Jakarta – The growing number of media outlets in Indonesia does not guarantee good quality reporting, which is needed given the flurry of flash news in the social media, a discussion heard recently.
Three journalists said the growing legion of journalists failed to offer better quality news.
Metta Dharmasaputra, an investigative reporter for Tempo newsmagazine, said the current trend toward instant news threatened the credibility of the press, placing journalists in danger of losing their skills of observation and verification.
"Flash news containing unverified information is getting more attention from the public than in-depth reporting," he said.
Metta cited the tendency for people to seek out and pass on truncated segments of information as news through social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter.
He also expressed concern that people could say almost anything on Twitter without the obligation to verify the information they passed on.
Metta decried the tendency among journalists toward this kind of "instant" reportage to the detriment of in-depth or investigative reports.
"Journalists want to report news quickly. Now they tend to string together statements from various sources without verification or adequate concern for accuracy," he added.
"Journalists have become information machines seeking to know more and more, but not verifying what they already have. Journalists are losing their ability to observe objectively," Metta said.
"We should prevent this from happening," he said, adding that the danger was that people might perceive unverified information as fact.
Senior journalist Atmakusumah Astraatmadja said all "instant news" should be considered only raw material because professional journalistic standards required the need for verification.
He added that investigation enabled journalists to search for and find solid facts that could be verified to provide adequate detail and lend a timeless quality to their reporting.
"Investigations can also reveal crimes and other matters that remain hidden from the public," Independent Journalist Alliance (AJI) president Nezar Patria said.
Metta said news in Indonesia often focused on politics, while white-collar crime such as share price manipulation in the private sector did not get enough attention from the press.
He added that investigative reporting would reveal important issues affecting public interests. (fem)