Page 94 - SCANDAL AND DEMOCRACY

Reformasi 79

create for the other editors summoned, Lubis warned them, “Don’t go alone. Because
if you go alone, there is no witness who can testify that you didn’t [give up your
source].” After her warning, “no chief editor . . . [went] to the police offices alone.”
And no one revealed the tape’s source.
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Two weeks later, Roy Suryo from Gadjah Mada University used voice spectrum
analysis to determine the tape’s authenticity. He first compared the voice on the tape
to one of Habibie’s televised speeches, and then compared it to a tape of the comedian
Butet Kartaredjasa impersonating Habibie. The match between the tape and Habibie’s
televised speech was very close, Suryo told the media, much closer than the match
between the voice on the tape and Kartaredjasa’s impersonation.
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Shortly after announcing these findings, Suryo was summoned by Indonesia’s
notorious military intelligence agency, Badan Intelijen Negara (BIA). He agreed to
meet, but not without some trepidation, he later explained, as he was fully aware of
the agency’s involvement in the disappearance of political activists under Suharto.
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He alerted members of the media and, armed with his cell phone, traveled from Yog-
yakarta to BIA’s headquarters. A few hours later, he called to explain that after driving
him around for a while, his interrogators had treated him to lunch and were now his
good friends. Journalists who had stood by, ready to publicize any mistreatment of
Suryo, concluded that BIA, at least, did not intend to harass either Panji Masyarakat or
Suryo to protect Habibie. Suryo spent the rest of the afternoon relating his story on
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a popular radio talk show.
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Press Community Response and Critique
The enormous publicity that Panji enjoyed after the report showed competitors
how profi table such a high-risk story could be. Other outlets not only felt obliged to
storify Panji ’s exclusive but also appeared to jump in eagerly, devoting serial coverage
to the case. The scandal dominated radio and television for several days and generated
heavy print coverage for another two weeks: On February 20, for example, the news-
paper Merdeka carried eleven articles, an editorial, and a political cartoon on the case.
Nearly every report, in print or over the air, gave a de facto plug to Panji by naming the

magazine as the outlet that had fi rst published the tape’s transcript.
The continued coverage indicated that the story had also become a boon for these
other outlets, a lure for expanding their own audiences. Panji claimed a spike in circu-
lation following the report and enjoyed a 27 percent increase in advertising between
February and April. It also raised its cover price from Rp7,800 to Rp8,500.
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Amid this media blitz, however, journalists from other publications were pri-
vately critical. M.S. Zulkarnaen from D&R dismissed the wiretap report as “gossip”

and “sensationalism.” He claimed that D&R had also known about the tape but “on
principle” decided not to report it. As a news magazine, he added, “We cannot exploit
gossip . . . we have to know the truth.” Budiman S. Hartoyo, a senior editor for
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D&R blacklisted under Suharto, took a somewhat different position. In publishing

the tape’s transcript, he said, Panji had exhibited “unusual political courage,” particu-
larly since other media had access to the same information. On the other hand, what
Panji had done was not investigative reporting, which involves “digging and digging.”

Instead, he argued, the report was “a kind of lucky break” for the magazine.
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Ezki Suyanto, from Dë TAK , argued that Panji was more opportunistic than brave.
Her critique was at two levels, assessing the report’s value for both journalism and
political reform. She said that Dë TAK had learned of the cassette weeks earlier and