Berita Harian reported on its frontpage yesterday that Anwar beri pengecualian kepada Perwaja: Saksi (Anwar granted waiver to Perwaja: Witness).

Berita Harian then proceeded to give a long narrative on what a witness in the current ongoing trial of ex-Perwaja boss Eric Chia said with regards to an exemption given by then Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim to Perwaja in that the company need not refer to the ministry when investing more than RM15 million (though it was still required to seek approval from a tenders committee).

The focus on Anwar was in contrast to the downplayed, later half of the report (which was relegated to page 14 of the newspaper) which revealed that it was former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad which had first given Chia permission to do as he pleased with Perwaja.

This is the primary fact which Berita Harian chose to ignore in favour of running with a minor detail but which it hoped would portray Anwar in a bad light. But those who read through the whole report would immediately know that it was Mahathir who made all the major decisions regarding Perwaja.

Utusan Malaysia also chose the same anti-Anwar stance for its report but in fact went a step further in that it completely left out any reference to Mahathir giving Chia a blanket approval to run Perwaja.

I read Oriental Daily's report on the same court hearing and it was reported in a professional manner. I suppose even a junior reporter could easily identify a primary fact such as shown above. How could the experienced editors at Berita Harian and Utusan Malaysia have made such a mistake?

'Have Berita Harian and Utusan Malaysia already launched their anti-Anwar propaganda agenda', is the question to be asked now.