The cost of “being neutral”

A couple of days ago, I saw a phone notification from the Kompas app. Kompas is one of the oldest, most respected, and biggest media in Indonesia, that was founded back in 1965. I started subscribing to them after my friend, Ario, mentioned about their promo on his Threads. Despite I didn’t get the promo due to my location (outside Indonesia), I was, and still is, pretty happy with the subscription. My goal is to make sure I have my information sources from the media, and Kompas is one of the non-partial media in Indonesia. The current Indonesian administration has been putting a blanket ban and ironfist control on the media, resulted with most of them reporting the “achievements” (or the lack thereof) of the current administrations and hyping up some corruption-rich national projects such as Indonesia’s Free Nutritious Meals. Speaking about fascism. So! The Kompas app’s notification. It was a notification of a recent article under the “Opinion” section. An essay by Nicholas Saputra,…