Media Moguls in Indonesian Presidential Race Is Worrying, as Evidenced by Other Countries’ Experience

Media Moguls in Presidential Race Is Worrying, as Evidenced by Other Countries’ Experience

By Johannes Nugroho on 9:08 am January 7, 2014.
The start of 2014 will undoubtedly see an escalation of political campaign for this year’s legislative and presidential elections.

Though it is still too early to determine who will be able to run for the latter, as the prerequisite for candidacy depends on the results of the legislative election, a few names have indeed declared themselves presidential hopefuls.Disconcertingly for our young democracy, these include media moguls Golkar Chairman Aburizal Bakrie, owner of TVOne, Dahlan Iskan, owner of the Jawa Pos Group, Surya Paloh, owner of Metro TV and the vice presidential hopeful Hary Tanoesoedibjo, owner of MNC Group.

With so many media bosses aiming at the country’s number one and two jobs, we must necessarily ponder the consequences of a marriage between the office of the presidency and the media.

Commonly known as the fourth pillar of modern democracy, the media does and will always play a crucial role in the government of any nation that adheres to a system of representative democracy.

The media, especially in our age of information technology, is arguably the most powerful pressure group in any democracy.

As the vehicle for opinion, it is also the only entity the public can access to exercise checks and balances on the government which is not, after all, by the nature of representative democracy, fully answerable to the people until the next general election.

The role of the media becomes even more essential in a country still ridden with corruption, collusion and nepotism such as Indonesia. It is through the media that Indonesians learn about corruption scandals, politicians’ campaign promises, facts and figures about their own country and the world. And, ultimately, the media can make and unmake the career of any government official through bad publicity, making it the single entity that any government body fears.

In light of this indispensable role of the media for a young democracy like Indonesia, we must question the wisdom of having media moguls run for public office. Can we say for sure that once a media mogul runs the state, the media companies under him will not turn into a government mouthpiece?

The cooptation of the media by the state, even in the most subtle way, would nullify its role in a healthy democracy. And any government that believes it has control over the media is bound to think itself unassailable.

The unhappy outcome of a media boss becoming a country’s top executive is transparent in the political career of Italian Silvio Berlusconi.

When Berlusconi was prime minister, the 2004 Freedom of the Press survey found that the Italian press had slumped to the status of “Partly-Free” due to his influence.

During his premiership, the longest in post-World War II Italy, Berlusconi also enacted laws that benefited himself or were aimed at frustrating judicial and political moves against him, a feat undoubtedly easier to accomplish with his own media arm behind him.

The scandal-ridden premier continued to make headlines outside Italy with tales of corruption and sexual escapades.

All the while, the Italian press seemed to be muted on his scandals, a fact the weekly British magazine Economist alleged was due to the prime minister’s 90 percent control over the Italian TV industry.

The Italian experience is one that Indonesians may want to learn from. Media moguls exert enormous influence already, without even being in government, so it would seem excessive that they would want to wear two hats at the same time.

The US public in the 19th century became wary of the political ambitions of media mogul William Randolph Hearst as he repeatedly attempted to run for public offices from mayor to presidential candidate.

Wielding great political influence as he did through his newspapers, his desire to become government apparently did not sit well with the instincts of the American populace.

It is perhaps time the Indonesian populace also gave the same answer to the phenomenon of media bosses wanting to transform themselves into presidents or vice presidents. The stakes are too high for our nascent democracy as the Indonesian media is instrumental in the fight against corruption, hence it should never be endangered by being silenced.

The United States’ experience of Hearst long ago arguably taught that merging media and political office is indeed a democratic impropriety.