The plan of the Indonesian government to activate and intensify the cyber police in 2021 got a warm welcome from the Indonesian Cyber Media Union (Serikat Media Siber Indonesia – SMSI) in an evaluation meeting of journalistic works at the end of 2020.
The government’s decision to activate the cyber police was conveyed by the Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs (Menko Polhukam), Mahfud MD.
“Digital attacks are a dilemma, but we have decided there is a cyber police,” Mahfud said as quoted by Kompas.id, Saturday (26/12/2020).
“Please activate the cyber police. We work protected by the press law. Cyber police have been around for a long time, please activate them,” said Chairman of the Central SMSI Expert Council, Hendry Ch Bangun, on Sunday (27/12/2020) during a year-end journalistic evaluation meeting at the Marbella Hotel, Anyer, Banten.
SMSI is not worried about the activation of the cyber police because all journalists working in the media are members of SMSI who have obeyed the law and the journalistic code of ethics. The target of cyber police is more on social media that spit words of hatred and slander. The professional press will not spread hate speech and slander.
We have the Press Law No. 40 of 1999, the Journalistic Code of Ethics as a Press Council regulation Number: 03/SK-DP/III/2006, the Cyber Media Coverage Guidelines as a Press Council regulation Number: 1/ Regulation-DP/III/2012, and the Child Friendly Coverage Guidelines (Pedoman Pemberitaan Ramah Anak – PPRA) which were endorsed by the Press Council on 9 February 2011.
“All that has been carried out by the media members of the SMSI. There is no problem, as for the contrarian problem, go ahead. This means that the counter-narrative presents correct information and with the right media,” said the General Chairman of the Central SMSI, Firdaus who was present at the evaluation meeting.
“This year-end evaluation is important, because it can be used as a reference for improvements in 2021,” said the Head of the Education and Training Division of the Central SMSI, M. Nasir.
In particular, the evaluation meeting highlighted the journalistic works of cyber media production by SMSI members, which amounted to 1,224 media.
According to the assessment of Hendry Ch Bangun, who is also the President Director of Siberindo.co, the quality of the journalistic work of the SMSI members’ media is quite good, violations of the code of ethics can be found in a very small number, between just one or two.
The violations included journalists who were impartial and unbalanced in reporting, such as when covering the regional head elections some time ago.
“There are still partisans. I already reminded that. In the future, you can’t do that. Things like this will be monitored,” said Hendry.
In terms of journalistic work, there are still those that are not standardized, the number is around 5-10 percent. In terms of news content, it is still found excessive in number for the same news object so that it seems that the news is just that.
Likewise, in presenting news actuality, there are still some media that have not been able to capture the actuality that readers are looking for. This deficiency will be a concern in education and training programs in 2021. (*)
