This study examines how Tempo.co and Kompas.com, two of Indonesia's most-read online news portals, framed the public debate over repositioning the Indonesian National Police (Polri) from directly under the President to under the Ministry of Home Affairs (Kemendagri), a policy discourse that remained undecided throughout the study period. Using a qualitative framing analysis grounded in Robert N. Entman's four-element model (define problems, diagnose causes, make moral judgments, treatment recommendation), the study analyzed 23 purposively sampled news articles (12 from Tempo.co, 11 from Kompas.com) published between November 2024 and February 2026. Findings show that Tempo.co exhibited a dynamic, two-phase framing shift: initially framing the repositioning proposal as a constitutional threat to police independence (December 2024), then reversing after the August 2025 civil-society protests and the formation of the Police Reform Acceleration Commission to frame Polri's current position as an unchecked “superbody” requiring structural correction. Kompas.com, by contrast, maintained formal balance throughout while substantively leaning toward rejecting repositioning, favoring cultural and institutional reform within the existing command structure. These divergent trajectories confirm the workings of political mediatization and the social construction of reality, demonstrating that both outlets actively shaped, rather than merely reported, public understanding of one of Indonesia's most consequential unresolved institutional reform debates.framing analysis, Robert N. Entman, Polri institutional reform, online media, political mediatization
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