Antara
The news agency was founded in 1937, when the country was still a colony in the Dutch Empire, by independence activists dissatisfied with the lack of local coverage by the Dutch-owned Aneta news agency. Antara's operation was absorbed into the DÅmei Tsushin news network following invasion by the Japanese in 1942. Its staff played a key role in the broadcast of Indonesia's proclamation of independence and assumed control of the DÅmei facilities in the region at the end of the war. The agency remained under private management until it was placed under the control of the presidency in the 1960s when the government shifted its focus from decolonization to nation-building. Antara became an institution through which the state could promote its policies.
Soemanang had been working at the Tjaja Timoer newspaper, while Sipahoetar was an employee for a Dutch advertisement agency. The latter was also an acquaintance of Adam Malik, who had left Medan after Dutch authorities attempted to imprison him for political activism. The three met at Soemanang's residence with author Armijn Pane to discuss the establishment of the news agency. Soemanang named the agency Antara based on Perantaraan,[b] a weekly magazine he had previously established in Bogor. He became its editor-in-chief, while Sipahoetar became a senior editor. Antara's 1st news bulletin reporting its own establishment, was reprinted in the newspapers Perasaan Kita on 14 December 1937 and Kebangoenan the following day. Sanusi Pane, Armijn Pane's older brother and Kebangoenan's editor-in-chief, and Perasaan Kita editor-in-chief Prawoto Soemodilogo were appointed to the agency's board of directors.
The agency's leadership was later reorganized. Soemanang became Antara's managing editor, and while Malik became his deputy. Malik, twenty years old at the time, was credited with keeping the agency alive in its early years by building a base of supporters in the emerging indigenous middle class. After Soemanang left Antara in 1938 to become the director of the Pergoeroean Rakjat network of schools, Sipahoetar was promoted to editor-in-chief, and Pandoe Kartawigoena became the agency's deputy editor-in-chief. Sipahoetar was later elevated to managing editor, but left the agency in 1939 because of an illness. Alwi Soetan Osman, an employee of the Indies' Ministry of Justice, briefly succeeded him as managing editor before being replaced by Pandoe Kartawigoena.
Antara's leading journalists soon saw a need for the agency to establish additional branches outside Jakarta. Sjahroedin, a former editor at DÅmei, opened one of these offices in British Singapore in February 1946. The branch received no funding from the newly formed Indonesian government and was housed in a three-story building in Raffles Place. Its goal was to "break the Dutch or Allied monopoly on news about Indonesia", especially when local British authorities didn't recognize Indonesia as an independent government.
After the Dutch relinquished all of their possessions in the Indies in 1962, the Indonesian government began mobilizing the mass media in its efforts to build a unified nation. President Sukarno released an executive decree which reorganized Antara as the National News Agency Institute under increased government control. Within three weeks of its reorganization on 24 September, Antara merged with three other existing news agencies: the Indonesian Press Bureau (PIA), the Asian Press Board (APB), and the Indonesian National Press and Publicity Service (INPS).
Antara received financial assistance from the government and was placed directly under the president's control, giving him the authority to appoint the agency's managing director and editor-in-chief. Antara's position in the structure of government resulted in confusion over its ownership and control, as well as shifting editorial views in the coming decades. As Sukarno pursued increasingly leftist policies, the conservative media accused Antara for its "explicitly partisan" reporting. Following his removal from office, the subsequent government also used the agency to further its policies, prompting criticism from the liberal media.
An abortive coup in 1965, blamed on the Communist Party of Indonesia and its allies, left Antara under military command. Nearly one-third of its editorial staff were dismissed, and many journalists sympathetic to the Communist Party were killed in the subsequent anti-communist purge. After Suharto assumed the presidency in the following year, the agency produced many of its news reports based on official government sources. Independent news outlets published stories on politically sensitive topics only if they had been reported by Antara in order to avoid sanctions should the stories be found offensive by government leaders. Although the government released a decree affirming freedom of the press, news publishers had to obtain a Permit To Publish from the Ministry of Information and a Permit To Print (Surat Izin Cetak) from the military security authority Kopkamtib. This ensured the suppression of publications with militant views.
Antara's legacy as a news organization is the documentation of Indonesia's decolonization process and formative years as a nation. Antara became an alternative news source for the fledgling Indonesian press which could not afford the services of its rival Aneta, and nationalist interpretations in its reporting contrasted that of the Dutch news agency. Despite these advances, political scientist Oey Hong Lee observed that the overall impact of Antara's reporting remained limited while Aneta continued to exist, "reflecting on the weakness of the nationalist press" and with "[Antara's] predominantly home-based news coverage finding its way only into more nationalist minded newspapers and progressive Chinese press organs".
The Indonesian Armed Forces, whose growing sociopolitical involvement in the 1950s resulted in a "triangular power structure" with President Sukarno and the Communist Party of Indonesia, grew wary of Antara's leftist leaning under government management. It countered by establishing the Armed Forces Information Centre in 1965 to disseminate the policies and views of the Armed Forces. A consortium of newspapers also sought to establish an unaffiliated news agency in 1966 when it formed the KNI Foundation (Jajasan Kantorberita Nasional Indonesia), but staff and resources were limited compared to Antara, which received government funding. Both agencies had ceased operations by 2001.
Romano and Seinor argue that Antara's relationship with the government puts the agency at risk of engaging in self-censorship in recent years. Internal reforms immediately after 1998 didn't completely eliminate the culture of cronyism that had come to characterize the relationship between the government and the press. The two note, however, that Antara journalists were given greater rights to affiliate and organize into unions than their peers in other news organizations.
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