Bayuni’s Bravado, Gramedia’s Grovel, Jakarta Post’s Double Standards

Slightly breath-taken by the bravado of Endy Bayuni, editorial king-pin at the Jakarta Post, who has made this stirring call in his role as an International Association of Religion Journalists committee member.

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Endy Bahyuni

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“Don’t give any room to the hard-liners,” said Endy…“Please cover them when they’re violating the law, but don’t give space to small group of people when they rally against something absurd. They used the media effectively and deceive the media to suit their own means. ”http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/indonesian-media-needs-to-cover-religion-not-radicals-iarj/

So I read on, hoping at long last to find some justification for his own JP’s cowardly failure to condemn Gramedia’s book-burning, carried out under the supervision of the most rabid Islamist fanatics in Indonesia.  https://rossrightangle.wordpress.com/2012/06/14/grovelling-gramedias-book-burning-bonanza-appeasing-fanatics/.

Does Endy think the JP’s editorial indifference to Gramedia’s slimy appeasement was an acceptable response to such Hitlerian practices?

Much of the report quotes Endy as saying sensible things – he draws attention to the scabrous media practice of branding Ahmadis as ‘heretics’  – I’ve posted more than once on Metro TV’s infamous tactic of using the word tobat, repent, when they have no sin to repent of, when what the biased media mean is ‘convert,’ be bullied into Islam, as happens so often.

Unfortunately, he also waffles on foolishly about ‘Islamophobia’ in Western media, as if ‘Islamophobia’ were anything much more than a consequence of activities like those of Gramedia’s book-burners, and gutless editors here who didn’t condemn them..

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But it gets a tad wearing to read Endy’s quavering about how senior staffers need to remind young journalists of their responsibility to pluralism…and how even if the media does cover religion, they fail to do it according to good journalism standard.”

So what are good standards?

If the Jakarta Post, for example, consistently eschewed editorial comment on these issues, okay, we’d know where we stand.

But that is not the case, for the JP often has editorial comment, often views I applaud.

But it failed the tolerance test in everyone’s eyes when not a word was heard to deplore those Gramedia curs who emulated Pablov’s Dogs, jumping through hate-hoops as prescribed by the MUI and FPI.

Endy has a lot to say, but what he won’t say is what undermines his credibility. So!

Why won’t he just admit that the JP editors bottled out of the denunciation Gramedia deserved because Gramedia is their newspaper’s parent company and their jobs would thus be jeopardised.

PS  I always worry that the JP might have found a conscience and assailed Gramedia’s sectarian kow-towing on some day when I’m abroad or asleep so that I mss it. But I think not. Our pinko readers LOVE the JP’s constant tear-jerkers on the plight of unrepentant PKI reds and hard-done-by homos. They’d soon leap in to correect me!