ABSTRACT
Through much of the twentieth century, the relationship between the media and any form of government – democratic or not – has been seen as more or less axiomatic. In Indonesia, the media has been the site of every momentous transition in living memory. In the early hours of 1 October 1965, General Suharto took over the then only legal radio and television stations in Indonesia to announce his army’s ascendency over the so-called communist coup attempt. Thirty-two years later, he announced his resignation and nominated his successor, Habibie, simultaneously on Indonesia’s many television channels, beamed across the world to millions of viewers. Since then, every presidential campaign and ballot (four counting the indirect elections of Wahid and Megawati) has taken place in the full glare of television cameras, in itself symbolising the distance that Indonesia has travelled towards democratisation. Put simply, every political aspirant and activist knows the media are important. But beyond the symbolic and the obvious, there is little agreement on how the increasingly diversified media operate in Indonesia and post-authoritarian transitions more generally and how they might promote or impede the pathways to a sustainable liberal democracy in the early twenty-first century.
