The Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ) sees the bid to regulate the online media as more of a move to “stifle dissenting opinions” than to control the quality of reporting.

In a statement, it pointed to a media monitoring study it conducted with the University of Nottingham, which shows that the online media " performed the best " compared with its regulated peers in the print and broadcast media.

In fact, CIJ said, it believes that it is the unregulated nature of operations that has allowed the online media to give "approximately equal quantities and quality of coverage to both BN and Pakatan Rakyat" when monitored over the 13th general election campaign period.

“CIJ believes a key contributing factor is that the online media - unlike its print and broadcast counterparts - is not regulated by the state and has more room to practise independence and fairness in reporting.”

It advised against apeing Singapore’s move to introduce regulations, saying the republic has performed poorly in world press freedom rankings.

CIJ said that indirect censorship by way of licensing would also affect access to information, especially among urban, young and middle-class reading constituents.

“(These are) the very constituencies which contributed heavily to the BN's... worst showing in the general election ...,” it said.

“We hope minister (Ahmad) Shabery Cheek's suggestion to study how online media can be regulated is not another step to teaching Malaysians a lesson for having collectively voted more for Pakatan Rakyat than for BN.”

It also reminded the minister that censorship would contravene Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor Bill of Guarantees and raise the of ire of the large following that online news portals enjoy.

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