MEDIA IMMEDIACY: ASIA ONLINE

East Timor Press www.easttimorpress.qut.edu.au/
Established by the East Timorese Press Foundation with the assistance of Queensland Newspapers and the Centre for International Journalism, University of Queensland, East Timor Press is a BOT (Build Operate and Transfer) project to raise the capacity of East Timor's fledgling news industry. The University became involved after a training workshop in Brisbane ﾑ 12 East Timorese journalists attended and it became apparent that they had no equipment or paper. On-site feature stories are researched and published locally, as well as links to the "world's newest newspaper," the Portugese language Timor Post:

On March 26, 1999, members of the Indonesia-supported militia group Mahidi stormed the offices of Suara Timor Timur (Voice of East Timor), the main daily newspaper. They destroyed the premises as retaliation against what they saw as 'antagonistic' reporting. Suara Timor Timur was a private newspaper owned by pro-Indonesia businessman Salvador Soares and was the main source of local print news under Indonesian rule. When the Indonesian military withdrew from East Timor after the August 30 referendum the pro-integration militia torched what was left of the offices of Suara Timor Timur. All production equipment was completely destroyed, but not the aspirations of East Timorese editors and journalists to produce uncensored news about the newly independent nation. The Timor Post has risen from the ashes of Suara Timor Timur...

When the Salesian Fathers' house was raided at Comoro in the week September 13-18, a local village chief who was pro-independence, had been hiding there for 4 days, because he was a wanted man. Then the police Brimob attacked the Salesian place and started to loot and burn. The village chief, realising what was happening managed to get a red-and-white Indonesian flag and tie it around his head, and then he started enthusiastically to loot his own hiding place, taking outside the possessions of the Salesian Fathers. The police did not realise that he was their man. After the looting policemen had gone, the village chief brought back the goods which he had stored outside, and returned them to the priests.

The assertion that Wiranto - Indonesia's top commander - was unable to control the violence in East Timor went unquestioned in the first two-thirds of the [New York Times] article. Then, in the article's twenty-ninth paragraph, an unnamed official travelling with the visiting U.N. delegation in East Timor flatly contested this account: "I don't see any reason to think they are having difficulties controlling the situation. Look at today and look at election day when everything was brought under control with the snap of a finger. This is such a coordinated and planned campaign ﾑ evacuating towns, assassinating moderate leaders, moving huge numbers of people into forced exile ﾑ that it could only have come from the top." This approach is typical of the mainstream media's recent coverage of the East Timor crisis. NBC News introduced its September 14 coverage of East Timor with a large logo reading "Out of Control" ﾑ even as anchor Tom Brokaw told viewers that "government-backed militias are reportedly carrying out systematic assassinations of those who support independence for that province."

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