By doing research about media, football and conflicts of interest, Afdal Makkuraga Putra achieved his doctoral degree. Afdal, Secretary of Broadcasting Department, Communication Faculty, Mercu Buana University, earned a doctoral degree of Cultural Studies and Media, after defending his dissertation entitled Media, Soccer, and Conflicts of Interest (Overview of Critical Discourse Reporting Conflict Management of Indonesian Football 2010-2012 in Three Jakarta Newspapers.
According to Afdal, media brought up the conflict as a commodity (sales value), and the media put them as if there were two groups facing each other. Media even dramatized the conflict in a way that is interesting to follow.
From the analysis of texts, manuscripts, interviews, and direct observation, Afdal finds some general trends in the news production about the conflict in the management of Indonesian football in three print media. According to Afdal, media such as Kompas, Bola and Sindo tried to produce a football news conflict in Indonesia in order to keep their institution.
“Those three media are seen as subjected to the interests of the market and subjected to the interests of elite of national football. Therefore, those media present news conflict in Indonesia,” said Afdal Makkuraga at his open examination at the Graduate School of UGM, Monday (23/5).
Afdal explained that the three media construct the conflicting parties into two, namely, the reformists and the quo status. Reformist group is represented as wanting to renew the Indonesian football by substituting Indonesian Super League (ISL) with Indonesian Premier League (LPI). This team is consisted of Arifin Panigoro, George Toisutta, Saleh Mukadar, etc.
“While the quo status is represented as maintaining Nurdin Halid as Chairman of the PSSI and Indonesian Super League remains as PSSI official competition, with actors such as Nurdin Halid, Nirwan D. Bakrie, Nugraha Besoes and so on,” Afdal explained, accompanied by team of promoters, Prof. Dr. Heru Nugroho and Dr. Budiawan.
When seen by the sources, the production of text from those media came from elitist. Almost all the speakers came from the two conflicting groups. Therefore, the news released was never out of the angle of conflict and is unobjective.
To write this kind of news, Afdal said, shows that Indonesian press system is more liberal than that during the New Order. But it has not been able to shift from the conventional journalism (information journalism) to public journalism. Public journalism aims to improve the quality of life of civil society by encouraging participation and debate.
“Public journalism requires media to provide high quality information which does not depend on the market interest. Therefore, even though the times have changed, the news style of the likes of Kompas has not changed,” he said.