Ismira Lutfia & Putri Prameshwari, Indonesia – The Indonesian Journalists Association (PWI) said in a statement on Tuesday that it regretted the recent suspension of private broadcaster Metro TV's morning "Headline News" program after it inadvertently aired uncensored scenes from a pornographic video.
Hendry CH Bangun, PWI's secretary general, said the suspension, which was ordered by the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI), could potentially threaten press freedom in the country, a basic right guaranteed by the Constitution.
PWI said the broadcasting commission had overstepped its authority when it ordered "Headline News" off the air for seven days, in addition to requiring Metro to broadcast public apologies for three consecutive days, on three different occasions.
The association did, however, acknowledge that Metro had breached the 1999 Press Law and the journalistic code of ethics by allowing the pornographic material on the air.
Snippets from a pornographic video were aired during a Metro news story about police raid on an Internet cafe in Trenggalek, East Java, on June 14. The video was playing on one of the cafe's computer monitors in the background.
Metro has accepted the KPI's sanctions and apologized for the incident. The station's deputy chief editor, Makroen Sanjaya, has said that Metro has taken "corrective actions" in response to the incident.
PWI's statement comes just days after KPI issued a joint decision with the Press Council and House of Representatives Commission I, which oversees communications affairs, to categorize infotainment shows as "nonfactual" programs which, under the broadcasting code of conduct and program standards, are subject to censorship.
PWI is the only journalism association that recognizes employees of infotainment shows as journalists. Ilham Bintang, the owner of the "Cek & Ricek" infotainment show and tabloid, is the secretary of PWI's honors council.
The association's statement on Tuesday came with a "Press Freedom Manifesto 2010" signed by 50 media pundits and practitioners who "strongly protest and denounce" KPI's actions against Metro TV.
The signatories include broadcast and print media bigwigs and mass communications experts, as well as a current member and a former deputy chairman of the Press Council.
"This action [by the KPI] deprives the press of freedom. It also stains President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's administration, which has reiterated and guaranteed there should be no restriction to press freedom," the manifesto says.
However, Ade Armando, a communications expert at the University of Indonesia, was dismissive of the manifesto.
"The people behind it certainly did not read the laws and regulations before signing it," he said. "If someone protests that a TV station should not be punished after airing a sex scene at five in the morning, something is definitely wrong with their heads."
KPI chairman Dadang Rahmat Hidayat said that according to the broadcasting code of conduct and programming standards, the commission was well within its rights to suspend the Metro program.
"The public deserves to receive decent information" Dadang said, "and we are trying to protect that [mandate]."
He said the KPI was merely following regulations, and pointed out that the suspension was only for seven days.
"We understand there is a debate about whether what we did was censorship," he said. "We know Metro TV is a credible station, but still, as a broadcasting institution, it has to participate in improving the nation."