Several shareholders of The Star told the board at its annual general meeting today to be more relevant in reporting people and human interest stories and not focus only on government and private sector bigwigs.

"Be independent, neutral and report the truth. You are the ‘People's newspaper' as the masthead says and you must stay relevant in reporting about the people.

"In the light of the popular Internet, people are turning to blogs and other news websites to find out the truth," a shareholder urged the board.

mca and the star newspaper The Star was also taken to task for not reporting on or writing any analyses on the government's 10 percent growth achievement and Malaysia being the 10th most competitive country.

"If you do not analyse these stories and inform the public then you will be depriving people of the truth and they will not believe anything you write on the government.

"The reader will go for alternative news outlets and it will be the mainstream newspapers which have driven them to the blogs to get the other side of the story.

"There are far too many stories hyped up and played up on the front page and this could result in your circulation decreasing," lamented another shareholder.

Shareholder William Leong told the board to be bright and bold like rival The Sun in reporting investigative stories and fighting for the rights of the poor and deprived.

"Stop giving us one-sided political news and think that we will accept it as the truth. The current generation is wiser now and will simply stop buying the newspaper."

Loan rejected

Another shareholder pointed out that its front page story today on the government calling to give feedback on subsidies was recycled news as it was announced sometime ago.

"Millions of people have already got the information as an SMS from a telco and it was also mentioned as a news item about two weeks ago."

NONE On the reason why The Star had not played up the news of rich people buying low-cost flats, a board executive director said that it was The Star which broke the story first in its Metro edition.

Shareholders were also informed that it was shocking for The Star's joint venture company to be rejected a loan amount of RM50 million for its new building complex on Jalan 13/6, Petaling Jaya, which is currently occupied by Utar.

There was then laughter among about 200 shareholders when they were told that a popular model had four stories on her including pictures in one day.

According to the shareholder, he cited a staff member telling him that the bosses had a soft spot for models.

One shareholder, when interviewed outside the AGM, said that he regretted that he did not get to express the low morale of the staff and that many of them had resigned.