Page 43 - SCANDAL AND DEMOCRACY

28 Chapter 1

of proliferating euphemisms and labyrinthine prose was not journalists but the offi-
cials they routinely quoted through a practice called “recording journalism” ( jurnal-
isme rekaman ). Todung Mulya Lubis describes this as “a kind of politics of avoidance
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[that] emerged as a calculated news policy.” When the media felt “obliged to publish
certain news, it attempt[ed] to rely more on interviews with those . . . regarded as
experts, rather than writing about the event directly.” Such experts were overwhelm-
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ingly public officials.
As late as 1995, a survey by the Institute for the Studies on Free Flow of Informa-
tion (Institut Studi Arus Informasi, ISAI) of routine coverage from five leading dailies
indicated that 20 to 30 percent of front-page stories consisted of “recording journalism”:
articles composed from a patchwork of official quotes. In coverage of a crisis or particu-
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larly sensitive matters, such reporting could rise to well over 50 percent. For two weeks

following the 1991 army massacre of 271 civilians in Dili, East Timor, Kompas filled its
front pages almost entirely with official quotes, even in articles unrelated to the mas-
sacre. Euphemism and the passive voice also pervaded these official statements, pro-
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ducing ever more recondite stories that obscured both the event and its investigation.
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Following the news thus required audiences to develop special skills of
interpretation—the art of reading between the lines, or “reading between the lies,”
as Aristides Katoppo put it in what became a standard quip. A 1998 history of the
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PWI noted that readers had to sort out three versions of “truth” in daily reporting:
the “press version,” the “government version,” and the “real version.”
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Jalaluddin Rakhmat has argued that such euphemism and linguistic sleight-
of-hand reflected a deep insecurity among New Order leaders who came to rely on
“impression management” to avoid not only public criticism but also honest self-
appraisal and responsibility for problems. But the media played along, exhibiting
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what Katoppo once called “the wisdom of cowardice.” While this “New Order–
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speak” may have originated in government circles, the mass media served as the
critical vehicle for its dissemination and normalization.
Some saw this period’s media as almost a sentient organism, engaged in advance-
and-retreat tactics that avoided sustained criticism but delivered short blows on unre-
lated issues in different articles or even publications—a combination called “sniper
journalism.” If people read between the lines, they might notice that a newspaper
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apparently supportive of the regime was often critical.
Yet even practices of resistance were problematic, creating habits that may have
inspired opposition among critical readers but arguably also reinforced New Order
assumptions about the proper role of the media, such as the belief that any critical
reporting should be in the form of “constructive criticism.” Hill describes the most
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common method that the media used to fault the government as “criticism by praise,”
explaining that “headlines never focus on negatives; articles bury barbs in the final
paragraphs. Criticisms are rarely written in the active voice, and a circumlocutory
passive form of speech disguises disapproval.” Similarly, Indonesia Raya ’s founder,
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Mochtar Lubis, once described New Order newspapers as relying on “very subtle allu-
sions to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings, having to be like a snake, circling round and
round without ever striking the target.”
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While this image of cautious subversion challenges the picture of the mass media
as, in Hill’s words, “the most important area of maintenance and reproduction of the
New Order’s legitimation,” such “guerilla” resistance might have boosted the New
Order’s power by reinforcing fears of directly challenging the regime. The circling
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snake may seem lethal but never strikes.