COMMENT For some time now in Malaysia, numerous segments of the media evidently have increasingly cast aside any pretence whatsoever of being ethical, of, for example, providing `balanced' reports, of telling the truth.

Why has this happened, we may ask? Well, if I may apply broad strokes, in the 1980s and 1990s, Dr Mahathir Mohamad and his BN regime began messing around with key Malaysian institutions, including the media, concocting and tightening legal controls to muzzle the media, and deregulating the media (press and broadcasting) in such a way - through ownership - that led, instead, to greater regulation and control.