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Jakarta. Although the media is often heralded as a key weapon in the fight against corruption, the regular exposes and scathing editorials on graft are not having the desired effect, experts have said.

At a discussion on Tuesday about the role of the media in rooting out graft, Press Council chairman Bagir Manan said news reports on corruption were still mainly focused on law-enforcement aspects, such as the prosecution of perpetrators, rather than on the preventive aspects of the campaign, and thus failed to provide much of a deterrent for would-be offenders.

At the same discussion, prominent lawyer Bambang Widjojanto agreed that the media rarely touched on the preventive aspect of the antigraft movement, such as the establishment of mechanisms to curb corruption and raise public awareness about graft, saying such issues had were often deemed by newsrooms as “neither hot nor selling.”

“It’s the corruption, not the corruption eradication movement, that makes the news,” said Bambang, who is one of seven candidates in the running for the chairmanship of the much-vaunted Corruption Eradication Commission, also known as KPK.

He added the media should embrace reporting of graft prevention measures as a challenge and make it newsworthy in spite of the “lack of drama.”

Media analyst Arya Gunawan called on the media to take a more active role in fighting corruption, particularly through more investigative reports.

He hailed weekly newsmagazine Tempo and its daily edition, Koran Tempo, as “a breed apart” from the rest of the media. He praised them for “consistently positioning themselves as the government’s watchdog” through their investigative journalism.

Tempo’s most recent investigative report, published in June, covered the suspiciously large bank accounts of several high-ranking police officers.

That report sparked a violent backlash, with unknown assailants firebombing the magazine’s editorial office, followed days later by the assault of an antigraft researcher who had contributed to a report used by Tempo in its article.

None of the perpetrators in either incident have yet been identified, much less brought to justice.

Arya said that while investigative journalism was “nothing new” for the press and could serve as the backbone of the media’s contribution to fighting corruption, very few outlets actually practiced it, effectively wasting the press freedom granted at the outset of the reform era.

“Most media outlets put out investigative reports only sporadically, and even then they’re flawed,” he said, adding that even those media that consistently published investigative reports did so based on revelations from whistleblowers rather than through their own journalistic efforts.

Media owners’ ignorance, a limited pool of skilled journalists, a general lack of appreciation from readers for such reporting and conflicts of interest among both owners and reporters were the main causes hampering vigorous investigative journalism, Arya said.

“Another problem specific to the Indonesian media is their short attention span, as their focus is often easily diverted when a new issue emerges,” he said, citing the recent lack of coverage of the Rp 6.7 trillion ($743.7 million) bailout of Bank Century, which in its heyday dominated the headlines of almost all mainstream media.

Wahyu Muryadi ,Tempo’s editor in chief, said the Bank Century scandal was a “never-ending issue” for his magazine, which was always on the lookout for any developments in the case.

However, he acknowledged that investigative journalism in the country was still far from satisfactory and that it was not always easy for media outlets to carry out such probes.

Tempo’s own investigation into the police officers’ bank accounts, based on documents from the Financial Transaction Reports Analysis Center (PPATK), was “a long and difficult process,” Wahyu said, taking five years before being deemed fit to run as the cover story.

Each investigative report, Wahyu went on, required at least one editor, two managing editors and 12 reporters working only on the one issue.

“This is the ideal format to ensure a thorough investigation with as few inaccuracies as possible, to minimize the risk of a libel lawsuit,” he said.

However, Arya argued that investigative reports would only have an impact on the antigraft movement if the authorities followed up on the issues and the government formulated policies to support it.

“Unfortunately, these two conditions are still unmet, making the press’s role in eradicating corruption less than ideal,” he said.

However, Cherian George, head of journalism and publishing at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, previously argued that press freedom was not a prerequisite for ensuring a graft-free government.

He cited Singapore as an example where press freedom was almost nonexistent, and yet the government’s anticorruption record was spotless.

“[Singapore] doesn’t really need a free press because of the government’s zero tolerance on corruption, and it doesn’t need the media as a watchdog to monitor the government,” he said recently at a seminar in Jakarta held as part of celebrations for the 16th anniversary of the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI).