About Pedoman

Pedoman

Pedoman, meaning Guide, was an Indonesian daily newspaper published in Jakarta. It was the main organ of the Socialist Party of Indonesia, the PSI, and its editor was Rosihan Anwar, one of the most prominent Indonesian journalists of the twentieth century. The paper was first published on 29 November 1948, it was closed by the Sukarno regime in January 1961, it was permitted to return in November 1968 under the New Order, and it was closed again in January 1974 after the Malari unrest. It therefore held the distinction, noted by historians of the Indonesian press, of being shut down by both the Sukarno and the Suharto regimes. As of 1960 it had a daily circulation of around 53,000, which placed it among the best-selling newspapers in the country, second in contemporary comparisons only within a small group of leading party dailies. Throughout its life it was known for critical comment, for the quality of its writers, and for an editorial identity that its own editor insisted was aligned with, but not formally owned by, its party.

Founding in November 1948

Pedoman was first published on 29 November 1948. Its founder and editor, Rosihan Anwar, had begun his journalism career as a reporter on Asia Raya in 1943, during the Japanese occupation, and had afterwards been an editor of newspapers and magazines including Merdeka and Siasat, the prominent weekly he founded and led from 1947 to 1957. He established Pedoman in 1948, in the middle of the Indonesian National Revolution, when the republic proclaimed in 1945 was still fighting to secure its independence from the returning Dutch. The paper's initial circulation was 3,000 copies, which then grew to 12,000 copies, an early expansion that took place under wartime conditions. The new daily entered a Jakarta press world that was being rebuilt at the same time as the state itself, and its founding editor brought to it the experience of both occupation-era and revolutionary journalism.

Colonial ban and republication in 1949

The paper was banned by the colonial government before it began publishing again in June 1949. That early closure, within months of its founding, set the pattern of its whole existence: Pedoman was repeatedly treated by successive authorities as too critical to be left alone. Rosihan himself had been detained by the Dutch at Bukit Duri in Batavia during the revolutionary struggle. When publication resumed in June 1949, the republic was in its final months before the transfer of sovereignty in December 1949, and the paper continued into the parliamentary democracy of the 1950s as a daily identified with democratic socialism and with the political current represented by Sutan Sjahrir, the leader of the PSI and the republic's first prime minister.

Rosihan Anwar and the claim of independence

Although Rosihan Anwar, as editor-in-chief of Pedoman, claimed to be an independent journalist, he was often considered to represent the political views of the Indonesian Socialist Party led by Sutan Sjahrir. Rosihan himself said that Pedoman was not the official wing of the PSI, but that it sided with the party's position. That distinction mattered to the paper's self-understanding. In contemporary classifications it was listed as the PSI's paper, alongside Abadi for Masyumi, Harian Rakjat for the PKI and Suluh Indonesia for the PNI, yet its editor fashioned himself as a democrat in the face of authoritarian state power and treated journalism as an intellectual pursuit for engaging deeply with politics. Historians contrasted that stance with editors for whom the press was a means to achieve power: for Anwar, the paper was a place of argument, reportage and criticism. He was known for a direct, unadorned reporting style, insisting that reportage did not need to be long-winded but should present facts point by point.

Growth and standing in the 1950s

By the mid-1950s Pedoman stood among the best-selling papers in the country. In contemporary circulation comparisons, Suluh Indonesia's daily issue of around 40,000 was described as behind Harian Rakjat and the Indonesian Socialist Party's Pedoman, and by 1960 Pedoman's daily circulation was recorded at around 53,000 in the Yearbook of the International Socialist Labour Movement. That growth, from 3,000 copies at founding to more than fifty thousand, was achieved in the competitive party-press market of parliamentary Indonesia, in which readers chose among dailies that openly represented competing political forces. Pedoman was grouped in accounts of the period with Merdeka and Indonesia Raya as a Jakarta paper that could not be separated from the vision of its editor: in Pedoman's case, Rosihan Anwar, just as Merdeka reflected B. M. Diah and Indonesia Raya reflected Mochtar Lubis. The era was later described as one of personal journalism, in which a paper clearly expressed the voice and attitude of its editor-in-chief.

Critical journalism and the pen wars

The rivalry and dynamics between the political forces of the 1950s were visible in what scholars called the pen wars and voice wars among the newspapers they owned. Pedoman and Harian Abadi, the papers of the PSI and Masyumi currents, generally stood on one side of those contests, in opposition to heavily nationalist publications such as Harian Rakjat and Suluh Indonesia. Rosihan maintained close professional relations with Suardi Tasrif of Abadi and Mochtar Lubis of Indonesia Raya, and with B. M. Diah they were founding members of the Indonesian branch of the International Press Institute. The paper was part of the healthy tradition of critical comment that observers later praised in the post-independence press, including a skilful use of innuendo to which the Indonesian language lent itself. That tradition depended on the freedoms of the liberal democracy period, and it came under direct threat as President Sukarno replaced that system with Guided Democracy after his decree of 5 July 1959.

Guided Democracy, the loyalty statements and the polemic with Mochtar Lubis

Under Guided Democracy the press was required to pledge loyalty to Sukarno's Political Manifesto, the Manipol, and in 1960 a new regulation required newspapers to obtain a printing licence by signing the 19 Statements, declaring loyalty, support, defence, obedience and compliance, and undertaking not to publish sensational news that insulted state officials. Pedoman's case became one of the most discussed of the period. Rosihan Anwar signed the statement, a decision that sparked a polemic between him and Mochtar Lubis, who opposed the document and informed the International Press Institute that Rosihan had signed it, as a result of which Rosihan was for a time removed from IPI membership. In his explanation to the IPI, Rosihan argued that signing was the best way to remain a journalist, to break through the barriers and to keep the people's trust in democracy alive. The episode was later studied as a case in communication ethics, illustrating the dilemma of editors who had to choose between closure and a signed submission that did not in the end guarantee survival.

Closure on 7 January 1961

Although the newspaper's leadership signed the statement, in the end Pedoman was forced to stop publishing on 7 January 1961. The closure was attributed to the character of its news and the critical views that were considered destabilising by the authorities, and to its association with a party other than those favoured under Guided Democracy. The PSI itself had been dissolved in 1960, along with Masyumi, after the PRRI rebellion, so the political current the paper sided with no longer legally existed. Accounts of the period grouped Pedoman with Abadi and Indonesia Raya among the best-known and longest-established papers ordered out of existence as Guided Democracy tightened its control. Rosihan, who had willingly signed the loyalty oath in the hope of keeping the paper alive, still saw it shut, a sequence that contemporaries described as a tragedy for him. His editorship of the first Pedoman, dated in career summaries from 1948 to 1961, ended with that ban.

Return under the New Order in 1968

At the beginning of the New Order, the government enacted Law number 11 of 1966 on the basic provisions of the press, and opposition newspapers that had been banned under Sukarno were permitted to publish again. Pedoman's licence was granted again on 29 November 1968, twenty years to the day after its first publication, still headed by Rosihan Anwar. To rebuild the paper he recruited Dewi Rais, Fikri Jufri, Abdullah Alamudi and Masminar Manginang. The revived Pedoman appeared alongside the revived Indonesia Raya and Abadi, in a brief period in which the media assumed a critical attitude toward the government without fear of being banned. Rosihan also served in those years as general chairman of the Indonesian Journalists Association, PWI, from 1968, a role that placed the editor of a twice-threatened paper at the head of his profession. The revival, however, depended on the tolerance of a regime whose press system rested on publishing and printing permits that could be withdrawn.

The Malari closure of January 1974

After the Malari incident, the student unrest and street battles in Jakarta of 15 January 1974 during the visit of the Japanese prime minister, the New Order government closed Pedoman together with a number of other newspapers on 24 January 1974. By the beginning of April that year no fewer than twelve dailies and weeklies had been axed. Pedoman was initially deprived only of its printing permit, but in April its publishing permit was also revoked, meaning that it would certainly not be allowed to reappear. A contemporary diplomatic cable recorded speculation in the press world about the closures and reported Rosihan Anwar's view that his paper had been sacrificed in a conflict between generals, because Ibnu Sutowo, who owned a substantial share of Pedoman stock, had been drawn in by a rival security figure. Whatever the immediate intrigue, the effect was final: the second Pedoman, edited by Rosihan from 1968 to 1974, did not return. Rosihan retired from formal positions in newspapers in 1974 and became a columnist for many publications, including Kompas, The Age in Melbourne and The Straits Times in Singapore.

Legacy of a twice-banned newspaper

Pedoman was remembered as the clearest example of the perjuangan, or struggle, press confronting authoritarian power under both of Indonesia's first two regimes. It had been banned by the Dutch colonial government in its first months, banned by Sukarno's Guided Democracy in 1961 despite its editor's signed loyalty, permitted again in 1968, and extinguished by Suharto's New Order in 1974. Its editor received the Golden Pen award from the PWI in 1978 and wrote twenty-seven books besides hundreds of journalistic works, and his later reflections on press freedom were bleak: he argued that the public itself had to struggle for press freedom because governments would never grant it while the existing power structure continued. For historians of the media, Pedoman's record, from 3,000 copies in a revolutionary capital to about 53,000 copies in 1960, and from a PSI-aligned daily to a symbol of critical journalism, made it a central case in the history of the Indonesian press between independence and the consolidation of the New Order.