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Indonesian media outlets might find themselves under more public scrutiny after Press Council member Wina Armada said talks are ongoing to develop a “media watch” television program.

Speaking at a discussion on media ethics at the Indonesian Journalists Association (PWI) office on Thursday, he said the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) and legislators from the House of Representatives’ Commission I, overseeing communication affairs, were keen on the idea.

“It’ll be like filing complaints with the KPI or the Press Council, only we do it on air,” Wina said, adding that the program would be similar to one that airs on Australia’s public broadcaster, ABC.

But he added that caution must be exercised to ensure the program would not be used as a tool to launch attacks on competing media outlets.

Journalism standards have been a hot topic after some news organizations violated the journalistic code of ethics when covering the leaked sex videos of pop band singer Nazril “Ariel” Irham and television hosts and starlets Luna Maya and Cut Tari through their so-called “infotainment” programs.

The debate reached its apex when House Commission I lawmakers, the KPI and the Press Council agreed that infotainment shows, which are just celebrity-gossip shows, should be classified as “non-factual” and be subject to censorship, after they were found to have breached the broadcasting code of ethics and programming standards.

The KPI also suspended a Metro TV news show that inadvertently aired scenes from a pornographic video.

Media pundits reacted strongly to some of the decisions, saying they would put new restrictions on the country’s new and hard-won press freedoms.

However, KPI chairman Dadang Rachmat Hidayat defended the commission’s role as the country’s media watchdog: “No news topic pertinent to public interest was banned, we did not ban individual news organizations, or even any programs.”

He said that Metro TV’s suspended morning “Headline News” program was only one of 24 programs the station aired daily, and that the KPI had no intention of restricting the freedoms enjoyed by the press.

Ilham Bintang, a veteran journalist and owner of infotainment program and tabloid “Cek & Ricek,” defended his show’s adherence to ethics but blamed the blurring of ethical lines on the commercial success of tabloids and their increased presence within mainstream society.

“But violations are also common in the mainstream media, and we can see clearly which media is used to launch attacks against another party and to push for a certain party’s interests,” Ilham said.

On the non-factual label, Wina suggested that it would be better if the KPI revised its categorization from factual and non-factual to journalistic and non-journalistic.

“This is because there are many journalistic products that fall into the non-factual category,” he said.