I refer to the Malaysiakini report Media reform still a distant dream?

The Center for Independent Journalism has just launched a much needed campaign to protect journalists in our land.

The ‘Hands-off Journos @ Work’ badges that every journalist worth his or her salt should proudly wear tells a sad and painful story of the marginalization of journalism and the daylight raping of press freedom in Malaysia.

As clearly pointed out by V Gayathry, the executive director of the Centre for Independent Journalism, it is shocking to witness how the law has failed to not only protect independent journalism but dealt a brutal blow to the press' duty to inform.

Inflicting any form of coercion and worse, bodily harm on journalists at work or even bribing them is a crime against democracy. As indicated at the campaign launch, those who restrain journalists’ many efforts to report truthfully in the interest of ethical behavior are guilty of murdering humanity.

The fact that journalists have been beaten and some even left in a coma is totally unacceptable. And the fact that prosecution of those responsible for these acts is not seeing urgency is a clear affirmation that justice for the media is near dead in this land that proclaims to be a moderate state.

The violation of the fundamental right to media freedom must stop immediately if we are to earn the respect and honour of the developed world. How else can we be admitted into the developed global community if we have those in power resorting to gangsterism and patronisation to muffle the media?

Ask any mainstream media journalist and they will readily whisper that between reporting the truth and keeping their job, the latter is the preferred option. Seemingly, idealism and principles these days do not guarantee that you can keep a well-paying job in Malaysia.

Putting food on the table and providing for the family takes precedence over upholding the fundamental rights of journalism. That, in essence is the sad but harsh truth is so far as a free press goes in Malaysia.

The system reeks of injustice, fear and intimidation. And all in the name of power and control. All in the name of protecting vested and personal interests.

Today we see in Malaysia that the obligations of the media as contained in the Hutchins Commission of 1947 have been completely cast aside owing to political interference and a derailed libertarian economics at work.

And who will be responsible for this sordid state of affairs if not the politicians who proclaim incessantly that they are the guardians of the rakyat? And would the law enforcers, too, not take any blame either?

The often heard song that the media cannot do their duty because we have to be sensitive of the racial and religious sitz-im-laben in the country is increasingly being suspected as just an excuse for withholding the truth to cover up the tracks of those with vested interests.

Fortunately for democracy, the man-in-the-street has far more religious and racial tolerance than politicians proclaiming otherwise.

Corporations and individuals who resort to lining the pockets of journalists on the beat with 'red packets' are equally guilty of robbing this nation of the fundamental right to know and their imperative duty to inform.

A nation that has compromised the journalist’s age-old and sacred duty to tell and our right to know is an enemy of democracy and a detriment to the advancement of humanity.

As such, the campaign by the Centre for Independent Journalism must be supported to right what has gone wrong for far too long in this sacred land.