From My Point of View

I was invited to speak in a discussion about Lapindo mudflow victims, a couple of weeks ago. It was held in Goethe Haus, Menteng, Central Jakarta. My colleague, Heru Margianto, the editor of Kompas.com was also invited to speak, along with Alif Nurlambang, former 68H Radio journalist and a victim of the mudflow, flew all the way from Sidoarjo, East Java. The main topic was how media portray Lapindo mudflow case, three years after. I was given a chance to speak after the guy from Sidoarjo. He lambasted media for being ignorance of their plight and misery. The first thing I said was that I felt like a defendant in that forum. Everybody was there to grill and question the media role, and I felt like I was put under a spotlight. However, I then said that this is a good thing. "Press freedom, media freedom, is your freedom, the public freedom," I said. Forum like this should be held more often, so that the public can say what they think about press reporting, and complaint about t...

This question haunted me since several weeks ago: how far do we, journalist, are responsible for things happening around us? It all begin last September. The Alliance of Independent Journalist (AJI) Jakarta, where I sit as the chairman since last February, was asked to host a discussion to commemorate the fifth year anniversary of Munir's murder. As everybody probably well aware, this prominent human rights campaigner was poisoned to death on a Garuda flight to Amsterdam, September 7th five year ago. Many journalists attended the discussion. We watched a documentary made by a friend of mine, former RCTI producer, Dhandy Dwi Laksono, and felt closer to Cak Munir. The film was great, it explained why we need to keep asking the question: who was behind this murder and keep pushing the police and attorney general to prosecute the mastermind. However, the thing that disturbed me came during the discussion. Although it was not openly spoken during the Q and A session, I sense that many h...