(B1) Media & Journalism Freedom

In general, news is the information about recent happenings and events. News is a “powerful questionable art form” that needs to be analysed. (Philosopher and author Alain de Botton, 2014)

Malaysia’s press freedom remained restricted and is getting more and more limited indeed. According to the World Press Freedom Index 2014, Malaysia fall and land at 147^th spot from it’s previous 124^th position. MALAYSIA's rank in World Press Freedom Index 2014

Malaysia has some of the toughest censorship laws in the world. The government is intense to protect the mainly the Muslim population from foreign influences. Kissing scenes and cleavages were censored, swearing and sex scenes were removed. There was an incident in 2012, where the government received negative reaction towards censoring an article concerning the 2012 Bersih 3.0 rally. Astro Malaysia, a Malaysian satellite television received complaints and was asked for explanation by BBC for doctoring up its news about the Bersih 3.0 rally. Astro responded that they were trying to comply with local content rule. It somehow violated the ethics code in term of doctoring the news sources. 

Malaysia news sources are informative but not informative and objective enough. The above incident is a good reference. It is always better to look up to other news sources to know more about some other’s opinions on the subject or topic from different point of views. Online news from different countries is always a good option to seek for more extra and complete information. While news from social media such as facebook and twitter are also informative but not reliable as it was not filtered and spam are burgeoning, there are also chance that social media being used as a tool to spread information to achieve some kind of purpose. In society around 1950s and 1960's, traditional medium, newspaper is their only way to know what is happening around them and as they were not well educated, they will just blindly believe what they have received from the newspaper. Newspaper is a one sided medium and it is controlled by the government. Therefore, it might not covered the entire story of the incident and somehow, there are some newspaper who speaks for the government, the news reported is sometimes bias and sided to the government. Malaysia media's is both cautious and docile due to the rules and regulation we have. The government has surpresed the media making us to see only the good side of it and otherwise has been swept under the carpet. In order to survive in the media industry, media can only act in the way that the government want it to be. 









Sources:
> http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/malaysia-worse-than-myanmar-in-world-press-freedom-index
> http://www.sarawakreport.org/2012/04/bbc-signals-outrage-over-malaysian-censorship-of-bersih-3-0-coverage-exclusive/
> http://www.aljazeera.com/aboutus/2006/11/2008525185733692771.html
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMPnplExls8&feature=youtu.be