A national newspaper suffering from flagging sales and, at the same time, wishing to shore up badly-needed support for a once-dominant political party, comes up with a front-page lead story asserting the need to control certain television programmes.

This call, not surprisingly, is backed by a bunch of failed actors, retired government "servants" (in the true sense of the word), and, of course, the obligatory youth voice represented by someone who probably doesn't know the difference between Siti Nurhaliza and Sitiawan.

This call is next taken up by the various other print and broadcast media and, even more predictably, well-meaning but too-free politicians.

That call, clearly one based on blind assertions and not an iota of evidence, then gets discussed and debated in the hallowed halls of Parliament. The country's Cabinet - on the basis of all these assertions, mind you - deliberates and is now coming up with a decision on this matter "for the good of the people in view of globalisation".

We must really be one of the few countries in this world where the above ridiculous scenario can - and did - take place. And, indeed, it can be safely said that there really is nothing new about this current controversy surrounding Astro.

What is also depressingly familiar about the controversy is that almost all the responses, especially by the moralists or cultural guardians are of the knee-jerk kind. They rely on so-called "common sense" and emotions and not reasoned, critical arguments based on available knowledge.

Put quite simply, the basic assertion is that the Chinese programmes on Astro can - and do - have so-called "effects" on their audience members. This assertion is then extended further to encompass Malaysian society as a whole - foreign (read Chinese) culture in the form of popular television programmes is now seen as "threatening" the moral fabric of society and, of course, "our culture".

Such an assertion, apart from being downright racist, is fraught with other ideological assumptions which are unproblematically and uncritically taken on board.

Nevertheless, let's first consider this "effects" assertion on its own terms and assess its merits, if any.

The bulk of research done on media "effects" has concentrated on the effects of media violence on the audience. These have been carried out by psychologists and sociologists, each camp having normally come up with diametrically opposed conclusions.

Many psychologists, on the basis of studies conducted in laboratories, have tentatively concluded that television programmes do encourage "copycat" behaviour. Sociologists, on the other hand, have generally found otherwise.

However, before the moralists start quoting these psychological studies, it needs to be said that the evidence is not as concrete as it is made out to be to settle the argument unambiguously. For a number of reasons it is simply impossible to generalise from laboratory settings to what happens in real life.

In the first place, the majority of these studies have been carried out in western contexts with nursery school children and college students. Though easy for researchers to get hold of, these groups are hardly representative of western society as a whole, let alone Malaysian society.

Second, edited extracts from television shows are normally used in these studies, rather than the whole programme. As a consequence, these decontextualised segments do significantly alter the way people interpret and respond to what they see.

Third, and in the Malaysian context, the most widely publicised study of this nature - a 1983 survey conducted by the Consumers' Association of Penang - only dealt with a sample of 50 children. By no stretch of the imagination can such a tiny sample be called "representative" of Penang children, Malaysian children more generally, or the Malaysian public as a whole.

We need to acknowledge, as most media sociologists rightly do, that there are tangled links between what people watch and how they think and behave. "Effects" - often too narrowly defined by researchers as changes in behaviour and attitude - are, in fact, mediated in the real world and are dependent on other factors, such as context and the socio-economic background of the audience members.

Hence, to assume a direct and necessary link between, for example, watching a Cantonese soap opera on Astro and changes in the behaviour, attitude or - God forbid - cultures of the audience in the short- or long-term is silly.

It also ignores the voluminous academic research done on the subject. It insults the mental capabilities of audience members. And, finally, it is a damning indictment of our social and cultural institutions; institutions which have generally developed over centuries, imparting spiritual and cultural values in the process and which now, somehow, appear to be under "threat" from Chinese television programmes.

What's truly annoying is that all these assertions, based on hearsay and emotions, are flying about at the same time as when similar characters are coining and hyping the latest buzzword, "K-society" or knowledge society.

The point that needs stressing over and over again to these baboons is that you can't go about talking about knowledge society and yet ignore whatever knowledge is available merely because your prejudices prevent you from agreeing with it.

Indeed, you also can't be talking about globalisation, which you are so fond of doing, and yet behave like a " katak bawah tempurung " (frog under a coconut shell). If such a katak is what you wish to remain, then all this talk about globalisation essentially will end up as a load of "globaloney", to borrow a recent phrase from the PM's speech writer.