I refer to the letter Independent media essential in democratic society .

When Umno Youth Chief Khairy Jamaluddin wrote the above letter, he chose to ignore a very important factor ie, the very nature of media ownership in Malaysia.

Unless this mater is addressed first, the so-called media freedom in this country will always be on a selective basis ie, if you are a ‘big fish’ or a ‘fish’ on the side of the ruling elite, then you can certainly take for granted that you are 'kebal' or invincible.

Khairy who has seen how the media operates in Great Britain and the US and in other countries should not be complacent over the level of media freedom in this country.

In my books, there is no media freedom if the private lives and behaviour of the politicians cannot be kept under constant watch and scrutiny for the simple reason that these people are the trustees of public money.

We have now seen that in the last 50 years, there have been billions if not trillions of public money being wasted either through corruption, favours for cronies or badly thought-out projects.

Anyway, Khairy surely knows that almost all the print and electronic media in this country are either owned by the ruling parties or the opposition or by tycoons who have no interest in media freedom.

The BBC and the Japan’s NHK are truly owned by the rakyat who willingly pay the license fees and even the 'evil' Rupert Murdoch and other media barons or General Electric who owns CBS believe in media freedom.

But here, surely Khairy knows who owns RTM, Bernama, the Utusan group, The Star group, The Sun, the Media Prima group, the Chinese papers and the Tamil papers.

People may think that among the newspapers, The Sun is the most independent and whose news and features are the most reliable but it is owned by the Berjaya group whose business practices (just like any other company’s) require constant scrutiny.

Real media freedom will never happen in this country until the whole culture of media proprietorship is completely overhauled. You don't have to be rocket scientist to institute these changes, and we don't have to go far.

Where do we stand compared to the media in India, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia? The way I see it, the Malaysian media is an exact replica of Singapore's media template.

Dr Mahathir Mohamad had always insisted that there is indeed press freedom in this country because the opposition parties, too, have their own ‘newspapers’. What kind of rationale is that?