Journalists in Indonesia: educated but timid watchdogs

Abstract

In Indonesia, 385 professional journalists were surveyed, by means of face-to-face interviews, to establish their basic demographic and social characteristics as well as their views on professional values. The findings suggest that the “typical” Indonesian journalist is young, male, well educated and earns an above-average salary. In terms of education and training, journalists of the archipelago are becoming increasingly professional. They see themselves as neutral and objective disseminators of news, not as political actors and agents of development. Indonesian journalists disapprove of unscrupulous practices of reporting, yet paradoxically many of them justify and practice corruption during their everyday work. Although the study's primary focus is on Indonesia, the analysis goes well beyond national boundaries. By subjecting the data to factor analysis, five dimensions of media roles are extracted, namely public-oriented news journalism, popular service journalism, critical watchdog journalism, objective precision journalism and opinion-oriented news journalism.