Of course, there remained challenges to this free-wheeling media, particu- larly when it took advantage of the relative freedom it enjoyed to take on local power elites. While commercial concerns tended to reduce serious political discussion in the mainstream media, the voice of opposition was to be heard more often among the regional and local media, particularly radio, with its tradition of dissent. As a result, it was here that the broader fight for media space was concentrated. It could be a violent and bloody battle, with journalists who criticized the powerful facing immense dangers.
Away from Manila, the law of rule, rather than the rule of law, meant journalists who covered stories on local political corruption found they had little protection from the anger of those they criticized. Assassins targeted reporters in bloody reprisals for their work. In 2004, at least eight journal- ists, mostly rural radio reporters, were murdered in connection with their work, making it the deadliest year for the Philippine press since the 1980s and the days of Marcos. The death toll was surpassed only in Iraq, where journalists were covering a war.
Philippine journalists attributed the rise in violence to a nationwide breakdown in law and order, the wide circulation of illegal arms, and the insidious effect of the failure to convict a single person in the murders of 56 journalists since democracy was introduced there in 1986 (International Federation of Journalists 2005). And, despite government protests to the contrary, the killings continued through 2006, with the latest in June of that year in Mindanao (Committee for the Protection of Journalist – CPI 2006).
As journalists carried out their work at the edges of the Philippine state, where the military and corrupt local politicians and businessmen formed
the political elites, little was done to protect them. Indeed, except for two cases in the 1960s, by the new century nobody in the Philippines had ever been convicted of murdering a journalist. Most of the killings took place in the provinces, especially in Mindanao, the strife-torn southern region of the country. Journalist and writer, Sheila Coronel, said the tradition of set- tling scores by killing remained very strong: ‘In Manila, national newspa- pers can report critically, even carelessly sometimes, and that is tolerated.
But in the provinces, there is a low level of tolerance for critical reporting’
(Baguioro 2003).
Politicians and officials exposed by the local press also used other, less radical methods to silence their critics. In 2005, at least five journalists, including Raffy Tulfo, writer of the ‘Shoot to Kill’ section of a local news- paper, were given prison sentences for defamation. On Mindanao, four media outlets were closed, including dxVR FM radio, which had its licence withdrawn in July by the mayor of a town on the island (Reporters Sans Frontieres 2006). Lawlessness and the gun culture in the Philippines has reached such an extreme level, however, that in the wake of growing number of murders of reporters and editors, not only were journalists assigned police body guards, but reporters have begun to arm themselves (AMCB March–April 2005).
The weak state creates major problems for the mass media as it addresses issues of separatism and its consequences. In the post 9/11 environment, the growing importance of the military has had an impact on media freedoms in the Philippines. The military’s central role in internal security is some- thing that has changed little since Marcos’s day and was given a boost by the ‘war on terror’. As with many of its neighbours, the Philippines had to have one eye always on the United States, particularly when two of the most dangerous al-Qaida-linked groups in Southeast Asia were based in the Philippines and had been providing training to Muslim radicals, including Jemaah Islamiyah, in camps in the southern Philippines.10
In the wake of the Bali bombings, Indonesian officials suggested that some of the five suspects had undergone military training in the southern Philippines. This was officially denied by the Philippines security forces, which claimed to have overrun all major militant camps in the southern region of Mindanao in recent years, forcing the rebels to move their bases elsewhere. Security officials privately said that local Muslim guerrillas had sheltered foreign extremists in their camps despite a ceasefire agreement with the government (Agence France Presse 5 October 2005).
Arroyo was quick to congratulate the military and police for their ‘string of successes’ against terrorism, despite accusations that much of the appar- ent success in their battle against terrorist groups was merely public rela- tions. Four men whom the Philippine National Police paraded before the
media in early 2005 had been in PNP custody for two months already – recycled, critics said, to boost support for Arroyo. The President was seeking to increase state power after 13 people were killed and more than 100 others wounded in a trio of Valentine’s Day bombings that jolted Makati, the country’s premier financial district, as well as two southern cities. Arroyo was bent on reviving a controversial proposal for a national system of identification cards, and the wire-tapping of suspected terrorists under an Anti-Terrorism Bill she had been trying to get passed since the 2001 terrorist attacks in the US (Baguioro 2005).
Before the press conference, Arroyo had told the military in an open speech that public safety was a component of economic progress as much as political stability and had ordered the launch of pre-emptive strikes to prevent ‘borderless’ terror groups from inflicting harm and sowing mayhem (Esguerra 2005).
Whether the success was real or imaginary, as with many of its neigh- bours, the Philippine government was already reaping a bonanza from its status as Washington’s favoured terror-fighting ally in Asia. US military aid increased from $2m (£1.25m) in 2001 to $80m a year, while US soldiers and special forces flooded into Mindanao to launch offensives against Abu Sayyaf, a group the White House saw as having links to al-Qaeda (Klein 2003). It served as a reminder of the resources available to the political elites in Southeast Asia who sided with Washington.
CONCLUSION
Whether or not the Philippine model is one that reflects a shared future for its neighbours in Southeast Asia, remains to be seen. After all, the elements that comprise this example do not exist in exactly the same equation any- where else in the region. The influence of Spanish and American colonial powers on the political culture of the Philippines have created a unique mix of family control within a democratic context, where a freewheeling, celebrity-filled media both grates on the local oligarchs who see themselves as born to rule, yet allows them to create huge constituencies for electoral validation. Besides, few would suggest it is a model to be encouraged.
But, from the embrace of the cult of personality by a growing urban and anomic Asian audience, through the emergence of nascent democratic political institutions, to a media and publicity apparatus which is both growing in stature and embracing tabloid-style content due to commercial pressures, these are all elements which are emerging across Southeast Asia.
Celebrity has an important psychological role as a brand in twenty-first century democratic consumer culture. It is the existential prop in the
bottomless pit of the ‘condition humaine’ of democratic consumer capi- talism, providing familiar faces amongst the anonymity of modern life.
And, given the energetic development of consumer capitalism in the region, the role of the publicity machine and of television, in particular, the pro- motion of these well-known faces and the democratization of fame leads, inevitably, to a celebration of the ephemeral: pushing personality in pref- erence to ideas. It is a process Kellner (1990) sees as undermining democ- racy. After all, ‘where there is nothing else that binds – not platform or ideology . . . why not sheer popularity. Where no principles are at stake, elections are mere popularity contests’ (Coronel 1999b, p. 92).
Of course, personality politics is nothing new for Asia. Personalities drove the creation of Asian nationalism, the push for independence, and then post-colonial development. The media amplify the personality cult under conditions of democracy as outlined particularly well in this case study. Under the spotlight of the modern media industry, few celebrity politicians live up to their hype. Certainly, if Erap was anything to go by, in the world of celebrity artifice cutting a dashing figure on the silver screen does not mean you can do the same on the national political stage.
The Philippine example also emphasizes important regional questions about cultural imperialism and the future of local cultural products given that the dominant Southeast Asian TV images have become those like MTV, World Wrestling Federation and Manchester United Football Club, which are clearly developed outside the Philippines – even if this is with a nod to localization through local language programming, or a trip to the
‘Far East’ to play exhibition matches. The increasingly hegemonic control of the media, and television in particular, by big business interests, means the increasing influence of US cultural images.
Likewise, the Philippines’ tabloid-dominated media underlines the fading commitment to factual and serious content driven by audience demand combined with broader industry trends. Relentless commercialization drives programming towards reality television and tabloid journalism, bowing to local political sensitivities and compounding the tendency for personality to be elevated over the professional, image over discourse, style over substance and simplicity over complexity (Coronel 2000, pp. 159–62). Thus, the growth of access to television among the newly-enfranchised in Asia pro- vides merely distracting flickering shadows on the wall of the Platonic cave of political choice.
It is easy to ignore the audience, and prurient public interest, the third party to this ‘uneasy Faustian marriage of media and celebrity . . . [with its]
virtually endless thirst for intimate details about the lives of others that borders on the forensic’ (Foulkes 2001, p. xxvi). In the promotion of media and entertainment goods, the building of this audience is now as important
as creating the product. Given the corresponding increase in the influence of the marketing department and the importance of audience research, it is clear that our media and entertainment products come to us ‘imbricated with theories of what we want’ (Frith 1996, pp. 169–70). So, as with our elected politicians, perhaps we also get the media and entertainment prod- ucts we deserve.
But even among those in the region’s mass media who are concerned about the directions the industry is taking, few would rather see its wings clipped. Sheila Coronel points out, she would ‘rather be a journalist in the rambunctious Manila press, than in the tame newspapers of the other, more sober, more stable societies, where government press releases and insipid developmental features are passed off as legitimate journalism’ (Coronel 1991, p. 52).
However, the Philippines case study illustrates how an apparently free media does not necessarily mean the development of a pluralist political culture or the constitutionalizing of the rule of law. In fact, democratized mass media and politics Philippines style sees, ironically, the elevation of the cult of personality and machismo. Such cults are familiar in more authoritarian cultures, and the Philippine experience of people power seems to have, via the free media, volatized all the worst elements of celebrification and personality politics. This does little to support classical ideas of rational debate and consensus achieved by means of free and open pluralist debate. As we shall see in the next case study, Indonesia, even in a culture that looks more to Mecca than to Hollywood, the mass media has been central to both the creation of the state, the elevation of person- ality cults and legitimization of elite rule.
NOTES
1. Media Partners Asia, www.media-partners-asia.com.
2. See Alkman and Pottinger (2002, p. 18), Oliver (2000) and Francis (2002, p. 5) among others.
3. BBC (20 January, 2001).
4. See the Mazi articles, Communication for Social Change Consortium, http://www.
communicationforsocialchange.org/mazi-articles.php?id=272.
5. www.luwaran.com.
6. www.philippinerevolution.org.
7. Accessed November 2003.
8. Mongbay Country Reports: The Philippines, March 2006, www.mongbay.com/
reference/ country_profiles/2005–2005/philippines.html, accessed April 2007.
9. Firm ownership data taken from annual reports from the website of the Philippines Stock Exchange: www.pse.org.ph.
10. See Associated Press (24 September 2004, p. 3) and Gomez (2005).
globalized media and the ‘war on terror’
INTRODUCTION
At the end of the twentieth century, there was an explosion of new titles in Indonesia’s media industry that followed a lifetime of authoritarian control. The end of the Suharto New Order and the initial post-1998 enthu- siasm for reform unleashed a variety of competing interests in the country.
Attempts, moreover, to restore central political control over a mass com- munication media, seen as both boon and bane, were showing few signs of success as the first decade of the new century drew to a close.
The mass media offered Indonesia’s political elite the possibility of reaching a huge and geographically disparate audience. Freedom, however, in the wake of the fall of Suharto and the New Order, was an unfamiliar state of affairs, and they were turning to various methods both familiar and new, from corruption and violence to ownership and legal recourse, to try either to silence or control what the elite saw as unruly elements in the industry. Moreover, with the ‘war on terror’ adding weight to conservative forces seeking a more ‘responsible’ and controlled media, Indonesia looked set to follow some of its neighbours in resisting an open media and demo- cratic pluralism.
The chaos of competing interests left by the collapse of the Suharto regime transformed Indonesia, briefly, into the most democratic country in Asia, accompanied by the ‘blossoming of a free and aggressive local media after decades of suppression under Mr. Suharto . . . aiding civic activism, such as the fight against corruption’ (Mapes 2004). However, efforts to influence and control the mass communication media continued, as pow- erful local figures refused to recognize the emergence of a plural industry, and political elites accustomed to unquestioned power struggled to convey their messages in an increasingly complex media environment.
Significantly, the sentencing in 2004 of Bambang Harymurti, the Editor of Tempo, the country’s most influential newsmagazine, to one year in prison in a libel case was one of a number of incidents that raised serious
140
concerns about resurgent government control and the curtailment of press freedoms in Southeast Asia’s largest nation after a period of openness (Hudiono 2004).
The growing number of libel cases was, however, only one of a number of strategies, including ownership, influence and violence, by which politi- cians, local strongmen, religious groups and sectors within the police and armed forces tried to reassert control over the media. These attempts to stem the free flow of information and opinion in the country came amidst renewed efforts by governments across the region to control the flow of news and entertainment products in the face of the growing impact of cross-border, mass communication media in the Asian region and beyond.
However, they also took place in an environment where political actors were making conciliatory moves and constitutional choices leading to the formation of alliances, convergence on issues and trade-offs between con- testants while aware of the pressures from an increasingly political, literate majority. This ‘political crafting’ (Di Palma 1990), was having an important impact on the pacing and direction of Indonesia’s political transition.
In Indonesia, charismatic leaders have used the media to project their image across geography and time. Where charisma is combined with media to create celebrity, it becomes an increasingly important element in the political process, particularly in relation to the forces of physical power and regimes of terror. It, thus, remains relevant in the twenty-first century in Indonesia and elsewhere as ‘the practice and imagination of the political economy of Indonesia, as in many post colonial states, is in crisis, or at the more predictable end of the usual low-level instability’ (Hughes-Freeland 2007, p. 192).
Indonesia struggled to recover from the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis: esti- mates from 2003 indicated that GDP based on purchasing power parity came out at $US758.8 billion, or $3200 per capita, compared to Malaysia at $207.8 billion, approximately $9000 per capita, and Singapore at $109.4 billion, or $23 700 per capita (CIA 2004). Indeed, of all the Asian economies, ‘Indonesia’s experience in the wake of the economic crisis of 1997, has to be the most intense and destructive’ (Robison 2001, p. 104)1. By 2004, the World Bank was warning Indonesia to reinforce the country’s improving economic growth, pass fresh laws to boost investor confidence and cut the country’s soaring fuel subsidies (Jakarta Post2004b).
This chapter will examine the problem of Indonesian democracy and the impact of the media freedom and media control, and how this dialectic has evolved since 1998, as Indonesian political elites have sought to force the media to further their perceived interests and attempt to restore their gate- keeping role over the flow of news and information within their borders by forging their own alliances, as Kellner (1990) maintains, with transnational
corporations, and communications technologies in the emerging era of technocapitalism. As with many of its neighbours, Indonesia’s political elites were aware of the centrality of the media to the lives of Indonesians.
They were also well aware that they had a battle on their hands when it came to controlling the flow of information, facilitated by the globalization of the media industry, across and within their borders. Recent history had shown them that this had clear consequences for their ability to maintain their grip on power.
Again, like many of their ASEAN neighbours, Indonesia’s political elites used the pretext of the ‘war on terror’ to curb basic freedoms or to crack down on their domestic opponents. This led to what critics described as an
‘unprecedented abuse’ of individual rights and freedoms (RSF 2002a). This trend looked set to strengthen, supported by a conservative backlash among a middle class troubled by fears for stability as terrorists seemed able to attack the heart of the country’s business district with impunity. They smarted at the interference by international groups in national affairs, and were impatient with the years of economic pain that followed the fall of Suharto and the onset of the Asian financial crisis in 1997.
The landslide success of former Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in the presidential elections of September 2004 was a sign that Indonesians, concerned about unemployment, rising costs and corruption, and restive after the bomb attacks in Bali and Jakarta, were only too happy for a former military general to restore law and order, even if it was to the detriment of some of their hard won democratic freedoms, including a plural media. There was, after all, little in the country’s political culture and in the history of the development of the media in Indonesia to suggest an instinctive support for democratic pluralism, and even the market looked set to conspire with traditional pressures to limit media titles and reduce diversity.
Indonesia, however, is no Singapore, where natural geography and logis- tics allow for a realistic control of the media. Given the country’s disparate geography and cultural make up, and its competing political interests, it was not going to be simple to nail the lid back on the Pandora’s Box of Indonesia’s mass communication media. Indeed, in the wake of terrorist attacks in Bali and Jakarta, Indonesia’s political elites were concerned how they might contain internal unrest, particularly if economic troubles deep- ened amidst the turbulent sea of social change, raising the further question as to whether or not Southeast Asia’s political elites could adapt to the fast world of a globalized media culture.
This chapter, then, examines the implications of the fast information age and its attendant communications technology on Indonesian development and democratization. It considers the new communication environment