There are a good many reasons put forward to explain why the poor are - and remain - poverty stricken. Some quarters have asserted crassly that it is the poor themselves who are to blame and that their condition is due to their own indolence.

There are others - even some of the poor themselves - who believe that they are fated to remain poor because that is simply the way things are. There are, however, others who argue more convincingly that poverty is largely a consequence of an overall system of exploitation.

Indeed, poverty and its causes, its consequences and its possible remedies is a problematic issue which continues to be discussed and debated by academics, policy makers, religious and social institutions, and even the man and woman in the street.

In Malaysia, unfortunately, developments in the communications industry have largely succeeded in marginalising the poor further. Access by the poor to the channels of communication is becoming more remote.

Discussions on poverty by the mainstream media thus far have tended to be along extremely narrow lines, where the parameters within which the discussions take place are circumscribed by a variety of factors, both internal and external to the media.

These factors include the wider political-economic environment within which the mainstream media operate. It is an environment also which socialises journalists into "taking as read" what/who are news and what/who are not.

It is an environment, certainly, that emphasises profit maximisation and minimum costs. It is an environment, therefore, that has very little time and space for the poor, the marginalised, the disenfranchised.

Indeed, when poverty is depicted, the major emphasis of the Malay newspapers, for example, is on rural poverty with the majority of stories being about the poor rural Malays. Invariably, there is an ethnic angle to the reporting.

Both the emphasis on rural Malay poverty and ethnicity is not surprising, given that the appeal of the Malay newspapers is towards the Malay readership which make up a large segment of total Malaysian newspaper readers.

It is also interesting to note that in the majority of cases, when the poor rural Malays are reported, they are invariably reported as adjuncts of wider reports about, for example, what the government is doing for them.

When specific individuals or groups of the poor are mentioned, more often than not, they are depicted because they represent "success" stories of the government. In short, they are seen as nothing more than beneficiaries of government policies and strategies.

As far as the solutions provided by these newspaper accounts are concerned, the emphasis is on self-reliance, self help, without much recourse to the government.

It is not so much that the news items depict the government as having abandoned its role as they depict individuals and civil society as having taken - indeed, must continue to take - up the slack.

Hence, the onus is on us citizens to help each other pull through. And, so go many of these news accounts, we pull through, often thanks to the efforts of charitable, caring (rich) individuals and organisations who have hearts of gold, despite being rich.

In this oft-played scenario, there is little emphasis on the possibility of the rich exploiting the poor, and greater emphasis on plots where the rich help the poor, the wretched of the earth. Indeed, by looking at poverty as discrete events without a probable common cause, the news items tend to ignore the fact that poverty is actually a process and not the sum of separate events.

The boom decade of 1987-1997 resulted in an influx of migrant labour into Malaysia, notably Indonesians and Bangladeshis. Many are still employed in plantations, factories and building sites in major Malaysian towns.

The plight of the migrant labour is one that is hardly looked into by the mainstream media, Malay or English. When they do get in the news, more often than not, they are depicted as a potential threat to Malaysian society.

Throughout the mid-1980s to the 1990s, such was the stereotype of Indonesian workers, seen as potential housebreakers and petty thieves, often using "spiritual charms" to overcome their victims. Sensationalist reporting too often has been the order of the day.

Very little was done, and very little is still being done, by the media to go beyond racist stereotypes, to understand the sacrifices of and the contributions made by poor and exploited migrant labour.

It would appear that for the poor to have a chance to be heard and duly represented in and by the Malaysian media, reforms need to come about in the wider political economic environment because it is precisely this environment that impinges upon the ways in which the media can - and must - operate.

For such reforms to come about, considerable political will and political action would be necessary, not only on the part of Malaysia's political leaders but, more importantly, on the part of Malaysia's citizens.

First, there certainly would be a need for the government of the day to look back at the basis of the New Economic Policy (NEP), namely the reduction - and finally the eradication - of poverty in Malaysia and to implement strategies to genuinely overcome the great divide between the rich and the poor.

To begin to do so, concrete action aimed at identifying more accurately the poorer segments of Malaysian society needs to be worked out. Basic ethnographic research would certainly need to be carried out not only to identify the different segments of the impoverished population, but also to assess the causes for their condition.

Such research would need to go beyond simple and simplistic explanations of poverty being a consequence of counterproductive (individualistic) attitudes to explanations that attempt to show poverty as having structural underpinnings.

Second, there would be the need also to seriously address the oligopolistic nature of the communications industry in Malaysia. If indeed studies indicate that oligopolistic practices result in restricted access given to certain segments of Malaysian society, including the poor, then it is imperative that the findings of such studies be relayed to the policy makers to enjoin them to correct these imbalances.

Finally, while there has been so much hype in Malaysia regarding information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the MSC, nonetheless, there is also clearly the need to examine the spaces which ICTs provide through, say, the use of the Internet. Insurgent media in the form of web-based daily newspapers have sprung up in Malaysia and spread over the past couple of years.

Initially, independent news websites were ignored by the mainstream media and ruling party politicians. But now the mainstream media and politicians are sitting up and taking notice of these sites, often referring and responding to them, albeit begrudgingly.

While some of these sites operate no better than rumour mills, others clearly provide spaces for change. These new spaces must not wasted, neither must their potential be underestimated, if new avenues for the marginalised, the disenfranchised to be heard are to be sufficiently utilised.

The communications industry in Malaysia, particularly the mainstream media, is currently facing a credibility crisis, precipitated by the political and economic crises which have rocked the country over the past two years or so.

Indeed, following the Asian meltdown, the numerous calls for reform in the Southeast Asian region have been strong ones and, despite resistance by many regimes, including that in Malaysia, the potential for social change is that much greater at this particular juncture.

The crisis should be seen as providing opportunities for change, for requestioning, for reform. Hence, those who genuinely wish to democratise the communications industry should seize the moment, to make these sectors more accessible for and representative of a wider segment of Malaysian society, especially the poor and powerless.