COMMENT | The mainstream media practice of giving more news prominence to government sources has long undermined its credibility and betrayed the people of their right to fair, truthful and accurate reporting.

With the apparent newfound freedom to probe and report since the May 9 election, and possible repeal of repressive media laws by the Harapan government, will we soon witness more critical reporting of public affairs?

I’m afraid not. For too long have our mainstream journalists deferred to the authorities and accepted politically correct journalism as a legitimate form of professional practice.

Foreign and local media monitoring organisations have variously questioned the independence and capacity of Malaysian mainstream media to report fairly and truthfully on public affairs. Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng recently cited his experience with the partisan Chinese press during his time as chief minister of Penang, notwithstanding the subjective interpretation of partisan reporting. Umno-affiliated Malay papers before the election were likewise deemed to have colluded against Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s leadership of Pakatan Harapan.

Politically partisan reporting and opinion-based journalism during election time are not uncommon. That’s the mainstream journalists’ ethical dilemma – to give more news prominence to the incumbent and hence be seen to be a government mouthpiece, or to lead with the opposition’s agenda and risk the story being rewritten or buried in the inside pages.

The fact is there were no distinctly unaligned media during the election campaign. None of the mainstream or alternative media made any pretence to independence or objectivity. Here lies the crux – the lack of self-examination of journalistic practices.

Transforming journalism

How can journalists be agents of transformation when journalism itself is not first transformed? Radical changes in the quality of Malaysian journalism will be a long time coming unless the professional culture in the mainstream newsroom fully transforms itself.

Criticisms of poor journalism practices and standards must first come from within the newsroom where the editors are able to inspire their reporters to higher standards. Mainstream editors must lead with a clear commitment to the pursuit of truth, fairness and accuracy in reporting.

All these should be geared towards accomplishing two media goals – reinforcing professional credibility and earning back the public trust.

The practical step to achieve these twin goals is to appoint an independent internal news ombudsman who watches over the watchdog such as practised at The Hindu or a reader representative such as at The New York Times and Washington Post before the positions were canned for economic reasons, and replaced by a reader centre.

Second is to establish a professional fraternity where editors and journalists can meet regularly to reflect on the professional and ethical standards of their work.

Third is to establish an independent Institute of Journalists, which was proposed on World Press Freedom Day on May 3, 2012 at the National Press Club to teach and train future journalists.

Educating journalists

This leads to the question: How effective are the current university and college journalism programmes in preparing their graduates for entry-level media-related positions?

The quality of journalism work and ethical standards of graduate journalists is significantly shaped by the depth of journalism education, the training and temperament that they acquire from their tertiary studies. This means appointing independent external experts to review the academic qualification and professional experience of journalism and communication lecturers in private colleges and public universities.

For the lack of a clear framework of professional practices and absence of an effective professional training organisation, journalists will continue to dish out routine stories while flagrant abuses of power, socio-economic injustices, racial polarisation, religious extremism, corporate irresponsibility, and corrupt governance are relegated to the “too hard” and “too sensitive” basket.

Here, I refer the mainstream media and journalism schools to the benchmarks of professional practices that journalists working in high-risk political environments strive to attain.

The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism believes that the media could - and should - be a catalyst for social debate and consensus that would promote public welfare. “To do so, the media must provide citizens with the bases for arriving at informed opinions and decisions,” the organisation says on its website.

From India, the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award “honours journalists who have shown extraordinary strength of character and integrity while reporting under dangerous, challenging or difficult circumstances. The story or series should expose issues or problems such as improprieties or injustice, mismanagement, and/or corruption. It should raise public awareness on the issue or involve taking extraordinary risks to reach a story that would not have been accessible easily.”

The majority of Malaysians - rank-and-file journalists included - may be more concerned with building a career, accumulating wealth or raising a family than engaging in the fight for media reforms. Many may not even be perturbed by the implications of repressive media laws on their constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression.

The onus now falls on veteran journalists and editors to show their reporters that they will work to higher standards in representing the people’s interests, to speak up for the plights of the weak and disenfranchised, and to be more vigilant in watching the Harapan government to ensure that it does not repeat the decades of malfeasance under BN, which Mahathir previously led for 22 years.

ERIC LOO is Senior Fellow (Journalism) at the School of the Arts, English & Media, Faculty of Law Humanities & Arts, University of Wollongong, Australia. He is also the founding editor of Asia Pacific Media Educator.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.