In the history of Indonesian society, the press was not foreign. Long before Indonesia's independence, the initial appearance of the press is a tool of struggle for all components of Indonesian society in conveying their aspirations to achieve the proclamation of independence. Post-proclamation of independence in 1945, a very large role of the press as a means of struggle in order to disseminate information or news to all corners of Indonesia and the region around the world. in its development in Indonesia, the world press have experienced ups and downs in both the Liberal era, the Old Order, New Order and Reform Era. In the life of a democratic society, one of the important role of the press is as a driver of community initiatives, introduce his efforts alone, and finding creative potentials in improving perikehidupannya.
The press also has the mission as one of the means of social control over the government, has been able to contribute in order to make corrections and improvements in the implementation of government. Therefore, in order to avoid reporting that leads slander, every insane press has been equipped with the Code of Professional Journalists Indonesia that must be obeyed. Code include: 1. Personality Indonesian journalist, 2. Accountability, 3. Method of Reporting and Declare Opinion, 4. Violation of Right of Reply, 5. Source of news, 6. Power of the Code, and 7. Monitoring Arrangement Code.
The era of globalization has given a greater role to the world press in raising initiative and creativity of citizens through a variety of information technology infrastructure. World news in the perspective of democracy and self-discovery and freedom are able to penetrate the boundaries of both countries in the political, economic, socio-cultural, legal, defense and security, and so on. Therefore, we entered the era of globalization as a democratic society should be able to evaluate the role of the press in a democratic society.