Farouk Arnaz and Dessy Sagita
JAKARTA: Executives from Metro TV and broadsheet Media Indonesia have filed a lawsuit against Cabinet Secretary Dipo Alam over his recent call for an advertising boycott against Indonesian news organisations.
The complainants, who filed the damages suit at the Central Jakarta District Court on Saturday, said their companies stood to lose much of their revenue if the boycott was enforced.
“Many of our advertisers fear the government, and if they decide to comply with Dipo’s suggestion, we could lose a lot of money,” said Metro TV director Tomi Suryopratomo, one of the plaintiffs.
“Not to mention Dipo has failed to meet our demands to retract his statement and publicly apologise within three days.”
The other plaintiffs were Metro TV deputy director Sugeng Suprawoto and Gaudensius Suhardi, news chief at Media Indonesia.
However, the plaintiffs declined to say how much compensation they were seeking.
The news executives also on Saturday lodged a defamation complaint with the National Police against Dipo, who accused their companies and TVOne last week of spreading hatred toward the government through negative news reports.
Metro TV and Media Indonesia are owned by Surya Paloh, founder of the National Democrats social organisation, while TVOne is owned by Golkar Party chairman Aburizal Bakrie and his family.
Dipo, who said the three news outlets portrayed Indonesia as a “messy and dark” country, threatened to cut their access to government information and state-funded advertising.
Otto Cornelius Kaligis, a lawyer representing Metro TV and Media Indonesia, said the proposed ban would violate the 1999 Press Law and the 2008 Freedom of Information Law.
“We believe Dipo has violated the principles of press freedom,” Otto said.
Comr. Gen. Ito Sumardi, the National Police’s chief of detectives, said his office would immediately conduct a preliminary investigation into the defamation complaint to determine whether the case “may be categorised as a crime or not.”
“In principle, the police are obliged to serve those who lodge a complaint with us,” he said on Sunday. “We will start interviewing witnesses and collecting evidence.”
Ito declined to say if the police planned to summon Dipo for questioning.
Meanwhile, Totok Sudaryanto, news and sports manager at TVOne, said his company had no plans yet to file similar complaints against Dipo.
He said the broadcaster had already asked for help from the Press Council, which agreed to mediate talks between the embattled cabinet secretary and concerned media groups this week.
“We’ve submitted the case to the Press Council, which has promised us that it will try its best to settle the case outside of court,” Totok said.
He also said TVOne would wait until the Press Council finished its investigation before deciding on further action against Dipo. “We’ll act accordingly [when the time comes], but for now, we’ll wait,” he said.
Additional reporting by Antara - Jakarta Globe/Pacific Media Watch
Pacific Media Watch
