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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/219343 |
| Date | January 1993 |
| Creators | Solikhati, Siti, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Communication |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Siti Solikhati |
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