Press freedom is sacrosanct especially in this new age world that we all journey today. The right to report the truth is a categorical imperative that responsible media newsrooms pursue in ensuring a balancing act in the face of the universal and demanding democratic right of humanity to know the truth at all costs.

And the ‘British’ UK has remained at the forefront of democracy, providing its Commonwealth member nations of past glory a standard in so far as upholding press freedom is concerned.

But recently as we read Channel 4 News (as is being reported in Malaysia), one wonders if London is now setting a new benchmark that stinks of press discrimination.

While the Malaysian prime minister was feted at a prestigious conference in London designed to draw irresistible investment opportunities for the London business community - at the Commonwealth Secretariat mind you, the UK broadcaster Channel 4 apparently was barred from the conference “despite repeated request to the organisers” (Malaysiakini, Wednesday, May 18, 2016).

What sends more shocks down the spine of the universal movement for press freedom and news accessibility is the published claim that “UK officials who spoke to the Channel 4 journalist seemed unfazed by the allegations against Najib, saying that legitimate business with Malaysia was something that must be kept going.”

This is unthinkable of a nation that has always been the pride of citizens from the United Kingdom’s long list of ex-colonies.

Has London put money and business-profiting interests before and above humanity’s right to know through the sacrosanct principle of the media’s duty to inform?

If there is nothing suspect about Malaysia’s smokey-1MDB, why in the world are so much of resources being committed in seven nations to investigate the complicated web of money trails headed by the prime minister of Malaysia?

Coming back to the subject of this letter, i.e. press freedom, can the Londoners ask their media and government why on earth is the UK subscribing to what third world regimes so often reek of? Why is Channel 4 being ‘barred’ at an investment conference?

Seriously, hope the UK will not become the new standard to this duty to inform through investigative journalism the truth that is pursued and published in the best interest of humanity’s right to know as the world promises to march towards greater accountability, transparency and in upholding the tenets of democracy.

Ethics knows no compromise. Otherwise the British government would have failed half the world.