About Sinar Harapan

Sinar Harapan

Sinar Harapan, whose name meant Rays of Hope, was an Indonesian-language evening daily newspaper published in Jakarta by PT Sinar Harapan Persada and its predecessor companies. It was first published on 27 April 1961 and became one of Indonesia's leading national newspapers, known in its strongest years as the king of the evening newspapers. Its motto declared its purpose: to struggle for freedom and justice, truth and peace, based on love. The paper was closely associated with Indonesia's Protestant Christian community, although its managers insisted it was not a party newspaper and that its responsibility was to the truth of the facts it reported. Its history was defined by confrontation with state power. It was banned repeatedly under both Sukarno's Old Order and Suharto's New Order, and the final revocation of its publishing licence in October 1986 kept it off the newsstands for almost fifteen years. It was revived in the Reform era on 2 July 2001, competed once more as an evening paper, and published its last print edition on 31 December 2015, thereafter continuing only as an online portal.

Founding in 1961

Sinar Harapan was established by a large founding group drawn from Indonesia's Protestant and professional circles. The figures involved in its establishment included Dr. Komang Makes, Lengkong, Ds. Roesman Moeljodwiatmoko, Simon Toreh, Prof. Dr. Soedarmo, J. B. Andries, Dr. J. Leimena, Supardi, Ds. Soesilo, Ds. Saroempaet, Soehardhi, Ds. S. Marantika, Darius Marpaung, Prof. Ds. J. L. Ch. Abineno, J. C. T. Simorangkir, Ds. W. J. Rumambi, Sahelangi, A. R. S. D. Ratulangi and Dra. Mrs. B. Simorangkir, and H. G. Rorimpandey, who was appointed the paper's first general manager and became its defining leader. The paper was published by PT Sinar Kasih and received support from Parkindo, the Indonesian Christian Party, but its own stated position was that it was not a party organ; like any other newspaper, it existed to voice justice and truth. Its first president director was I. D. Pontoan, with Rorimpandey as a director. The new evening paper began modestly, with a circulation of about 7,500 copies, but by the end of 1961 that figure had jumped to about 25,000, and its staff, about twenty-eight people at the start, began the growth that would eventually take it into the hundreds.

First Bans Under the Old Order

The paper's troubles with authority began early and recurred in every era of its life. During the crisis that followed the 30 September Movement of 1965, Sinar Harapan was banned on 2 October 1965, at a moment when only certain approved media were permitted to publish and the events of that night were not to be freely exposed. The ban was short: publication resumed on 8 October 1965. Indonesian accounts of the paper count four temporary closures or publication bans across its early decades, in 1965, 1973, 1974 and 1978 in one reckoning, as control of the press remained in government hands and sanctions of this kind were a normal hazard for any newspaper that tested official patience. The pattern established in the 1960s, of a paper that reported aggressively, was stopped, and then negotiated or waited its way back onto the street, repeated itself for the next twenty years.

The Commission IV Affair and News-Getting Reputation

Under Suharto's New Order the paper built a reputation for beating both rivals and the government to sensitive news. In July 1970 the government objected strongly to a Sinar Harapan report that exposed the findings of Commission IV of the People's Representative Council on corruption. Officials argued that the paper had violated the press code of ethics by pre-empting the President, since the report was only to be read out by President Suharto in his state speech of 16 August 1970. The paper was defended by many who praised its superiority in news gathering, and the Honorary Council of the Indonesian Journalists Association, the PWI, concluded that there were insufficient grounds to find a violation of the code of ethics by Sinar Harapan. The episode captures the paper's standing in the early New Order: commercially successful and journalistically respected, yet already identified by the authorities as a title willing to publish what the state would have preferred to release in its own time.

Repeated Suspensions in the 1970s

The 1970s brought a sequence of collisions. In January 1972 the paper was again before the press honorary council over a report it had published on 31 December 1971. In connection with its reporting of the state annual budget plan, the commander of Kopkamtib, the operational command for the restoration of security and order, temporarily revoked Sinar Harapan's permit; the paper ceased on 2 January in that period and was allowed to publish again on 12 January. The Malari riots of January 1974, when student demonstrations against Suharto's economic policies turned violent, triggered another round of newspaper suspensions across Jakarta, Sinar Harapan among the affected titles. Then, on 20 January 1978, the paper was ordered by telephone by the public affairs office of the Jakarta military command, Kodam Jaya, not to publish the following day, apparently because its reporting of student activities was judged to be heating up the political situation. Troops and mass arrests accompanied the wider crackdown of that year, in which seven newspapers including Kompas and Sinar Harapan received temporary bans and were made to sign pledges before resuming. Sinar Harapan was allowed to publish again on 4 February 1978. Through all of this the paper kept growing, and by the middle of the following decade it stood among the largest newspapers in the country.

The King of the Evening Newspapers

By the 1980s Sinar Harapan had developed into a leading national newspaper. Its circulation, about 250,000 copies a day by 1985, made it one of the biggest titles in Indonesia; one international reference work of the period put its circulation at 220,340 and described it as a Protestant, non-Javanese-edited mass-circulation daily published in Jakarta. Its workforce grew from about twenty-eight employees in 1961 to about 451 by 1986. As an evening paper it occupied a distinctive place in the daily rhythm of the capital, reaching readers at the end of the working day with the fullest account of the day's events, and it earned the Indonesian description of raja koran sore, the king of evening newspapers. Its influence extended beyond its own pages. Sinar Harapan was among the Indonesian media companies that came together to found The Jakarta Post, the English-language daily launched in 1983, an experiment in cooperation between rival publishers under the New Order, and its successor company retained a shareholding in that paper for years afterwards.

Aristides Katoppo and Fearless Reporting

The paper's editorial courage in the New Order years was personified by Aristides Katoppo, one of its founding figures and its editor-in-chief. Katoppo was remembered for standing at the forefront of reporting the important events of the day and pushing his journalists to pursue the truth, telling them repeatedly that they would not be able to please everyone but owed it to the people of Indonesia to find out the facts and write them. Reporting of that kind carried physical menace. During the paper's investigation of the so-called Petrus affair, when criminals were being rounded up and murdered and their bodies dumped in forests or rivers, one of its offices was sent the head of a Petrus victim, apparently as a warning, and government raids on its offices were a recurring experience. Katoppo's mentorship extended beyond the newsroom: he trained student journalists and supported many of the student activists who eventually helped bring down the Suharto regime, offering them a meeting place and discussion with other idealistic figures, and he later helped to set up the Alliance of Independent Journalists. His career embodied the paper's self-image as a publication that served a public larger than its owners or its church constituency.

The Final Ban of October 1986

What hit the paper hardest came in 1986. On 9 October 1986 the government revoked Sinar Harapan's Surat Izin Usaha Penerbitan Pers, its press publishing business licence, effectively cancelling its permission to exist. The immediate trigger was the previous day's headline, Government to Revoke 44 Trade Decrees on the Import Sector, an economic report the authorities treated as creating gloom, confusion and unease in society; the Minister of Information, Harmoko, claimed the paper's economic reporting had produced that atmosphere. Commentators noted what the termination notice did not mention: Sinar Harapan had also been in the forefront of discussion of presidential term limitations, a subject the New Order treated as untouchable, and its editorial columns had been discussing that issue. The ban was understood across the industry as an exemplary punishment intended to deepen self-censorship in the rest of the media. The ban forced Sinar Harapan and its publisher PT Sinar Kasih out of publication altogether, and unlike the temporary suspensions of earlier years there was no quick way back; the paper could not legally appear again while the New Order lasted.

Rebirth as Suara Pembaruan

Rorimpandey did not accept the verdict passively. After long negotiations with the government he was permitted to publish a newspaper again, but only in altered form. On 4 February 1987 a new evening paper, Suara Pembaruan, appeared under a new publisher, PT Media Interaksi Utama, with a new editorial structure and a member of the People's Representative Council in a leading role, although it retained many of Sinar Harapan's key people and a concept, logo and sections closely similar to the old paper. Long-serving staff were taken on, but Rorimpandey and editor-in-chief Aristides Katoppo were replaced at the top, with Albert Hasibuan among those who assumed leading roles. The arrangement was the classic New Order solution to a banned title, also applied when the closed Prioritas later resurfaced as Media Indonesia: the journalism could continue, but the name, ownership and editorial leadership had to change, and the revived paper was expected to be more moderate and more responsive to government concerns. Sinar Harapan itself remained legally buried.

Revival in the Reform Era

The fall of Suharto in 1998 and the coming of Reformasi, capped by the Press Law of 1999 which eliminated press licensing and the government's power to ban publications, made a true revival possible. Even then it was contested; Katoppo later recounted that when an information minister signalled openness to Sinar Harapan's return, the owners of Suara Pembaruan lobbied against issuing any licence, and the proposal that the old name simply replace its successor was rejected by the largest shareholders. In the end Sinar Harapan returned as a separate paper, published again on 2 July 2001 by Rorimpandey and Katoppo under PT Sinar Harapan Persada. Some sixty journalists and staff worked on the revived daily, whose first distribution was about 100,000 copies, sold, at first, only in Greater Jakarta because of delivery costs, with a break-even hoped for within a year. At the launch ceremony Rorimpandey ceremonially passed leadership to a younger generation, handing the first cut of the tumpeng to editor Kristanto Hartadi. Despite having been buried for about fourteen years, the revival drew a positive response from government and political elites, businesspeople, professionals, advertising agencies and newspaper agents, and Sinar Harapan journalists went on to receive journalistic awards. From 2001 the revived paper competed directly with Suara Pembaruan, its own government-sanctioned successor, two evening newspapers of the same root fighting for the same readers.

The End of Print in 2015

The evening newspaper market that both titles served was shrinking under pressure from television and then digital media, and the revived Sinar Harapan never recovered the commercial dominance of the 1980s. It officially stopped print publication from 2016 because of problems with investors leaving the paper. In its final print edition, dated 31 December 2015, general manager Daud Sinjal bade farewell to its loyal readers with gratitude and apologies. Although that farewell also announced the discontinuation of the paper's online presence, the Sinar Harapan name in fact continued as an online-only portal, sinarharapan.co. The print newspaper that had been founded in 1961, banned four times and buried once, had nevertheless completed a full second life of more than fourteen years, a rare resurrection in Indonesian press history.

Legacy

Sinar Harapan was remembered as a test case of everything the Indonesian state could do to a newspaper short of permanent extinction, and of the limits of that power. Its repeated suspensions in 1965, the early 1970s and 1978, its vindication by the journalists' honorary council in the Commission IV affair, and its destruction in 1986 for economic reporting and discussion of presidential terms traced the boundaries of permissible journalism under two authoritarian systems. Its reappearance under another name, and then under its own name after Reformasi, demonstrated how an editorial community could survive the legal death of its title. It also left institutional descendants: Suara Pembaruan, which carried its staff and format through the late New Order, and a share in the founding of The Jakarta Post. For Indonesian journalists of Katoppo's generation, the paper's injunction to find the facts and write them, issued under threat of raids and worse, remained the standard by which the evening king was judged.