Sirikit Syah

Sirikit Syah has set up a citizen monitoring effort to help journalists and press associations improve their professional standards and ensure continued support for a free press.

To usher in a new era of openness and freedom of the press, Sirikit is helping journalists and the public understand the role and responsibilities of the media in a democracy. She sees that if democracy in Indonesia is going to work, there must be information; further, the information must be reliable and, to the extent that it's possible, unbiased. Through a popular newsletter, a radio program, and a civic education effort, she brings to public attention the responsibilities of the media, and the public's responsibility to keep journalists on track. Her newsletter, Media Watch, is intended to encourage accountability on the part of journalists during this critical period in Indonesia's formation as a democracy. A journalist herself, she also wants to help her peers develop a professional identity that is rooted in high standards of reporting and an attention to a professional code of ethics. Free from strict government control, journalists will be accountable to themselves as a professional body and, thanks to Sirikit's growing media watch efforts, to the public.

After three decades of authoritarian rule, accompanied by tight controls on the media, Indonesia became a democracy in May 1998. The resulting changes rocked the country, calling for the hasty establishment of many new institutions and ways of doing things. Journalists were suddenly free to report what they saw and heard around them. The abrupt change brought about a dramatic increase in the number of newspapers, tabloids, and magazines, many of which doubled as entertainment pieces rather than serious, well-researched news. The standards of reporting dipped, and in the absence of a formal professional code of ethics, reporters as a group were doing little to assist the new democracy. For citizens of Indonesia, the transformation suddenly has cast them in the role of running the government by making judgments on the information available to them. Having never relied on the media to inform their opinion, Indonesians do not fully see the public's role in holding journalists, the agents of information, accountable for the integrity of the information they report. For the most part, people easily believe what is presented to them, and do not question what they read in print or see on television. On the other hand, if people feel that journalists publish news that is disadvantageous to them or their group, they will join together in actions of terror and intimidation and attack the offices of the publication or broadcast in question.

Sirikit's strategy is designed to reach two main groups: citizens as consumers of media; and journalists and other media professionals as media providers. By educating both, she hopes to establish a system of checks and balances that will allow the media to play a critical role in developing democracy in Indonesia. To reach the public, Sirikit started an interactive radio program three years ago. This program has been a particularly effective tool for educating the people of Indonesia, and Sirikit has witnessed a definite change over time in the callers' responses. The topics she addresses include monitoring the media, media and the law, the responsibility of teaching what is true, delivering feedback to the press, and creating a shared perspective between the press and the people regarding democracy and access to information. In the first year, many people expressed anger and emotional responses to media coverage. Now, they tend to be more analytical and can refer to the journalistic code of ethics. Sirikit has been asked to create similar programs for other stations, but she has decided to work on preparing a television talk show dealing with media issues.
She is currently studying scripts of programs from the Australian Broadcasting Company to which she has links, and negotiating with TVRI Surabaya, in part because programs aired regionally by TVRI often make their way to a national station. Rather than acting as a presenter, she sees her role as a writer and producer. From a small office in Sirikit's home, Sirikit and her team publish a monthly newsletter to about one thousand subscribers. Called Media Watch, it is sent to members of the press and parliament, citizen organizations, political parties, and universities. Lecturers of media and communications often use articles in the newsletter to spark class discussion, and some leading newspaper editors post a copy in the newsrooms and encourage staff to read it.
Funding for the newsletter has come from subscriptions and donations from individuals (including those from several national newspaper editors). Sirikit plans to triple the distribution size so that the newsletter reaches more readers and is supported through subscriptions. The newsletter has reached areas throughout Java and Bali, and in eastern Indonesia to NTT and Papua, and has stimulated interest among communities across the country in setting up local media watch organizations to monitor the actions of the local press. Sirikit hopes to see many media watch groups take on special focus areas, such as children's rights or gender equality. To help this along, she travels to Papua, Bali and Malang, offering consultation to those who plan to establish their own media watch organizations. The group from Bali is a women's citizen-led organization that will be monitoring the media for exploitation of women and children, while in Malang the group is based at a university. Three students from Malang now work with Sirikit as interns. There are requests from other cities as well, and Sirikit hopes that other staff will act as consultants and mentors. The best funding for media watch organizations, according to Sirikit, are media companies themselves–these companies should consider local groups to be an external research division as well as a control element. One existing network with which Sirikit works closely is the Independent Journalists Assocation. She was influential in their campaign against "envelope journalism," which stressed that prominent figures and companies that use bribes to obtain positive coverage should be exposed.Sirikit also engages her peers–journalists and other media professionals–in setting up and policing standards of conduct and ethics for their profession. She teaches classes for journalists and is a frequent contributor to national newspapers and a speaker in national meetings. To encourage excellence in journalism, she has established an annual award for outstanding journalism to provide first-rate examples to others in the profession.

Sirikit is the seventh of twelve children in her family. Because her father, the family's principal breadwinner, died when she was only three, the family had little money for the children's needs and education. She loved books, and although none were provided in her home, she found them in the public library. Starting in elementary school, she began writing stories on recycled writing booklets. She wrote in serial form and her friends and neighbors became eager borrowers and readers of her work. Encouraged by her high school language teacher, she continued to write stories and went on to create a magazine. Throughout high school and university, she won awards for her short stories. She also began writing features for leading national publications. She graduated in 1984 and took a teaching position at the college and a job as a journalist with the Surabaya Post. She decided to be a journalist and soon was acting as both reporter and editor at the Surabaya Post. She was recruited to write scripts and act as a media contact in 1990 by one of the new privately-owned television stations. She pioneered the news program and led a team of thirty people in covering the news of Eastern Indonesia. Because of the political control placed on these news broadcasts by the station's owners and managers, and lack of job satisfaction, Sirikit left and became a freelance journalist and a university lecturer in journalism. In 1988, she won a fellowship to study in Japan and in 1994, she received a Hubert Humphrey Fellowship, which allowed her to study media and journalism in the United States.