Up and down

Who are the real psychotic?

Well, what can I say to this country now? The government seems to have become more and more worried realising the independent online media and bloggers are drawing more attention and amplifying their volumes down the road now. The government is getting more aggressive and ‘vigorous’ now in interrupting the news production by these rights and humanity activists, who continuously and frequently lambaste on government’s unfair actions. It’s even more pathetic and sarcastic when the government seems unable to stand with the heavy critics from bloggers, that the Tourism Minister Tengku Adnan uttered such an unforgivable and unwise statement, accusing 80 percent of these bloggers are unemployed women who are liars, cheat people and a threat to national unity. More irritating, this was made on International Women’s Day. It makes those who came across this statement horribly sick and nauseating when the ‘accused’ spun his word at the National Press Club Press Conference after he realised the consequence of his words, that he ‘loved’ all the women in this country. “I love my mother, my grandmother… without them, where were we today?” Oh, shut up before I spat the residues out from my stomach! Err, so gross the bugger!

Very unfortunately, not all the mainstream newspapers dared to report on what this fella has said, probably for fear of penalisation, except for a reporter from Sin Chew Daily. As a matter of fact, in this country, when you try to tell the citizens truthful news, the aftermath is that you are either a threat to the country or a big fat liar who manipulates people. You make noise, you eat your own bitter fruit; you behave, you’re safe from custody. No matter what, there are always a group of people out there in this country who are never exhausted in digging the real facts to people in order to create a wider awareness among the people who have been very much following only news from the mainstream channels. While they practice their rights of freedom of speech and expression, they do not go all out for mere enjoyment or with the intention of aggravating anger in people. But what really drives them is the duty to report facts as faithfully and truthfully as possible to the public, to tell them what has gone wrong, to provide alternative source of information that the mainstream channels never touch on. So you see a problem here?

I remembered when I was in my internship in an English tabloid early last year, one of the sub-editor told me these groups of people (rights activist, especially the opposition party) are just psychotic and act insanely, therefore do not deserve any free publication in the mainstream media. Apparently, he was referring to the Parti Keadilan Rakyat’s (PKR) Information Chief Tian Chua who always speaks on behalf of the residents who couldn’t find way to air their voices. But pathetically speaking, he is treated as a mad person and he said he lost counts of his detention under the ISA. To him, detention never stops him from continue serving the public’s right to truth. “As we survive detention, we survive everything. You must have to courage to face arrestment.” Perhaps not all can really take this. Different people, different interpretation.

I came across an article written by another b****r from Internal Security Ministry which I find contradictory. He argued those media that play a role to inform the public to uphold to the principles and ethics of journalism and to provide only facts based on substantial and proved evidences. In other words, he warned the media not to publish any issues from the cyber media and blogs which seem to be baseless and speculative, which are very likely to mislead the public. But how can the Ministry reminded the media practitioners to uphold to principles of journalism when you are being contradictory to yourself and never provides any leeway for them to practice the Canons? On one side, you urge the journalists to report facts accurately and respect the public’s right to truth, which are the fundamentals of the Canons, but on the other side, you’re luring them to report only news that are favourable to you without triggering any issues on conflicts of interests to reduce your harms. So please check back on what you’ve said and compare with what’ve done before you tell the journalists what to do. They know way better than you as not all of them are liars.

But one thing undeniable, as long as the cyber media, bloggers or whatever activists they are, continue to act as a regular guardian on government’s action, the government will surely continue with struggle all the way with them. But remember, people are never shadowed by your propaganda tool or your hanky-panky behaviour forever. Besides, the cyberspace ensures free flow of information where you just can’t stop people from seeing and reading. So, at the end of the day, whatever your effort invested, it’s going to be no avail. People will speak up eventually till you allow sufficient leeway of expression in this country that you coined democratic and enjoy freedom of speech.

1057am, signing off.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 7:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.