It is confirmed. The Star is The Paper That Lies

 

Given the false and malicious allegations by the Star editorial board made above, I’m making available the correspondence between our Media coordinating officer, Mr Chu Yoon Ming and The Star advertising official, Hafzan to the public for their scrutiny and judgement.

 

Tony Pua 

I held a press conference yesterday to express our disappointed with The Star for rejecting our paid advertisements. These advertisements were to counter the highly misleading and controversial advertisements placed by MCA and Barisan Nasional which are themed “A Vote for DAP is A Vote for PAS”.

 

We have wanted to counter these advertisements with the theme “A vote for MCA/BN is a vote for Umno is a vote for PERKASA”.

 

However the advertisement was rejected by The Star on 30 April, Tuesday 4pm.

 

The Star has responded angrily by making these claims :

 

1. That we refused to place our logo on the advertisements as requests by The Star.

 

2. That we refused to amend the advertisement by “removing” the keris and that we were unable to explain the circumstances behind the presence of the keris.

 

3. That The Star bent over backwards to cater to our demand to publish the advertisement in less than 24 hours.

 

4. That the advertisement incites racial tension

 

5. That DAP should be eternally grateful to the Star for giving some prominent coverage to DAP events “like the DAP mega ceramah in Penang”.

 

6. That I should be grateful to The Star because it “carried two reports and a picture of [me] even though [I have] been away from PJ Utara constituency busy campaigning elsewhere”.

 

Items 1 to 4 are blatant lies, while the points 5 and 6 are at best laughable.

 

Given the false and malicious allegations by the Star editorial board made above, I’m making available the correspondence between our Media coordinating officer, Mr Chu Yoon Ming and The Star advertising official, Hafzan to the public for their scrutiny and judgement.

 

1. Email from Chu to Hafzan 29/4/13 1.15pm

To book advertisements on 3rd and 4th May.  Our advertisements were rejected on 30th April.  Hence it is a complete lie by The Star editors that they had bent over backwards to allow us to submit for advertising within 24 hours.

 

1. Email from Chu to Hafzan 29/4/13 2.02pm

Because The Star wanted to review the advertisement in advance, we forwarded to them the proposed advertisement. 

 

1. Email from Hafzan to Chu 29/4/13 5.09pm

The Star “can accept the ad to be published in The Star except you need you to remove the “keris”/or change the photo without the keris.” That was the ONLY condition cited in the email. We were also told verbally that the cut of date for 3 May publication is 2pm on April 30.

 

1. Email from Chu to Hafzan 30/4/13 1.32pm

Despite our own internal reservations, we submitted a revised advertisement without the “keris”, by using another picture of Ibrahim Ali. It was submitted well within to meet the standard deadline for 3 days advance notice (contrary to the accusation by The Star of last minute submission).

 

1. Email from Hafzan to Chu 30/4/13 4.02pm

“After taking into several consideration, we regret to inform you that we are unable to run the requested ad at this time.”

 

The above are all the correspondences between The Star and DAP over the publication of the advertisement. 

 

1. There was never any mention of use of DAP logo in the advertisements as accused by The Star. 
2. DAP willingly complied with the request to remove the “keris” as a condition for publication, even though other newspapers Sin Chew Jit Poh and China Press had no problems in publishing the original advertisement.  What is more, the picture was an accurate reflected of the “struggles” Ibrahim Ali’s Perkasa.
3. We are giving the required standard 3 days’ notice and not the less than 24 hours notice as lied by The Star.  There was no special treatment for the DAP unlike that for BN.
4. The advertisement does not incite racial tension as accused. Instead in points out that BN and MCA are hypocrites by nominating Perkasa leaders as their candidates.

The above only goes to show that The Star are equal hypocrites in the above for they have continued to published advertisements attacking the DAP and PAS over religious and racial issues which are half-truths at best, but unwilling to publish our advertisement despite initially agreeing to do so.

 

By publishing lies to defend themselves over the issue of not printing DAP advertisement, The Star has proven that its editorial board possesses no integrity, has no sense of justice and righteousness and are hypocrites of the highest order. This is despite its editorials frequently preaching strong “moral values”.

 

We call upon The Star to apologise to all Malaysians for attempting to use indefensible lies to cover up its biased attempt to keep Barisan Nasional in power.