• by Erik Sass , September 11, 2007

Forget newsprint prices and circulation declines: political machinations can still make journalism an incredibly expensive proposition in foreign countries, as Time Inc. has discovered in Indonesia. Here, according to the Associated Press, the supreme court on Monday ordered Time magazine's Indonesian edition to pay a whopping $106 million in damages to the country's former dictator, Suharto, for publishing an article claiming his family still has about $15 billion stolen when he was in power.

The ex-dictator took such exception to the cover story--"The Family Firm," published in May 1999--that he sued the magazine when it refused to retract it. Time insists the story is sound, noting it required four months of reporting in 11 countries to uncover the mechanism whereby Suharto transferred billions of dollars to Swiss and then Austrian bank accounts. Altogether, the magazine claimed his family accumulated about $73 billion from nepotistic business arrangements and corrupt dealings.

But it seems political connections can still trump journalism: after two lower courts dismissed Suharto's lawsuit against Time, their rulings were reversed by a three-man panel of Supreme Court judges--one of whom is a retired general with ties to Suharto. The magazine has one chance to appeal.

Suharto seized power in 1965, enjoying American support as an important ally in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. But with the end of the Cold War, American support evaporated, and he was forced to step down in 1998. Rumors of corruption were widespread, and observers condemned human rights abuses in Indonesia, including Suharto's invasion of neighboring East Timor in 1975, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.