From chaos to coherence:

Critical comments on media coverage

of the October 12th bombing in Bali
by Dr. Richard Fox
email: richard.fox@bajra.org

Paper to the Third International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS3)

19 - 22 August 2003
Raffles City Convention Centre,
Swissotel, The Stamford
Singapore
A copy of this conference draft is accessible online at http://www.berubah.org/chaostocoherence.pdf

al-Qaeda has spread its network across the region, from the remote
islands of Indonesia, through the glistening city-state of Singapore, to the
jungles of the southern Philippines. It is a network that existed long before
September 11, and one that now appears to be growing, both in its
influence and its ambitions. The presence of al-Qaeda and its supporters
has set off a war for the hearts and minds of the Muslims of Southeast
Asia. And, at this point, it is unclear who is winning. So here now, Maria
Ressa, and a CNN Presents special investigation, Seeds of Terror.
- News anchorman, Aaron Brown, introducing the
CNN television special, Seeds of Terror.1
Belief that a clash of worldviews, values, and civilizations is leading to an
impending confrontation between Islam and the West is reflected in the
headlines and articles with ominous titles While such phrases capture
public attention and the popular imagination, they exaggerate and distort
the nature of Islam, the political realities of the Muslim world and its
diverse relations with the West. They also reinforce an astonishing degree
of ignorance and cultural stereotyping of Arabs and Islam. Islam is often
equated with holy war and hatred, fanaticism and violence, intolerance and
the oppression of women.
- John L. Esposito (1999: 2-3)
In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon
the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very
important respects, what they seem to be.
- Hubert H. Humphrey

In the earliest newswire reports from Bali on the night of October twelfth 2002, it was not
altogether clear what had happened. It seemed that a bomb had exploded near the US
Consulate in Renon, and a much larger explosion in Kuta was said to have destroyed
several buildings, leaving numerous dead and many more seriously injured. A separate
bombing had been reported at the Philippine Consulate in Manado earlier in the day,
though it was uncertain whether this was in any way linked to the blasts in Kuta. A bomb
was also said to have detonated in the central Balinese tourist center of Ubud, but
despite appearing in both the Indonesian and Anglophone news media there is every
indication that this was simply an erroneous report.2 If the details, however, were a little
1

Recorded at 11pm (EDT) on 21 June 2003. The program also aired two hours earlier, at
9pm that evening. The online transcript (available at
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0306/15/cp.00.html) for the program suggests that
it was initially broadcast at 8pm (EDT) on 15 June 2003.
2
The earliest report of the bombing posted to CNN.com, for instance, includes the
following: The explosions came at Kuta Beach and Ubud on Saturday night. The Media
Indonesia website also carried a piece entitled Lubang Ledakan Bom Di Kuta Sedalam 2

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2003 Richard Fox

sketchy and often contradictory in the earliest reporting, there was one thing on which
most reports seemed to agree: the scene in Kuta following the blasts was chaotic.
The earliest report of the bombing that I have been able to find was an article entitled
Explosion in Kuta killed approximately 10 people that was posted to the Tempo website
about an hour and a half after the explosions. The article described great commotion at
the location of the incident, with tourists milling about and ambulances rushing back
and forth transporting the injured to Sanglah Hospital in Denpasar.3 A little less than an
hour later, a report from Reuters was published on the Jakarta Post website citing several
eyewitness accounts of the chaos in the area near one of the explosions.4 Out of this
initial chaos, a more or less coherent if not always consistent account of events
would gradually emerge, in which the bombing would be made to take its place within
the broader framework of the war on terror. In this paper I would like to examine this
mass-mediated process, and consider some of the regularities and disjunctures that arose
between the mainstream Anglophone and Indonesian media coverage. I am especially
interested in examining the underlying assumptions regarding Islam, its place in
Indonesian society and its role in the emergence and transformation of popular
explanations for the tragic bombings in Bali.
Primary definition
This paper comprises one of the initial steps toward a much broader analysis of the media
coverage of the Bali bombing. I have limited my analysis here to the first week of
reporting for two related reasons. First, there is the complexity of the coverage itself.
Representations of the bombing over the last nine months and across different regional
media have been anything but uniform. Since the twelfth of October 2002, I have
compiled an archive of media materials that includes over 300 digital television
recordings and some 30,000 articles, in both Indonesian and English, from sources in
Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, the UK and United States.5 The collection is focused on

M diameter 4,5 M (posted 13 October 2002, 03:28 Western Indonesian Time) that
included reference to an explosion in Ubud: Ledakan bom lainnya terjadi di kawasan
Renon yang berjarak sekitar 100 meter dari Konsulat AS, dan di Ubud.
3
Hakim, J. (2002) Ledakan di Kuta menewaskan sekitar 10 orang. Tempo Interaktif.
Posted 13 Oct 2002, 0:0:35 Western Indonesian Time.
4
The Reuters report would be replicated almost verbatim and in its entirety less than
two hours later in an article posted to CNN. See CNN (2002) Bali explosions: 12
dead. CNN.com. Posted 3:39 PM, Eastern Daylight Time.
5
In addition to digital television recordings, I have systematically monitored on a daily
basis the websites for the following publications since the 12th of October, 2002:
Republika, Tempo (daily and weekly editions), Kompas (online and print editions), Media
Indonesia (online and print editions), Bali Post, Denpasar Post, Jakarta Post, Straits
Times, Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online, CNN.com,
Los Angeles Times and New York Times. For each of these publications, a snapshot of the
front page as well as the full text and images for all relevant articles have been stored

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2003 Richard Fox

the bombing, but also includes a wide range of materials related more generally to
representations of religion, violence and the war on terror. It is, to my knowledge, the
most comprehensive archive of its kind. Second, there is the matter of what Jaap van
Ginneken discussed in his excellent book on Understanding global news in terms of the
primary definition of a news story:
three major world news agencies, the major American, British and French newsgathering organizations [Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse], have a
quasi monopoly in providing prime definitions of breaking news in the world periphery.
Even if they are not actually the first on the spot, they are usually the first to inform the
rest of the world. (1998: 114; bracketed addition mine)

And, once the story is framed, there is a certain resistance to change. The Gestalt or
configuration will tend to perpetuate itself (1998: 113).6 Although I am not concerned
primarily with newswire agencies as such, an important aspect of my current research is
an examination of the processes through which complex events such as the Bali bombing
are made to make sense.7 On the basis of my research to date, I would tentatively propose
that very much as van Ginneken suggested more generally the early representations of
the Bali bombing seemed to set the parameters for subsequent coverage. In other words,
the broadly Euro-american configuration of the bombing in terms of the war on terror
appears to have achieved a considerable degree of hegemony, largely disarticulating
alternative accounts of what happened and why.
Making sense
The initial processes of making sense of the incident were not entirely parallel in the
Indonesian and Anglophone media respectively. In addition to reporting on both the
physical destruction in Kuta and the number and nationalities of the victims, much of the
early Indonesian coverage seemed to be concerned primarily with the economic and
domestic security implications of the attacks, as well as with their impact on the image of
Indonesia in the eyes of the rest of the world. Meanwhile, the mainstream Anglophone
coverage was dominated in the first twenty-four hours of reporting by eyewitness
accounts and what might best be described as anecdotal gore descriptions, e.g., of
dismembered victims and other images of carnage. I have argued elsewhere that, in
addition to establishing a particular sense of on the scene authority, this preponderance
of graphic detail underwrote the largely unsubstantiated (and grossly sensationalist)
digitally for subsequent analysis. I also retrospectively examined the relevant articles
published in the Suara Pembaruan, Suara Merdeka, the Jawa Pos and others.
6
An interesting comparison might be made with the earliest reporting on the outbreak of
violence in Ambon particularly with regard to the changing position of religion in
accounting for the conflict. I have written a brief overview of this early coverage which is
posted to http://www.berubah.org/Ambon.htm
7
I take it as axiomatic that any given representation is underdetermined (Quine 1994) by
the events it purports to explain.

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2003 Richard Fox

speculations on al-Qaeda responsibility that were so central to the Euro-american

coverage of the attack.8 Although the question of terrorism and it was a question
figured prominently in the early Indonesian coverage, there were neither the ubiquitous
invocations of al-Qaeda responsibility, nor was there the preponderance of images of
horror and conflagration that dominated the mainstream Anglophone coverage.
If initially there was a degree of disjuncture between the Indonesian and Anglophone
press, a more or less consistent account of the bombing would gradually emerge in the
weeks to come, tying the blasts in with a familiar set of post-9.11 representations of terror
and Islamic extremism. Although the Indonesian media were not always uncritical of this
drive to articulate the bombing within the framework of the war on terror, the gap
between Indonesian and broadly western coverage at least with regard to what might be
considered the facts of the incident seemed to grow progressively smaller as the days
passed.9

Competing frames?
A rather interesting point of disjuncture may be discerned in the reports published by two
leading newspapers one British, the other Indonesian on the morning of the 14th of
October 2002 that is, two days after the bombing. That mornings London edition of
The Daily Telegraph carried the front-page headline Al-Qaeda link to club bombing.
Beneath the headline, there was a large and rather dramatic photograph of a bloodied and
shirtless young man picking his way through the rubble with a woman of similar age,
against the backdrop of a flaming car.10

See Fox (n.d.-b)

There were, of course, notable exceptions to this trend; but that is something to which I
shall have to return in separate paper. For an example, see note 32.
10
Incidentally, this same image was also carried on the front pages of several other
papers including, among others, the Australian edition of The Daily Telegraph, The
Advertiser and The Australian. I have elsewhere discussed this photograph at some length
(see Fox n.d.-b).
9

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2003 Richard Fox

Front page, The Daily Telegraph (14 Oct 2002).

The caption beneath the picture reads: Injured victims of the Bali terrorist attack stagger
past burning cars on their way to safety after two nightclubs were destroyed on Saturday
night. Al-Qaeda is thought to be responsible. Articulating headline and photograph, the
caption brings together the two dominant elements of the front page: injured victims
and al-Qaeda. However, while the victims are discussed at some length in the article,
there is only brief and decidedly inconclusive mention of al-Qaeda:
No group claimed responsibility. But the attacks heightened concerns that the al-Qaeda
network had regrouped after the war in Afghanistan and was behind them.
The killing of American troops in Kuwait and the Philippines this month and a suicide
attack against a French oil tanker have indicated that the network has launched a global
offensive against crusader targets, a code for those linked to America and its allies.11
11

It is worth noting in passing that, in this brief excerpt, each of the three incidents is
represented as an instantiation of a global offensive, while that global offensive itself
emerges as the necessarily a priori framework for interpreting the incidents as its
moments of appearance. In other words, in addition to articulating the Bali bombing in
terms of the war on terror through little more than simple juxtaposition, the implicit
logic of the reporting is circular. Presumably one must break this interpretive circle
through recourse to the assumption that the reporter knows something we, as readers,
do not. Sadly, this is an assumption that is required all too often in these Orwellian days
of the war on terror a point not unlike that made by Ade Armando in his piece for the
Indonesian Islamic daily, Republika, entitled Kabar itu meragukan, or The news is in
question:
For me, its not a matter of trusting or not trusting. What is at issue is that the validity of information
in these reports is questionable. The problem is that most of these articles contain information

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2003 Richard Fox

Although there is scant mention of al-Qaeda on the front page (apart, that is, from
what I have just cited here), there is a piece printed back on the fourth page, entitled
Finger points to the men with al-Qaeda links. The latter cites Jemaah Islamiyah (JI)
and Laskar Jihad as possible suspects, and it is accompanied by an aerial shot of
morning after destruction in Kuta.12 The article suggests that the prime suspects are
from a hardline Indonesian Islamist group with links to al-Qaeda. Yet the actual links
that are cited in the article previous accusations against JI, non-committal comments
from a terrorism expert etc. are rather tenuous. But if the article is a little short on
evidence (or even serious circumstantial support) for a link to al-Qaeda, it is also
accompanied by a chronological survey entitled The list of terror attacks.

The list of terror attacks in The Daily Telegraph (14 Oct 2002), page 4.

Although not on the list itself, the Bali bombing implicitly emerges from this
juxtaposition as the latest of many Islamic militant terrorist attacks since September 11.

12

obtained not on the basis of journalists investigations but, rather, they are based primarily on
intelligence reports. That doesnt necessarily mean the news is false. But, establishing its accuracy
is problematic, as it is difficult for anyone else to crosscheck the information when its sources are
confidential.

In an earlier paper (Fox n.d.-b), I proposed a tentative typology of the images that were
deployed in the media coverage of the bombing. I labeled one particular set of
photographs as images of the morning after, as they depict from various perspectives (in
amongst the rubble, from the air etc.) the physical destruction of Kuta, including burntout buildings and the smoking remains of cars and other vehicles that were destroyed in
the blast.

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2003 Richard Fox

The implications of this representation are perhaps best approached through a

comparison with a similar list published that same morning in the Semarang-based daily
newspaper Suara Merdeka. The latter a List of 2001-2002 BOMBINGS came at the
end of an article entitled Bomb explodes, Bali cries (Bom meledak, Bali menangis).

List of 2001-2002 BOMBINGS, Suara Merdeka website (14 Oct 2002)

Perhaps tellingly, there is not a single incident that is common to the two lists. The
list published in The Daily Telegraph includes various attacks (in numerous countries)
that have been widely covered in the Euro-american press in connection with the war on
terror, while the Suara Merdeka list includes a string of bombings that occurred in
Indonesia during 2001 and 2002 (and which, incidentally, received very little attention in
the mainstream Euro-american media). The Suara Merdeka article also refers to the
attacks of 9.11, but the link is made through the similarity in consequence lives
needlessly cut short not through the suspected perpetrators. So what are the
implications of this disjuncture?13
In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, there were isolated commentators in
Europe and the US John Pilger and Jeffery Winters come to mind who explicitly
questioned the ease and rapidity with which the attack was made to make sense within the
prefigured framework of the war on terror.14 It is important to remember that, at the
13

What would happen, for instance, if one took events in Indonesia i.e., rather than
recent attacks popularly associated with al-Qaeda as the primary frame of reference for
interpreting the Bali bombings? Unfortunately, this is a question that goes beyond the
scope of this paper though it is one to which I shall be turning my attention in
forthcoming research.
14
In an October 14th interview on National Public Radio, for instance, Jeffery Winters
remarked that,

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2003 Richard Fox

time the initial reports were aired and went to press, there was no publicly available
evidence whatsoever for a connection to al-Qaeda or even, to my knowledge, to
international terrorism more generally. (In this connection, what happened subsequently
is, strictly speaking, irrelevant.) An al-Qaeda affiliate/look-alike/whatever may or may
not have been behind the bombings. But there was absolutely no way to know one way or
another at the time these stories were published. Yet the early allegations of al-Qaeda
involvement were made with a startling degree of certainty. So, on what were these
allegations based? How were they articulated? And, critically speaking, what were the
consequences?

Visually articulate
Having looked at two reports from the 14th of October, I would now like to go back a
couple of days, in order to consider a short excerpt from the 6: 30pm segment of the NBC
Evening News, broadcast on the northeast coast of the United States (in Massachusetts

I have serious doubts that this was an al-Qaeda operation, and my reasons for saying that are the
following. First, while its true that there are people who have had contact with al-Qaeda figures in
Indonesia, as well as in Malaysia and the Philippines contact that goes back to the war in
Afghanistan against the Soviet Union and then all the folks involved in that went back to their
constituent countries it is not the same thing to say that, because they had those contacts that they
are somehow direct operatives with al-Qaeda pulling the strings of Indonesian puppets in this case. I
think the explanation for whats going on in Indonesia has much more to do with the domestic politics
of Indonesia. If we look at this attack, we have to understand that there were three clear targets.
Someone wanted to hurt Australians, because whoever did this knew that the majority of people
inside that nightclub were going to be Australians. They would also want to damage Megawati, and
they would also want to further undermine Indonesia economically and politically. And I dont think
any of these things fit into an al-Qaeda agenda. Megawati, if anything, has been beneficial to al-Qaeda
because she has not been very helpful in closing down the Indonesian banking system as a system
through which money could be easily laundered and moved. And she has not been moving in any kind
of effective way to shut down Indonesia as a porous place through which terrorists could move and
hide and so on. So I think we should be very cautious about jumping to the conclusion that this was
al-Qaeda. And if we have to ask the question Who had the capacity to set off a detonation like this in
Indonesia?, well, its very likely the same people who set off more than a dozen bombs
simultaneously at churches in Indonesia on Christmas Eve two years ago, who blew up the basement
parking garage of Indonesias stock exchange a little over two years ago, who blew up the Philippine
ambassador (sic) right in downtown Jakarta. What we need to understand is that Indonesias own
military has figures both active and retired who have an interest in destabilizing Megawati and
causing damage to Indonesia, and, most important of all, in hurting Australians, because it was the
Australians who led the United Nations force in East Timor to push out the Indonesians and push out
the Indonesian military. So theres a lot of possibilities here that have to do with factors very much
inside Indonesia.

Winters remarks were more or less disregarded almost rudely, to my ear by the host,
Neal Conan, who seemed more interested in commentary on the possible resurgence of
al-Qaeda from his other guest, Paul Wilkinson, a terrorism expert who has often appeared
on CNN. A copy of the transcript from the interview may be viewed online at
http://www.berubah.org/BaliBombing/Winters_1.htm . (See below, for the resurgence
of al-Qaeda as a news story.)

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2003 Richard Fox

and Rhode Island, I believe) the night of October 12th. This excerpt aired roughly eight
hours after the explosions had occurred.

Transcript of excerpt taken from NBC Evening News with John Seigenthaler
12 October 2002
Segment

(1)

Narrative
[Transition from coverage of the DC
Sniper.]
Anchor: Now to Bali, a major
international tourist destination where
two bombs exploded today killing
dozens of people. Authorities are
trying to figure out who is responsible
for the attacks.

(2)

Image

Image A-01
to 0:10

The two explosions occurred on the

southern end of the Indonesian island.
And NBCs Ned Colt reports.

Image A-02
zooms in to focus on Bali, to 0:16
*note Sanu (Sanur?)

(3)

Ned Colt: The explosions occurred

almost simultaneously, 11:30pm local
time

Image A-03
pans out, to 0:22

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2003 Richard Fox

(4)

when streets in the popular resorts

of Kuta and Sanur

Image A-04
to 0:25

(5)

were packed with tourists. Two of

the blasts occurred outside dance
bars, another just 250 yards from

Image A-05
to 0:31

(6)

the US consular office. The worst

were the bar bombings.

Image A-06
to 0:34

(7)

Flames burned for hours, so furious

that one witness thought that a plane
had crashed.

Image A-07
to 0:38

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2003 Richard Fox

10

(8)

Close to 60 people are now confirmed

dead, and that number is expected to
rise.

Image A-08
to 0:44

(9)

More than 120 people have been

injured, some of them Americans.

Image A-09
to 0:48

(10)

Bali is a Mecca for foreigners

Image A-10
to 0:51

(11)

and until now it has been

considered extremely safe.

Image A-11
to 0:54

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2003 Richard Fox

11

(12)

However, Indonesia, the worlds most

populous Muslim nation

Image A-12
to 0:57

(13)

is home to a number of hardline

Islamic groups

Image A-13
to 1:00

(14)

some of which have threatened US

and other foreign interests.

Image A-14
to 1:03

(15)

The US embassy in Jakarta has been

shut down frequently in the past
year

Image A-15
to 1:06

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2003 Richard Fox

12

(16)

due to terrorist threats. But

Image A-16
to 1:10

(17)

no claims of responsibility yet for

this deadly terrorist attack. Ned Colt,
NBC News, Hong Kong.

[Transition to segment entitled

Target: Iraq.]

Image A-17
to 1:15

Although this segment was among some of the earliest television coverage of the
bombing, it incorporated several key elements of the storyline that would come to
dominate the Anglophone media coverage of the bombing in the weeks and months to
come. (Here one may recall van Ginnekens point regarding primary definition.)
The clip begins with a mid-range shot of the anchor, John Seigenthaler, standing
beside an on-screen title that simply reads Explosions. The background graphic consists
of an Indonesian flag set against a deep red background that is scored with a lightercolored grid. In passing, it is worth noting that, although this grid-scored background was
not used during any of the other parts of the program, it did appear in the subsequent
segment that was entitled Target: Iraq. Following this graphic continuity, and
considering the common use of similar imagery in news, popular films and television
programs addressing global strategic and/or military-related subject matter, I would
tentatively propose that the grid suggests a certain sense of strategic significance. (It
perhaps, albeit several steps removed, exemplifies the surveillance in both the common
sense and the etymological sense of sight from above associated with longitudinal and
latitudinal lines.) It is against this backdrop that Seigenthaler introduces the story: two
bombs killed dozens in the major tourist destination of Bali; and authorities are trying
to figure out who is responsible. The scene then cuts to a map of the region, zooming in

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2003 Richard Fox

13

on Indonesia and, eventually, Bali,15 as Seigenthaler explains that the explosions

occurred on the southern end of the Indonesian island. He then introduces the
correspondent, Ned Colt.
The audio then switches to the correspondents voice (reporting from Hong Kong),
and the scene cuts to footage of the burning buildings and cars in Kuta. These scenes of
conflagration comprise four separate clips, spread over 19 seconds altogether (almost
30% of the duration of the entire report), with a short (3 second) interruption while the
scene cuts to footage of people milling about in the dark.16 While this footage runs, Ned
Colt reports on the simultaneity, location and time of the explosions, noting that the
flames burned for hours, so furious that one witness thought that a plane had crashed.
If, at this early stage in the reporting, the graphic inflection of the coverage was
comparatively subtle, it would not be long before the nature of the event was
overdetermined by supplemental onscreen visuals. On the MSNBC news magazine
program, Hardball, for instance, Al-Qaedas resurgence was the Big story for the
evening of 14 October 2003. From a strictly visual perspective, the Bali bombing
emerges unambiguously from this program as the latest of three recent al-Qaeda
attacks.

Selected screenshots from the MSNBC program, Hardball with Chris Matthews
14 October 2002

Map depicting Recent al-Qaeda attacks

13:04

Chris Matthews posing a question to one

of his guests. Here, as during much of the
program, the onscreen title reads:
AL-QAEDAS RESURGENCE.
13:25

15

It is worth noting, in passing, that the label Sanu is presumably a misspelling of

Sanur, the southern Balinese beach resort not far from Kuta.
16
See note 30, below.

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2003 Richard Fox

14

Scene from the morning after

in Kuta, Bali.
14:32

File footage of OBL with a senior advisor.

The screen cut to this clip while an al-Qaeda
expert discussed OBLs possible whereabouts
with the host, Chris Matthews.
14:55

Although there was still, at this point, no publicly available evidence for who might have
been behind the bombings (there were also, as yet, no claims of responsibility), a
resurgence of al-Qaeda was raised in connection with the sequential occurrence of
attacks on the French tanker in Yemen, the US soldiers in Kuwait and the bombing in
Bali. The link between these events was articulated primarily through a combination of
the hosts commentary with onscreen graphics and recycled video footage associated
through previous usage with a congeries of fears tied up with popular representations of
terrorism and the Islamic Other.
Here one is reminded of those ominous titles that John L. Esposito described as
capturing public attention and the popular imagination, but also exaggerat[ing] and
distort[ing] the nature of Islam, the political realities of the Muslim world and its diverse
relations with the West. As he argued, They also reinforce an astonishing degree of
ignorance and cultural stereotyping of Arabs and Islam (1999: 2-3). So, what is the
justification for such seemingly inflammatory onscreen graphics and the related
articulations of terror? Was this little more than ratings-driven sensationalism? Or,
alternatively, might they actually be grounded in the kind of resurgence they appear to
suggest? Interestingly, when the four expert guests on Hardball were asked point-blank,
at the conclusion of the program, whether they thought the three incidents were
organizationally linked, the replies were somewhat less than apropos of the certainty
suggested by other aspects of the program.
Chris Matthews: Were lucky to have four people who all are experts in different fields
of this question here. I want to ask you all in order, do you think these events are
connected. Steve Emerson in Kuwait, Bali and the French Tanker in Yemen?
Steve Emerson: In the wider symbolic way, but I dont think theyre tethered
necessarily by command and control.
Chris Matthews: Dr. Post?

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2003 Richard Fox

15

Dr. Jerrold Post: I feel the same way. I think that this represents a resurgence of activity;
but not necessarily closely coordinated.
Chris Matthews: Simon Reeve, are the three connected in any kind of tangible way? In
other words, in terms of communicating command and control activity here?
Simon Reeve: I think, I think it is difficult to say whether they were all controlled
centrally; but certainly I think they all represent an al-Qaeda-inspired attack.
Chris Matthews: Back to you, Robin.
Robin Wright: Theyre part of the same phenomenon, if not part of the same organized
plot.
Chris Matthews: It sounds like you all believe the press was a little strong in saying
they were all al-Qaeda. Does anyone want to disagree with that? The press was too strong
today in saying this was all al-Qaeda connected?
Steve Emerson: Well, I mean, there is some merit to the fact that they are in uh, as
Simon Reeve said, al-Qaeda inspired.
Chris Matthews: Right.
Steve Emerson: So the question is: does inspiration mean a connection?
Chris Matthews: Yeah, well, thank you very much. Its murky as hell, but thats the life
we lead right now.

So, at least in this instance, there was considerable disjuncture between the narrative17
and onscreen graphic/visual components of the report. So what are the implications of
this disjuncture? If, at this point in the coverage, inspiration was all that could tie alQaeda to the bombing in Bali let alone to the incidents in Kuwait and Yemen what is
one to make of the map labeled Recent al-Qaeda attacks? And, beyond reinforcing (to
use Espositos phrase) an astonishing degree of ignorance and cultural stereotyping,
what purpose is served by the file footage of the notorious OBL? As a first step toward
answering these questions, it is perhaps worth a look at the some of the implicit
assumptions regarding the island of Bali and its relationship to Indonesia.
Paradise lost
Returning to the segment from the NBC Evening News, the correspondents report may
be considered in two parts, the first ending here with the footage from the hospital, the
partial body count (which is expected to rise) and the estimated number of injured
victims some of them Americans. In passing, it is worth noting that, despite the fact
that it was already obvious that numerous Indonesians were killed in the blast,18 it is only
17

I should note that I am not using the term narrative in any of its many technical
senses but, rather, as a shorthand for the transcribed oral/aural aspect of television news. I
have dealt with some of the philosophical issues involved in transcription of this kind in
my doctoral thesis (Fox n.d.-a).
18
For instance, even the earliest lists of dead and missing included victims explicitly
named as Indonesian citizens. Yet Chris Matthews could still, as late as the 14th, ask one
of his expert guests, Why this target, as you see it? A bunch of Australians, a lot of

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16

the Euro-american victims who seemed to warrant sustained media attention. (Oddly
enough, this was also at least to a certain extent the case in much of the Indonesian
coverage.)
While, to this point, the report seemed to be primarily concerned with the facts as
they were known at the time, the second half of the segment framed these facts in terms
of a series of popular assumptions regarding among other things Bali, Indonesia and
Islam. With the cut to daytime footage from Kuta beach, we are told perhaps ironically
that Bali is a Mecca for foreigners, while the second beach clip accompanies the
suggestion that until now [Bali] has been considered extremely safe. Such
representations of Bali were pervasive in the coverage, and ranged from the somewhat
nave to the positively inane.

Fox News Channel

Sunday morning, 13 October 2002
Female host: Its probably no coincidence that the
attackers picked this specific spot in Bali, Indonesia,
which is a very famous resort area; its a famous
surf spot; its got a young nightlife. Our reporter out
there was saying that this is kind of the peace and
harmony and sort of kumbaya type of place where
people just go and kick back. Its also frequented by
many, many Australians, because Australia is a
quick flight away. Also the British, Italians, lots of
Europeans and Americans. And, apparently,
according to our reporter, seventy percent of the
victims were Australian.19

The two hosts in the Fox News studio.

Along similar lines, one frequently encountered the question, how could this have
happened here?, the idea being presumably that no one could have expected such a

westerners, not Asian people, but foreigners enjoying the good life in an Islamic country,
not following the rules of Sharia (MSNBC 9:00pm EDT, 14 October 2002).
19
Such representations of Bali and the Balinese have been around for some time.
Geoffrey Robinson cited an example that is not entirely out of synch with the Fox News
report cited above. The passage was taken from a brief prepared by an officer of the
Bali/Lombok brigade (Capt. J.B.T. Konig) for an incoming battalion of Dutch shock
troops in July 1946:
The Balinese is a remarkable Oriental. He is very artistic and expresses this in music, dance, wood
carving, and silver work. Although he is a poor fighter, because he is cowardly, the Balinese is selfconfident and therefore very free in his association with others, including Europeans, though he does
this in a pleasant way. He is good-humored and likes to join in a good joke. These character traits are
certainly part of the reason for the great success of tourism here. (Konig 1946; cited in Robinson
1995: 130)

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17

terrible thing to occur in this tropical idyll.20 The island of Bali, we are told, is simply not
that kind of place rather, its the peace and harmony and sort of kumbaya type of place
where people just go and kick back.

Terror in paradise

PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer

14 October 2002

MSNBC, Curtis & Kuby

14 October 2002

Front page, The Independent

14 October 2002

Page 5, The Times, London

14 October 2002

20

Are such questions not always asked at the scene of a tragedy? How could children be
gunned down by their classmates in suburban Columbine? How could educated members
of the middle class have become suicidal terrorists? And so on.

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18

CNN Online
13 October 2002

Sydney Morning Herald Online

14 October 2002

Apart from the unabashed reiteration of stereotype, it takes little time perusing the
annals of Balinese history to recognize the absurdity of such idealizations. Whether one
considers the massacres of 1965-66, the matter-of-fact lynching of thieves, or the history
of colonial battles, internal warfare and other bits of internecine nastiness, it is rather
difficult to retain the paradisiac fantasy of peace and harmony so pervasive throughout
the Euro-american coverage of the bombing. If anything, Bali has been historically a
rather violent place.21 (Though I hasten to add that it is probably no more so than
anywhere else.) As Mark Hobart noted in an unpublished piece on violence in Bali,
Balinese village law deals extensively with punishments for various forms of violence to
others. Sanctions against fellow villagers for failure to comply with communal decisions
including sending to coventry, bricking up offenders houses and sentencing them to
death. During my fieldwork a thief in a nearby village was taken from armed police and
torn limb from limb. In another a man who insulted the village during a meeting was
promptly taken and killed by pinning him to his own grave with an agricultural hoe
through his neck. Rival villages seem often to have engaged in fights of their own; and
bloodshed between irrigation associations over water was still not uncommon in the
1960s. (Hobart n.d.-a: 7)

Yet, as historians of Bali have noted with increasing frequency, this small and densely
populated island has long been on the receiving end of the displaced fears and desires of
Europeans, Australians and Americans. In other words, the (pre-bomb) image of Bali was
very much as Adrian Vickers (1989) described it: a paradise created.22 Now, with
21

In the preface to his book on political violence in Bali, The dark side of paradise,
Robinson remarked,

22

At the outset I was confronted by two perplexing problems. The first was that I could not find a single
book or article that set out clearly what had actually happened in Bali in the previous century or so.
Frustration gave way to puzzlement. Why, I wondered, had no one bothered to write a political history
of this extraordinary place? The second problem was that the available sources made it clear that Bali
had suffered an unusually turbulent and bloody history. It was a picture that fitted very poorly with
the pleasing and romantic image of Bali with which I was familiar.

Robinson noted,

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19

paradise lost, Bali is imagined as having completed its Miltonian circle;23 and the
mainstream news media reports land up as little more than the latest permutation of a
tired and not terribly helpful bit of western mythology.24
The worlds most populous Muslim nation
If Eve, an apple and a snake were blamed for the expulsion from the Garden, this fall
from paradise was predominantly explained through reference to elements associated
with (the rest of) Indonesia which, as we are frequently reminded, is the worlds most
populous Muslim nation.
Another eyewitness reported hearing at least three explosions on the island [of Bali] in
Indonesia, the worlds most populous Moslem nation. (CNN Online, 13 October 2002)
The paradise island of Bali lures tourists from across the globe with its white-sand
beaches and unique Hindu culture, and until now has been immune from the violence that
has wracked Indonesia over the past few years. (Sydney Morning Herald, 13 October
2002)
For months, US and Singaporean officials have been saying that Al-Qaeda cells are
hiding in Indonesia, a Muslim nation with porous borders and weak law enforcement.
(Straits Times, 15 October 2002)
Next door to Australia sits Indonesia, the worlds most populous Muslim country, and
also an unstable, fledgling democracy. (French 2002; in New York Times, 20 October
2002)
The image of a harmonious, exotic and apolitical Bali gained wide acceptance in the late 1920s, when
Dutch colonial power in Bali was at its height and the restoration of Balinese tradition had become a
central feature of a conservative Dutch colonial strategy of indirect rule. By the 1930s, the
bureaucratic memoranda of Dutch colonial officials had, with a tedious uniformity, begun to describe
the people of Bali as more interested by nature, in art, culture, and religiondance, music, painting,
carving, ceremonies, festivals, and so onthan in politics. The generally unspoken assumption in
colonial circles (and in the foreign anthropological and artistic community in Bali) was the culture
and politics were mutually exclusive categories, and that a cultural people could not at the same
time be a political one. So long as Balinese culture remained strong, the reasoning went,
political influence would be weak. (1995: 5-6)

Ironically, it might be argued that in more recent years the image of Bali as a tropical
idyll has been maintained at least in part through the violence of security.
23
In years past, Bali was alternately feared, loathed and also idealized all with equal
conviction. But, in each case, these representations tended to homogenize and
detemporalize the lives of the men women and children living in Bali, relegating them to
an exotic corner of the western imagination and, perhaps more to the point, excluding
them from becoming the subjects of their own history. Against this historical backdrop,
perhaps one should not be so terribly surprised to find little discussion of the Balinese
and other Indonesian victims of the bombing.
24
As Hobart noted in another unpublished piece, Roland Barthes Myth Today (1973)
works singularly well to understand the political rhetoric of the media (because, I
suspect, they underpin his examples). Most of Barthes main figures appear in reporting
the Bali bombings (n.d.-b: 7).

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20

Fox News interview with former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the United
States Army, Van Hipp, Sunday morning, 13 October 2002
Van Hipp: I dont think theres any question that
there is a direct link to, uh, to terrorist activity here.
Dont forget that Indonesia, uh, has the largest
Muslim population of any country in the world, 174
million. It has long been a hotbed of Islamic
extremist activity. Uh, you got an Island chain there
known as the Moluccan Islands, where between
three and five thousand Christians have been
butchered in the last 24 months alone. President
Megawati has tried to be, uh, helpful to us. But
shes basically been surrounded by, uh, Islamic
extremists in her own government.25

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary

of the United States Army, Van Hipp.

If we return to the initial segment from the NBC Evening News, we find that the
invocation of hardline Islamic groups is accompanied by two short clips from what
appears on first sight to be a mass demonstration of some sort, with people both chanting
and waving flags and banners wildly.

Image A-12
(See above.)

So might this have been a scene from that hotbed of Islamic extremist activity? Perhaps
a gang of extremist Muslims off to butcher some Christians in the Molluccas?

25

Van Hipp went on to articulate the Bali bombing in relation to al-Qaeda, Iraq and then
weapons of mass destruction:
Van Hipp: And heres the problem: youve got al-Qaeda cells in sixty countries. And I would say
that this [i.e., Indonesia] is one of the top, if not the worst of all the countries in the world. Uh, the
goal of al-Qaeda has been to disrupt, uh, the western economy. Thats why they did this, in my
opinion in Bali, which is a non-Muslim area, uh, of Indonesia. Uh, and can you imagine if Saddam
Hussein is successful in being able to export his weapons of mass destruction to all of these countries,
particularly Indonesia, that has very active, uh, terrorist cells? I mean, what if that car bomb had been
a dirty bomb?

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21

Closer examination of this footage would in fact suggest that the demonstration was a
peace rally. The banners themselves indicate that these were students demonstrating
against the American invasion of Iraq. (For instance, the signs read stop war, we
oppose war, no more blood etc.)26 Although, on reviewing the footage, the protestors
do look enthusiastic even determined they certainly do not look violent, let alone
hardline (whatever that would look like).27 But, if there was any ambiguity in the
footage, it was quickly clawed back with the next clip in which two protestors (from the
same demonstration?) are depicted running alongside a pickup truck and carrying a sign
that reads (in English) BUSH, BLAIR AND GELBARD GO TO HELL.28 In subsequent
broadcasts on other channels, similar video sequences articulated the same opposition
between Bali (Hindu, safe) and Indonesia (Muslim, dangerous).

Transcript of a segment from Wolf Blitzer reports on CNN news,

14 October 2002
(1)

Until now

Image B-01

26

That many of the signs were in English might also suggest they were made with a
western audience (and mass media) in mind. Sadly, one might further argue that these
images were used here to the inverse of their desired effect.
27
The closest tie to Islam is an only partially legible banner that seems to indicate the
participation of the Executive Student Body of the Islamic University in Jakarta.
Underneath the acronym BEM (presumably Badan Eksekutif Mahasiswa), the banner
appears to read Universitas Islam Negeri Jakarta.
28
I had to slow the footage considerably to make out the names. Playing at regular speed,
it is only the Go to hell that is really legible. One presumes the footage is from the time
of Ambassador Gelbards tenure in Indonesia. Ralph Boyce was sworn in as the US
Ambassador to Indonesia on 9 October 2001.

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2003 Richard Fox

22

(2)

Bali had attracted an average of more

than a million vacationers a year,

Image B-02
(3)

most from Japan, Australia,

Image B-03
(4)

Taiwan and Europe.

Image B-04

(5)

Until now, the island had been almost

exempt from the turmoil

Image B-05

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23

(6)

lawlessness and government-issued

travel warnings that have long afflicted
Indonesia.

Image B-06

I would argue that both the footage of (Islamic) protestors on the NBC segment, and
this (rather gratuitous) visual representation of Indonesian turmoil and lawlessness on
CNN, paved the way for the articulation of a very particular kind of threat. Considering
the general tenor of such video sequences, it is perhaps not entirely surprising to find a
couple of nights later even the CNN anchor, Carol Lin, declaring my sense of it, as an
American watching from overseas, is that people there [in Indonesia] hate Americans,
that there is a distinct anti-American, um, pro-Islamist movement going on in Indonesia
(14 October 2002, 1:35pm EDT). So perhaps Paradise and the Inferno may turn out to be
two sides of the same coin. Taken together, these clips certainly seem to suggest a
general sense of unrest and, more specifically, a threat of Indonesian (Muslim) disorder
disrupting previously peaceful (Hindu) Bali.29 So what was the nature of this threat? And
how was it represented? (Or, critically speaking, can these two questions even be
distinguished?)
Following the footage of the (anti-war) demonstrations in the NBC segment, we are
told of the terrorist threats that caused frequent closures of the US embassy in Jakarta.
This is accompanied by a shot of an Indonesian soldier standing guard in front of the gate
of what one presumes is the American Embassy, and then another short clip depicting
what appear to be (more) Islamic protestors, waving large green flags. I would suggest
that it is not insignificant that the latter footage was filmed from behind a long line of
Indonesian security forces in full riot gear, thereby placing the viewing subject behind the
lines of defense. Yet, despite the preponderance of (Islam-related) suspicion and

29

The threat of disorder has long been a set piece for cultural and media studies analyses
of how the news articulates an ideological version of the world. van Ginneken
summarized the process nicely: The overarching logic is twofold; on the one hand a
vivid evocation of new threats to convention, normality and order; on the other hand their
labeling, categorization and neutralization (1998: 188). Paralleling classical myths of
cosmogony, the news begins with chaos and ends with (white, male and upper-middleclass) order.

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24

innuendo, we are told (yet again) that there have been no claims of responsibility yet for
this deadly terrorist attack.30
By any other name
The western imagination of Islam has a long, complex and well-documented history
which has in large part been dominated by displacement, fear and misinterpretation
(see e.g., Said 1979, 1994, 1997; Asad 1993; Esposito 1999). Sadly, the war on terror
seems to have given new and, most worryingly, institutional life to many of the old
stereotypes and prejudices. Yet, while it is by now trite to declare that Islam has long
been maligned in the Euro-american world, it remains no less the case; and these
tendencies seem to have impinged seriously on the ability of the Anglophone news media
to engage critically with the Bali bombing as a complex international event.31 While
focusing on the conspiratorial aspect of the Indonesian coverage,32 much of the more
30

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this final line is delivered against the backdrop of burning
ruins. I proposed in an earlier paper (Fox n.d.-b) that the initial articulation of the
bombing in terms of the war on terror was perhaps more than a little parasitic on images
of what I tentatively labeled horror and conflagration. The speculations about al-Qaeda
involvement were repeatedly set against the backdrop of flaming cars, burnt-out buildings
and bloodied victims. I suggested that, if the former lacked substance, perhaps the latter
served to fill the gap.
31
Without wishing to put too fine a point on it, one might argue that the bombing was
precisely the opposite of what it was generally said to have been. Of course it was tragic.
But it was neither a cowardly act, nor was it necessarily a senseless or irrational act of
evil. On the contrary, there is every indication that this was a political act.
Unfortunately, critical reflection on such an action is precluded by the dominant tendency
in the mainstream Euro-american media to collude with the state-institutional drive to
disarticulate the bombing as an act of senseless evil. One should be able to condemn the
action without abdicating the responsibility to reflect on its desired ends and the sociopolitical circumstances out of which it arose, and in which it was possible.
32
Much has been made of the various conspiracy theories that circulated in the
Indonesian media following the bombing. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald, for
instance, remarked that,
One conspiracy theory after another has hit the media or circulated around the Jakarta elite this week.
One front-page story had two prominent generals as masterminds of the Bali bombings. Another
theory pointed to former defence minister General Wiranto. On Wednesday, US ambassador Ralph
Boyce had to fend off renewed questioning from local reporters suggesting the CIA had a hand in the
attack. On Thursday, newspapers quoted police chief General Dai Bachtiar raising suspicions about
separatists in remote Aceh province. Way down the list of suspects, it seems, are the organisations
that Western governments most strongly suspect: Osama bin Ladens al-Qaeda terrorist group from
the Middle East, and Jemaah Islamiah, a similar-minded local group of radical Islamists who aspire to
create a pan-Islamic state including all believers in South-East Asia. (Sydney Morning Herald,
02/11/2002; compare Jane Perlez remarks in her 07/11/2002 article for the New York Times)

It should be noted, however, that one of the more popular conspiracy theories discussed
in the Indonesian media was based on an Australian source. As Greg Fealy noted, in his
rather scathing review for Inside Indonesia, the micro-nuke theory that the bombing

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25

serious and reflective Indonesian media commentary has been ignored by the
Anglophone press, thereby contributing to the disarticulation of a serious alternative to
the master framework of the war on terror.33
There is every indication that the scene in Kuta following the blasts was chaotic,
with very little information available regarding what had actually happened. Yet, within
hours of the bombs exploding and despite the absence of any serious and publicly
available evidence Jemaah Islamiyah was named as the group most likely responsible
for the attacks, headlined as a local branch or affiliate of the now seemingly
ubiquitous al-Qaeda terror network. On each successive day, there were new reports
based on the increasingly detailed (and often contradictory) information that was released
by police and other security agencies; and this mass mediated drive from chaos toward
a very particular kind of coherence marched on unabated and largely unreflective
eventually culminating in reports of the arrest of numerous suspects allegedly affiliated
with the JI.
In closing, I would note that, almost four months after the blasts (and still despite the
absence of publicly available evidence for a link to al-Qaeda), the Director of the CIA,
George Tenet, was able to list the Bali bombing significantly, without further comment
as one of many recent attacks by al-Qaeda, in his testimony to the Senate Select
Intelligence Committee.34 One presumes such hearings are not without consequence. As
one unnamed military official reportedly told CNNs Barbara Starr: it looks like alQaeda, it walks like al-Qaeda and it smells like al-Qaeda.35 So, perhaps things in the
war on terror, as Hubert Humphrey said many years ago, are in very important respects,
what they seem to be.

was actually the result of a mini nuclear device detonated beneath the street was
originally put forward by an Australian private investigator:

33

In its search for far-fetched accounts of the bombing, Republika turned up the Western Australiabased Joe Vialls, whom it generously described as a private investigator and explosives and
intelligence analyst. Vialls might be more accurately labeled an extreme right-wing professional
conspiracy theorist. His website is filled with virulently anti-Semitic and anti-US views.

I am currently preparing an article that addresses the Indonesian coverage at greater

length.
34
Full video footage from the hearing is available online at www.c-span.org/.
35
CNN, 11:30AM, 14 October 2002.

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26

Works cited
*I have listed news articles by author when one was listed, and otherwise by publication (e.g., Kompas, Tempo). Radio
and television broadcasts have been listed according to the channel on which they were broadcast (e.g., CNN, NPR).

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French, H. (2002) Terrors tool; As bodies start coming home, Australians criticize
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Reuters (2002) Three dead, 100 hurt in blasts on Indonesias Bali. TheJakartaPost.com.
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