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Press freedom helps to fortify democracy and good
governance in a country. How do you measure press freedom? What indicators
do you use? Discussions on measuring press freedom will come up on National
Press Day on Feb. 9, observed in Manado, the capital of North Sulawesi.
The Paris-based
Reporters Without Borders, better known by its French initials RSF, and
Freedom House in Washington, are two organizations that publish annual
worldwide press freedom indexes.
For its World
Press Freedom Index, RSF prepares a lengthy questionnaire. It lists 74
questions and additional sub-questions in six core criteria: pluralism,
media independence, environment and self censorship, legislative framework,
transparency, and infrastructure. Journalists, researchers, human rights
activists and 150 RSF correspondents worldwide answer the questionnaire.
Sample
questions are: do privately owned print and TV networks exist? Are there
any kinds of limits from owners or governments? The index also attempts to
show restrictions on the free flow of information on the Internet.
RSF uses a
logarithmic formula applying a weighting system to give a country score.
The score ranges from 0 — 100 with 0 the best possible score on the state
of press freedom and 100 the worst.
Outside the
questionnaire, RSF staff also assess the level of violence against
journalists. The violence score with a given weight of 20 percent is
factored into the score of six criteria for the final score. The outcome is
a ranking of 179 countries.
Meanwhile,
Freedom House does not use a globally distributed questionnaire as its main
tool. It uses input from its own travel, professional contacts and the
findings of human rights and press freedom organizations.
To assess press
freedom levels in a given country, Freedom House uses 23 methodology
questions and 109 indicators in three categories: the legal environment,
the political environment and the economic environment.
Specimen
questions are: Is there implicit impunity for those who commit crimes
against journalists? Is there government control of state-run media
outlets? For each methodology question, the lower number of points, the
freer the situation.
A score of 0 to
30 places the country in the free press group, 31 to 60 in the partly free
press group and 61 to 100 in the not free press group.
In RSF’s 2013
World Press Freedom Index (covering events from Dec. 1, 2011 to Nov. 30,
2012), Finland tops the world ranking with a 6.38 score, followed by the
Netherlands and Norway. Among ASEAN countries the top three are Brunei
(world rank 122, score 35.35), Thailand (135, 38.6), and Indonesia (139,
41.05). Indonesia surged seven places from 2012. Timor Leste, which seceded
from Indonesia in 1999, fared better at 90.
Freedom House
has not released its 2013 index. However, in its 2012 index (covering
events from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2011), for Asia and the Pacific, Freedom
House places Palau, an island southeast of the Philippines, on top with a
score of 16, followed by New Zealand.
No ASEAN
country scored below 30 for a “free” press status. Three ASEAN member
states are classified as “partly free”, with the Philippines ranked 21 with
a rating of 42, Indonesia (22, 49) and Thailand (28, 60). Timor Leste
scored better with 35 for the 18th place.
Indonesian media
organizations are developing a nationwide press freedom measuring tool.
Under the auspices of the independent Press Council, journalism schools
such as in the University of Indonesia and Dr. Soetomo Press Institute
(LPDS), and professional organizations like the Association of Independent
Journalists (AJI), the Indonesian Journalist Association (PWI) and the
Press Legal Aid Institute (LBH Pers) are jointly drafting an instrument for
a press freedom index.
Still a work in
progress, the tool is a two-part questionnaire. Part I covers nine
questions under the heading “Internal Threats”. Part II has seven questions
on “External Threats”. The questionnaire directs concern at possible
restrictions from within a media outlet, meaning the owners and management.
In part one,
several questions reflect the reality that a number of media owners have a
political agenda in the upcoming 2014 general election. Some of the
questions as are follows: Do journalists get an assignment that potentially
violates the journalism code of ethics? Must a journalist’s political
partiality be in line with the political interest of the owner/management
of the media outlet? Is self-censorship ordered by the owner/management of
the media outlet?
Meanwhile, a
sample part two question is as follows: Is there a legal process starting
from the police, the prosecutor and the judiciary that impedes journalists
in exercising their journalistic duty?
All the
questions require a yes or no answer. A yes reply gets one point and a no
scores zero. A score of zero to two earns a “very good” press freedom
status. A score of 13-16 gets a “very bad” press freedom grade.
Reworking still
needs to happen on the scope and wording of the questions, a weighting
system, identifying the respondents and the evaluators. One point agreed is
that the evaluating team must be independent and professional. When the
questionnaire is finalized, it will indicate the variance in press freedom
in each of Indonesia’s provinces. ●
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