Ilham Bintang, often described as ?the king of infotainment?, and celebrity gossip show presenter Fenny Rose have spoken out against the growing groundswell of criticism against their industry.
Fenny, host of RCTI?s ?Silet? (?Razor?), also claimed that gossip shows ? hugely popular in Indonesia with every television stations broadcasting at least two such programs daily ? had ?even more public benefit than news about the Century scandal.?
Speaking on the ?Mata Najwa? talk show hosted by Najwa Shihab, Ilham, the owner of the ?Cek & Ricek? celebrity gossip show and tabloid newspaper and also the secretary of the honor council of the Indonesian Journalists Association (PWI), insisted that infotainment was journalism.
?On behalf of the PWI, I say infotainment is journalism as stated in the 1999 Press Law,? Ilham said. ?But only if the infotainment follow journalistic rules and code of ethics. As for the bad ones who don?t follow the rule, we allow them to take a hike.?
Last week, the House of Representatives Commission I, which oversees communications and information, the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) and the Press Council agreed to begin categorizing the shows as ?non-factual? programs.
Non-factual shows, as established by the KPI, do not abide by religious norms, ethical, moral or social values and journalism ethics and therefore cannot be considered journalism.
?Under the KPI?s broadcasting code of conduct and programming standards, non-factual programs are subject to censorship by the Film Censorship Body (LSF),? KPI member Ezky Suyanto said last Wednesday.
Ilham, speaking ?Mata Najwa,? questioned KPI?s ?fatwa.?
?Do the people in KPI really have the competency to issue the fatwa? I feel KPI has ?castrated? the freedom of the press with the fatwa,? Ilham said. ?The KPI should have warned the infotainment programs that are deemed to have violated the press code of ethics first before taking such harsh action.?
He also mocked the statement by Press Council member Agus Sudibyo about what distinguishes news from infotainment.
?Agus Sudibyo said that if ?Ungu? releases a new album it is news but a celebrity divorce is not. I think that is very shallow. When a couple get a divorce, we must reveal the cause because there will be legal implications in the future such as alimony,? he said.
Last weekend, Agus said that only a small number of the shows could qualify as journalistic products.
?But only very few of them offer content that is pertinent to public interest and has news value,? Agus said.
Fenny, in a stoic defense lacking in substance, claimed that ?infotainment is factual? and ?we follow the code of ethics 5W + 1H,? apparently referring to what, where, when, why, who and how, which has nothing to do ethical standards.
?And if infotainment is accused of violating ethics, let me ask the aristocratic journalists if they really never violated it,? Fenny said, referring to members of the Alliance of Independent Journalists.
When asked what benefit the public could gain from infotainment, she said, ?Public benefit? Let me ask you, for people at the grass-roots level whose main concern is the soaring price of chili, what kind of benefit they get from political news like Century??
Previously, Dandhy Dwi Laksono, the author of ?Jurnalisme Investigasi? (?Investigative Journalism?), said the issue had divided the public in two.
?The first group is angry with the KPI for divorcing from infotainment because they want infotainment to be chained harder with the journalistic code of ethics and the second group who defend infotainment to the death,? Dandhy said. ?But I?m worried that the second group is merely trying to protect their money machine with a cloak of journalism.?
He cited AGB Nielsen data that shows that infotainment programs attracted 54 percent of the total number of advertisements.
?Go Spot program on RCTI, for example, of its 60-minute duration, 20 minutes are reserved for commercial breaks. Each commercial costs Rp 3 to 4 million per spot, so every day the program can make Rp 120 million,? Dandhy said.
(c) the jakarta globe
