I must challenge the accusations by C Anthony and Joseph Paul who said Dr Mahathir Mohamad is playing the race card when he mentioned the name of New Straits Times group editor Brendan Pereira in one of his remarks.

Let us be honest about this. As of today, the Chinese and the Indians are very much in control of our English journalism and the media industry as a whole. In fact, the (Abdul Kadir Jasin-owned) Berita Publications employs a lot of non-Malays. It seems the Malay bosses themselves don't have confidence in their own people.

Insofar as the NST and The Star are concerned, we all know that the NST belongs to Umno while The Star is MCA-owned. The Sun is also in the hands of the Chinese.

On the other hand, when the Malaysian side of The Straits Times was Malaysian-ised during Tun Abdul Razak's time, the staff then were already either Singaporeans or Sri Lankans who couldn't be sacked just like that.

On top of that, Tan Sri Leslie Hoffman (a Jew) was allowed to continue as editor-in-chief and he was then succeeded by Tan Sri Lee Siew Yee. The first Malay to be editor-in-chief was Tan Sri Samad Ismail, followed by Noordin Sophie, Munir Majid, A Kadir Jasin, Abdullah Ahmad and in between there was PC Shivadas who was even made a director.

But the Malay editors-in-chief, rightly or wrongly, had never tried to make the NST a Malay outfit. Thus many non-Malay journalists were employed, made a good living and several even secured jobs overseas. Many of those in The Star including managing director Steven Tan, editors-in-chief VK Chin, Thong Ping and now Wong Sulong are ex-NST .

After the NST , these non-Malay journalists can secure senior jobs in The Star and The Sun and other magazines and public relations outfits which the Malays may find it a little difficult to get employment with unless they can be useful to secure government contracts.

Anyway, with a Malay as editor-in-chief, it is expected that the NST would champion the Malay (Umno) cause while The Star the Chinese (MCA) cause. The NST is also expected to give prominence, if not fight for Islam and the Muslim world which we know The Star and The Sun would not do.

This is what Dr M means.

When Pak Lah put his confidant Kalimullah Hassan as NST editor-in-chief, the latter brought in his mate Brendan who worked with him for Singapore's Straits Times as well as his other old mates like R Nadarajah, an ex-NST news editor who was for several years with the Far Eastern Economic Review and others.

The fact that quite a lot of senior Malay journalists took the VSS (voluntary separation scheme) during Kalimullah's stewardship is certainly unusual to say the least. And when Kalimullah went back to his chosen career as investment banker, Brendan was made group editor. (Yes, yes, we know that Hishamuddin (who?) Aun is the editor-in-chief.)

What we have now is that while the Chinese have The Star and The Sun as their English newspapers, the Malays cannot really feel that the NST is for them, let alone for Muslims.

In the US, even the minority Christian Scientists have their own newspaper ( The Christian Science Monitor ) while the Washington Times is owned by the Moonies. As for the Jews, well, they own, among others, the New York Times and Bloomberg News .