistic political authority. A steady and systematic depoliticization has taken place and the style of governance looks for the elimination of politics, disdains the need for conciliation, and trusts in the expertise of the leadership to plan and implement its plans with complete and irreversible power.14 The main rationale for the “elimination of politics” is also its main tool: rapid and broad-based economic development, in PAP thinking, both justifies as well as facilitates depoliticization. Behind this approach is the assumption that sound economic management can largely do away with political conflict. Whatever little friction that remains, the theory goes, can be sandpapered down with authoritarian methods that are not so coarse as to provoke widespread dissent. Then, the main political tasks that remain would be to boost citizens’ trust in the longterm wisdom of programmes that may entail short-term pain, and to enhance their sensation of nationhood and mobilize them towards national goals. Economic development certainly minimizes the risk of violent uprisings, of the kind that erupts in societies where the poor and hopeless feel they have little to lose by resorting to riots. It is fallacious, however, to think that economics can transcend politics. Advanced capitalist industrialization brings with it a more complex society and multiplies the number and capabilities of competing interests. Affluence empowers people to pursue their private interests and their chosen lifestyles without having to ask the state’s permission, or to rely on

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state resources. The concessions to the impersonal forces of globalization and the market will also generate a reaction from those who want to preserve a comfortable status quo threatened by these forces. Economic maturity is likely to bring with it the growth of various special interest groups and professional associations, contributing to a livelier public debate on an increasing number of issues. Existing groups include the feminist organization AWARE, the Association of Muslim Professionals, the Roundtable (a political discussion group), the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry and dozens of others. None of these organizations may have a national agenda, and collectively they do not add up to a united front against the PAP. On the contrary, the various causes and interests represented by such groups are usually inconsistent with each other. Therefore, this development may have a neutral electoral impact, and it is still only the PAP that would offer an across-the-board national programme. Nevertheless, each of these groups would become a force to contend with whenever a policy impinges upon its specific area of interest. Collectively, the growth of these interest groups constitutes a livelier civil society. At the individual level, Singaporeans are becoming more highly educated and well-travelled. This is unlikely to increase opposition to the deeper status quo, and may even increase national consciousness and hasten political and civic socialization around national institutions and norms. However, it is likely to make Singaporeans more critical and demanding, and more aware of their rights and interests. This may not make them vote against the PAP, but it will make them more sophisticated consumers of public services and systems. Where money is concerned, which is most of the time, they already refuse to be talked down to by officials. The rise of the “knowledge worker” may have an impact. The shift towards a knowledge-based economy means less assembly-line-type work that requires workers to grasp only their own small part of the production chain, and more engagement in multi-skilled processes. Knowledge workers have to feel a sense of responsibility for quality and innovation over a wide range of activities, across functional and hierarchical divisions. This new mindset is unlikely to be confined to their workplaces and switched off in the public sphere. Singaporean knowledge workers may become more critical of government programmes and services that do not meet their expectations.

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Together, these trends weaken the government’s ability to dictate society’s focus, and could represent a shift to the organizing principle of civil association with its greater emphasis on the rule of law. Recent symptoms of this include an initiative to open dialogue and co-operation among civil society groups within a network called The Working Committee (TWC). The network was a self-consciously bottom-up effort. While the government had been encouraging the growth of a “people sector”, TWC’s founders rejected the government’s presumption that it had a natural right to exercise moral leadership over civil society. They worked to establish horizontal links between civic groups, independent of government. Internally, TWC emphasized process rather than predefined purpose. The participants formed themselves into subcommittees to organize a public fair and conference, but otherwise kept TWC’s structure open and non-hierarchical, to maximize its receptiveness to new ideas. Other pressures for civil association include appeals from civil society against the government’s discretionary powers contained in the ISA and in laws pertaining to public speaking and the formation of associations. These developments in society affect the media system directly. First, as consumers, Singaporeans are demanding more from their media than accurate reports of government news. It should be noted that in the Anglo-American, and increasingly global, tradition of “objective” journalism, there is an inherent bias towards institutional sources of news and comment, and against the unorganized and the anonymous. This bias is less salient in liberal democracies, where practically every shade of opinion is championed by organized groups or at least by vocal, and quotable, experts: a journalist can reflect a plurality of views on an issue by quoting these varied sources. Singapore journalism, in contrast, has suffered from the lack of diversity in institutional and expert sources. The disaffection of the media consumer dovetails with a second societal development that may be the more potent force of change. Singaporeans are becoming a richer and more diverse source of news in their own right. The media will be a major beneficiary of this increased propensity to articulate ideas in the public sphere. In addition, groups and individuals can become mass-communicators in their own right, using increasingly accessible and affordable technologies. There are legal constraints on such activities. The government’s 1996 Internet regulations require “political” content providers to register with the

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Singapore Broadcasting Authority, so that they can be held accountable for what is said on their web sites. This obviously includes locallyregistered political parties, but also any “body of persons engaged in the propagation, promotion or discussion of political or religious issues relating to Singapore on World Wide Web through the Internet”. In 1998, the Films Act was amended to ban outright all political films. The move was prompted by an attempt by the Singapore Democratic Party to release a party videotape to the public. The government decided that videos were an “undesirable medium” for political debate, because they tended to promote image over substance.15 Under the new legislation, any person who imports, makes, reproduces, distributes or exhibits a “party political film” could be fined up to $100,000 or jailed for up to two years. To make the law watertight, party political films are defined in the Act to include any motion picture “which is made by any person and directed towards any political end in Singapore”. Despite these restrictions, the Internet in particular has emerged as a key communication and organizing tool for civil society. The aforementioned TWC, for example, makes extensive use of the Web and mailing lists.

GOVERNMENT IN TRANSITION: FRAGMENTATION AND FLATTENING A second site of change that will transform the media system is the government itself. In core public sector activities, such as the management of social welfare programmes, government ministries have been devolving functions to local Community Development Councils chaired by MPs of the ruling party. This is part of a conscious process of making more people responsible for governance. The creation and strengthening of institutions was one of Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong’s key tasks, as he said in an interview for the PAP’s 45th anniversary publication. “It is about having more pillars, instead of depending on one pillar. The one pillar can be very strong, can hold up a whole floor, but it will age over time.”16 In addition, a steady stream of public sector activities is being farmed out to more autonomous and market-driven organizations. Already, government departments have handed over functions to new statutory boards, such as the Land Transport Authority, National Arts Council and the National Parks Board. Statutory boards were turned into government-owned companies, such as Singapore Power and

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Media Corp. Singapore Telecom became a public-listed company, joining the likes of Singapore Technologies and DBS Bank. The goal is to subject these organizations’ corporate governance to the market discipline and to make them more responsive to changing needs. To that extent, it is fair to ask if this trend strengthens the mode of enterprise association, by downloading the goal of market competitiveness into these various organizations themselves. What is weakened in the process, however, is the hold of national leaders. Corporatization and privatization create public sector organizations with their own institutional interests and corporate cultures. Strong statutory board chiefs feel a sense of responsibility towards interests that transcend narrow ministry protocol. When statutory boards become commercial companies, ministers turn from being direct bosses whom the managers strive to please, into regulators whom they try to avoid. Successful company chiefs are those who look to serve their market, not the government officials supervising them. The government will have to accept, even encourage, more of what in the old days would have been frowned on as verging on insubordination. Restructuring will reap benefits only if the privatized entities genuinely behave as such. If a chief executive habitually sacrifices market competitiveness for political loyalty, bailouts are bound to follow. Similarly, if statutory board chiefs choose to act no more independently than the director of a ministry department, corporatization would be at best pointless and at worst costly and time-consuming. The government has also recognized that when state monopolies are deregulated to generate economic activity, the only way to attract private sector investment is to guarantee that the industry will be supervised by professional regulatory agencies that apply consistent rules, not by the whims and fancies of politicians. These concessions to the market make Singapore’s power structure less hierarchical, more diffuse, and increasingly subject to transparent rules. Thus, although the ultimate goal is market success, this new interest in the rule of law adds to the pressure for the civil association mode of social organization. At the apex of government, Lee Kuan Yew’s inevitable departure may signal a new kind of politics. This change will not be dramatic. By preparing for succession as early as the 1970s and handing over the premiership in 1990, Lee himself has ensured that it will be mainly business-as-usual after he leaves. The Senior Minister is no longer indispensable to Singapore’s continued success and stability. However,

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events in recent years suggest that the government has not yet fully weaned itself off the senior minister’s wellspring of influence. Lee intervened at key points in political debates, bringing to bear the considerable weight of his influence to quash opposing viewpoints.17 Lee’s moral authority and political skill derive from his 40 years’ hardball political experience, his success as a premier, and his status as the architect of most of Singapore’s post-colonial norms and institutions. He played this card whenever he felt it would help the government’s hand. Lee thus remains a kind of high priest, the oracle to which the establishment instinctively turns when faced with uncertainty and doubt. The question is whether the organizing principle of enterprise association can survive without Lee’s looming presence helping the government maintain its unity and internal discipline. The PAP has a culture of solidarity that will not be easily eroded. The administration is not likely to spring the leaks that characterize administrations elsewhere. The prosecution and conviction of a top government economist, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, under the OSA in 1994, sent the message of zero tolerance of even minor leaks. Cabinet is likely to impose that culture on the civil service as long as possible. Within the party, a split is unlikely, as there are no clearly distinct tendencies or personalities around which competing factions could emerge. At the cabinet level, ministers will probably try to preserve the tradition of generally speaking with one voice, even without Lee. However, unless a post-Lee prime minister surrounds himself with sycophants, it is possible that the top leadership will include strongwilled personalities who do not see themselves as a mere chorus to the top man’s tune. Regardless of how deeply they believe in preserving PAP dominance, honest differences of opinion are bound to surface. How such trends can affect media dynamics is already evident. In the latter half of the 1990s, the republic’s President was involved in a complex dispute with cabinet, putting the press in the unusual (by Singaporean standards) position of having two conflicting official sources to report on. The president was popularly elected for the first time in 1993, and wielded enhanced powers under a Constitutional amendment designed to provide an additional check on the spending of financial reserves. This voluntary sharing of powers by the government was not expected to yield any newsworthy excitement, since the first elected President was a government-nominee and a former Deputy Prime Minister, Ong Teng Cheong. However, disagreements arose. One

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constitutional dispute had to be referred to the Supreme Court for an advisory ruling. Other disagreements were settled in a White Paper of principles that would guide their working relationship. The recourse to legalistic and public mechanisms was a break from the government’s preferred “Asian” mode of behind-the-scenes settlements, but it was inevitable, given that the President was not subject to internal party or civil service control. Most controversial was a decision by Ong, late in his term, to publicize the disagreements at a press conference. Lee took to the national podium to settle the issue. Not content that the matter was scheduled to be debated in Parliament, he summoned two ST journalists to his office at the Istana on a weekend and spent some eighty minutes to set the record straight about what the new-style elected presidency was all about. There was, of course, no better person to clarify the matter. “It was my proposal,” he reminded the public.18 Goh concluded in parliament: “President Ong has shown what the Government expected all along: that when an honourable man assumes this constitutional position, he has to exercise the powers of that institution without fear or favour.”19 The affair provides a foretaste of the future of politics in Singapore: in the absence of a single, consistent line emanating from the broader establishment, the press may be forced to play the role of an independent and objective reporter. While the discretionary press laws are in the hands of the Minister for Information and the Arts, he and his cabinet colleagues may find it politically untenable to use such legal powers in intra-establishment disputes, and competing claims would instead be contested in the court of public opinion.

MEDIA IN TRANSITION: THE INTERNET REVOLUTION The Internet is the most important development on Singapore’s media scene, as it has been elsewhere. E-mail, bulletin boards and fringe web sites on the World Wide Web allow people to communicate with each other in a manner too difficult for governments to monitor and censor. The Singapore Internet Community, or Sintercom, was the first group to take advantage of the Web to circumvent the regulatory and economic obstacles in the way of radically new ventures in print or broadcast media in Singapore. It was launched in October 1994 by a Singaporean studying for his Ph.D. at Stanford University in the heart of Silicon Valley. The site was hosted at Stanford and a few other campuses

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outside Singapore. The 20-odd volunteers who edited Sintercom were based in Singapore and five other countries in Asia, Europe and North America. It was a case study of a local, citizen initiative in a global, technological age. Sintercom included a digest of discussions on the soc.culture.singapore electronic bulletin board, commentaries and interviews on national issues, and jokes, recipes and other assorted Singaporeana. Added later was an e-mail service that delivered articles on Singapore, including critical pieces from foreign publications, that the editors felt were worthy of note. Many welcomed its role as an alternative forum — a service that included publishing readers’ letters that had been rejected or edited by the Straits Times. Public intellectuals and civic groups used the site to publicize their correspondence with government agencies. Sintercom was also the virtual home of TWC, the groundbreaking civil society initiative that brought non-government organizations together to work on joint projects. The site was launched after Parliament had just legislated a sweeping new Singapore Broadcasting Authority Act, giving the government jurisdiction over not just television and radio but also electronic communication. No specific regulations were set down for the latter — yet. Sintercom sailed through the loophole. The legislative honeymoon period did not last long. The Singapore Broadcasting Authority (SBA) came out with its list of rules for the Internet in July 1996.20 On the list of taboo material were contents that jeopardized public security or national defence; excited disaffection against the government; undermined public confidence in the administration of justice; satirized any race or religion; or which encouraged permissiveness or promiscuity. All this was familiar ground for those who worked within the mainstream media; Netizens would now have to come to terms with it. The SBA announced that sites that sought public attention and dealt with what were deemed to be more sensitive areas, principally religion and politics, would have to register. Registration required the web site’s editors and publishers to sign a declaration accepting “full responsibility for the contents ... including contents of discussion groups carried on it”.21 The SBA said it was merely trying to encourage responsible use of the Internet. However, holding those in charge of web sites accountable for comments other people posted on it would make it impossible for sites such as Sintercom to carry on as before.

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Individuals associated with Sintercom were at the forefront of public opposition to the new regulations, writing letters to the press and posting their views on their site. Sintercom’s narrower mission — to evade the registration requirement — was achieved primarily through private negotiations with the authorities. What may have clinched the argument was its preparedness to pack up and leave Singapore. The government seemed prepared to live with the web site being treated as a special case, and Sintercom was given reprieve. Of course, had it gone beyond the limits of government tolerance, things may have been different. The site carried independent and critical commentary, but it was not rabidly anti-government. Comfort with Sintercom grew. A hotlink to the site was incorporated on the front page of “Singapore Infomap”, a web window to Singapore maintained by the Ministry of Information and the Arts.22 In a speech on civil society in May 1998, the minister, George Yeo, named Sintercom as one of the country’s civic organizations that “encourage us to be more socially conscious”. “Singapore is a heterogeneous society and differences of opinion are natural,” he acknowledged.23 The Sintercom case study is interesting not only because of its struggle with media regulations, but also because of its economic model. The stability of Singapore’s media system thus far has much to do with the commercial basis of its main players. As successful businesses in a protected market, newspaper companies have a vested interest in the status quo and its mode of enterprise association. Even the foreign media are managed with economic carrots and sticks. Singapore has positioned itself as an attractive location for media managers to base regional operations, regardless of what journalists may feel about the lack of press freedom. The gazetting laws strike at offshore publications’ commercial interests, as the restriction of circulation in an important Asian market such as Singapore is bound to hurt advertising revenue. The revolutionary effect of the Internet was to eliminate the publisher’s reproduction and distribution costs, which together had kept the media industry’s barriers to entry forbiddingly high and enabled the government to exercise considerable leverage over media companies. Sintercom took advantage of free computer infrastructure provided by the universities at which its founders were studying. As for manpower, it ran entirely on volunteer energy. Its editors had a shared commitment to stake out a free community space, independent of either governmental

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or commercial shackles. Most of its editors believed passionately that it should remain non-commercial. Other non-commercial players include the pro-opposition Singaporeans For Democracy and Singapore Window sites, both based abroad.24 The Think Centre operates a growing mailing list for alternative political news and views, and has used the Net to organize and publicize its campaign against the Internal Security Act.25 In 2000, TalkingCock.com launched an irreverent satirical site in aid of “a less constipated Singapore”.26 These alternative media have led a tenuous existence. In 2001, Sintercom was again asked to register — a move widely seen as part of the government’s preparations for the coming elections. Rather than succumb to the self-censorship that registration would have entailed, the original web site’s editors closed it down. However, SGDaily ([email protected]), Sintercom’s e-mailing list for relaying news and commentary about Singapore, continued to function. Around the same time, Think Centre removed its online forum, Speakers’ Corner Online, from its web site because of the risk of falling foul of new provisions under the Parliamentary Elections Act.

THE MAINSTREAM AND THE MARGINS The government has not entirely resisted the changes being wrought by technology and civil society. Nor, however, have all its steps moved in the direction of openness. In the same decade that it allowed cable news services to enter and helped to roll out the Internet, it also introduced new restrictions on political films and web sites. As promised, the government generally applied these new laws with a light touch. It seemed anxious to show the business community that it did not want to impede the growth of the Internet or the culture industry. Politically, it has tried to strike a balance between embracing alternative views and maintaining control. In a definitive statement on political “out-ofbounds markers”, Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said: As our society matures and grows more stable, and the population becomes better-educated and more discerning, the limits for debate — the ‘OB markers’ — will widen. If you look back say over the last decade, both the amount and the quality of public discussion on policies have clearly gone up, and this improvement will continue … As long as we are only arguing over policies, the limits are very

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wide. There is no policy too sensitive to question, nothing which is taboo and must not be raised. The Government may defend the policy vigorously, especially if it is an important one and the Government thinks the criticism is not justified. But the matter will be decided entirely on its merits, and we hold nothing against anyone simply for holding a different opinion from the Government. … On the other hand, to accept every criticism as constructive feedback would be naïve. The Government will continue to set the tone for the public debate, encouraging participation and also participating actively itself. The Government cannot promise that its responses will always be meek and mild. But we do promise to take serious criticisms seriously, and to give them carefully considered responses.27 It would be foolish, however, for any journalist in the national press to assume that the PAP is diluting its core position, which relegates the press to a subordinate position. As Lee put it, in reference to critics in general: “The issue is dominance — who deserves to be on top, and in charge.” The government continues to assert that only it can be in charge of the national agenda; and that the press must never confuse Singaporeans or the world outside as to what that national agenda is. Thus, for example, the Straits Times could not possibly campaign against the government’s foreign talent policy and get away with it, even if it publishes only the occasional critical column or letter. Nor can its overall coverage be sympathetic towards, say, gay rights. The national media are not part of the avant garde, and will not become so. Political controls aside, and for purely commercial reasons, the press is not likely to stray from the middle-of-the-road position where the maximum market share lies. In the meantime, however, organizations on the fringe, such as Think Centre, have carved out for alternative voices a niche that is now a part of the Singapore media scene. These players are self-consciously a response to the conservative national media, devoting considerable resources to demonstrating shortcomings in the news coverage of the Straits Times. The mainstream media have responded with the highest form of flattery: imitation. The web sites of the national newspapers and broadcast stations have incorporated forums for chat and feedback, giving more space for public participation.

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The picture that emerges is a mixed one. The best way to make sense of it is to distinguish between the mainstream and the margins of the news media. The mainstream continues to be monopolized by commercial media — both local and foreign — owned by large corporations, run by professional journalists and marketers, and bankrolled by advertising revenue and subscriptions. These companies have a presence on the Internet, but they are not Internet “pure plays”; their core businesses are in print publishing or broadcasting. At the margins lie the non-commercial Internet-based media, run on tiny budgets and voluntary effort. While their non-commercial bases give them a certain freedom of manoeuvre, this mode of operation comes with significant limitations. The difference in financial muscle leads directly to differences in content. The mainstream media can support full-time reporters and editors to create a new product every 24 hours or less, with a high proportion of news and information. The marginal media are more opinion-based, and are updated as irregularly as once a week or once a month. They are also handicapped in marketing themselves. Thus, the Internet, once the preserve of the academic and civic sectors, has become thoroughly commercialized. The Web still offers fascinating possibilities for non-profit organizers, but they have been pushed to the backstreets of the information superhighway. The trend is an international one, as observed by Robert McChesney: Corporate dominance and commercialization of the Internet have become the undebated, undebatable, and thoroughly internalized truths of our cyber-times ... For activists of all political stripes, the Web increasingly plays a central role in organizing and educational activities. But from its once lofty perch, this nonprofit and civic sector has been relegated to the distant margins of cyberspace; it is nowhere near the heart of operating logic of the dominant commercial sector.28 The mainstream–margin divide also seems to exist as a conceptual distinction in the minds of regulators and policy-makers. The government is more sensitive to what appears in the Straits Times because it is the Straits Times. The mainstream media are seen as definitively public. The government therefore believes that it cannot meaningfully control the national agenda if that agenda is neither

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reflected nor supported in the mainstream media. Enterprise association is thus maintained through the mainstream media. The government appears to have come to terms with the fact that the marginal media cannot be controlled in the same way: hence the leeway given to political content in, say, SGDaily’s mailings that would not be tolerated on national television. Marginal media thus have the latitude to serve as agents of civil association. This dual system may prevail for some time. However, there is bound to be leakage between the two sectors. Mainstream media cannot ignore the existence of marginal media, for they ultimately compete for the same finite resource of audience attention. The national news media companies will be forced by competitive pressures to learn from non-commercial Internet sites. On the other hand, marginal media cannot expect complete immunity from political constraints. By and large, the government may choose to treat them as narrowcasters whose impact can be discounted. However, this is a matter of political judgement, not of transparent and predictable rules. Certain content, in certain circumstances, may well be judged to cross the line into the fully-public sphere, threatening the PAP’s hold on its crucial middle ground, or confusing the public about the national agenda. At such points, the government could try to subject the producers of marginal media to the authoritarian controls that mainstream media are accustomed to. However, there are limits to what the government can do. It can close down a newspaper or restrict the circulation of an offshore magazine, but, in the proposed “Intelligent Island”, it cannot shut off the Internet without the economy grinding to a standstill. It can lock up a journalist or arrange for an editor to be fired, but it cannot stop thousands of individuals from spreading information and opinion through private e-mail. Accordingly, Stephen Yeo and Arun Mahizhnan have argued that Singapore has no choice but to rethink its whole approach to censorship. The state cannot indefinitely continue its system of mandating what adult citizens are allowed to read or view, they say. They urge the government to: relinquish consciously and systematically its long-held statenannyhood and encourage more self-regulation by the citizenry”. … The advent of unprecedented information technologies will make unilateral control virtually impossible. Conventional notions

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of control will have to be revised. In the Information Age, for those who wish to be at the leading edge, liberalization will be the default mode.29 While Yeo and Mahizhnan focus largely on “moral” censorship, the argument applies also to more explicitly political communication. It is said that politics is the art of the possible. The Internet radically transforms the possibilities in any given situation. Consider, for example, the government’s response to the group of assorted activists whom it wanted to neutralize in the mid-1980s. The chosen method was to detain them without trial, using the national media to make the onesided case that they were Marxist subversives.30 The allegations strained credibility, but there was no avenue for the victims’ supporters to try to influence public opinion or mount an effective protest, nor a tradition of independent investigative journalism to uncover the truth. Today, the Internet’s omnipresence as a medium for unofficial communication makes it impossible for the government to control the flow of information the way it could in the 1980s. It would have to assume that opposing views would rapidly circulate within a large segment of the population, and factor-in the resulting political cost before resorting to the ISA against political opponents. The foregoing hypothetical scenario suggests that marginal media can have an appreciable effect on the practice of politics, even while remaining on the margins. It is important to stress this because, in a backlash to the early hyperbole surrounding the medium, it has become fashionable to swing to the other extreme, and to be skeptical about impact of the Internet. The skepticism is usually based on figures that show that most informational web sites do not draw the audiences of the size that broadcasters and newspapers continue to command, and are not as profitable. However, in societies such as Singapore, where mainstream media are not sufficiently plural, marginal media that offer under-represented views can have a disproportionately large impact in times of crisis or controversy. This proliferation of alternative content can create conditions of “ideational pluralism”, as Geoffry Taubman calls it: “When it becomes commonplace for the citizens of a particular state to have access to a greatly expanded quantity of news, facts, and ideas, governments will face greater difficulties in maintaining their hegemony over the distribution of information and ideologies in the domestic arena.”31

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A comparative perspective is illuminating here. Larry Diamond’s analysis of the so-called “third wave” of worldwide democratic transitions in the late twentieth century shows that — contrary to the many scholarly studies that emphasize the actions of élites — civil society frequently plays a crucial role in organizing and mobilizing the public. The efforts of civil society organizations and independent media may appear “quixotic” at the time, Diamond notes, but they do “limit the capacity of the authoritarian regime to legitimate and consolidate its rule and to browbeat the public into total resignation”. To the extent that they embody such values, these activities on the margins help to “preserve some kernel of civicness in the culture, some seeds of honesty, trust, solidarity, efficacy, and hope”, and to “build social capital and cultivate democratic networks, norms and expectations”.32 Also noteworthy is the fast-growing body of literature on the impact of the Internet in various authoritarian societies, including lessdeveloped countries with far shallower Internet penetration than Singapore enjoys. The best known example is the Zapatista uprising in Mexico, which used the Internet to increase its visibility overseas and as an organizing tool.33 In Tibet, illiteracy and poverty mean that most Tibetans cannot connect to the Internet, but cybercafés have reached the streets of Lhasa, and the minority of Tibetans who are connected have found ways to share information and ideas both within China and with the outside world.34 In Serbia, an independent radio station, B92, made use of the Internet when its transmitters were cut off by President Milosevic’s regime. The station sent its content over the Net to sympathetic stations overseas, which then transmitted the reports back into Serbia over the airwaves.35 Researchers stress that the technology itself is politically neutral, and can be used for non-democratic ends. Governments can tap the Internet to increase their administrative efficiency and thus their hold on society.36 Furthermore, as shown by a study of the use of the medium by two fundamentalist groups, the neo-Nazis and the Taliban, “the new media play a distinguished role also in the political propaganda and communication of the opponents of modernization and globalization”.37 David Hill and Krishna Sen are mindful of this double-edged quality of the Internet in their study of the use of the technology by the protest movements that led to the fall of President Soeharto’s New Order regime in Indonesia. They note that the Internet became an

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important space in which mounting grievances could be publicly voiced and evolve into collective public opinion. But they are quick to stress that there is nothing inevitable about this process: developing and maintaining the Internet as a democratic public sphere needs conscious and continued commitment from participants to preserve autonomy from state and capital.38 Hill and Sen thus turn the spotlight squarely to where it should be: on the role of human agency in social and political transitions. In this chapter, which has been necessarily speculative and preliminary, I have emphasized the importance of the legal framework and political economy within which the media operate and the impact of changing technology. The status quo cannot be explained, nor the broad sweep of change predicted, without reference to such factors. However, while these are powerful in shaping and constraining developments, they do not determine the actions of individuals and institutions, nor dictate their outcomes. There remains room for human agency and choice, increasingly so in a period of technological, economic and social change. Within the government, individual public sector leaders have the choice to guard their workings as secret, or to facilitate the press and encourage more transparency and accountability to the public. Academics and intellectuals can choose to ignore all lines of inquiry that are potentially sensitive, or to be guided by their intellectual curiosity and their conscience. Civic groups and professional organizations can view their interests as narrow and private, or engage the press and public with their visions. Consumers of news can choose to remain atomized and passive, or to organize themselves to monitor the media and to apply both moral and commercial pressure on producers and publishers. The greatest room and responsibility for choice lies within the journalistic profession. Making hundreds of decisions daily, editors decide what issues to cover, and reporters what questions to ask of newsmakers. Between the highway of least resistance on one side, and the legally- or politically-forbidden no-man’s-land on the other, lie many paths that lead to a more independent and critical brand of journalism than now predominates. These are not risk-free choices, but seem unavoidable if the mainstream media are to reserve a place in the hearts and minds of Singaporeans in the coming decades.

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NOTES The author wishes to thank Larry Diamond of Stanford University for his advice and encouragement. 1

2

3

4 5 6 7 8

9 10

11 12 13 14 15

Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975); James Cotton, “The Asian Crisis and the Perils of Enterprise Association: Explaining the Different Outcomes in Singapore, Taiwan and Korea”, in Politics and Markets in the Wake of the Asian Crisis, edited by Richard Robison et al. (London, New York: Routledge, 2000). See, for example, Tony Tan, “‘Creative Destruction’ Needed in New Economy”, Straits Times, 29 March 2000, p. 60. Tony Tan is Deputy Prime Minister. Lee Kuan Yew, “Creating a Financial Centre”, in From Third World to First: The Singapore Story 1965–2000. Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore: Times Publishing and Singapore Press Holdings, 2000). Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew is widely recognized as the founding father of independent Singapore, which he ruled as Prime Minister until 1990. Garry Rodan, “Asian Crisis, Transparency and the International Media in Singapore”, Pacific Review 13, no. 2 (2000): 217–42. See Mary Turnbull, Dateline Singapore: A History of the Straits Times (Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings, 1995). Lee Kuan Yew, “Managing the Media”, in Lee, op. cit. For a comprehensive review of government–press relations up to the 1980s, see Francis Seow, The Media Enthralled (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998). “Govt Suspends Woman’s Affair”, Straits Times, 23 November 1991, p. 32; “Woman’s Affair to resume publication”, Straits Times, 8 February 1992, p. 24. Rodan, op. cit. In the financial year ending August 2000, Singapore Press Holdings netted profits of almost S$400 million on a record turnover that exceeded S$1 billion. See, for example, Cheong Yip Seng, “For an Age of Info-overload: Journalism with a Cause”, Straits Times, 150 Years Supplement, 15 July 1995. Leslie Fong, “A time to cheer, a time to dissent”, Straits Times, 150 Years Supplement, 15 July 1995. “More Freedom for Journalists but Govt ‘Will Still Set the Boundaries’ ”, Straits Times, 27 October 1991, p. 20. Chan Heng Chee, The Dynamics of One Party Dominance: The PAP at the Grass-roots (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1976). “Govt Says ‘No’ to Party Political Videotapes”, Straits Times, 27 July 1996, p. 1.

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16 “Interview with Goh Chok Tong”, For People Through Action By Party (Singapore: People’s Action Party, 1999), p. 142. 17 Cherian George, “Air-conditioned underwear and the future of politics”, in Singapore: The Air-Conditioned Nation (Singapore: Landmark Books, 2000), p. 203. 18 “SM Lee: Elected President Not the Second Centre of Power”, Straits Times, 12 August 1999, pp. 32–33. 19 “President’s Significant Role Praised by PM”, Straits Times, 18 August 1999, p. 25. 20 “Internet regulation to start on Monday”, Straits Times, 12 July 1996, p. 1. 21 Registration Form B for Class Licensable Broadcasting Services, Singapore Broadcasting Authority, . See also “SBA and the Internet”, . 22 Singapore Infomap, . 23 “Strengthening the S’pore Network for the Web World”, Straits Times, 7 May 1998, pp. 36–37. 24 Singaporeans For Democracy is at ; and Singapore Window at . 25 The Think Centre mailing list is accessed by an e-mail to [email protected] 26 TalkingCock.com is at . 27 Speech by DPM Lee Hsien Loong at the Singapore 21 Forum, 16 January 2000, . 28 Robert W. McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy (Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pp. 129–83. 29 Stephen Yeo and Arun Mahizhnan, “Censorship: Rules of the Game are Changing”, Sunday Times, 15 August 1999, pp. 34, 35. 30 For an account of the arrests, see Francis Seow, To Catch A Tartar: A Dissident in Lee Kuan Yew’s Prison (Yale University South East Asian Studies, 1994). 31 Geoffrey Taubman, “A Not-So World Wide Web: The Internet, China and the Challenges to Nondemocratic Rule”, Political Communication 15, no. 2 (1998): 257. 32 Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation ( Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), pp. 218–60. 33 See, for example, H. M. Cleaver, Jr. “The Zapatista Effect: The Internet and the Rise of an Alternative Political Fabric”, Journal of International Affairs 51, no. 2 (1998). 34 John Bray, “Tibet, Democracy and the Internet Bazaar”, Democratization 7, no. 1 (2000).

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200 Cherian George 35 Peter Ferdinand, “The Internet, Democracy and Democratization”, Democratization 7, no. 1 (2000). 36 Ibid. 37 Peter Chroust, “Neo-Nazis and Taliban On-Line: Anti-Modern Political Movements and Modern Media”, Democratization 7, no. 1 (2000). 38 David T. Hill and Krishna Sen, “The Internet in Indonesia’s New Democracy”, Democratization 7, no. 1 (2000).

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Reproduced from Media Fortunes, Changing Times: ASEAN States in Transition, edited by Russell Hiang-Khng Heng (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available from < http://www.iseas.edu.sg/pub.html >

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9 Offending Images: Gender and Sexual Minorities, and State Control of the Media in Thailand Peter A. Jackson

INTRODUCTION In recent decades the legitimacy of new highly-visible cultures of male and female homosexual and transgender minorities in Thailand has been much debated by the country’s academics, bureaucrats, medical professionals and politicians. Thailand does not criminalize homosexuality or transgenderism and there is no history of state surveillance or intervention in individuals’ private sexual lives to enforce conformity to dominant heterosexual norms. However, since the 1980s there has been considerable debate about the public representation of gender/sex minorities in the electronic media, with the controversy reaching a new peak in 1999 when then prime minister Chuan Leekpai unsuccessfully attempted to keep images of kathoey (male-to-female transgendered characters) out of the public domain. These changes took place against a background of a significant transition in Thailand. Politically, Thailand has moved from a militarycontrolled authoritarian regime of the early 1970s to the multi-party civilian democracy of the 1990s. This passage of time encompasses a long history of resistance to military dictatorship, the end of Cold-Warperiod justifications for state authoritarianism to counter communist “subversion”, and the economic ascendancy of the commercial and industrial middle classes since the Thai economic boom (1987–1997). They have all contributed to a progressive empowerment of the civil

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society sector and its growing success in media battles with the entrenched conservatism of Thai authorities. A superficial observation of the public imaging of gender/sex minorities in Thailand provides a study in dramatic contrasts. In Bangkok, pornographic male homosexual publications, videos and VCDs are sold openly, but illegally, in tourist areas such as Silom Road and Patpong, as well as in the city’s homosexual red-light districts such as Saphan Khwai. However, non-pornographic movies realistically representing homosexual and transgender lifestyles have at times been banned. This chapter will examine several much-publicised cases where films, television programmes and public events such as transgender beauty contests have been defined as “indecent” (lamok) or “pornographic” (po) and banned, or attempted to be banned. The above interventions contrast with instances of state sufferance (such as recent screening of Thai-language films about homosexuality) or even promotion (for example, Thai state agencies have harnessed the public’s fascination with transgenderism to promote national programs and policies). This chapter locates these paradoxes in the Thai state’s management of homosexual/transgender issues in the broader context of long-abiding cultural conventions, although the immediate political dynamics of the state–media relationship are also a relevant factor in the equation.

GAY, LESBIAN AND TRANSGENDER THAILAND Thailand today is home to a diverse range of publicly-visible minority gender/sex cultures. In Thai, masculine homosexual men are called “gay”, as in English, while male-to-female transgenders and transsexuals are called kathoey. Feminine homosexual women are called dee, from the second syllable of the English term “lady”, and their masculinedressing female partners are called tom, from “tom boy”. I have described elsewhere the cultural and socio-economic factors that have supported the development of a large commercial gay scene in Bangkok (Jackson 1989, 1995, 1997a). In previous research I have explained how the most intense sanctions against transgenderism and homoeroticism in Thailand operate at the level of discourse rather than of practice or the conduct of everyday life (Jackson 1997b). Thai transgender and homosexual people have not had to fight against anti-homosexual laws or religious doctrines. They are nevertheless marginalized by popular and formal

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discourses that stigmatize them as “perverted”, “disgusting”, “disgraceful”, and so on. Since the 1960s, gendered and eroticised identities have been objects of bureaucratic and academic anxiety in Thailand, with a considerable body of Thai language publications on the topic. In an earlier study I surveyed over 200 Thai language monographs, book chapters, postgraduate dissertations and journal articles on transgenderism and male and female homoeroticism published between 1956 and 1994 (Jackson 1997b). The majority of these publications problematized the new identities, and were biomedical and psychiatric attempts to “prevent”, “treat” or “cure” transgenderism and homoeroticism. There has also been an interest in quantitative studies of rates of homosexual experience, in part prompted by the HIV/Aids epidemic (Jackson 1999). The intensity of anti-transgender and anti-homosexual discourses within Thai schools, universities and the civil service, which seek to silence and make invisible gender/sex minorities, contrasts with the apparent liberality of attitudes experienced in everyday life. This state of affairs is comprehensible once we understand that dominant Thai discourses and cultural rules for the public imaging of transgenderism and homoeroticism are subject to more intense surveillance than heteronormative erotic practices, and that Thai educational and bureaucratic institutions are privileged sites for the production and reproduction of “acceptable” forms of public discourse. In Thailand, the most intense anti-transgender interventions have been in statecontrolled agencies and media, especially the state education sector and television. Thai television reflects state gender-ideology much more consistently than the press, and political concerns over gender issues are more often focussed on how images are presented on television. Private sector organizations are the ones that have most often challenged state-defined norms. The print media, which throughout the modern period have been in private hands, have more consistently challenged state norms of seeking to silence transgenderism and homosexuality. Even at times of intense authoritarian military governments marked by stringent political censorship, reporting of homosexuality and transgenderism in the Thai-language press has occurred without restriction. For this reason my historical research draws on the Thai language press as a key source. Debates about the public representation of gender/sex minorities have often been fought between conservative state agencies, on one side, and transgressive

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private sector organizations, on the other. Significantly, the gradual opening of public spaces for representing gender/sex minorities parallels the increasing marketization of Thai social, cultural and political life. Since the 1960s, the rising economic influence of private media interests have gradually provided these groups with sufficient power to resist successfully the established institutional power of the state.

CONTESTING THE PUBLIC/PRIVATE DIVIDE: THE THAI REGIME OF POSITIVE IMAGES A contrast needs to be made between the Thai state’s comparative lack of interest in press accounts of homosexuality and transgenderism, and the often intense anxiety that has surrounded the visual imaging of cross-dressing men in the nation’s television programmes. In the domains of gender and eroticism, the differential sensitivities of Thailand’s print and electronic media create a bifurcated cultural space. A relatively, but not fully, unregulated autonomy for the printed word (as well as for private homosexual and transgender behaviours) contrasts with a much more intensely policed domain of electronic images (as well as considerable anxiety around public expressions of transgenderism and same-sex eroticism). Within this differentiated space for the various media, Thai film and radio exist somewhere between the liberal domain of the press and the intensely monitored sphere of free-to-air and cable television broadcasting. This hierarchy of sensitivities reflects two historical factors. First, the printed word, especially in the Thai language, is culturally a less-sensitive communications medium than that of the televisual broadcasting of images; and, second, the Thai press has historically been in private hands, while Thai free-to-air television and radio began, and largely remain, state- and military-owned and controlled. Historically, both radio and television have been administered by arms of the civilian and military bureaucracies, which for most of the twentieth century ensured that the country’s free-to-air broadcast media reflected state policies. In contrast, since its inception in the nineteenth century the Thai press has operated within a market-based context of intense competition between a relatively large number of privately-owned daily newspapers and weekly news-magazines. The case studies considered in this chapter show that, with regard to gender and eroticism, a much-contested but none-the-less intensely

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monitored divide between the public and private domains of life exists in Thailand. With regard to gender, normative masculinity and femininity are allocated to the “morally proper” (somkhuan) public domain, while transgenderism and homosexuality are considered matters that should be kept private (suan-tua). Concerning eroticism, normative heterosexuality expressed within the bounds of marriage occupies privileged public spaces, while homosexuality and other non-marital forms of heterosexuality such as concubinage (mia noi) and prostitution (sopheni) are relegated to the private domain. This public/private divide is established by an intense regime of “face” (na) and “positive images” ( phap-phot), with Thai authorities being more concerned to use legal and other institutional means to enforce the public enactment and media representation of images of normative heterosexual masculinity and femininity, than with enforcing practical compliance with these norms in private. Thai notions of “face” and “positive image” are closely related, the difference between them being that while only human beings possess “face”, both people and institutions such as businesses, the police force, the monarchy and the Thai nation possess an image. Both “face” and image denote the construction (sang) of visual and discursive public representations that conform to cultural norms of appropriate, ethical, respectable behaviour. Public slips, mistakes or failures to conform to expected norms result in a “loss of face” (sia na) or a “damaged image” (sia phap-phot), both of which provoke intense anxiety, shame and at times anger and violence. Under the Thai regime of positive images, it is the transgression of the private/public divide — that is, when behaviours culturally labelled as private are wilfully or mistakenly exposed in public places or within public discourses — that incites the operation of Thai censorship laws. However, the use of institutional forms of power over gender and eroticism is limited to “reprivatizing” obscene behaviours or images — that is, expelling them from the public domain. Historically, Thai authorities have had no interest in using institutional forms of power to expunge non-normative forms of gender or eroticism from the social body. Once “improper” images or behaviours such as transgenderism and homosexuality have been reassigned to their “proper” private space, then they are left to their own devices. Historically, the divide between the private and the public has not been fixed, but has been highly context-dependent and has had two

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distinctive dimensions. One of these dimensions is local or internal to Thailand, while the other comes into play when Thai authorities believe that their society is open to international scrutiny, especially by Western (farang) observers. Under this double local/international definition of the private/public divide, images of eroticism that circulate publicly within the country without any interference when it is thought that they are accessible to Thai eyes only, may be suppressed if it is believed that they have been exposed to foreign gaze, such as by being reported by the Western press or media. This double set of understandings reflects a view that foreign ideas of obscenity differ from, and indeed are more prudish than, Thai understandings. In some cases, censorship laws may be applied to enforce what Thai authorities imagine foreign understandings of obscenity to be, rather than local Thai views of what constitutes obscenity. This dual form of the public/private divide reflects the impact of Western colonialist and neo-colonialist forces on the long-standing Thai preoccupation with “face” and constructing positive images. It is a concern for the reputation (cheu-siang) of the country within globally privileged discourses on civilization, modernity and development, particularly when the nation’s reputation is thought to be at risk of being damaged (sia) or destroyed (sia-hai). The split between Thailand’s regimes of print and visual representation, and the private/public split that dichotomizes Thai gender/sex culture, both reflect the country’s distinctive response to the threats posed by nineteenth century European and American imperialisms. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the country’s governing élites sought to avoid colonization by a national rebadging strategy that replaced negative Western representations of a “barbarous Siam” with positive images of a “civilized and modern Thailand”. In this regard, the impulse to keep image- or face-damaging issues in the private realm became strengthened. Similarly, visual representations, which are more accessible to foreigners than literary representations, came under stricter scrutiny. Thailand was the only Southeast Asian country not colonized by a Western power. However, the memory of the threat of being colonized has operated as a powerful force in Thai relations with the West. Thailand’s cultural engagement with the West is inflected by the memory of the need to preserve national autonomy in the face of British and French imperialisms, and to avoid the fate of the country’s colonized neighbours.

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WESTERN GENDER IDEOLOGY AND CHANGING THAI NOTIONS OF INDECENCY Chiang Mai University historian Nithi Aeusrivongse notes, “The idea of obscenity in any culture is related to the segmentation of life into the realms of ‘private’ and ‘public’. The exposure of whatever [should remain] in the realm of the ‘private’ in public is regarded as obscene” (Nithi 1990, p. 94). Nithi points out that Thai notions of obscenity changed dramatically after Western fashion was adopted in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In pre-modern (pre-1850) Thai culture, the public display of the sexual organs per se was rarely considered obscene. Rather, it was the expression of “sexual emotion” (arom thang-phet) in public that was considered obscene. Nithi traces the definition of the simple exposure or public representation of the naked body (especially the male genitals and the female breasts) as a legally punishable act, to the cultural changes of the past century. Nithi notes as an example Thai Buddhist temple murals dating from the period before the Westernisation of dress and erotic sensibilities, in which it was common for artists to include amongst religious paintings of the Lord Buddha “visual jokes”, such as images of people urinating and defecating, men and women engaging in erotic play, or having trouble keeping their sarongs on while at work, exposing their genitals to the amusement of smirking passersby. However, all visual representations of the genitals or sex play in Buddhist temples and other public spaces ceased in the second half of the nineteenth century, as Western notions of public modesty and propriety were adopted along with Western fashion. This change in Thai temple murals did not reflect any intervention or restriction upon private sexual practices. Rather, it resulted from the creation of a new notion of obscenity, that was derived from the nineteenth-century Western view that the human body was to be kept to the private domain and that public exposure was considered obscene. The modern Thai body — that is, the public enactment and fashioning of masculinity and femininity along Western lines — is now policed by Thai obscenity laws.

STATE GENDER/SEX CULTURE MANAGERS AND POPULAR RESISTANCE A complex range of state institutions is involved in monitoring the propriety of public images of Thai men’s and women’s bodies and

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representations of gender and eroticism. These institutions include the police, educational authorities and state-based medical and health professionals, as well as agencies tasked to promote Thai national and cultural identity, such as the Office of the National Culture Commission (ONCC) within the Office of the Prime Minister. In 1997, one of the ONCC’s English-language newsletters, designed for international distribution through embassies, emphasized the normative character of its work when it stated bluntly that, “all Thai citizens are responsible for protecting the national cultural heritage and to observe cultural norms. Therefore the ONCC has promoted and disseminated the national cultural development.”1 In the past few decades, the most significant transition in Thai press and media accounts of homosexuality and transgenderism has emerged from a contest over the definition of which kinds of behaviour are considered to be morally appropriate, and hence able to be represented in public discourses, and which are inappropriate and should be kept out of the media. Contention over the public/appropriate and private/ inappropriate divide has taken place between various sectors of the state bureaucracy, on the one hand, and media owners, journalists and members of the public, on the other hand. In broad terms, bureaucratic agencies of the Thai state have resisted any broadening of the definition of what is considered to be appropriate, public and hence reportable gender or erotic behaviour. In contrast, it has been a loose informal alliance of media owners, journalists and vocal concerned members of the public who have confronted and resisted state definitions. Since the 1970s, these latter diverse groups — all key sectors of Thailand’s emerging civil society (prachasangkhom) — have been increasingly successful in their battles with state authorities in expanding the domain of what the press and media may report. Indeed, while sections of the bureaucracy continue to resist the public representation of what they regard to be morally inappropriate gender or erotic behaviour, free discussion of these topics has become increasingly common in tandem with the rise of civil society. The cases cited below illustrate this trend. Over the past few decades (1970 to 2000) owners of film and television companies, individual transgendered and homosexual men and women, and print media journalists have all contested the definition of “proper public behaviour”. During this period, Thai authorities did not become any less interested in using their power to keep images of gender minorities out of the

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public domain. However, their interventions became progressively less successful. Indeed, in the late 1990s these interventions widely came to be seen as outdated relics of Thailand’s history of political authoritarianism. The new “people’s constitution” of 1997 has been invoked as providing Thai transgenders and homosexual men and women with a constitutional right to be publicly represented in the nation’s electronic media.2 Since the 1980s, Thailand’s civil society sector — including NGOs, public intellectuals, public-minded journalists and academics — grew in its influence. With that, popular resistance to state authoritarianism has gained increasing legitimacy. In the 1990s, elements within civil society also assumed increasingly real power in confrontations between a traditionalist bureaucracy and “the people” (prachachon).

STATE AGENCY CONCERNS ABOUT AN “EPIDEMIC OF HOMOSEXUALITY” Homosexuality and transgenderism in Thai society are widely considered to be outside the bounds of convention (nork rit nork roi), and in recent decades have often been understood as one of a range of perceived social problems considered to result from excessively materialist capitalist development. As one 1994 magazine article stated: In the twentieth century the problem of homosexuality has been endlessly debated and it appears it will in effect become socially accepted. … The roots of this problem lie in the failure of our family, educational and religious institutions, and it is exacerbated by the influences of a directionless, capitalist society.3 State interventions in the media and elsewhere in the past two decades reflect an ongoing programme to counter a perceived “epidemic of homosexuality” (rak-ruam-phet rabat) by disseminating information against leading a gay life. For example, in order to intercept (sakat-kan) the perceived increase in homosexuality amongst Thai youth, The Office of the National Committee for Promoting and Coordinating Youth Affairs (Samnak-ngan khanakammakan song-serm lae prasan-ngan yaowachon haeng chat) in 1987 organized a seminar entitled, “This [gay] Way of Life is to Suffer” (chiwit baep ni mi thuk). A Committee spokesman later told the press:

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In contemporary Thai society, sexually deviant behaviour amongst both youth and the general public becomes increasingly prevalent every day, both in educational institutions and the wider society. This behaviour is unnatural and provides a bad example to children and youths.4

BLAMING THE THAI MEDIA FOR HOMOSEXUALITY Attempts to restrict media representations of gender/sex minorities have taken place in the context of these anxieties about a perceived increase in rates of homosexuality. Academic and medical claims have been made about what has been claimed as the inordinately high rate of “gender/sex deviance” (biang-ben thang-phet) in the country (Wanlop 1988, p. 129; Prachan 1988, p. 37). The controversy coincided with commercial television’s growing fascination with kathoey characters, and led some commentators to link the two phenomena and claim that the electronic media were “to blame” for homosexuality in Thailand. In 1987, Siam Rath columnist Sujinda blamed openly-gay academic Dr Seri Wongmontha and the media in general for the claimed increase in homosexuality.5 Sujinda stated that one of the causes of being gay, transgender or lesbian (she used the colloquial expressions gay-tom-dee, phu-chai na ya, phu-ying na khrap), who she said were “flooding the country”, was wrong child-raising methods. She added that another reason so many homosexual people now dared to reveal themselves openly in public was because movies and television soap operas “incited” (yua-yu) youths to be gay. By being too open Sujinda claimed, gays, lesbians and kathoey may incite prejudice, whereas she felt they would be better off doing their jobs well and benefitting society without becoming news or public issues.6 The following year, a well-known psychologist, Dr Wanlop Piyamanotham, who ran a programme to “cure” homosexual men and women, called for kathoeys and gay men to be banned from soap operas and other television programmes (Prachan 1988, p. 38). What is noteworthy about Sujinda’s critique is that she did not call for an end to homosexuality, but rather to its public representation in the Thai media. This type of critique reflects the fact that in Thailand the private practice of same-sex eroticism is much less of an issue than its public imaging, and that state agencies are more concerned to contain non-normative eroticism within the private domain than to

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eradicate it. Wanlop’s clinic to “cure” homosexuality is the exception in Thailand rather than the rule, although Wanlop’s high media profile, often designed to promote his private clinic’s services, at times gives the mistaken impression of a wider medical intervention. Homosexuality is tolerated provided it remains invisible and silent, and only becomes obscene and subject to possible legal intervention when it becomes too visibly or too loudly public. Consensual homosexual activity has historically been seen as a private matter beyond the concern of the state and legal authorities. So despite anxieties about a perceived increase in rates of homosexuality, there is a reluctance on the part of state authorities to intervene in people’s private lives. The issue is more about how to regulate its media representation.

STATE SUPPRESSION OF THE IMAGING OF GENDER/SEX MINORITIES State and bureaucratic anxieties about the imaging of gender/sex minorities in the electronic media reached a climax in 1999, with an attempted prime ministerial ban on kathoey appearing in Thai television programmes. However, to understand this high-level intervention, as well as its complete failure to achieve the desired objective, we need to appreciate the considerable history of state attempts to control the public visibility of men and women who do not match gender norms, as well as to examine changing power relations within the Thai polity. This section summarizes several of the most-reported attempts by Thai state authorities to restrict the public imaging and representation of sexual and gender minorities. It then considers factors behind the most noticeable shifts in the form, as well as the declining success, of state interventions in the media.

1972: The Banning of the Miss Siam Kathoey Beauty Contest In November 1972, well-known Bangkok male-to-female transsexual and owner of the Rakchanok Beauty Salson, Yort Kathoey Rakchanok Na Chiangmai7, (also known as Rakchanok Khacha, male name Niran Sangkharerk) applied to compete in the state-sponsored Miss Thailand Contest, declaring that she was now a woman and that she wished to

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prove that an “artificial woman” (sao thiam) could be prettier than a “real woman” (sao jing). However, the contest organizing committee rejected the application on the grounds that the rules required that contestants should not be “individuals who cause social degeneration (seuam-sia)”.8 After being banned from the Miss Thailand contest, Rakchanok together with a group of Bangkok kathoey and supporters organized their own national-level beauty contest for a “second type of beauty queens” (sao ngam praphet sorng — that is, transgenders and transsexuals), as part of an already-planned Miss Siam Contest to be held on New Year’s Eve 1972 at an international trade fair in Bangkok’s Lumphini Park.9 The Miss Siam Contest organizers did not object.10 This appears to be the first time that a national level kathoey beauty contest had been organized, although local kathoey contests had been held in Bangkok and other provinces since at least the late 1950s. The 80 transvestites and 10 transsexuals who applied to compete in the “second type of beauty queen” section outnumbered the 58 “real women” applying for the mainstream section of the Miss Siam Contest. Thai Rath reported that this showed that the public was more interested in what it called the “Kathoey Siam” competition than in the “real” Miss Siam contest. The police refused approval for the event, saying it would have a deleterious effect on public morals. The chief of Lumphini Police Station said, “We’ve never had anything like this before. It’s immoral (phitsilatham) and so I won’t permit this contest.”11 The organizers then tried to salvage the situation by calling the event a kathoey fashion show, informing the press that, after discussions, the Police Department had agreed.12 However, on the night of the event 50 police raided the stadium, took all 100 contestants to the police station and fined them 20 baht (US$1) each for not carrying their identity cards, before releasing them. The ID pretext — the contestants could not be carrying them in their evening gowns — was used to close down the event without technically defining it as illegal.13 The police do not appear to have interfered with the staging of previous private or semi-public kathoey beauty contests in Bangkok, but they effectively banned the first national level contest, which was pre-advertized in the national press. In part, this was because of the event’s appropriation of the old name for the country, Siam. In other words, the event was seen as besmirching the international image of

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the country by being too explicitly provocative in associating the hallowed name of Siam with what many at the time saw as mere kathoey burlesque. In addition, the police intervened because the event was also seen as placing the kathoey beauty contest in direct competition with the officially sponsored Miss Thailand pageant at an international trade fair intended to promote Thai exports. Official attitudes to the staging of national and international kathoey beauty contests have relaxed considerably since 1972, however, with such events now being staged regularly and often broadcast live on national television.

1974: Banning of the Film The Male Prostitutes (phu-chai khai tua) After several decades of authoritarian military rule, in October 1973 a popular uprising in Bangkok led to the overthrow of the detested “tyrannical” (thorarat) regime of Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn, and to the installation of a democratic government. While the military returned to power in a violent coup in October 1976, the three-year democratic window from 1973 to 1976 saw a tremendous upsurge in unfettered creative expression in academia, literature and film. Issues that had not been able to be represented publicly under military rule became the focus of considerable public attention. In a 1996 review of Thai cinema in the culturally ebullient 1973–76 period, film historian Dome Sukwong noted: Thai movies made after October 1973 can be divided into two groups: those focussing on sex and violence and those with a strong political bias. We must remember that the creative endeavours of film-makers had been restricted and controlled [by the military] for so long that freedom was taken to the extreme. There were a lot of movies where crude language was used and which dwelt heavily on sex. The issue of bisexuality surfaced [in film] for the first time; it had never been talked about before.14 During this period, Thai films began to represent kathoey characters and some actors and television personalities also became publicly known as homosexual. Openly homosexual actor Therng (Yanyong) Satifeuang

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played the role of a cross-dressing kathoey in the 1974 film, Necklace of Love (soi sawat); and another film, The Saint’s Desire (tanha nak-bun), featured a passionate lesbian kiss between the two female leads, Aranya Phusit and Metta.15 Thai films increasingly challenged censorship laws in this period. Male nudity, and men being represented as sexual objects of female desire, also hit the news in the mid-1970s. In June 1974, the popular press exposed the fact that young male actors and university graduates were increasingly turning to sex work to earn a living. Thai Rath reported that one hundred Thai men, mostly lesser-known movie stars and support actors who “have high class characters and tastes”, were engaged in this occupation (achip), using a famous shopping arcade to meet customers.16 Customers were identified as being married women whose husbands could not satisfy their sexual needs, minor wives whose husbands could not spare time from their main family to see them often enough, lonely older women and widows, female foreign tourists, and a few local kathoey. Thai film-makers quickly capitalized on the public fascination with the press exposés and tested the limits of Thai censorship laws. In September 1974, the first Thai movie about male prostitution, Rented Husband (phua chao), was released.17 This film portrayed a rich woman who buys her live-in male lover. The expression “rented husband” was a playful neologism based on an existing idiom, “rented wife” (mia chao), which described the live-in Thai female partners of US servicemen posted to Thailand during the Vietnam War period. However, much more controversial was the competitor film, The Male Prostitutes (phu-chai khai tua). This film created a storm, not for what it actually portrayed but for the blatant lewdness of the pre-release advertising. The Male Prostitutes and Rented Husband were scheduled to be released at much the same time and were competing for audiences. The billboard advertising for The Male Prostitutes was much more risqué and incited the greatest reaction. Forty-foot tall billboards of the two naked actors, Krung and Dam, their genitals covered by signs labelled “sex” in English, were installed around Bangkok, including on the main road into the city from Don Muang International Airport immediately next to a sign in English proclaiming: “Welcome to Bangkok”. These large billboards challenged norms of the public exposure of the male body and quickly became the talk of the town, being colloquially dubbed “the two nude buddies” (sorng kler kae pha).18 After a public

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outcry, the director-general of police ordered an investigation, labelling the billboards “horrifying” (sayorng). On 12 October 1974, the day that the film was scheduled to be released in Bangkok cinemas, the police issued a banning order saying that it was “against the good morals of the general public and this occupation [male sex work] is not found in Thailand”.19 In this case it was the sensational poster advertisements for the movie, rather than the content of the film itself, that incited the banning order. At any point in time, the line which separates public from private — and hence the definition of indecency — is not constant in Thailand; it moves depending on the context. Of itself, a movie portraying male sex work screened in public cinemas was not considered obscene; the film Rented Husband was released with no intervention. However, when advertising for “The Male Prostitutes” blatantly challenged norms regarding the exposure of the male body, and especially when the transgression of these norms was made known to foreigners arriving at Bangkok’s international airport, and hence was perceived to impact negatively on the international reputation and image of Thailand, then the entire enterprise of the film was redefined as obscene and subjected to legal intervention.20 Legal interventions, such as the banning of The Male Prostitutes, are often linked with a discourse of denial. Despite evidence to the contrary, public figures commonly feel bound to declare that a banned or illegal practice simply does not exist in Thailand, or that it is found only among “perverted” foreign visitors. The above-noted police denial of the existence of male sex workers in Thailand, despite months of press exposés revealing the extent of the profession, is an example of officials denying unpleasant truths about Thailand and reflects their concern to monitor representations that do not present the country in a positive light. Such denials should not be interpreted as literal denials of fact, for the facts have already “escaped” into the public domain and circulate widely. Rather, they need to be seen as attempts to expel an offending fact from the domain of public discourse and to relocate it to the less problematic private domain. Such denials represent a use of state authority to signal an official silencing: that henceforth such a thing should not be discussed in public. Its actual practice may often continue unaffected in private spaces, but forthwith it is to be discussed only as a whispered rumour, not as a publicly proclaimed statement of fact.

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1997: The Ratchabhat Institutes Ban on “Gender/Sex Deviant” Students In late December 1996, the Rajabhat Institutes Council, the governing body for Thailand’s 36 teacher-training colleges, decreed that “gender/ sex deviant” (biang-ben thang-phet) and “wrong-gendered” (phit-phet) students would henceforth be barred from enrolling in teacher training courses.21 This ban appears to have been on the books for a number of years, but was first given public prominence in the aftermath of a much-publicised murder. In December 1996, a male student from Chiang Mai University, identified by the press as a kathoey, murdered and dismembered the body of a female student, identified as a tom, in an argument over an outstanding loan. This violent and gruesome murder was used as one of the justifications for the ban on “wrong-gendered” students enrolling in teacher training courses.22 As the Bangkok Post reported, the Council of the Rajabhat Institutes decided to: … bar homosexuals from enrolling in 36 colleges nationwide for fear they will set a bad example to students who go on to teach. Charoon Chularp, Secretary-General of the Council, said the measure would be enforced for three years then reviewed if it caused conflicts. … Pholsan Phosrithong, Director of the In-service Training Division, said the idea behind the measure was that homosexuals tend to have a very short temper.23 The ban quickly became a focus of intense public debate, with critics claiming that it violated the right of academically-qualified students to receive an education. The highly contested nature of the ban, which does not appear to have been strictly enforced, revealed contradictions between academic antipathy to gender/sex minorities and more liberal sectors of Thai society, notably elements of the press, opposition political parties, human rights groups and some social commentators, all of whom vehemently attacked the ordinance. Seri Wongmontha, himself a victim of anti-homosexual bias in academia a decade previously (see endnote 5) spoke out against the ban.24 Some educators also disagreed with the ban. Rung Kaeodaeng, secretary-general of the National Education Commission, said: Children will suffer if gays are banned from Rajabhat Institute campuses … Youngsters should not be shielded from homosexual

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teachers because they need to learn that society takes in people of different preferences. … The more children are shut away from reality, the more damage it would cause.25 The two newspapers, the Bangkok Post and The Nation, generated publicity that was critical of the ban.26 The Ratchabhat Institutes Students Federation called on the Education Ministry to review the ban because it violated “basic human rights”.27 In Parliament, the Committee on Justice and Human Rights also branded the ban a violation of basic rights.28 However, despite the wave of criticism, Education Minister Sukavich Rangsitpol insisted that he would not lift the ban, which he pointed out had been on the books since the Institute had been established three years previously, although it had not been acted upon. In support the ban he said, “Homosexuals are no different to drug addicts who need treatment. … I do not want these people to be role models for children.”29 It is not clear whether the ban was ever enforced, or whether any student was denied entry to the Ratchabhat Institutes’ teacher-training programs on the basis of their gender or sexual status. However, the ordinance against “gender/sex deviant” students was lifted in August 1997, after a cabinet reshuffle led to Sukavich being replaced as education minister by fellow New Aspiration Party member and political rival, Chingchai Mongkhontham. The Thai bureaucracy and political system are riven by competing interests, with individual administrators and politicians often taking widely differing positions on public issues. The education minister who rescinded the Ratchabhat Institutes ban on kathoey students was from the same political party as the minister who initially issued the ban. This shows the considerable disagreement amongst those with institutional and political authority in Thailand about whether to control or suppress the public representation of gender/sex minorities. In some cases, such as the attempt to ban transgender students from teacher training colleges, the repressive use of institutional power against gender/ sex minorities was part of a wider power play amongst competing political figures that may have been unrelated to the issues of homosexuality or cross-dressing as such. In contrast to the English-language press’s usage of “gay ban”, the Thai-language press used a variety of expressions to report the Ratchabhat Institutes ban on transgender students, all of which emphasized the ordinance’s primary focus on gender deviance. The following banner headlines provide examples:

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“Sukavich Opposes Tut-tom Studying to be Teachers, Clearly Specifies They Are Ill” (Sukavich Dot Khwang Tut-tom Rian Khru Rabu Chat Khon Puay), Matichon, 23 Jan 1997, pp. 1, 23. “Ban Gays-tuts From Studying to be Teachers” (Ham Gay-tut Rian Khru), Daily News, 24 Jan 1997, p. 1. “Opposition to Ban on Toms-Tuts Being Teachers” (Khan Ham Tomtut Pen Khru), Thai Rath, 25 Jan 1997, pp. 1, 23. The above Matichon and Thai Rath items noted that both masculinedressing female (tom) and feminine-dressing male (tut, a derogatory slang expression for kathoey) students were the focus of the ban. An English-language report in The Nation also makes it clear that the education minister who attempted to enforce the ban was not concerned about homosexual students who “do not make their preferences known”: Education Minister Sukhavich Rangsitphol stood his ground yesterday in defending his ban on homosexuals …. saying that the move is directed against overt gays. ‘I prefer calling them kathoey, but there is no offence meant. And those who don’t make their preferences public should not have problems with the ban’ … he said.30 Same-sex eroticism was not at the centre of the Ratchabhat Institutes ban, although its discursive linking with transgenderism, as implied in the Thai usage of “gay” and the common confusion of transgenderism with homosexuality, did suggest that it was also at issue. Thai-language reports indicate that the overwhelming force of the ban was to try to ensure that male teachers dressed, behaved, spoke and in all other ways enacted normative masculinity in Thai classrooms. The private sexual lives of teachers was not at issue during the dispute, and it is therefore a mistake to see it as a blanket ban “against homosexuality” (Morris 1997, p. 60). This is not to argue that Thailand is in fact more “liberal” than the West with regard to the treatment of gender/sex minorities, but rather that the forms of power which seek to enforce gender/sex norms, as well as the domains of life over which that power operates, are systematically different in the two cultures.

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More and More Kathoey on Thai Television The greatest concern about the public representation of gender/sex minorities has centred on the appearance of kathoey characters in soap operas, game shows and other television programmes. These anxieties reached a peak in 1999 with an intervention by then prime minister Chuan Leekpai to attempt to force television stations to ban kathoey characters from their programming. This ultimately unsuccessful move marked the culmination of several trends and transitions over the previous decades: 1. Since the 1970s, medical and educational authorities had been concerned about a perceived increase in rates of homosexual and transgendered behaviour, and debate had raged for some time about how to stem this supposed increase 2. Kathoey and tom characters had become increasingly common on Thai television since 1980 3. Calls to ban kathoey from television had been increasing in both frequency and volume for several years before the 1999 attempted ban. In the 1980s and 1990s, public debate centred on whether visual images of kathoey should appear on Thailand’s television screens. However, a couple of decades earlier in the 1960s, even mentioning the word “kathoey” on television was a transgressive act that incited criticism. In the 1960s, Sut Saengwichian MD, a medical researcher who was one of the first Thai clinicians to undertake academic studies of intersex and transgender kathoey, made a number of attempts to educate what he regarded to be an ill-informed Thai public about the nature of gender/ sex difference. At this time, the term “kathoey” was a highly charged expression, and Sut reports that, when I was invited to speak on television [about gender/sex minorities], the program compere misunderstood that I was going to speak about transvestism [lakkaphet] when in fact I was going to talk about hermaphrodites [kathoey]. The program’s senior producer came and censored what I could talk about in the following half hour. (Sut 1967, p. 2).

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Sut observed that even with this censorship, after the program was broadcast, I was criticised considerably in the pages of the press. They complained that I was too direct in my use of words and might make young women feel embarrassed in front of their [television] receivers. … We Thais are ashamed about things that should not cause embarrassment, but we are not ashamed at all about things that should cause embarrassment. (Sut 1967, p. 2) As examples, he cited the fact that many women were too ashamed to have gynecological examinations, often leading to unnecessary health problems, while Thai people felt no shame praying to phallic Shivalingams at monsteries or shrines to seek supernatural help in choosing lucky lottery numbers. The brief democratic period of 1973–76, which also saw a creative cultural efflorescence throughout Thai society and the first cinematic representations of homosexuality, came to a sudden end in October 1976 with a violent and bloody military crackdown. The years immediately following this right-wing coup also saw morally controversial issues, such as same-sex desire, briefly excluded from film and television. However, in 1980 General Prem Tinsulanonda, former head of the Royal Thai Army as well as supreme commander of the Thai armed forces, became the military-appointed prime minister and began an eight-year rule marked by a gradual relaxation of the political and cultural controls imposed by his military predecessors. As Cold War tensions eased with Thailand’s communist neighbours Laos and Cambodia, and glasnost became the buzz-word in US–Soviet relations, Thailand followed a more open foreign policy and gradually extended cultural and intellectual freedoms at home. By the middle of the 1980s, economic growth and rising educational levels had seen a rapid expansion in the internationally aware and independentlyminded commercial middle classes. In this context of lessening Cold War political tensions and rising affluence and educational levels in Thailand’s major cities, the press and media became increasingly independent of state controls. From the 1980s, ratings rather than state policies increasingly determined what was screened on Thai television, reflecting the rise of a market-oriented approach to supply broadcast programming that fascinated viewers and attracted

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advertising revenue, rather than that which matched the policies of culture-manager bureaucrats. In the more marketized popular approach to broadcasting under Prime Minister General Prem Tinsulanonda’s government (1980–1988) kathoey and effeminate gay characters became increasingly common in Thai television soap operas (lakhorn TV). These characters were extremely popular with viewers, so much so that in late 1980, openly gay beautician and part-time journalist Pan Bunnak wrote: Gays fascinate people in the local community. It seems that every television soap opera has to have a gay story line: “The Flat Residents” (Prachachon chao flaet), “The Human Jungle” (Dong manut), “Troubled Mind” (Jit mai wang) and many more …31 Writing towards the end of the 1980s, journalist Korn Korakot observed that comical kathoey characters were often added to Thai soap operas to “add flavour” (pherm rot-chat).32 The popularity of kathoey characters continued to grow in the 1990s — so much so that by 1997, kathoey characters had become so common on Thai television that the Bangkok Post described this as one of the most notable cultural phenomena of the year.33

1999: Prime Ministerial Attempt to Ban Kathoey from Television In May 1999, almost two decades of gradually increasing public concern about the propriety of televising images of kathoey reached a climax when, “television programs featuring frivolous shows of transvestites and transsexuals” faced a government clampdown, after then prime minister Chuan Leekpai received a wave of complaints through his Internet homepage.34 As The Nation reported: The Public Relations Department circulated a directive to all television stations on April 27, asking for their ‘cooperation’ not to screen shows featuring transvestites and transsexuals ‘to prevent innocent youngsters from imitating unfavourable examples.’ The directive said the policy was introduced after members of the public had filed complaints with the Prime Minister via his Internet home page against ‘television shows that promote sexual abnormalities’.35

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As in the case of the Ratchabhat Institutes ban, the objects of the attempted television ban were in fact cross-dressing kathoey, not gendernormative gay men. The prime ministerial intervention led to considerable debate. The director of programming at army-run Channel 5, Colonel Amnuay Thonsuchote, stated that subsequently his television station would vet scripts to limit appearances by kathoey. Prasanmit University academic psychologist, Dr Wanlop Piyamanotham, now described as “an antihomosexuality activist”, once again entered the public fray, asserting that sexually perverted people had received too much media attention and that children could get a false impression and imitate them.36 Two gay activists, on their part, opposed the policy, arguing that the problem was not that kathoey were on television, but that the medium was not portraying them positively.37 Another threatened to organize a petition against the media clampdown.38 Overall, the Thai press took a dim view of the attempted television ban. Journalists working for the Bangkok Post collectively intervened with a jointly written item entitled, “Get Real!” in the paper’s “Outlook section”, which opened with the statement: [W]hen ‘Outlook’ asked a number of television producers, academics and television watchers their opinions, most thought the directive was misguided and missed the point. The general agreement was that kids do not suddenly decide to be gay after watching ‘katoeys’ on television, that the government should lay off such censorial and discriminatory comments and that programme makers should act more responsibly in their portrayal of gay people.39 The issue incited debate over Article 40 of the new 1997 national constitution. This Article stipulates that broadcast frequencies are “public properties and should be allocated by an independent body to serve the public interest.”40 The prime ministerial intervention was represented widely as an autocratic and undemocratic exercise of power that violated the constitutional authority of an independent media-monitoring body. In the face of the widespread criticism, the government back-tracked and did not implement the announced ban. Prime minister’s office minister, Suphatra Masdit, attempted to calm public outrage by claiming that there had been “some misunderstanding” on the issue. A month

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after the announcement of the ban, she stated that, “the Public Relations Department (PRD) had not totally banned transsexual figures from television shows, but wanted them moderated.”41 After it became clear that television stations would in fact continue to be free to broadcast images of kathoey, public debate turned from the issue of whether kathoey should be represented on television at all to how gender and sexual minorities should be represented in the media. Discussion then concentrated on the perceived need for greater balance, diversity and representativeness in Thai television’s imaging of homosexual and transgender people.

NON-INTERVENTION IN THE PUBLIC IMAGING OF GENDER/SEX MINORITIES The previous sections have highlighted instances of censorship of public representations of eroticism and of gender/sex difference considered obscene or morally offensive. This section examines contrasting cases from film and live theatre which, while apparently similar in content to banned representations, have not incited any official attempt to restrict their public circulation. Looking at when and why apparently similar representations are either banned or tolerated provides a clearer understanding of how state power is exercized over the media in Thailand.

Thailand’s First Gay Movies In the 1980s, the benevolent authoritarianism of military-appointed Prime Minister General Prem Tinsulanonda saw a gradual cultural relaxation. This included a return to homosexual themes in film first explored in the 1973–76 period. A series of highly popular films in the second half of the 1980s brought homosexual lifestyles to the big screen, but unlike the boom in kathoey characters on television at the same time, this did not incite any calls for banning or restriction. The 1985 film, The Final Song (Phleng sut-thai) has been described by the Bangkok Post as Thailand’s “first full-length gay movie”, which “caused a sensation” when it was released.42 The story is about a country boy who comes to the city to make good and starts an ill-starred relationship with a male transvestite revue performer. When the boy leaves the transvestite for a “real woman”, the jilted kathoey lover

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commits suicide on stage at the end of one of his evening performances. The Final Song was selected as one of the top 10 movies at the 1987 Canadian International Film Festival, and was also an entry at the 1987 Asian Filmfest held in Taiwan. In Thailand, the film was very popular. Two years later, a sequel was made, of which the Bangkok Post said, “For two hours you don’t see a single heterosexual man or woman on screen …”43 Despite concerns about the representation of kathoey on television, there have been no parallel moves to restrict the representation of gender/sex minorities in general release Thai-language films such as The Final Song, Tortured Love, But Darling, I’m a Man (1987, see below) or more recent hit films such as Iron Ladies (Satri lek, 2000), which represented in fictionalized form the real-life sporting success of a team of kathoey and gay volley players in Thailand’s 1996 national games. Similarly, there have been no attempts to ban gay- or kathoey-themed stage plays in Bangkok. Since the second half of the 1980s, live theatre in Bangkok has increasingly portrayed gay and transgender themes in a sympathetic light. The only restriction placed upon these dramatic performances, which are often attended by groups of senior high school students, is that children under 18 years of age must be in the company of an adult. It is therefore important not to see the attempts to suppress public representations of transgenderism discussed in the previous sections as representing a general policy of the Thai authorities. Indeed, overall the Thai state and bureaucracy are just as likely to use the public fascination with transgenderism to promote their policies as they are to seek to suppress these images. This reflects the high level of debate over where to draw the line between appropriate public and inappropriate private behaviours, as well as the individualism that operates within the Thai bureaucracy on issues of gender and sexuality.

State Agencies’ Use of Gender/Sex Minorities While some agencies have sought to suppress public representations of transgenderism, other arms of the state have seen gender and sexual minorities as humorous and harmless, employing them to attract public attention and harness the public’s fascination with effeminacy — and especially with men in frocks — to support government programs. For example, in 1982, the Public Relations Department of the Ministry of the Interior invited Dr Seri Wongmontha to participate in a “teasing

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debate” (saeo wathi) on the topic of safety in the workplace. A “teasing debate” is a humorous public forum on a serious topic, a highly popular form of public speaking widely used by government agencies to promote public awareness on social issues. Executives from Royal Thai Army-run television station, Channel 5, who were in the audience for Seri’s safety first presentation, were so impressed with his entertaining publicspeaking skills that they gave him his own weekly television chat show on current affairs, appropriately called “Teasing Debate” (saeo wathi).44 A decade and a half later in May 1997, at a time when the Ratchabhat Institutes ban on transgender students was still in force, Channel 5 broadcast a Saturday evening sitcom called “Wandering Tour” (talorn tour). In this series, a number of pop singers who had recording contracts with Grammy Entertainment Pty. Ltd., one of Thailand’s largest pop music promoters, played a variety of roles, with the storyline revolving around a tour agency run by a couple who have a tom driver whose gay brother also works for the company as a tour guide. The Nation reported, “The concept began when the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) joined hands with Grammy [Entertainment Pty. Ltd.] to promote tourism in Thailand.”45 Here a government agency, the Tourism Authority of Thailand, included tom and gay characters in a sitcom designed to attract a local audience and promote domestic tourism. In the 1990s officials from the Tourism Authority of Thailand, as well as representatives from local government administrations, also regularly appeared as judges in publicly broadcast kathoey beauty contests staged by popular transvestite revues, such as Pattaya’s Alcazar. Despite some Thai educators’ concerns about the possibly deleterious impact of kathoey role models on Thai children, humorous transvestite characters have also been used in government-sponsored educational presentations. In 1997, a popular male comedian with the stage name of Kluay Chernyim (“A banana inviting you to smile”) appeared in a television advertisement sponsored by environmental departments in the role of a granny teaching her grandchildren about the dangers of CFCs and aerosol pollution.46 Seri Wongmontha’s public speaking and repartee skills are widely admired in Thailand, and have contributed to the common belief that gays and kathoey are clever (keng) and smart (chalat), being especially gifted in the cultural and aesthetic domains. It is for these reputed skills that government agencies often call upon gay men and transgenders to help them reach the public with various official messages. However,

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other sections of the bureaucracy fear that gays’ reputedly persuasive verbal and aesthetic talents may be used “to promote their cause” and to convince impressionable young people to “convert” to homosexuality or engage in cross-dressing. Interventions to limit the circulation of images of kathoey represent attempts to keep effeminate-looking men out of the public domain, so that their imagined “seductive” skills of persuasion do not lead young people off the straight and narrow path of gender normative heterosexuality.

CONCLUSION: TRANSITIONS IN STATE–MEDIA RELATIONS The lack of a fully consistent or uniform state policy towards media representations of homosexuality and transgenderism does not mean that there are no patterns or regularities in the ways that the Thai bureaucracy and politicians have responded to these issues in recent decades. As shown above, it is images or public representations of transgenderism that are likely to be restricted, not same-sex eroticism per se. Furthermore, attempts are only likely to be made to restrict the public circulation of representations of gender/sex minorities when influential individuals in the national parliament or the bureaucracy believe that the ill-defined and much-contested line separating appropriate public behaviour from inappropriate private activities has been crossed. The fact that some state agencies have openly engaged gay men and kathoey to promote their policies to the general public at precisely the same time that other agencies have sought to limit the public role of such figures, attests to the high degree of debate about precisely where the line separating the public from the private should be drawn in the domains of gender and eroticism. This disagreement demonstrates the difficulty of instituting and enforcing a single, universal definition of where to draw the divide between the public and the private in a rapidly democratizing and economically dynamic society such as Thailand. Gay and kathoey issues were just as hotly contested in Thailand in the 1990s as they had been during the country’s three-year democratic experiment in the 1970s, when issues of homosexuality and transgenderism began to be represented to a mass national audience. If anything, the 1990s saw more state-originated attempts to restrict the public representation of gays and kathoey than during the 1970s.

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However, what distinguished these two decades was the success of bureaucratic attempts to restrict representations of gender/sex minorities in the 1970s, compared with the almost complete failure of attempts to muzzle the media on these issues in the 1990s. In the past three decades, the key transition in Thai state–media relations has not been in any lessening of bureaucratic attempts to control public discourses to match state policies and objectives. Rather, it has been in the increasing inability of the Thai state to force the media to follow its directives. The declining effectiveness of bureaucratic controls over the media reflects broader processes of political democratization and the economic empowerment of groups outside the state. This transition in state– media relations demonstrates the declining real power of the Thai bureaucracy in the face of emerging groups such as media entrepreneurs, activist-journalists and public intellectuals. These latter groups within civil society now have sufficient authority to directly engage the state on issues such as where the line between the public and the private spheres of life should be drawn, and hence what can and cannot be represented in the country’s media.

NOTES 1

2 3

4

5

Thai Cultural Newsletter 12, no. 2, External Cultural Relations Division, Office of the National Culture Commission, Bangkok (March 1997). In this issue, an item illustrates the ONCC’s cultural authority. It banned a song by a well-known Thai singer Joey Boy for “unpolite (sic) words”. A new civilian-drafted constitution came into effect in 1997 after a military attempt to seize power in 1992 was foiled by a people-power revolution. Chutima Sunjarern, “Male prostitution, a social disaster” [phu-chai khai tua wibat khorng sangkhom], Krung-thep Thurakit, Jut-prakai Section, 20 July 1994, pp. 1–2. “Dr Seri Admits that Gay Life has Suffering, but Dreams of Being Government Spokesman” [Dr Seri Yorm-rap Chiwit Gay Mi Thuk, Tae Fan Yak Pen Khosok Ratthaban], Siam Rath, 20 July 1987, p. 11. Dr Seri Wongmontha, flamboyant former Dean of Thammasat University’s Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communications, is perhaps Thailand’s best-known openly gay man, and he has long taken an activist gay rights position in his public statements. Seri’s activities since the mid-1980s have significantly raised the public visibility of gays and kathoey; after his diverse and prolific forays into theatre, radio, film and television, homosexuality could no longer be ignored as a public issue in Thailand. In 1987, under

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6 7

8

9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16

17

18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25

pressure from a conservative academic establishment, he was forced to resign from his academic position. Sujinda, “I’m a Woman, Dear: Stop Right There Dr Seri” [Phu-ying Na Kha: Yut Korn Dr Seri], Siam Rath, 21 July 1987, p. 11. “Yort kathoey” is a 1970s journalese title for a beautiful kathoey who could pass successfully for a beautiful woman. Yort kathoey means “the acme of kathoey”, implying that there are also less-beautiful kathoey. “Kathoey Fails [in attempt] to Compete in Miss Thailand [contest], Committee Says Hold Your Own Contest” [Kathoey Chuat Ching NS. Thai, kk. Hai Prakuat Kan Eng], Thai Rath, 11 Nov 1972, p. 1. “Farang Kathoey Competes, Hundreds Apply for Miss Second Type” [Kathoey Farang Prakuat, ns. Praphet 2 Samak Ruam Roi], Thai Rath, 21 Dec 1972, p. 1. “Late News” [Khao Sut Thai], Thai Rath, 25 Dec 1972, p. 16 “Thai Kathoey Beauty Queen Contest Banned” [Ham Prakuat Yort Kathoey Thai], Thai Rath, 26 Dec 1972, p. 1. Ibid. “Rebecca Accepts Three Thai Men, Kathoey Contest in Disarray, Police Preemptively Arrest and Fine All” [Rebecca Rap 3 Num Thai Prakuat Kathoey Wun tr. Sakat Jap Prap Ranao], Thai Rath, 2 Jan 1973, pp. 1–2. Anchalee Chaiworaporn, “Focus: Politics in Motion”, The Nation, 25 Oct 1996, pp. C1–C2. Photo on the features page of Thai Rath, 23 Oct 1974, p. 13. “Den of Men who Sell Themselves Exposed, Well-built Stars and Overseas Graduates ‘Service’ Wild-mooded Women” [Phoey Laeng ‘Phu-chai Khai Tua’, Mi Dara nr. Nork ‘Hun Di’ ‘Borikan’ Phu-ying Arom Pliao], Thai Rath, 17 June 1974, pp. 1–2. Thai Rath, 3 Sept 1974, p. 12. This film was produced by Adul Green, scripted by Raphiphorn, and starred Sombat and Aranya Phusit in the male and female leads, respectively. “Pornorgaphic Pictures, ‘The Male Prostitutes’ ” [Phap Po Phu-chai Khai Tua], Thai Rath, 9 Oct 1974, pp. 13–14. “Movie ‘The Male Prostitutes’ Banned, Immorality Cited”, [Baen Nang ‘Phuchai Khai Tua’ Ang Khat Silatham], Thai Rath, 12 Oct 1974, pp. 13–14. The producer of The Male Prostitutes appealed the ban, but two weeks later the production company rescinded the appeal. It reshot some scenes and released the film under the non-provocative title, Men [phu-chai]. Bangkok Post, 26 Dec 1996, p. 2. “Caught: Kathoey Who Sliced Up Body of Female Student” [Jap Kathoey Han Sop n.r. Sao], Daily News, 21 Dec 1996, pp. 1, 18. “Seri Critical of Gay Ban at Colleges, Rajabhat Institute Decision Under Fire”, Bangkok Post, 26 Dec 1996, p. 2. Ibid. “Education: Children Will Suffer from Rajabhat Ban, Youngsters ‘Need to

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27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

229

be Exposed to Reality’ ”, Bangkok Post (Internet edition), 23 Jan 1997 . Sanitsuda Ekachai, “Commentary: Not a Very Nice Move”, Bangkok Post, 2 Jan 1997, p. 6; and “Editorial: Discrimination Against Gays Must be Condemned”, The Nation (Internet edition), 24 Jan 1997 . “Students to Fight Ban on Homosexuals”, Bangkok Post (Internet edition), 12 Feb 1997. “Education: Children Will Suffer from Rajabhat Ban, Youngsters ‘Need to be Exposed to Reality’ ”, Bangkok Post (Internet edition), 23 Jan 1997. Ibid. “Sukhavich Unwavering in Stance Against Gays”, The Nation (Internet edition), 24 Jan 1997. Cha-ngon 3, no. 107, 17 Nov 1980 (Buddhist Era CBE 32523). Korn Korakot, “Male Stars and Gay Roles” [Dara Chai Kap Bot-bat Gay], Neon, 27, Nov 1987, pp. 112–113. “Outlook: 1997: How Was It For You?”, Bangkok Post (Internet edition), 25 Dec 1997. “Gay Entertainers Under Attack”, The Nation (Internet edition), 19 May 1999. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Anan Paengnoy, “Gays Organise Petition Over Govt’s TV Ban”, The Nation (Internet edition), 19 May 1999. “Outlook Reporters”, “Get Real!”, Bangkok Post (Internet edition), 29 May 1999. Anan Paengnoy, op. cit. Ibid. Poon Choke, “Gay World According to Pisan Akaraserani”, Bangkok Post, 7 Dec 1987, p. 36. Poon Choke, “Review: Revenge of the Gay Brothers and Sisters”, Bangkok Post, 21 Dec 1987, p. 40. Ek Phrommalat, “The Stage of Life” [Wethi Haeng Chiwit], Ban Meuang (daily), 5 Mar 1988, p. 15. “Focus: ‘Talon Tour’ Off Road as Casualty of Ratings War”, The Nation (Internet edition), 14 May 1997. Alongkorn Parivudhiphongs, “Television: The Katoey Connection”, Bangkok Post (Internet edition), 13 Mar 1997, Outlook Section.

REFERENCES Jackson, Peter A. 1989. Male Homosexuality in Thailand: An Interpretation of Contemporary Thai Sources. New York: Global Academic Publishers.

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230 Peter A. Jackson . 1995. Dear Uncle Go: Male Homosexuality in Thailand. Bangkok: Bua Luang Books. . 1997a. “Kathoey < > Gay < > Man, The Historical Emergence of Gay Male Identity in Thailand”, in Sites of Desire/Economies of Pleasure, Sexualities in Asia and the Pacific, edited by Lenore Manderson & Margaret Jolly, pp. 166–90. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. . 1997b. “Thai Research on Male Homosexuality and Transgenderism and the Cultural Limits of Foucaultian Analysis”. Journal of the History of Sexuality 8, no. 1: 52–85. . 1999. “Same-sex Sexual Experience in Thailand”, in Lady Boys, Tom Boys, Rent Boys: Male and Female Homosexualities in Contemporary Thailand, edited by Peter A. Jackson & Gerard Sullivan, pp. 29–60. New York: Haworth. Morris, Rosalind. 1997. “Educating Desire: Thailand, Transnationalism and Transgression”. Social Text 52/53 15, nos 3 & 4 (Fall/Winter): 53–79. Nithi Aeusrivongse. 1990 (BE 2533). “Obscenity, the Thai Way: About Pornography and Nakedness” [Reuang Po Po Pleuay Pleuay]. Silapawatthanatham (Art and Culture Magazine) 11, no. 5 (March): 94–105. Prachan Wanliko. 1988 (BE 2531). “Sexually Deviant Behaviour: Thailand has Among the Most in the World” [Phreutikam Biang-ben Thang-phet: Thai Tit Andap Lok]. Nittayasan Kan-tha-reua 35, no. 365 ( June): 37–40. Sut Saengwichian. 1967 (BE 2510). Some Information about Kathoey [Khwam-ru Bang Prakan Kiao-kap Kathoey]. Bangkok: Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine and Siriraj Nursing, The Medical University. Wanlop Tangkhananurak (Khru Yui). 1988 (BE 2531). “Wrong-gendered Children” [dek phit-phet] in Thai Society’s Forgotten Children [Dek Thi Thuk Leum Nai Sangkhom Thai], pp. 128–34. Bangkok: Mulanithi Sangsan Dek.

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Reproduced from Media Fortunes, Changing Times: ASEAN States in Transition, edited by Russell Hiang-Khng Heng (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available from < http://www.iseas.edu.sg/pub.html >

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10 Vietnamese Media in Transition: The Boon, Curse and Controversy of Market Economics Tran Huu Phuc Tien

INTRODUCTION In keeping with the country’s socialist political system, Vietnam has a media system which is state-owned and funded. However, beginning in the early 1980s, a wave of market reforms brought about significant changes to the economy in general, and the media in particular. This signalled the beginning of a new policy to stop subsidizing the economy and let market forces take over. Within this new economic orientation, media organizations, like business enterprises, had to learn how to operate without the usual financial handouts. In line with its reduced largesse, the state also eased its control of the economy, thereby allowing media organizations to experiment with new ideas and increase their popularity with consumers. Adjusting to market reforms was, therefore, both a matter of necessity and opportunity. Some of the changes in the media are easily evident, for example the increase in the number of publications. But besides these obvious changes, there remain a few outstanding questions about the Vietnamese media which do not have clear answers yet. An examination of these issues therefore provides an understanding of how far advanced the media is in the transition to a market model.

ADVENT OF MARKET FORCES1 In 1986, the VCP (Vietnam Communist Party) formally endorsed doi moi, a reforms programme that began the country’s transition from a 231

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centrally-planned to a market economy. One fundamental change that came about was the phasing out of state subsidies for most sectors of the state-owned and state-run economy, including the media.2 Before doi moi, the state provided all media organizations with their operating expenses such as office space, equipment, newsprint, wages and other running costs. In return, the state set the price and the size of the print runs, and regulated the content. The newspapers before 1986 did not rely on advertisements as a source of revenue. Only one paper in Ho Chi Minh City, Tin Sang (Morning News), which was also the only privately-owned newspaper, had some space for classified advertisements.3 The print media relied entirely on its circulation for revenue. Whether this covered the cost of production did not matter, because the state always made up for any shortfall. In essence, this was a mismanaged economy. When, in 1978 and 1979, two border wars (with Cambodia and China) aggravated the economic problems even more, subsidies for the media became very erratic. The newsprint provided was of very poor quality and was frequently insufficient; and the power supply was often interrupted, thus affecting the running of the printing presses. Delivery was no longer reliable, and sometimes newspapers had to cut down on the number of pages they printed as a result. As a response to the shortages, beginning in the years 1982–83, local authorities, particularly in Ho Chi Minh City, took the initiative of allowing and even encouraging media organizations to try and provide for themselves by expanding into other businesses, such as farming or handicraft.4 Media organizations could sell these products in the free market and use the extra revenue to make up for the loss in subsidy; the state did not collect tax on the earnings derived from these supplementary activities. Thus, circumstances provided Vietnamese media organizations with their first experience of how to operate in a market economy. In reality, most media organizations stuck close to media-related businesses even as they tried their hand at producing goods that could fetch a profit. Pioneers such as the VNA (Vietnam News Agency), Tuoi Tre (Youth), SGGP (Sai Gon Giai Phong or Saigon Liberation) and Khoa Hoc Pho Thong (Popular Sciences) launched supplement which were either regular weekend editions or event-based, such as special editions on the World Cup football series. They then sold these publications at a price that would make them a profit.

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Once doi moi was endorsed by the VCP in 1986, the marketizing trend accelerated. Doi moi also liberalized the media environment to allow more scope to discuss issues or provide a diverse range of information. This dovetailed with the media’s need to produce more interesting content that would attract readers and boost their circulation figures. Foreign investment in Vietnam began, bringing the country into contact with new media ideas as a result. All these developments combined to change the media in significant ways. One of the most fundamental changes was that media organizations began to break their habit of relying on the state for production resources. In reducing their dependency on the state, two related features could be observed: media content became more diverse and interesting, and the media industry grew. Thus, generally speaking, the first contact between the media and market economics was a positive experience all round.

GROWTH OF THE MEDIA INDUSTRY According to official statistics, Vietnam’s print media produced 177 newspapers and 313 magazines in 1998.5 A study of the production figures throughout the 1990s reveals a significant increase in the titles available (see Table 10.1 below).6 In the last decade, more market experimentation was allowed, and this was instrumental in making newspapers today look and read differently from the pre-reform socialist media. A higher technical standard is evident in cover design, page layout and the quality of newsprint at this time. Tabloids purveying scandals picked up a high circulation, and advertisements became evident in many of the major publications. All of these factors added to the dawning realisation that there was money to be made in media, and this became the underlying dynamic that propelled the publication boom. Table 10.1 Production of Print Media

1990 1993 1997 1998

Newspapers

Magazines

Total

n/a n/a 159 177

n/a n/a 290 313

282 350 449 490

Source: Ministry of Culture and Information.

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These growth statistics belie the reality that Vietnam is still a poor country. However there are explanations for this impressive media performance. First, there was a consumer base that was not fully developed during the pre-doi moi economy, and this provided room for subsequent growth. In 1998, Vietnam has a population of over 76 million. The literacy rate of 88 per cent is high for a Third World country; 63 per cent of its labour force have a secondary school education. It is a young population where half the workforce — more than 20 million — are under 20 years of age, About 20 per cent of the population (about 15 million) are in the two major urban centres, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. These demographic features are reflected in the media readership: the major consumers of media are urbanized, literate and young.

MEDIA AS BUSINESS CONGLOMERATE Another feature of Vietnam’s growing print media is the expansion of some media organizations individually. These are organizations that have grown from having just one publication to having several. Others have diversified their business and moved into different kinds of moneymaking ventures, not always connected to the media. The 1990s media scene is marked by the rise of some media business conglomerates. One example is the VNA. When the Vietnamese state started to allow a measure of market reforms in 1983, the VNA moved from being just a wire news agency, waiting for others to use its despatches, to publishing its own news bulletins that cover sports and sciences. The agency was tapping into a market that the rest of the Vietnamese media were neglecting. From there, it graduated to publishing its own newspaper, Tuan Tin Tuc (Weekly News). Through the 1990s, the range and scale of its business activities grew. Today the VNA stable has 3 daily newspapers, 15 magazines and periodicals and 2 news web sites. In addition, it also owns 2 printing houses, 1 IT firm, 1 joint-venture hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, and at least 3 commercial buildings for rent in Hanoi. Another media-initiated business conglomerate is Tuoi Tre in Ho Chi Minh City. This paper began only in 1975, as a weekly under the aegis of the Ho Chi Minh City Communist Youth Union. Its official objective then was to cater for the young people of the city. The paper has since grown in size and popularity, and by 2002 was a newspaper with five editions weekly. It has won itself a reputation for handling some of the

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city’s most sensitive corruption stories and also for being aggressive in campaigning against bureaucracy. It has built up a circulation of 250,000 per issue, which may be the highest for a Vietnamese newspaper. Tuoi Tre has since added two magazines to its list of publications. In addition, it owns a printing house, an office block for rent and a real estate company. A third media conglomerate is the Saigon Times Group, which belongs to the city government of Ho Chi Minh City. In 1991, it began with one business magazine, the Saigon Economic Times. Since then, it has become a media group with six publications (three in Vietnamese and three in foreign languages), a news web site and an up-market restaurant. The VCP publishes the daily Nhan Dan (People) and this is currently a most powerful media organization in Vietnam. Nhan Dan also runs a weekly newspaper, a monthly magazine, two news web sites and seven printing houses. The HCM City branch of the party runs another media group which publishes a daily, SGGP (Sai Gon Giai Phong or Liberated Saigon), for the city in Vietnamese and Chinese. The SGGP group also has two weekly magazines, one news web site, one printing house and one advertising firm. Insufficient data precludes any clear analysis of how the emergence of media conglomerates has restructured the actual production process and improved its economic takings. But there is no denying that these media groupings have an impact on the public consciousness, creating an impression that the country’s media, like other sectors of the economy, are making strides towards being part of a modernized market economy, sharing many of the key features of more developed market economies elsewhere.

ADVERTISING Another distinct sign that the print media is moving in step with the transition to a market economy is the visible growth of advertising. This has increased from a time of almost no advertisements before doi moi to the present situation, where newspapers like Tuoi Tre and Sai Gon Giai Phong carry advertisement inserts that can be twenty pages or more. This evident growth in advertisements represents a developing awareness of competition in the media. Market reality is pushing editors and journalists to look for exclusive information and interesting stories

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that will attract a larger readership and thus more advertising interest. Market-sensitive innovations have diversified media products. Today’s print media has tabloids that dominate the market because they carry sensational corruption cases or sex and gangster scandals. Many new publications focus on entertainment and consumer lifestyles. Some of these new titles in the 1990s have achieved impressive circulation rates by Vietnamese standards, such as the weeklies Sai Gon Tiep Thi (Sai Gon Marketing) and The Gioi Phu Nu (Women’s World), each of which sells 70,000 copies per issue.7 In addition, media organizations are quickly learning that product promotion take many forms other than print advertisements, and some have branched out into organizing trade fairs or entertainment events. Initially, many of these media organizations did not know the advertising and promotion business and relied on private individuals outside or their own reporters to look for clients. In recent years, however, major media organizations have had enough experience to set up their own business departments to handle marketing in a professional way. Some larger publications, like Tuoi Tre, the Vietnam Economic Times and Sai Gon Tiep Thi, are even offering consultancy services to other media organizations on a wide range of media-related activities such as advertising, sales, design, delivery mailing and even, sometimes, editorial matters. The size of the advertising market has been growing since the early 1990s. According to data published by a foreign market research firm, the total expenditure in 1999 reached US$116 million, which is equivalent to about 0.25 per cent of GDP.8 This is also a growth of many times over from the US$8.1 million that was spent in 1992 (see Table 10.2). In the period 1992–99, the first four years recorded exponential growth, peaking in 1994 and 1995 when spending for the two consecutive years grew by 192 and 94 per cent respectively. The decline in the growth rate beginning in 1996 was symptomatic of what was happening in the larger Vietnamese economy, when foreign companies began to wind down their operations because of red tape. In 1998, the regional financial crisis also had an impact, leading to negative growth in the advertising business. The 1999 recovery was modest. Whether or not advertising expenditure will return to the tremendous growth rate of the early 1990s is therefore likely to depend on the overall economic situation. The advertising industry is also a young industry, and the mass media has much to learn about how to stimulate its growth and

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Table 10.2 Total Advertising Expenditure Year

US$ million

% Increase

1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999

8.1 12.0 35 68 101 111 109 116

n/a 48% 192% 94% 49% 10% –2% 6%

Source: AC Nielsen Vietnam.

benefit from it. The mass media, in general, have to be more proactive in promoting their services to potential advertisers. Thus far, relatively few newspapers have been able to optimize their revenue from advertising. As Vietnam’s economy continues to engage market forces, an anticipated feature may be more newspapers competing more aggressively for advertisement revenue.

DOWNSIDE OF MARKET TRANSITION Fifteen years of transition into a market economy has given Vietnam’s mass media opportunities to raise technical and professional standards. Media consumers benefit from the greater media choices and the improving quality of the media product. At the same time, working conditions in terms of pay have also improved for media practitioners. If we take the example of journalists’ remuneration at a successful paper like Tuoi Tre, the basic income of an average reporter in 1985 was 500,000 dong (around US$60 then); in 1994 it rose to 1 million dong and in 2002, it is 2 million dong (US$133 then). However, the increasing importance of the profit motive in the media industry has a dark side to it. Sometimes, it has led to irresponsible journalism, referred to in Vietnam as “commercialization” (thuong mai hoa). In its March 2000 congress, the VJA (Vietnam Journalists Association) voiced its concern that “commercialization” had manifested itself in some publications, which had abused their right to produce

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extra editions on a weekly or monthly basis by doing so purely for money-making purposes. In this, the Association was referring to publications that thrived on scandals involving crime, sex, violence and the sensationalizing of people’s private lives. The Association also criticized those media organizations that were too keen to sell advertisement space and which ended up violating existing advertising guidelines as a result. One such rule that is violated is the ban on having advertisements on the front cover or page of a publication. To get around this, a publication will instead run a news picture that incorporates its client company or brand. Another advertising rule that is similarly violated is one which prohibits the advertising of medicines or other products that have not yet been licensed or which may even have been banned. Another of the ill-effects of “commercialization” was the growing incidence of corruption among journalists. Journalists have been found guilty of refraining from reporting certain news or distorting information after receiving bribes. In some instances, journalists used the pages of the press to lobby for companies or projects with dubious credentials. Some also blackmailed newsmakers in the business sectors with threats of bad publicity unless they were paid. This is a phenomenon observed in other countries as well; it is known popularly as “chequebook journalism”. Some cases have already been highlighted in the Vietnamese press. For example, a reporter of the Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper took bribes to give positive publicity to Tamexco, a state-owned enterprise that was subsequently involved in a major corruption case. In another case, a number of companies paid a Vietnam Television reporter to make a programme on them.9 In another case, a fine was imposed on a reporter from the Nguoi Lao Dong (Labourer) newspaper for assisting a bank that was mired in a public scandal. She helped the bank to organize a press conference, as well as assisting in handing out cash in envelopes for journalists who were at the conference.10 In addition, it is no longer unusual to hear about journalists receiving a small sum of money in an envelope when they attend a press conference. The practice has grown in recent years. That it hints of a breach of ethics is undeniable, and companies handing out such envelopes at press conferences therefore euphemistically call them “meal or transport allowances”. The VJA has provided a perspective on why commercialization and corruption are growing trends in Vietnam’s mass media. In an annual report, it raises the issues of weak

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self-discipline in media organizations, the mismanagement of media where the state-bodies owning them could not control them, and the lack of experience and training for editors and journalists to help them deal with these challenges.11 Huu Tho, who then headed the party’s Culture and Ideology Department, also repeated similar concerns about the press, when he said in 1997 that media competition without control was also a major cause of “commercialization”.12 Both Huu Tho and the VJA stress the role of personal integrity, which they want individual journalist to exercise. It is doubtful whether many journalists will live up to such appeals to their conscience and turn their back on chequebook journalism, especially those more commonplace practices such as cash in envelopes, where the sums involved are not large. The solution to this problem may require a long-term strategy to reform the media system, a key part of which must be to improve the working conditions of journalists so that they need not rely on petty benefits like cash in envelopes to supplement their incomes. However, the issue of adequate pay for journalists is a complex one that is meshed with the problem of the productivity of individual journalists and how many newspapers can afford to pay a competitive market rate to get the competent journalists they need. As it stands, the VJA and media authority may have no choice but to live with the problem of chequebook journalism in the short term. For example, the VJA is practical enough not to have banned reporters from keeping the envelopes containing cash distributed at press conferences. The Association’s position is that it will leave it to members to decide whether or not they want to accept such little “perks”.

REASONS FOR MEDIA GROWTH The media boom in the 1990s raises a series of questions. Where did the capital investment come from? Has the Vietnamese print media market such immense potential for growth that it can absorb more than 200 new titles in a span of less than ten years (see Table 10.3)? How was this new readership developed? Many of these questions do not have clear answers because the empirical data is not available; and without clear answers, the question of how much the mass media has adjusted to the market economy is also likely to remain unanswered and controversial.

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The growth statistics of the media sector is better understood when placed in a Vietnamese context. In Vietnam, publishing licence is only given to a state (a Party or government) institution or to a stateapproved body (that is, mass organizations representing youth, women or various other sectors of society). Apart from needing to have the capital to produce a newspaper, and a market to sustain it, the basis of a Vietnamese publication must be the need of an organization to have an “institutional voice” (co quan ngon luan). Usually, a Vietnamese organization begins with an internal publication of some kind to disseminate information and fulfil its propaganda duties. As the organization grows in size and membership, it can ask to upgrade this internal publication into a newspaper or magazine that can be circulated widely. Given the market reforms, the state became more receptive to such requests — for example, newly-formed organizations that are concerned with foreign economic relations could now justify launching publications in foreign languages. From the period 1985–99, many organizations asked for and received permission to launch a new publication or upgrade an existing one. From 1990 onwards, the state also approved the formation of many new organizations and these started publications that contributed to the media boom. Table 10.3, while not comprehensive, provides an idea of some of these new organizations. Two examples from Table 10.3 illustrate the extensive changes that market reforms were bringing to the Vietnamese media. The reforms included the wooing of foreign investment, and a State Committee for Cooperation and Investment (SCCI) was set up to do this. In order to attract foreign investors, Vietnam saw the need to allow business publications that would provide these investors with adequate and upto-date economic information, something which the old media system was not good at doing. Thus the SCCI was allowed to launch the Vietnam Investment Review with Australian capital and expertise. Similarly, a Swiss company, Ringier, was permitted to fund the Vietnam Economic Times, launched by the Economist Society.13 These business publications, both targetted at the foreign business community living in Vietnam, contribute to the sense of market competition that the economic reforms policy of the state are intended to encourage. Both publications have English and Vietnamese editions and have helped to set new technical standards for Vietnamese newspapers.

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Table 10.3 The New Publishers New organizations

Newspapers/Magazines

Year of launch

Animal Husbandry Union

Kinh Te V.A.C. (Animal Husbandry Economics)

1987

Veterans Union

Cuu Chien Binh Viet Nam (Vietnam Veterans)

1990

State Committee for Cooperation & Investment

Vietnam Investment Review

1991

Economist Society

Vietnam Economic Times

1991

Union of Cooperatives

Doanh Nghiep (Enterprise)

1993

Anti-Illiteracy Committee

Dan Tri (People’s Wisdom)

1994

HCMC Veterans Union

Cuu Chien Binh TPHCM (HCM City Veterans)

1994

Senior Citizens Society

Nguoi Cao Tuoi (Senior Citizens)

1995

Ministry of Industry

Cong Nghiep Vietnam (Vietnam Industries)

1996

Learning Society

Khuyen Hoc (Promoting Literacy)

1997

Tourism Authority

Tuan Du Lich (Tourists’ Weekly)

1998

Ministry of Sciences

Khoa Hoc & Phat Trien (Science & Development)

1998

Traffic Safety Committee

Ban Duong (Friends of the Road)

1998

Population Committee

Gia Dinh & Xa Hoi (Family & Society)

1999

By this author’s own tabulation of publications from 1985 to 1999, of the 45 new newspapers, 14 were launched by newly-formed organizations and 31 by existing organizations.14 Of 182 new magazines issued during this period, 60 belonged to newly-formed organizations and 122 to existing organizations. In addition, there were 36 newspapers published by new party provincial branches.15 Foreign direct investment was a major propelling force in Vietnam’s overall economic reforms. However, other than the examples of the two

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business publications stated above, foreign capital played virtually no role in fomenting the growth of the media16 — domestic capital alone paid for these new publications. How was this domestic capital raised? Many Vietnamese organizations launching a new publication had the convenience of being able to tap into their existing resources. For example, part of an organization’s existing premises could be used to accommodate the staff of the new publication, and excess staff could be deployed to run the new publication.17 As such, these big-expenditure items were hidden in the existing budget provided by the state and it really cost very little to set up shop and start publishing. These low start-up costs helped to keep publication prices affordable. Market reforms allowed media organizations to develop products that were popular with readers and that could sell enough copies to make a profit. Money made in this way could then be used to finance and expand the new publication. When other organizations witnessed this new way of making money, many were tempted to give it a try, thus helping to create the post-1986 boom in publication.

THE CONTROVERSY OF MARKETIZATION Currently, there are still some features in the Vietnamese media system that are not congruent with the characteristics of a market economy. This raises questions about how advanced are market reforms. The picture that emerges of the Vietnamese media, after more than a decade of market reforms, is one of state-owned organizations gradually adapting to the dynamics of market forces. In name — since everything is stateowned — the media may still be considered a state monopoly. In reality, however, competition does exist between different media organizations for readership. The phasing out of direct subsidies has also made media organizations more conscious of keeping within their operating budgets and producing publications that can sell enough copies to cover their cost of production. However, the engagement with market forces does not always go far enough and the media system retains a few old anomalies from the pre-reform days. First, many members of the media still enjoy indirect subsidies; and in some quarters, direct subsidy is still intact. In a few major areas, the role of the state in financing and developing the media still remains. Where state capital is critical to the development of a particular medium,

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such as television, radio or the Internet, there has been substantial injection of state capital, and on occasion, foreign development aid has also been used to improve the media. A good example is the national Vietnam Television station which, beginning in 1995, received generous financial support from both the government and from foreign aid to extend its broadcasting reach domestically and overseas. One reason for this was the high economic growth rate for the greater part of the 1990s, which increased the state’s ability to play this subsidizing role. It is difficult to estimate the size of the role of the state in media financing, beyond a broad understanding that it is still significant. The VJA Congress report of March 2000 merely states (without providing names) that some print media were breaking even and that a few had made a profit. Neither the media organizations nor the state agencies that oversee them have released detailed figures of their finances. Media organizations, although owned by the state, are not audited in any way. Many of them want to cultivate an image of being efficient enough to earn their own keep without not relying on state hand-outs. However, they do not want to declare their profits, in order to avoid the high taxation rates that would be subsequently imposed by the state. All of these factors add up to a complex situation, for which there are only some brief statistics from the Ministry of Culture and Information’s 1998 report on the media.18 In a survey of 401 media organizations, only 43 of them were profitable.19 Of the 61 Party provincial newspapers, 57 were still subsidized by the national budget to a tune of 42 billion dong (around US$3 million). The government continued to subsidize 83 media organizations at the central level to a tune of 4 billion dong (about US$285,000). These figures only pertain to the budget of the central government. The subsidies that regional governments put into sustaining or developing the media remain unknown. From the Ministry’s report, only the broad conclusion can be drawn that the total government subsidy for the whole media system from central to province and district levels is likely to have run to hundreds of billions of dong. The ministry’s statistics indicate that a majority of Vietnam’s publications are not making money. This raises another question about the sustainability of the boom in publication. Indeed, the media market might not be as easy to tap as many Vietnamese organizations had thought in the early years of reforms. Vietnam’s print media generally do not enjoy a high circulation commensurate with the actual size of

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the population. Low disposable income and poor distribution facilities are contributing factors. Among the titles published, only 10 newspapers and magazines have a circulation of over 50,000 copies. The highest circulation newspaper sells 260,000 copies, and the most popular weekly magazine sells 600,000.20 Once the excitement of reading a new kind of journalistic product was over, and as more and more titles entered the market, readers became more discerning. Many of the organizations starting new publications did not have the editorial expertise to produce something that would sustain readers’ interest. Although Vietnam has a well-educated population with many young people seeking jobs, only a few of the big newspapers or magazines have the resources to develop the journalistic potential of this labour pool. The effect of this on readers has been to create a sense that there may be too many newspapers and magazines coming onto the market, and that they represent quantity rather than quality. From the publishers’ perspective, when the expected returns fail to eventuate, those new publications are forced either to close down or to find new ways of keeping themselves afloat. While some may be able to persuade the state to sustain them with financial assistance, others have resorted to selling their publishing permits to private individuals who require an official cover for their publishing ventures. This has led to the publication of material that violates official guidelines. Concerned that such a disorderly situation in the print media may get out of hand, the VCP Politburo issued Directive 22 on 17 October 1997 which stated quite clearly the party’s intention to clean up the situation. In summary, what propelled the media boom was not always rational business decisions based on a sound understanding of the media market and what it required to produce a publication that could be sustained in the long term. Sometimes, it also involved exploiting loopholes in publishing regulations, leading to a disorderly situation where the state had to move in to clean things up rather than leave the market to sort out the mess. This is the controversial question underlying the impact of market reforms on the media. On the one hand, the reforms have brought many visible changes that give the impression of fast growth in line with a media boom. On the other, the economic fundamentals behind the growth rate are still rather far removed from the realities of a market economy.

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This is not the only facet to this controversy. Many other questions have arisen out of the transition to market economics that have no easy answers. For instance, debate continues about who or what is to be blamed for the ethical decline observed increasingly among journalists. At a roundtable forum on this problem organized by the Ho Chi Minh City Journalists Association on 16 June 1999, many thoughtful questions were raised.21 Should journalists alone be blamed for unethical reporting, or should the newspaper and its editor, who control journalists in many ways, not also take a share of the blame? Should breach of professional ethics be left to individual newspapers to deal with, or should regulation be handled by the Vietnam Journalists’ Association? Has the market economy weakened the control of Party-appointed editors over journalists? Can the market economy even be blamed for chequebook journalism? Do the state and the market economy provide enough for the upkeep of media organizations and journalists? Are the ethical problems among journalists a matter of not recruiting the right people and not giving them the right training? These questions do not have ready answers that will satisfy everybody. They are listed here to provide a flavour of the prevailing questions in the discourse on media and its transition to a market economy.

CONCLUSION Underlying all these features of a media in transition is a condition of uncertainty. The media in Vietnam faces a dilemma over the roles it should play as the whole country moves towards market economics. This begins with a need to review the current concept of media. For many years, there is no official concept of what the media business is about. According to the Press Law (adopted in the National Assembly in December 1989 and revised in June 1999), mass media is defined in political terms in Article 1 as “essential for social life”, “the organ of speech” for Party, state and social organizations, and “the tribune of the people”.22 Therefore, the mass media is not considered to be a business and media organizations are not regarded as business enterprises. This is the reason why the Vietnamese media think and act as an administrative body, a component of the state bureaucracy. Journalists are also governmental officials, and some of them are even highranking officials. Thus, when media organizations have to engage the

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market economy, they become confused between government demands and consumer demands. Editors sometimes have to choose whether to serve the state or the market. The market is a new phenomenon in Vietnam, and the Vietnamese have still got to get used to it. The media in Vietnam are like state-owned enterprises, and have to be reformed to adapt to the new situation. They need more time and opportunities to improve their professionalism and also their confidence to do business. In this transition period, some major questions about the extent of political control — whether to increase or reduce it — are still unresolved. Despite a certain buoyancy about long-term prospects, many issues therefore still remain unclear concerning the media during this transitional period in Vietnam. NOTES 1

2

3

4

5

6

The details in this section are derived from my masters thesis, “Tim hieu giai doan moi (1975–90) trong tien trinh lich su bao Thanh pho Ho Chi Minh” [The Evolution of Media in Ho Chi Minh City from 1975 to 1990] (National Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities, Ho Chi Minh City branch, 1991). I shall assume that most readers know enough of the basics of a centrallyplanned socialist economy not to have to provide a detailed description. Briefly, the state decreed what and how much to produce, and set wages and prices rather than let market forces decide their actual levels according to supply and demand. This system resulted in low productivity, shortages and perennial losses, which had to be covered by state subsidy. Tin Sang stopped publishing in 1981. In its place, the party daily of Ho Chi Minh City, Sai Gon Giai Phong (Saigon Liberation), began to provide space for classified and commercial advertising, but this was still very limited. The level of advertising that is seen in the Vietnamese press today began in the early 1990s. The relaxation of controls on the economy was across the board and not just limited to the media. Almost all state institutions could engage in a form of private economic activity. At the same time, the state also tolerated the growth of a free market rather than insisting on sales of all goods and services to the state at a fixed price. This was experimentation with free market economics on a growing scale. Ministry of Culture & Information (MCI), Annual report on Media 1998; Vietnam Journalists Association, Official Report at the 7th Congress on 22–23 March 2000. Tran Huu Quang, Xa Hoi Hoc va Truyen thong Dai chung, (Ho Chi Minh City

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8 9

10

11 12

13

14 15

16

17

247

Open University, 1997) pp. 85–86; Phuc Tien, “Newspapers Spur Changes in Vietnam”, Reuter Link Newsletter, no. 2, 1995. The trend is also observed in broadcasting. VTV 3, which was set up purely as an entertainment channel, and the radio show Sai Gon Buoi Sang (Morning Saigon), have picked up a following and increased their advertisement revenue significantly. Advertising Agency Directory Viet Nam (AADV), vol. 1. Ho Chi Minh City and Bangkok: Adarco Ltd, 2000. “Di Tim Su That Ve Nguoi Co The Nha Bao” [Searching For the Truth Behind Those Who Hold a Press Card], Nghe Bao (Journalism), no. 902, Ho Chi Minh City Journalists Association, 21 June 1999, pp. 16–17. “Ve Nhung Viec Lam Bat Thuong Cua Mot Phong Vien Viet Ve Toa An” [About the Unusual Activities of a Reporter Who Cover the Courts], Nghe Bao, no. 902, 21 June 1999, p. 40. Vietnam Journalists Association, op. cit. Huu Tho, Nghi ve Nghe Bao [Thinking about the journalist profession] (Hanoi: Education Publishing House, 1997) pp. 190–91, 267–83. The Party’s Culture and Ideology Department is a major organ that oversees the media, superseding the prerogatives of the Ministry of Information. All editors throughout Vietnam meet with the Department a least once a week for briefing sessions. The Economist Society (Hoi Khoa Hoc Kinh Te) gathers together cadres, both current and retired, who were trained in economics or had experience in economic management. Some of its members had been very senior officials. I also drew from the data published in the Vietnam Press Directory (Hanoi: Ministry of Culture and Information, 2000). Sometime after 1976, a unified Vietnam began to merge existing provinces into larger provinces, thus reducing the total number of provinces. According to convention, each VCP branch in almost all the provinces would have a newspaper. As part of the 1980s reforms programme, the merged provinces were dissembled. This administrative reform increased the number of provinces, and with that the number of provincial Party papers. Other examples of foreign investments in the media sector include Tuan Bao Quoc Te (International Affairs Weekly) published by the Foreign Ministry and Thoi Trang Tre (Young Fashion) published by the Communist Youth Union. Some of these cases of foreign involvement have since stopped and the publications are now totally owned and managed by Vietnamese institutions and cadres. The working premises of Vietnamese publications can be very spartan; just a room with some office furniture and stationery for writing. Many big state organizations would not have a problem finding a space like this.

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18 19

20

21 22

Similarly, after years of bureaucratic expansion in the pre-doi moi era, many organizations have excess manpower that they can redeploy. Ministry of Culture and Information, op. cit., p. 12. These figures may not reveal the whole picture. While media organizations, as a rule, want to work towards financial independence, many avoid reporting too large a profit because of the steep taxes likely to be incurred. The bestselling newspaper is Tuoi Tre, published the Communist Youth League of Ho Chi Minh City. This paper has earned a reputation as a dynamic and aggressive newspaper through the years, and draws its readers from the city rather than nationwide. The bestselling magazine is An Ninh The Gioi (World Security) published by the police, and this attracts readers from all over the country. Its provides a popular diet of international espionage issues as well as interesting investigative pieces on domestic issues. Personal notes taken at the forum. Vietnam Press Directory (Hanoi: Ministry of Culture and Information, 2000), p. 42.

© 2002 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Reproduced from Media Fortunes, Changing Times: ASEAN States in Transition, edited by Russell Hiang-Khng Heng (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available from < http://www.iseas.edu.sg/pub.html >

Index

249

Index Abdurrahman Wahid – see Gus Dur Advertisement – Cambodia 28 – Indonesia 62, 75 – Laos 110–112, 114 – Myanmar 150, 153, 158–59 – Thailand 214, 215, 221 – Vietnam 235–37 Anwar Ibrahim 120–23, 124, 128, 133–35 Asian theories of communication 4, 8–10 Bangkok Post 216, 217, 221, 223, 224 Censorship 3, 49–50 – Cambodia 28–30, 32–34, 36, 41 – Indonesia 55, 59, 74, 85, 91–92 – Malaysia 130–33 – Myanmar 143, 144, 145, 154–56 – Thailand 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 214, 215, 219, 220, 220, 222, 223 – Singapore 194–95 Chequebook journalism 4 – Vietnam 237–39 Chuan Leekpai 201, 219, 221 Civil society 6 – Cambodia 37–38, 42

– Indonesia 55–57, 68–72, 94–96 – Malaysia 121–22, 133–35 – Singapore 181–5 – Thailand 201, 202, 208, 209, 216, 227 Co-optation of media – Indonesia 56–57, 93 – Malaysia 123–27 – Singapore 178–80 Consumer of media 5–6 – Malaysia 135 Cotton, James 174 Crimes, against journalists – Cambodia 38–40 Democratization – Cambodia 30–32 – Indonesia 94–98 – Singapore 196–97 – Thailand 201, 213, 220, 226, 227 Development journalism 7–10 Economic impact, on media 10–12 – Cambodia 31–32 – Indonesia 48, 57–58, 86–90 – Laos 110–115 – Myanmar 148–150, 156–59 – Vietnam 233–39 Film – Thailand 204, 213–15, 220, 223, 224

249

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Foreign media 6–7 – Myanmar 147, 156 – Singapore 178 Gatra 56–59, 70, 72 Gus Dur 54, 99–100 Habibie, B.J. 96–97 Harakah 133 History, of media – Cambodia 28–32 – Indonesia 47–55, 84–90 – Myanmar 143–48 – Thailand 204 Hun Sen 31, 32, 33, 36, 40, 41 Industrial disputes, in media – Indonesia 61–64, 66, 67, 70–72 Information Technology 1, 2, 12–13 – Indonesia 72–75 – Laos 115 – Malaysia 133–36 – Myanmar 152–55 – Singapore 188–97 – Vietnam 243 Internet – see Information Technology Jakarta-Jakarta 55, 60–63, 64, 65, 67, 70, 72 Journals, see Print media Khieu Kanharith 30, 31, 34, 35, 37, 43 Laws, media 3, 13

– Cambodia 37–38, 41 – Indonesia 63, 68, 83, 86, 97, 98–99 – Malaysia 128, 132, 135 – Myanmar 143, 155, 163–64 – Singapore 176–78, 189, 191 Leadership, intra-elite competition – Indonesia 73 – Malaysia 120–23 – Singapore 185–88 – Thailand 217 Lee Kuan Yew 174, 178–79, 186 Magazines, see Print media Malaysiakini 134–36 Mahathir Mohamad 120–23, 124, 127, 128, 130–32, 134 Megawati Soekarnopoutri 54, 56, 91–92 Military – see ownership of media, military Myanmar Times 159–61 Nation, The 217, 218, 221, 225 New Straits Times 124, 125 Newspapers, see Print Media Oakeshott, Michael 174 Opposition parties – Cambodia 32–34, 36 – Indonesia 55–56, 91–92 – Malaysia 133 – Singapore 180 Organizations, representing media – Cambodia 42 – Indonesia 97, 100

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Index

– Myanmar 145, 150 – Vietnam 237–39, 243 Ownership of media – Cambodia 27, 31–35 – Indonesia 84–85, 86–87, 97 – Laos 108–10 – Malaysia 124–27 – Myanmar 143–46, 148–49, 156–58 – Singapore 177–78 – Thailand 203, 204 – Vietnam 234–35 Ownership of media, foreign – Cambodia 31, 40 – Myanmar 159–61 – Singapore 177 – Vietnam 240–42 Ownership of media, military – Thailand 204, 225 Pasason 108, 109, 111 Pers perjuangan 52–53, 59, 66, 69–70 Pracheachun 29 PDI, Partai Demokrasi Indonesia 56, 91–92 Prem Tinsulanonda 221, 223 Print media – Cambodia 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 38–40, 41 – Indonesia 53–60, 60–63, 64, 65, 67, 69, 70, 72, 74, 97, 101 – Laos 108–10, 110–13 – Malaysia 123–26, 135 – Myanmar 143–45, 148–49, 152–53, 156–61 – Singapore 175–76, 176–77, 179, 180–81

251

– Thailand 203, 204, 212, 214, 216, 217–18, 221, 223, 224, 225 – Vietnam 233, 234–35, 235–36, 238, 240–41, 244 Privatization 11 – Cambodia 31, 34 – Indonesia 86–90 – Malaysia 126–127 Protest, public – Indonesia 55–57, 94–96 – Malaysia 120–22 Public journalism 10 Radio 5 – Cambodia 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 38 – Indonesia 84, 98, 99 – Laos 113–14 – Thailand 204 Radio, Beehive 32, 33, 35 Radio UNTAC 31 Ranariddh 29, 33 RCTI, Rajawali Citra Televisi Indonesia 86–90, 92, 95 Reforms, economic 10–11 – Cambodia 31 – Laos 108, 110 – Myanmar 141–43 – Singapore 185–6 – Vietnam 231–33 Reforms, political – Cambodia 31–32 – Indonesia 97 – Laos 108 – Myanmar 145, 148, 156–57 – Thailand 201, 213, 220 Sam Rainsy 33, 34, 40

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SCTV, Surya Citra Televisi 86, 90, 95 Sihanouk 28–29, 31, 41 Socio-cultural changes – Indonesia 68–72 – Singapore 181–85 – Thailand 220 Soeharto 51, 53, 56, 59, 60, 61, 70, 71, 85, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98 SPK (Sapordamean Kampuchea or Cambodia News Agency) 29, 34 State management, of media – Cambodia 35–36, 37–38, 41 – Indonesia 63, 67–68, 85, 91–92, 93, 95–96, 97–100 – Malaysia 123–29, 131 – Myanmar 143–47, 151 – Singapore 176–81 – Thailand 204, 215, 220, 221, 223 Straits Times 175–76, 177, 179, 180, 192 Television – Cambodia 30, 32, 36 – Indonesia 83–102

– Laos 114–15 – Malaysia 124, 126–28, 136 – Myanmar 146, 153 – Singapore 178 – Thailand 204, 219–23, 225 – Vietnam 243 Tempo 53–60, 61, 63, 64, 69, 70, 72, 74 Thai Rath 212, 214, 218 Tickell, Paul 51 Theoretical issues 3–4, 6–10 – Indonesia 51–53 – Singapore 173–74 TVRI, Yayasan Televisi Republik Indonesia 84–86 Utusan Malaysia 123, 124, 125, 135 Video – Myanmar 147, 151–52 Vientiane Mai 111–12 Vientiane Times 112–13 Western influence 6–7 – Cambodia 31, 40 – Myanmar 159–61 – Singapore 178 – Thailand 206–07

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