The Malaysian media, like the nation itself, has evolved a great deal since independence in 1957. In the immediate post-war years, the media was predominantly comprised of privately-owned newspapers while radio and television was the state's monopoly, broken only in 1983 when the first private television channel was established.

Malaysia has experienced fairly rapid growth since independence, and the media industry's expansion has been a close reflection of this. Its commercial growth has been matched by stricter legislation controlling its output, with most of the media owned by interests close to the government. These conditions have led to greater censorship and shrinking democratic space for the media.

The decade since 1987 has been the most tumultuous period so far for the Malaysian media. In 1987, four newspapers were closed down in a wider crackdown on dissent infamously known as 'Operation Lallang'.

By 1997, an unprecedented decade of strong economic growth had transformed the media business, as new money and newer technology flooded a newly middle-class market eager for fresh media. Newspapers, magazines and terrestrial and satellite television stations were established, hiring media workers at previously unheard-of wages.

But the brief moments of heady optimism among journalists and readers alike soon faded, as Southeast Asia's economic crisis swept through Malaysia in 1997. Compounding the media's economic bruising of the past two years has been the political crisis brought on by the sacking and arrest of former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim.

As a consequence, the Malaysian media business has retreated and regrouped, its brief flirtation with an expansive optimism - reflected in new investment and a tolerance of liberal elements - was soon discarded as growing ownership paranoia and shrinking revenues took hold.

Senior editorial management linked to Anwar Ibrahim resigned or were ousted, while editorial attacks against dissenters appeared more regularly in print and on the airwaves. Recent crises experienced by neighbours such as Thailand and Indonesia may have given rise to new independent media and a diversity of voices, but it has not been a feature of Malaysia's mainstream media.

Why this has been the case is a question best answered by examining the mix of legislation, licensing and ownership that has helped stifle the media's culture. It's also important to consider how the practice of Malaysian journalism in recent times has been marked by expensive lawsuits, a culture of self-censorship and fear, and a decline of professionalism.

Moreover, the end of the 20th century has seen the marked rise in the Malaysian media's role as a propaganda tool for the establishment. It has also given rise to an unprecedented information battle between oppositionists and dissenters using new mediums such as the Internet, and the licensed establishments losing both credibility and sales.

The growth of an authoritarian political culture has turned out as pervasive as it is deep. Not surprisingly, the media in Malaysia reflects this culture of 'soft authoritarianism', where the institutions of a democratic state and the division of its powers may exist in principle but has been made ineffective or absent in practice.

"In spite of fairly regular multi-party elections and some other features requiring accountability of the regime," write Edmund Terence Gomez and KS Jomo in Malaysia's Political Economy (1997), "the Malaysian state has been authoritarian since the colonial period, though analysts have characterised the political system as semi-authoritarian, semi-democratic, or quasi-democratic... Some features of authoritarianism have been pronounced since Mahathir Mohamad became prime minister in 1981."

Malaysia's rapid development has revealed a basic contradiction, these political economists explain: the authoritarian style of Dr Mahathir's government has on the one hand enhanced economic growth and material well-being while on the other hand led to abuses of power and a shrinking of democratic space.

The media as an institution has been particularly vulnerable to such a culture. Its independence as an institution has largely disappeared in the past two decades thanks to legislative control in the form of annual licensing, and more recently the commercial constraints of expensive lawsuits. Mixed in with this has been the corporate manoeuvering of media assets and management further consolidating this control.

While a raft of restrictive legislation has played an important role in stunting the growth of a media culture of inquiry and debate, it's clear that the ownership of media organisations has played a critical part in curbing media freedoms.

Both these constraints of legislation and ownership are the reasons commonly given by senior Malaysian journalists as to why there's hesitance (and some reluctance) to report on events deemed 'sensitive' by the authorities.

Responding to criticisms against him run in the New Straits Times last year, the sociologist and opposition politician Dr Chandra Muzaffar questioned the journalistic integrity of the mainstream media. He asserted that "the NST has made Dr Mahathir into a sacred icon, beyond reproach and beyond criticism... the interrogation of power is, after all, the essence of democratic accountability. The NST cannot rationalise its subservient attitude to the prime minister in the name of press laws and media ownership."

He went on to point out that "wealth, culture and social stability have conspired to thwart the emergence of such courageous and principled journalists in this country" (JUST newsletter, November 1998).

The relatively comfortable wages that allow for car and house ownership, annual bonuses of up to six months' wages and a broader social mobility for Malaysian journalists into the middle-class have indeed helped in obscuring journalism's ideals; the freedom to shop remains more attractive than the freedom to investigate the trading practices of such a shop

At the Commonwealth Press Union conference in 1998, the then editor-in-chief of the NSTP group Abdul Kadir Jasin said that although the three (main) media organisations are independent and owned by public listed companies, they want to continue supporting the government. The government may not be too perfect, but it is not too bad either".

His colleague at the best-selling English-language newspaper, The Star , shared this attitude and elaborated further at the same conference. According to news editor Wong Chun Wai, "the responsibilities of the local media are to help the country and its people develop by providing positive information which would keep the peace"; this news editor has argued similarly to this writer numerous times over the past two years, maintaining that the media in Malaysia "faces no press restrictions".

It's a peculiar argument for a journalist from The Star to make; after all, his paper were among the publications that had their licenses revoked under the provisions of the PPPA back in 1987.

Throughout the 1980s, The Star captured a growing middle-class readership interested in and sympathetic to its 'balanced' news policy and its populist verve; until today, its masthead declares itself 'The People's Paper'.

But by October 1987, this apparent popularity with the people went horribly wrong when it lost its printing and publishing licence along with its Sunday edition and two other newspapers, all casualties of Operation Lallang. Virtually overnight, a tentative culture of inquiry was cowed and eventually disappeared, as a generation of journalists left the trade taking their skills and experience with them.

Not all of them were from these banned newspapers alone; there were also refugees from other dailies like the New Straits Times : one of its editorialists at the time, Rehman Rashid, embarked on his "years of (self-imposed) exile" after the sacking of the Lord President (chief justice) and two other Supreme Court judges in 1988:

"Until then, I had doggedly kept believing we might recover from the rapid-fire concatenation of calamities that had assailed us... I could see causes and effects, and I could still rationalise what had happened... But when the Supreme Court got its head blown off, I gave up."

The "quiet resignations" of the two editors of Malaysia's best-selling newspapers, the Malay-language Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian , in July 1998 suggest the media's fundamental problems of control and ownership haven't gone away in the decade or so since Operation Lallang.

It was the first media salvo in the political war between the prime minister's forces and Anwar Ibrahim's. Both Johan Jaafar and Nazri Abdullah, editors respectively of the aforementioned dailies, were no paragons of media virtue to begin with; both had been political appointees of Anwar Ibrahim when he was in government. Media commentator and academic Zaharom Nain was forthright at the time:

"Calling these resignations 'a crackdown on the media' does appear a trifle overstated, primarily because there wasn't anything much to crack down on in the first place. Such assertions merely reinforce the myth of an independent Malaysian media. Malaysian media's role in shaping public opinion cannot be understated: most rural Malays glean information about what's happening in the country from state-controlled television and radio stations - and from Utusan and Berita Harian ."

Another commentator, Dr Mustafa Anuar of social reform group Aliran, added that "most of the local media are ready to 'co-operate' with the leadership under the concept of 'development journalism' so much so they practise self-censorship."

The constraints of legislation and ownership have nurtured a media culture that reflects the wider society, where some freedoms and democratic rights have been traded away for promises of economic prosperity. There has been a process of socialising Malaysians to "accept and even appreciate authoritarian rule, norms and institutions," note Edmund Terence Gomez and Jomo KS ( Malaysia's Political Economy , 1997).

Inadvertently confirming this view, the editor-in-chief of the state-owned Bernama news agency Syed Jamil Jaafar defended the mainstream media's self-censorship while acknowledging the culture: "You can't blame the press for that. Because of the atmosphere you operate in, you tend to play safe. You follow the banker's maxim - err on the side of prudence." (The Sun , 1 July 1999)

But the traditional media's audience seems tired of playing safe, especially since September 1998. The political crisis has spawned new and unlicensed phenomena such as the Internet's many websites full of Malaysian opinion, rumours and often inaccurate reports savaging Dr Mahathir and his government.

There is also the cottage industry outside the realm of licensing, in the sales of cassettes, videos and video CDs featuring reports not found on domestic television - for example, at demonstrations and elsewhere, the consumer camcorder has played a popular role in documenting police brutality for audiences outside Kuala Lumpur. One street trader of such wares assured me that business was brisk and sustainable whenever a major development in the political crisis occurred (August 1999).

The government's vociferous attacks on the Internet's news credibility and bias have not slowed the numbers of Malaysians surfing the web for alternative news and points of view; one result, suggests an editor whose newspaper is affected, is a marked decline in mainstream newspapers' readerships in the last two quarters. Another is the proliferation of cybercafes with cheap access across the country; articles from such websites are also reprinted and copied on paper for further distribution.

The Bernama chief Syed Jamil Jaafar argued that media freedom will come about once the government realises the inevitable change brought on by technology and the Internet: "In other words, governments can no longer suppress information... they might as well open up... unless the mainstream media open up, the public would rather turn to the alternative media," he told The Sun .

In Malaysia, the media's freedoms and its sense of responsibilities have been from the outset determined by the wider society's tolerance of anti-democratic measures by the state. Though the laws and ownerships controlling the mainstream media have curbed its ability to conduct critical reporting of the government and its rich and powerful, these conditions have also offered the attractive material rewards enjoyed by media workers.

As an aspirational society which had experienced rapid rises in its collective wealth along with good social mobility, the media has been a direct beneficiary of the economic boomtimes. Moreover, few media workers have questioned how such conditions have come about.

If the democratic process involves the scrutiny of the state, ensuring accountability of elected government, the defence of an independent judiciary and the free flow of information, then the Malaysian media has often failed in serving this process. It remains to be seen if the political crisis will give way to more democratic space and a larger civil society, so that the media can assume its critical role in dialogue and debate.

KEAN WONG is an independent writer based in Kuala Lumpur. The above is adapted from the chapter, "In the grip of the government", in Losing Control: Freedom of the Press in Asia, edited by Louise Williams and Roland Rich; Asia Pacific Press.