REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- The Indonesia Broadcasting Commission (KPI) has appealed to all the television stations in the country to be independent and balanced in their election reports.

The KPI chairman of content affairs, Rahmat Arifin, stated at a discussion on election coverage here on Wednesday that the community will suffer if the television stations were not independent and balanced.

He said that two private television stations (Metro TV and TV One) had been kept under KPI scrutiny because they had not been balanced in their election reports so far.

"Indeed, these two stations have been kept under KPI scrutiny," he said. In reply to whether the MNC Group stations and Trans TV stations had any problems over the issue, he said that they have issues, but their reports have not been so intense as the two.

He said the imbalance could be measured from the duration, frequency, and tone of their election reporting.

He said on June 10 KPI had reprimanded Metro TV and TV One as no change had been made and the imbalance on proportion of reporting still continued.

"TVOne always reports positively about Prabowo, while Metro TV reports more about the Jokowi-JK pair," he said.

In view of that, KPI had reprimanded these stations, and on June 16 the chief editors had also been summoned.

"We have asked the two chief editors to be stricter in supervising the output," he said.

On June 17, KPI sent a letter containing the results of the meeting on June 16 written in several statements, which in principle emphasized the importance of balanced reporting.

"We will keep monitoring them. If the principle of balanced reporting is not adhered to, KPI will reprimand them for a second time or take other action," he said.

He said KPI could send a letter to the ministry of communication informatics asking it to evaluate the license of the two stations.

"Frankly speaking, the license of 10 television networks in Jakarta will expire in 2015," he said.

In the presidential election on July 9, Jakarta governor Jokowi with former vice president Jusuf Kalla as his running mate will compete against former army figure Prabowo Subianto with former economic minister Hatta Rajasa as his running mate.

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