Haris Pardede: from newspapers to football videos ^{CEFR B2}

Haris Kristanto Pardede is a prominent Indonesian football commentator who left traditional newspapers to focus on online video. He worked as a sports journalist at Koran Sindo before becoming a content creator during the pandemic, and he gained many followers after covering the Indonesian national team at the 2023 Asian Cup in Qatar. Pardede hosts the Bung Harpa YouTube channel, where he reports from the field, attends matches in other countries and often publishes first-hand information not yet carried by mainstream media.

As of this writing the channel has 118,000 subscribers, 1,072 videos and more than 22.5 million views. In an interview at Gelora Bung Karno Main Stadium in Jakarta, Pardede said he began the channel because he loves football and wanted to speak directly to subscribers and fellow journalists. He explained that his journalistic background shapes his ethical approach and that genuine, original reporting can build trust and help prevent rumours and disinformation.

Pardede also described the experience of sometimes being the only Indonesian citizen journalist at match fields abroad, calling it both a challenge and an opportunity: his reports drew public attention, but he felt isolated without more peers present. On the wider state of football reporting, he criticised a trend of assembling material from existing sources without much on-site work and argued that the available data and infrastructure demand more creativity and more field reporting to improve coverage.