Flashback: How the editors froze during Kg Medan

ARCHIVES 2010

By admin-s On Apr 26, 2010

Either put up or ship out like ntv7′s Wong did

By Reina

When race riots broke out at Kampung Medan in 2001 between Indians and Malays, the editors of a particular newspaper waited for a response from the government as to how they should report the story.

This is how it usually is with issues involving race and conflict. The editors have, since the days of the Mahathir administration, been told to downplay racial issues, and not incite anger and hatred among races.

So when the Kampung Medan riots broke out and news of people being killed was flying all over the place, these editors were sitting still, wondering what to do. As journalists, they are supposed to report the issue as it is and for what it’s worth. But they knew better than that because if they went ahead and reported, Mahathir would have come down hard on them and editors would have lost their jobs.

Phone calls from Big Brother

And how does the instruction from the government come? Via phone calls from either the PM’s Office, or his special officers or the Information Ministry. But it is always a verbal instruction, never a formal handwritten one.

So that evening as FRU trucks were rushing towards Kampung Medan to douse the anger, the editors of one newspaper decided to go ahead and use the story in Page 4 while the editors of another newspaper decided to push the story to the back pages – Page 10 – and play it small, only a one-column report.

It was only the following day that someone from the government called up to inform them how to play the story and gave a list of instructions, which among others were:

only use government or police as sources of information,
do not interview any of the victims, hospital officials or the residents of Kg Medan.

To this day, no one really can say how many people actually died during the race clashes at Kampung Medan.

Govt control over stories

There are times when the government demands that certain news stories or features be faxed, e-mailed or sent to them for vetting and this probably started happening during the Badawi administration.

A journalist who writes commentaries and analyses on politics had to fax over her articles to certain government officials close to the Prime Minister’s Department to get their approval. The same daily even had to fax over, to these same officials, a pullout they were doing for the Aug 31, 2007 National Day celebration to get their approval.

There was a slight difference in the way the media was treated during the Badawi administration compared to Mahathir’s.

Mahathir would periodically call for meetings with the editors of the mainstream media organisations and tell them what is to be covered and what are the stories that should be downplayed.