Media-elite interactions in post-authoritarian Indonesia

capital and journalists agreed to a shareholding split of fifty per cent held by Jaya
Raya and fifty per cent divided between the journalists (Dhakidae 1991: 266).
This arrangement – embodied in the establishment of the shareholding
company PT Grafiti Pers – was a novelty in journalist-capital relations and
strengthened Tempo’s independence (Dhakidae 1991: 267). However, the fifty per
cent belonging to Tempo workers is represented by the shareholder PT Pikatan.
Since PT Pikatan is owned by five main individual shareholders 21 holding 70 shares
each, Tempo is not really a worker-owned company (Dhakidae 1991: 268). Rather
those journalists who gained the shares had changed from “journalist-workers to
capitalist journalists” (Dhakidae 1991: 268) and thus became part of the capitalist
class, or, in C. Wright Mills’ (1959) terms, capitalists who are simultaneously
journalists. Christianto Wibisono, one of Tempo’s founders, emphasizes that a
journalist’s world view and interest changes by being promoted into a publisher
and results in an imbalance between those journalists who own and those who do
not. 22 In this context it should also be noted that Fikri Jufri, Tempo’s co-founder and
former editor, is, together with Kompas’ Jakob Oetama, among Indonesia’s 200
largest individual tax payers (Haryanto, 3 June 2002).
Tempo’s philosophy is to “present news as factual, accurate, and balanced” 23
(PT Tempo Inti Media Tbk 2009: 41). Under the leadership of Goenawan
Mohammad, co-founder and editor of Tempo, the magazine became Indonesia’s
most trusted and influential news magazine. It is regarded as independent, credible,
21
Harjoko Trisnadi, Goenawan Mohamad, Fikri Jufri, Bur Rasuanto and Lukman Setiawan.
22
Christianto Wibisono, in Jakarta-Jakarta, Majalah Berita Bergambar, 29 October 1987, p.92 as quoted in
Dhakidae 1991: 404.
23
“menyajikan berita peristiwa secara faktual, akurat, berimbang”.
18