Looking at photos of the candle-lit peace march in Kuala Lumpur on Sept 27 with a restrained police force on the side, and reported in bits by the mainstream media, I am optimistic that the ISA, Printing Presses and Publications Act and sedition laws that stifle our journalistic work may be amended or at best repealed in good time. But to achieve what now seem like impossibilities, we need a robustly critical and transparent media to sustain the reformasi spirit.

History has shown that fundamental changes in media practice generally happen alongside radical changes in the political environment. Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika-glasnost in the mid-80s broke up the Soviet Union and gave the Russian media new freedom to report and refute.

Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms in the early 90s opened the doors to private media ownership and consequently an ersatz newfound ‘freedom’ to report – although under the watchful eyes of the Chinese Communist Party.

In Cambodia, journalists had their first taste of press freedom in 1991 when the United Nations Transition Authority in Cambodia (Untac) assumed part control of the country and paved the way for open elections and subsequent democratic rule in 1993. Part of Untac’s mandate then was to forge a structure for a free press to grow, which was left to sprout a life of its own until this day.

In Indonesia, after the fall of Suharto in May 1998, Habibie and Abdurahmman Wahid deregulated the media. That gave rise to an unfettered commercial press industry and fly-by-night operators , which a colleague at the Soetomo Press Institute in Jakarta, Warief Djajanto , said was akin to turning the "hounded press" overnight into "a press hound" .

internet media and print media In our case, at about the same time, the Internet gave vent to alternative online news media – notably Malaysiakini and Malaysia Today – and reformasi blogs run by activists disillusioned with the politically-affiliated mainstream media.

However, what we see – rather sadly – today is a generation of journalists many of whom, through the dictates of their editors, are trained to report on cue and carry out their daily tasks based on what has always been a failed paradigm – that the national interest is better served by a compliant press that acts as a government surrogate.

Time to switch channels

What we need now is to switch channel, return to the basics of committed ethical journalism and recalibrate our moral compass for the coming change of season. Here, we can draw from the experience of our overseas compatriots who have stayed the course in reporting what they know to be right despite the continual threats to their life and family. Like, in the Philippines where journalists often risk their lives in exposing the corrupt and pork-barreling cronies in government.

Glenda Gloria, managing editor of Newsbreak in Manila is one of these journalists. I recall asking her two years ago how she coped with death threats in her investigative reports on the military’s involvement in President Arroyo’s aide’s wiretapping in the 2004 presidential elections. This is what she said in one of our email correspondence:

"When you get a threat like that, you get scared. You ask questions: am I overdoing it? Is this the kind of media environment I deserve? But after a while, you just get over it. Journalism is the only work I know.

"It has given me tremendous blessings and opportunities not just for personal growth, but for serving my community. I don’t know of a job better than this. So if what comes with it are these threats, I would have to live with them."

raja petra in jail prison We take comfort that we have the Hindraf 5, Raja Petra Kamarudin and many other activists before them - rest in peace Pak Samad - who live by their ideals of truth-telling and conviction for social justice. Which reminds me of a proverb in the Bible: "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy."

Today, writing my column and emailing in my copy in the comfort of an open media and academic environment in Australia is far from the risks that Gloria and others like her face daily in their investigative work, or the many sedition laws shadowing my fellow Malaysian activists.

hindraff isa detainees 141207 I wouldn’t even presume to understand the incarceration of the Hindraf 5 and RPK or feel what they are going through in Kamunting even as their families are comforted by the solidarity and support of the reformasi rakyat . But I know the human spirit is enduring.

My point is the fruits of press freedom - when the mindless media laws are finally put to rest - are only as sweet as journalists who know to exercise their rights and answer their calling in representing the rakyat ’s aspirations for fundamental change to the system.

Thus, these questions the reformasi-oriented media and civil societies need to think about as we demand for greater transparency, accountability and standards from mainstream journalists:

Do away with mindless media laws

How can we help to change the current media ownership structure, which is tightly locked into the logic of commercialism and political patronage, so that mainstream journalism will be more conducive to truth-telling?

Without a strong foundation of ethical media practice - further weakened by an entrenched compliant media culture - how can we help educate a new generation of story tellers committed to the ideals of reformasi-oriented journalism and truth-telling?

How can we help train a new generation of journalists – currently studying in universities disciplined by the UUCA and taught by academics politically and intellectually stifled by the Oath of Allegiance (‘Aku Janji’) - to become actively reflexive of their practice and accountable to the rakyat ?

anti isa dataran merdeka 270908 lantern 2 Many of today’s student journalists – perhaps not out of choice - have strayed far from the days of campus activism of the 70s. The photos of the anti-ISA march in KL on Sept 27 gave me a sense of deja vu when in 1974, I marched the streets with other student union members at Universiti Sains Malaysia protesting what we understood then were big salary increases of parliamentarians when farmers in Baling were reportedly going broke, and hungry, because of falling rubber prices.

We wrote about it in the campus newspaper and distributed pamphlets on the streets. We even had a Hyde Park type speaker’s corner under an angsana tree on campus. I wonder what it’d be like if the student activism of 1974 were to run free in our universities today.

I remember as a journalism student one of our readings on press freedom assigned by a visiting American professor was Areopagitica , a pamphlet written by an English poet, John Milton in 1644. Milton wrote that a free press was indispensable for truth and the "free and knowing spirit" to flourish. Simple principle, but so true.

A reformasi-oriented press should thus denounce the culture of fearful parochialism that the mainstream media have been trapped in over the past decades. Otherwise, as it’s said, we deserve the media we get.

In the current fractious political environment, activist journalists and civil societies will be instrumental in compelling the mainstream media and its master, the government – broken as it is – to respond to the reformasi demands, and generate thoughtful dialogue on where our society and country will go from here – not least the repeal of the ISA.