International Journal of Indonesian Studies Volume 1, Issue 3 | Page 30

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES
SPRING 2016
Catchy, informal and easy to read.
Lampu Hijau uses vernacular language in most of its headlines, but it uses more serious and
formal language for social and political news, particularly in the Metro Jabodetabek section.
Lampu Hijau also often uses very long headlines (up to 40 words), and tends to ignore the
grammatical rules of Bahasa Indonesia. For example, its headline on 1 December 2011 read:
Asked to go to the Mosque, a girl hasn’t returned to her house for three days. She
was kidnapped by her ex boyfriend and raped by her ex and his 2 friends. One friend
admitted he raped her once, another friend admitted he raped her twice, while her
ex did not admit yet because he is still on the run.
In addition, Lampu Hijau often uses metaphors and anecdotes in their titles to allow readers
to get an idea of the stories quickly and easily. The paper also uses local daily jargon to
create familiarity with its readers. Furthermore, Lampu Hijau uses an unusual form of
censorship. The image will be covered by black boxes that include comments from the
editor or editor-in-chief. These act as censor mechanisms. More details of this can be found
in Figure 4.

Figure 4. The ‘censor mechanism’ in Lampu Hijau.
The yellow sentences in the black box translate as, ‘This has been censored by the
editor-in-chief’. These boxes are the censor mechanisms of Lampu Hijau. This form of
censorship can always be found in the international celebrity news, but is not used for the
crime news.
Local news focusing on crimes
Analysis of the front page reveals that Lampu Hijau gives more space to crime issues than
Pos Kota does. During the research period, the front page of Lampu Hijau was dominated by
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