On Oct 1, the Star carried this headline, ‘Hindraf commotion at govt’s Raya open house’ in reference to the now-banned Indian movement calling on the prime minister at PWTC.

boycott the newspaper pc 280108 haris ibrahim Haris Ibrahim, a civil rights lawyer who led a separate group of Hartal ISA bloggers said, “I was there and can vouch that there was no unruliness on the part of the Hindraf delegation”. He gave the same account in his statement to police when called for questioning at their Bukit Aman headquarters.

Haris administers The People’s Parliament, a blog which also hosts the Hartal MSM project.

Then on Nov 9, police moved in on members of the public at an anti-ISA candlelight vigil when the gathering was singing Negaraku.

People’s Parl featured a Hartal MSM comment on how the Star central edition did not carry the story at all although the paper’s online version had a short article of 321 words. New Straits Times was even more perfunctory, logging a 131-word write-up on Page 19 and unaccompanied by any pictures.

Hartal MSM also noted that NST , while reporting an MP and state assemblymen were arrested, “did not say Tony Pua was kicked in the stomach and shin and got his shirt torn. It did not say Lau Weng San was punched in the face and got bruised and was bleeding. It did not say anything about the police charge during the national anthem.”

Freelance journalist Anil Netto blogged in Penang: “The Star (at least its northern region edition) carried the news of the arrests last night at the bottom of page 31 in today’s paper! Obviously, the editors of the ‘People’s Paper’ have got a different set of editorial priorities and criteria for news-worthiness. The report of the arrests appeared below a picture of police displaying drugs seized during a raid. ‘I was wondering what the arrested MP and Aduns had to do with drugs seized,’ a confused reader of the paper told me.”

Blogosphere support for boycott

Almost exactly a year ago on Nov 29, my article in this column was headlined ‘Boycott the newspapers!’

It was a follow-up to Haris’ blog posting ‘Do we, the people, have it in us to bring the falsehood mongers to their knees?’ I had appealed, “Connect with us on how to break the mighty MSM monopoly of the Malaysian mind. We’d like your participation at People’s Parliament”.

Haris had been prompted to initiate the Hartal campaign after MSM misreported the Bersih rally and me because of the disinformation perpetrated about Indians who rallied in the streets.

In the interval between then and now, March 8 happened and some things changed. However this change bypassed the mainstream media in some respects. Spin is still evident.

What Hartal MSM had wanted back in January was to blunt the BN propaganda which we anticipated would be in top gear during the general election. We called for a ‘Paper-Free Tuesday’, i.e. encouraged a blanket boycott of all newspapers for that one day of the week. Our slogan was ‘No buy, no lies’.

Murmurs for boycott had already been percolating through blogosphere before we put our group’s name to the sentiment and gave the campaign a public platform at People’s Parl. It was an idea whose time had come and digital technology allowed supporters to coalesce in cyberspace.

Hartal MSM’s drive received a more comprehensive coverage above-ground abroad (to as far as France and Germany) than it did at home where some MSM blacked out the news even though their reporters had attended our Press conference announcing the campaign launch.

For me, the point of the symbolic boycott was to alert fence-sitters that droves of other Malaysians are sceptical of MSM. A corollary to the boycott was ‘citizen journalism’ and bloggers stepped up to the plate.

Strategic alliances

A ‘Focus’ piece on socio-political bloggers headlined ‘Windmills of political change’ (Nov 9) and written by Suhaini Aznam bears a closer look.

She interviewed Ahirudin Attan (better known as Rocky), Syed Azidi Syed Aziz (Sheih), Zainol Abideen (Mahaguru), former NST political editor Nuraina Samad and Marina Mahathir.

The story is illustrated with a piece of graphics, i.e. screenshots montage.

Now here’s the interesting anomaly: While four screenshots were of blogs belonging to the interviewees named above, the fifth screenshot was of ‘New Malaysia’ blogged by Star group editor Wong Chun Wai. Now why is Wong’s blog pictured prominently at top left if he was not mentioned in the copy? [May I be permitted to laugh?]

parliament anwar pc on motion rejected 241108 Another intriguing anomaly is the quote attributed to Zainol: “So I am aligning myself to no one, not the Barisan, and I will whack Anwar (Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim) left, right and blue!”

The blogger has clarified that the sentence should read “… and I will whack Anwar left, right and blue if he doesn't practice what he has been and is preaching!”, and suggesting that “Suhaini has inadvertently left out [the ‘if he doesn’t practice” emphasis] regarding that standpoint of mine”. Tsk, tsk … how careless of a seasoned journalist like Suhaini to inadvertently leave out the ‘if’ condition which Zainol had particularly emphasised.

And there are more anomalies. Suhaini quoted Rocky describing himself as a ‘neutral’ blogger. At the same time, “Bernard Khoo (blog name Zorro Unmasked), Harris and Raja Petra Kamarud¬din (Malaysia Today) were all either ‘inspired or sponsored by Anwar’, said Rocky”.

‘Kamarudin’ is spelt with one ‘d’, Haris with one ‘r’ but this is not the anomaly. The anomaly is that People’s Parl is a blog usually downplayed by Star whereas the paper plays up other blogs such as Rantings by MM.

Nonetheless, Suhaini’s erring on the side of caution in not putting ‘Ibrahim’ to ‘Harris’ – if she was unsure who Rocky was referring to although the rest of blogosphere knows well enough – is laudable. Or she could have just confirmed with Rocky which Haris – that’s what reporters do … ask questions.

Since the trio alleged by Rocky to be inspired or sponsored by the Opposition Leader were not given their corresponding right of reply in that Star story, you will have to go to blogs for their side of the story.

Developments and undercurrents

As Suhaini’s article exemplifies, MSM will cherry-pick to slant their coverage. The bias – only to be expected – is clearly against Pakatan.

Suhaini nonetheless is only part of the trend as over the last year, the authorities and MSM editors and reporters have consistently cast aspersions on blogosphere; as have columnists – ‘Liars hiding behind the cyber curtain’ by Tunku Abdul Aziz in NST , ‘Separating fact from fiction’ (Jacqueline Ann Surin in theSun ) and [‘blog’] ‘The new four-letter words’ (Raja Zarith Idris in Star ).

Similarly, MSM have been unabashedly promoting their colleagues venturing into cyberspace with the newly set up Web portals; these Old Media-turned-New journalists are ones who in the recent past happily bashed bloggers and in the distant past blasted the then fledging online media that was trying to make a breakthrough.

These ‘pendatang baru’ journalists, and websites on BN payroll, have more distinctly factionalised the online community. It’s a fallacy that blogoshere is one homogenous bloc. What’s real is Big Brother is watching.

Recently on Nov 25, the Star did this story, ‘Ministry keeping eye on blogs that “play up controversies”.’ Deputy Home Minister Chor Chee Heung said the authorities are telling bloggers “not to use their blogs as a mechanism to confuse people or as a weapon against those they don’t like”. Somehow, I doubt it was Dr Mahathir Mohamad (whose blog is Che Det) that Chor had in mind.