(B1)Role of Journalism in Malaysia

Hi there, today I want to discuss about Role of Journalism in Malaysia.

Basically, journalist is the one who used to inform public and officials about new information and interpret the information for society.  Unfortunately, today in Malaysia, Journalist use their power to set the mind of citizen in Malaysia. In can be seen in the figure 1 below, most of the media is control by government or those who related to government.

This make our media in Malaysia become propaganda of government or help the government to hide some information and news behind us. For normally, a journalist should become a “watchdog” to supply the citizens with information they must have to know and to warn citizens about those that are harm for them. However, Malaysia journalists have become the “watchdog” of government to help them filter out news that adverse to government.

Besides that, Malaysia journalists also take the chance to ignore some information by changing the citizen attention to the other news by so call “agenda setting”. They also become “gatekeeper” to filter the information that wants audience ignores or to be know by people out of the country. For example, the 505 Blackout Rallies is a rallies that organize by citizen of Malaysia to show their disagree with the result of election of 5th May of 2013. However, Media block most the information of the news and also decrease the number of people that attend when report in news.

This is also make the result of Malaysian mostly youngster don't not believe on print media and broadcast media. Most of them get news and information from online media and also from social network like facebook. However, the accuracy and the source of information are unknown.

(Figure 1: Media ownership of Malaysia)