PROPERTYMalaysiakini :: ERIC LOO
- Ongoing education of a journalist
A Bangladeshi newsman reflects on demands of the profession and the need for continuing education
- Doing the right thing, we sleep better
- With a five-dollar note stashed in my ‘L-lembu' licence, the plastic sleeve smudged through frequent fiddling, I handed it over.
- Caught between hate-mails and cow-heads
- Whether one believes in a personal God, or don't, what matters ultimately in our earthly life is this, 'if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink'.
- Media guilty until proven innocent
- Religious deviants have had their bad run in the news the past two weeks. It's the digital forensic investigators' turn now.
- No end to cow-crap politics
- In mediation, shouldn't one avoid justifying the furore?
- Need to calibrate our moral meter
- The bigots are like powder kegs, eternally on edge, waiting for the moment to explode.
- 'Trust us, we're journalists.' Really?
- A colleague belatedly emailed me an alert to a Kosmo article on the late Yasmin Ahmad. I have watched a few of her films. Sepet is my favourite.
- I am, you are, we are 'Malaysian'
- Curious parents of children studying in Australian universities often wonder if Aussies are anti-Asian. Media coverage in early June of Indian students being harassed and harangued in Melbourne has understandably stoked parents' fear
- 'You'll be right, mate,' so says the Aussie to foreign students
- Malaysian students had to learn and acculturate to the Aussie social rules in a very short time - in fact, right after clearing immigration at Sydney airport - to reorientate to the dialectical learning environment and free-spirit social space in Australian universities.
- Hope lies in the reformasi press to catalyse change
Looking at photos of the candle-lit peace march in Kuala Lumpur on Sept 27 with a restrained police force on the side, and reported in bits by the mainstream media, I am optimistic that the ISA, Printing Presses and Publications Act and sedition laws that stifle our journalistic work may be amended or at best repealed in good time. But to achieve what now seem like impossibilities, we need a robustly critical and transparent media to sustain the reformasi spirit.
- The humanity of journalism
- Despite the massive commercialisation of mass media, Palagummi Sainath the guru of rural reporting tells how experiential based reporting meets the truth more.
- 'Mission and service' benchmarks in journalism
- Journalism teachers have to decide who they wish to make their students responsible to - readers and people, or bosses and balance sheets.
- Alas, the mainstream media sloth awake
- We need a fresh generation of journalists - educated and committed to serving the people rather than the shareholders and political masters.
- Dialogue beats boycott outside the gatekeepers' gates
- Boycotts do make strong political statements. But, often, weak is its desired outcome. Seldom do boycotts achieve practical solutions to political issues.
- Keeping online rage for reformasi
Dire consequences arise when the media – like our MSM - become singularly pro-government, anti-opposition and, I suppose, anti-journalism.
- 'Who you vote for? Shhh, secret, cannot tell lah!'
World politics have shown that the potential for democratically-elected prime ministers or presidents to become dictators is greater in governments of unlimited terms.
- What might have been if Malaysia Boleh
- Behind the ‘complexities’ of race politics lie a common sense solution – talk, listen and act for the common good.
- What not to do in critical writing Pt 2
- Research papers are written in a way that often confounds rather than communicates. Many believe that obscurity reflects profundity.
- What not to do in critical writing
- After years of sitting through mind-numbing thesis committee meetings, I've read copious reports of what examiners judged were weak research and poor writing.
- What we fear but know not why
- What we need now is less pointless fiery diatribe but more robust reasoned dialogue in the public space.
- Write, blog and rap to roll the rage
- Write a column, run a blog, rap on YouTube and tell the truth, at times absolute, but most times wittily. That'll get you the state's attention.
- 'Itulah' ethical blogging
- Indeed, our ministers, through their operatives, should try their hand at blogging, and get connected to their constituents.
- Not Islamic or Western just good or sloppy journalism
- What news will 'Islamic journalism' cover that the secular media are not already offering?
- Entwining the religious twain
- Racial supremacists often also happen to be religious zealots, be they Christian, Jew or Muslim.
- Suicide: Where can they turn to?
- 'For a moment he was blinded from reason and it only takes a moment to climb that low rail and leap. Within seconds he was taken from us.'