‘On the Air’ in Indonesia

by Mary T. Rogus

It is hard to believe that in just 36 hours our adventure to Southeast Asia will be over and Tim, Lindsey and I will begin the long journey back to Ohio. We bring home with us plenty of pictures, more than a few souvenirs (get ready for some great gifts, family and friends!), and many wonderful and interesting memories of the new friends we’ve made. We also come back to America with an important understanding of the television media in Indonesia.

We’ve visited seven national stations in Jakarta and one regional station in Yogyakarta. The facilities ranged widely from the brand new SCTV newsroom and studios built into an upscale mall where most Indonesians can do little more than window shop, to the oldest station TVRI, the former government, now public television station in several buildings which look as if they haven’t been touched with a paintbrush since the station went on the air in 1962. And then there is Metro TV, Indonesia’s CNN, in a building more opulent than most 5 star hotels, with highly polished mahogany trim, plush carpeting and beautiful Indonesian art work everywhere. With the exception of the public television, most of the technology is very similar to what one would find in an American station, or at the network level. Most of the news operations are using digital editing software and produce their newscasts with the same electronic newsroom management programs used in newsrooms here.

As I mentioned in the previous blog, these ‘superstations’ produce 70-90% of their own original programming, in addition to news. So they have multiple studios, many of which look much like a Hollywood production facility. We often found a dozen people busily creating or re-creating the next set for the upcoming live show, sometimes just hours before that show would air. Some of the shows have live audiences of 100-350 people, which adds to the chaotic traffic as show time approaches. The stations which are similar to our networks, producing a variety of entertainment and news programming, told us the most popular programs are the variety/music programs.

One of the very interesting things we found was how the stations respond to Ramadan, which is the fasting month for Muslims. For the entire month of September, most Muslims don’t eat or drink anything from sunrise to sunset. That means that they get up in the middle of the night to eat a meal between 4:00 and 4:30am and then break their fast at 6:00pm. The stations have recognized this as an opportunity, so many of the national stations produce special live programming from 2:30-4:00am which apparently gets quite high ratings. They also typically move their evening news programs to an hour earlier, often starting at 4:00 or 4:30pm instead of after 5:00pm.

At every station we have had extensive time for discussion with news managers and producers and reporters, including the journalists who were part of the exchange program and visited Ohio last summer. These discussions were fascinating as we learned about the similarities and differences among U.S. and Indonesian television news. In just about every newsroom it was easy to identify the assignment desk, usually a hub of activity. We learned many things about the type of coverage stations do and what the ‘big’ stories were. Corruption is the clearly the number one story across Indonesia. As many of the journalists told us, bribery or ‘the envelope’ is a custom in Indonesia, even for journalists. Many of the major news organizations have policies forbidding their journalists from accepting any money, but for some of the smaller, regional stations, reporters told us, management expects that they are getting and accepting these gifts of cash, and therefore pay them as if these ‘tips’ are part of their salary. For the government bureaucrats, these cash payments are part of their budgets and giving the cash is simply part of Indonesia’s culture of hospitality. Their hope in giving the money is that they will make friends with the journalists, and then perhaps the journalists would not be so critical of their ‘friends’.

Another fascinating story we heard about is devil possession and exorcism. And no, this was not a topic on the Indonesian version of The Jerry Springer Show, this is a real story that news departments struggle with how and when to cover. Apparently it’s happened more than once that all the students in a school, typically middle or high school, will start screaming for no obvious reason. They believe the school is haunted by evil spirits and the principal might bring in an exorcist to rid the school of the evil. There was some skepticism among the journalists about what really causes the mass hysteria, but others admitted that they weren’t sure what might be happening, and perhaps one shouldn’t dismiss what can’t be proven one way or another.

[note: And we weren't ready to dismiss it either. Especially after seeing the sign below in front of the gorilla cage at a local restaurant. Yes, at a local restaurant.]





Of course there was great interest in the U.S. Presidential race given Barack Obama’s ties to Indonesia. In fact the elementary school he attended while living here with his mother was very close to our hotel. We were barely off the plane before we were accosted by a man who asked if we were American and then wanted to know immediately if we were voting for Obama. A couple of the national stations had crews in Denver and Minneapolis to cover the conventions. We were always asked about the election, and frequently put on the spot about who we personally supported. Lindsey was the best at skirting this question!

It was actually quite interesting watching the wide range of coverage from the BBC World, to CNN International, to Aljazeera English to the Australian Network. The speeches received heavy play, especially foreign policy portions, for the Democrats, but Hurricane Gustuv took center stage for the beginning of the GOP Convention. Across the board of international coverage John McCain received high praise for ‘setting politics aside’, and it was regularly noted that he was trying to dispel the memories of what was referred to as “Bush incompetence” from Hurricane Katrina. It is very clear in the coverage that there’s no love lost abroad for President Bush. The Sara Palin revelation that her unmarried, teenage daughter is pregnant was typically reported with no commentary or judgment.

One thing that was very clear from our many visits, was that, although television news is relatively young (typically just 10-15 years), the journalists understand how important it is in a country with low literacy and newspapers with circulations of a few thousand in a population of 240 million. Even in the most impoverished areas, every shack had an antenna on top to receive television signals.

Tonight we have our farewell dinner, and for me it will be especially sad. This time when we part, I don’t know when I might see the journalists whom I’ve gotten to know so well through the first workshop in Jakarta that brought the group together 18 months ago, to their six weeks in Ohio a year ago, and now our visit to bring Ohio journalists to Indonesia. They have become my family across the world, and more importantly they have become an incredible network of journalists committed to developing the professionalism of Indonesian journalism and focusing on a positive role for the media in this country’s many conflict situations. My pride in their work and their dedication grew daily as we saw them in action, and learned of their newest accomplishments, such as being three of the top five finalists, including the winner, of a British Consulate national competition for stories which show how conflict situations have turned to citizenship opportunities. The winning journalist did an incredible story of guerilla fighters in Aceh who now patrol the forests and protect the lands against illegal logging which can strip areas bald and lead to devastating flooding. When we visited this journalist’s station he brought me to his office, and there on the wall was the award certificate he had received only the night before, but next to it was his certificate for participation in our exchange program, and he pointed to each and said to me, “This is my award, but this is my social contract.”