Tim Dodd, Jakarta – For five days this week Indonesia's media was in hot pursuit of the story that President Abdurrahman Wahid planned to retire on his 60th birthday in September this year.
Newspapers, radio and television ran the story. It hit the front page of several newspapers. On two consecutive days it was on page one of the Republika daily. It became common currency that the President had said he would stand aside.
But the story was wrong. The source was a mistranslation of an interview with Mr Wahid by this reporter, published in The Australian Financial Review last Friday.
The tale of how a translation error came to get such a run in the Jakarta press is an insight into how the Indonesian media is developing since then president Soeharto resigned two years ago.
It is boisterous, vigorous, pushes political barrows unashamedly and is often very loose with the facts. All traces of the media control of the Soeharto era are gone. Anybody, especially the president, is fair game.
Last Friday the AFR story reported Mr Wahid as wanting to cut his term as short as possible so he could enjoy his retirement, although he stressed he was committed to staying until his goals were achieved.
"You know, my idea was to live at peace after 60 years of life. To write a book, to lead a pesantren [a Muslim religious college] and then I was catapulted into the presidency. I hope that it can be over soon," he had told the AFR.
"I would like to have it as short as possible, but if necessary I will have to go to see the completion of the [five-year] term. That's what I mean by the ideology of human rights, of the rule of law; it's more important to me than anything else. It's my life."
Mr Wahid's wish, before he became president, to retire at 60 soon became, in many reports, an intention to step down from the presidency in September. And once a story starts running in the Indonesian press it is very difficult to put down.
His close colleague, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Alwi Shihab, corrected the mistake. The President himself corrected it, while confirming the AFR story, but still it kept running. Some reports attributed the original interview to The Sydney Morning Herald.
This reporter, keen to ensure the AFR was not associated with the false story, wrote to newspapers to correct the error. The letter was run in several papers the next day, with his name spelt three different ways.
Indonesia's media has expanded greatly since it was freed in 1998. The standard of the thousands of new journalists is generally not high and much of the misreporting can be put down to honest mistakes.
But there are also political motives. One influential Jakarta commentator believes the "resignation in September" line was spread by supporters of Vice-President Megawati Soekarnoputri who want to see President Wahid step down.
The culmination was an interview with this reporter on Wednesday which led the evening news of the Indosiar television channel, ahead of the Economics Minister denying rumours he would resign due to illness. One wrong story can go a very long way.