COMMENT | Journalism under attack again

About 20 years ago, a group of American students on an exchange programme turned up at the office wanting to know about the media in Malaysia. After the customary tour of the office, it was question time.

The session went along these lines:

“Where does the government agent sit? I was told that all the news in Malaysian newspapers is censored,” one of the students said.

“Who let out this secret?” I asked in jest.

“My Malaysian host told me that you can’t believe anything that is reported,” she continued.

“Oh, the censor? He only comes into the office in the evening and occupies the editor’s chair. With a red pencil in his hand, he goes through the printouts of the day’s news and deletes whatever is not palatable to him,” I answered.

She seemed to have accepted the answer until I told her it was a myth and that the editor had the final say in what went out the next morning.

This summed up the public’s perception of newspapers in the bad old days when ‘patriotic editors’ occupied their seats to facilitate what the government wanted you to read.

The situation has changed drastically over the years...