There has been an on-going debate in Indonesia about the implementation of the policy of Pers Pancasila between the press and the government. Therefore, this study will examine the extent to which both socio-cultural and sociopolitical factors influence the policy of Pers Pancasila as it actually operates. It aims to help understand why such a debate exists and why it is likely to continue. Using mainly a qualitative content analysis, this thesis examines reporting in the three Indonesian daily papers Kompas, Pelita, and The Jakarta Post between 1987- 1991. Four major news categories -news the press, religion, development, and Pancasila issues- are defined as being relevant to understanding the implementation of Pers Pancasila policies. Quantitative analysis is used by counting the frequency of the news as well as measuring the space of each news. In addition, qualitative analysis is applied by adopting the news-as-narrative approach used by scholars such as Entman, Ettema, and Glasser. Taking 180 editions of the three papers as a sample, this study finds that there were significant differences in the way the three papers reported the four selected news categories. Certain papers are found to be more critical in reporting certain news than the others. The affiliation of of each paper, to some extent, influences the attitudes of each paper. Pelita is affiliated to other Islamic papers, The Jakarta Post is affiliated to Christian papers which are in favour of the government, Kompas (the Christian based paper) sees itself as a neutral paper which represents the voice of the people. Although there have been disagreements on certain issues, such as in reporting news about development and Pancasila, the three papers were found to consistently apply the policy of Pars Panpasila. The papers are aware that although the government does not have direct means of controlling press reporting, it still has a range of control mechanisms which substantially determines the scope of Indonesian press freedom. Due to Indonesian cultural diversity, the government pursues a 'free responsible' press theory in that the press should have self-censorship. However, there has been different interpretations made by the press and the government about this policy which often cause misunderstandings.