Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has warned websites, bloggers and SMS-senders to beware. His panzer of propaganda machines dutifully reported this highlight-of-the-day news bulletin: 'Writers on the internet could be detained for investigation into the crime of causing disturbance, unrest and compel[ling] the public to lose faith in the nation's economic policies'.

'We cannot allow them to abuse the freedom earned under the media,' the Umno party supremo intoned. Well, good luck to the PM and congratulations to those media that hold his seal of approval.

The contents menu of malaysiakini is clearly not mainstream fare and I think its tagline 'only the news that matters' best sums matters up. That this young, small outfit like the iconic lone man who planted himself in the path of the Chinese army's rolling tanks at Tiananmen Square has not (yet anyway) been flattened to a pancake clues us to the resilience of editor-in-chief Steven Gan and his team, and the niche malaysiakini currently fills as an e-newspaper. It also hints that many closet dissidents care to read what's contained in this website, and extend malaysiakini their silent support.

Global media mogul Rupert Murdoch said something interesting about the Net and its users. In a speech at the annual meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in April 2005, Murdoch told his audience that younger readers 'want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it.' He continued: 'Too often, the question we ask is: Do we have the story? Rather than does anyone want the story?'

Granted there are readers who do want the sort of stories splashed in banner headlines on the front pages of Bolehland newspapers, for example on pop princess Siti Nurhaliza's engagement. On that same day, a tsunami hit our neighbour Indonesia killing scores of people but that particular item was relegated to the middle pages of Malaysia's largest circulation English newspaper. The popular singer's wedding plans took editorial precedence. Maybe Ken and Barbie (Akademi Fantasia talent contest winner Mawi similarly merits reams of newsprint) do sell after all, and not only at Christmas.

The continental drift

Unlike our prime minister, Murdoch has a different and forward-thinking outlook on the internet. His media organisation News Corp spent US$1.3 billion on Net real estate over the last summer, buying several sites. That the corporation is staking its claim on New Media is likely prompted by the trend that shows a drift favouring the Net. Realistically speaking though, we here cannot expect a sea change as it's highly unlikely that online portals would surpass print access in Malaysia anytime soon.

Nonetheless, statistics in technological innovator United States is telling. A Pew survey reported in June 2005 that a third of Americans under the age of 40 say the Net is their main source of news. The Carnegie Corporation similarly concluded in its report that American Baby Boomers 'read newspapers one-third less than their parents and the Gen Xers read newspapers another one-third less than the Boomers'.

Is the truth out there in cyberspace?

Pak Lah doesn't think so, having accused bloggers of slander and 'spreading untruths'. But has Malaysia's government-licenced traditional media all that much more probity?

Please bear in mind that news channelled to you is never objective. I'm not saying this merely on account of the near total control of the local press, either directly by the government, or through Barisan Nasional-linked companies. (All the free-to-air commercial television stations TV3, ntv7, 8TV, Channel 9 as well as The New Straits Times , Berita Harian , Harian Metro and Malay Mail are owned by one single conglomerate, Media Prima Bhd, ensuring it a chokehold on information delivery).

The truth is that the very fact of news presentation is subjective. To quote a one-liner by the leading prophet of the electronic age Marshall McLuhan 'the medium is the message'.

Example: Images showing Israeli soldiers as brutal aggressors are in the main sourced from the photo library of wire agencies like Reuters or AP . What you see in your newspapers is selected by probably a single person whose job is 'copytasting' and who is often the publication's foreign desk editor. He then passes on his choice of picture(s) to the layout artist whose page may or may not be reviewed at the evening staff meeting where the news editor or editor-in-chief has the final say on the design.

From my own observation, it's ultimately one or two or perhaps at the most three persons, who in practical application determine the slant of Middle Eastern news to be swallowed whole by our entire, highly emotional nation.

Blogging in comparison is open to input from anyone with access to a computer in any part of the world. Which is not to say that blogs are without their own agenda or shortcomings. Essentially, the news gathering process is still carried out by reporters, and credit is due to them for their work on the field. Bloggers only interpret events, offering their brand of commentary and analysis. Their drawback is that they are usually once removed from being on the spot.

Big Brother is watching

Although I have never blogged and my only voice online is through my Z Sunday fortnightly column, it is emotionally draining to maintain this intensity and frequency of writing. Some of you may have registered that I have been absent from these pages the past three months or so. Simply put, I found each dicey article highly taxing to do and myself swimming against the current every time. The demands tired me.

I was tired too of the hooliganism that pervades discussion in the public sphere the dread that a posse of 50 men may come knocking on my door in the dead of night to knock some sense into me.

At times like these, the muse who lifts my flagging spirit is Alfean Abu Bakar. He reads the first draft and final copy of my malaysiakini work, and provides constructive comments, information tidbits and cups of steaming hot coffee. (Thank you).

But Pak Lah's open warning will certainly reinforce the fear of family and friends at my being associated with malaysiakini and criticising the ruling party and the sacrosanct policies that it inflicts upon us plebs. We live indeed in a culture of fear where topics deemed 'too sensitive' for discussion augur dire consequences for the dissenting individual.

Breathe free air

Like my fellow columnists, I don't rely on malaysiakini to pay the bills. We write from a sense of conviction. It's a sacrifice of our time that, for me, could have been spent curled up with a good detective story by PD James.

However, my conscience rebels at what I see to be the unremitting brainwashing practiced by mainstream misinformation conduits that blunts our faculty for critical thinking and skews our moral compass. It is a Third World 'development journalism' jingoistic approach that appeals to the lowest common denominator without displaying any subtlety. A good case in point is the song aired over TV by an Umno Youth-endorsed cohort calling themselves Malaysians for Peace.

In comparison, malaysiakini does not ask that I park my brain at a disused garage. It has never appreciably censored my work. It leaves discretion to the contributors themselves - to observe any perceived boundaries beyond which it would be unwise, in an authoritarian state, to overstep. This freedom to think and express my thoughts unfettered is like a vitamin shot for growth, allowing me a steep learning curve that would not otherwise have come about had I remained in another, more restrictive publishing environment.

Malaysiakini is the little David punching above his weight in an uneven football field where capital-intensive and corporate-propped media behemoths have 22 players on the pitch, and the referee and linesmen as their cheerleading squad. Malaysiakini operates against the bookmaker's odds in the sort of Bolehland environment where the iron-fisted authorities insist internet rumours and SMS are enough to destabilise the country. It's a dirty job to rattle the skeletons in the closet but somebody's gotta do it. Malaysiakini is, for better or worse, the one doing it. Kudos, guys.

Unless the mainstream media sheds its self-defeating self-censorship, people who have not parked their brain away will continue turning to independent 'alternative' e-newspapers. Or otherwise be spoon-fed the slanted semiotics of the bad doctor's nasty medicine (it's all for our own good, they would have it).

I fervently hope that Net readers will not be cowed by this long-expected salvo from the information minister and his boss, and that more recalcitrants will wander into cyberspace to escape the narcosis of Bolehland 's suffocating air.