What is the relationship between journalists and superheroes? What do
Superman and Spiderman have in common? That’s right, they are both
journalists. I never understood why these superheroes were journalists,
of all professions. Since I studied journalism at college in Indonesia, I
found out the reason.
My friends and I were indoctrinated with the thought that journalists
carry out a noble profession. Why? We are delivering news, or as some
say, the truth. We watch the government, you can’t do anything wrong or
we are going to expose it. Why do we that? Because we work for people
rights, the minority, those who suffered and et cetera.
Isn’t it cool to be a journalist? We carry the truth on our
shoulders. We, journalists, are almighty. But are we really? I you ask
me, I’ll say no. I started my profession as a journalist circa 2011.
Young. Barely knew anything. But, believe me, I don’t feel like I have
superpowers at all. Why? We surrounded with kryptonite. Our “green
stones” are the very same companies that we are working for.
Couple of months ago, I heard shocking news from my friend. He and
several colleagues of his were fired. My friend told me the details.
They started to complain about salary cuts ranging from 5% to 20%.
Management argued that action should be done to keep the company
running. Not just that, these journalists found out that they won’t have
any health insurance and pension anymore either as that has been cut
from their salary as well. The same fate united them. To make their
voice heard, a worker union was born. They asked for their rights.
From my point of view, what they did was right. These guys are good
journalists. I always met them every time we covered news together. They
aren’t just anybody, and they didn’t deserve what their company did to
them. It is pathetic. At some point, these people who always “fight” for
the labour rights of others, often people they don’t even know
personally, are now the ones who need someone to fight for them. They
write with mission “every labourer should get paid well”.
But, when it happens to themselves, who fights for them? Nobody. As
we live in a modern era. Everyone has freedom to speech. You can’t seal
peoples mouth’s. Look what happened to Aung San Suu Kyi, she lived with
an invisible seal on her mouth. Journalists spoke for her rights the
entire time. But, when it happens to journalists who will stand up for
their rights? Well, if the government seals the mouths of journalists,
other journalists will help. But, it wont be the same when the media
seals its journalist mouth.
It happened with my friend. She felt something was not right with her
news division management. She stated her opinion. Anyone can guess what
happened to her? The company “tortured” her with moving her to a much
less important compartment. To me, it shows that her company doesn’t
want to hear any criticism even if it is constructive criticism. I don’t
see the fruits of freedom of speech in a media landscape like this.
One last story that I want to share with you. Nowadays we can’t avoid
media convergation. Let me explain. One holding company can have paper,
television channel, radio, news wire, and content media provider. What I
learned from uni was this kind of practice is very undesirable. It is
as if all news is being controlled by one party, either the owner of the
holding company or the editor in chief itself. All I believe is
citizens have the right to have varied sources of information.
I am not going to talk about how this converged media will affects
the readers, viewers, audience and all. Again it is about how media
companies treat their reporters/employees. In order to cut the budget,
sometimes they just hire some reporters to fill, say, two to three
different news paper. Yes, they are sharing the news. And the sad thing
about sharing news is, if Paper A has an exclusive news, its sister,
Paper B, can copy and publish it the next day. So, Paper B has their
news one day late. Isn’t there is NEW in NEWs?
One of my friend said, “I am kind of ashamed to copy and rewrite
story from my so-called-sister-paper. I want to make my own story.” Is
this the sound of weakness inside a superhero? Yes it is.
Those are few things I face in daily life. It might not represent
Indonesian media as a whole, but this is how I experience it. So, how
are media companies in your country run? Keen to share your perspective?
*also published here
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