At a gathering of global publishers, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak has once again spoken out against the prevalence of fake news in Malaysia.

While stressing that freedom of speech is thriving in Malaysia, Najib cautioned that with freedom comes responsibility, and a part of it is the need to counter what he described as "a plague of false and fake news."

Najib pointed out how globally, the problem has escalated to a level that the British Broadcasting  Corporation had earlier this year announced a special team dedicated to fact checking and exposing false news on the web or on social media.

"We are far from immune to this problem here in Malaysia.

"We have had former leaders talking about Malaysia going bankrupt. We have had people talking about Malaysia being in danger of becoming a failed state," he said in his opening address at the Asian Media Awards Gala dinner in Kuala Lumpur.

"(But) look around you, at this first class hotel we are gathered in, at the heart of a vibrant development, KL Sentral, which has sprung up in the last ten years," said Najib who went on to regale the guests, representing 75 publications from 19 countries, with Malaysia's numerous economic successes in recent years.

Without mentioning any names, Najib in his speech also took numerous potshots against alleged purveyors of fake news.

Among others, he said that a "well-known foreign newspaper" had taken to printing complete lies about the Government, citing as an example on the appointment of a new governor for Bank Negara last year.

"They scandalously even brought His Majesty, the then Yang di-Pertuan Agong, into it as well. All without a shred of evidence, and based solely on nameless, anonymous sources who may not even exist.

"And multiple sources, including independent authorities, that don’t fit part of their narrative, they brazenly ignore," he claimed, adding that it was an example of how fake news had entered  the mainstream media.

"This represents a cancer at the heart of journalism, and this disease can have very serious effects," he cautioned.

Najib, as such, said that news publishers has a duty to fight the tide of fake and false news that threatens to turn truth into a purely subjective matter, with little relation to the actual facts.

Among others, he reiterated that such fake news had nearly costed Malaysia millions of dollars in lost foreign investments, including Saudi Aramco’s US$7 billion investment in the Petronas Pengerang Integrated Complex.

The award ceremony, organised by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (Wan-IFRA), is now in its 16th year and also held in conjunction with Publish Asia 2017.

What crackdown? Najib tells of free speech in M'sia