It’s about time we free the press
It’s easy to put all the blame on the government. Let’s be honest, to begin with, journalists must take a hard look at ourselves.
Bob Teoh, mysinchew
The increasingly clampdown on newspapers calls for a rethink on how we run newspapers. Our role is to inform readers on matters that matter to them. How else can we hope to have a nation of thinking citizens who make decisions on an informed basis? I say it’s time to free the press; not by piecemeal efforts but by a bold initiative.
The naysayers say it can’t be done. Why not? Our neighbours, the Philippines and Indonesia did it with the stroke of the pen following the fall of Marcos and Soeharto. Some say this is because freedom is in their blood. Please don’t tell me we don’t have this rare blood type.
It is not a fight against the government of the day. The fight will have to continue even if the opposition takes over the reins. This is because the fight for press freedom is a continuing process. This requires the participation of all and from all stakeholders; legislators, regulators, journalists, media owners and investors, journalism educators, advertisers and the readers.
The debacle over the indefinite suspension of the publishing licence last week of The Heat, a three-month old English language newspaper, is clear enough that we as a nation has little clue on the role of the press in national life. This is especially so as the gag order came hot on the heels of yet another fiasco. This involved the withdrawal of a publishing permit for a new English language newspaper hours after it was granted.
I don’t intend to go into the gory details of these two cases as there is already too much speculation. That’s the whole irony of censorship. The more they want to cover up, they more we resort to speculation and worse still, rumours! So the choice is clear; news over rumours. We can’t have it both ways.
These two instances of state censorship or state intervention in the functioning of the press are but some of the more recent examples of confusion ensuing from the Home Ministry whose officers have seemingly an absolute hold over the fate of newspapers.
The irony again is that the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 (PPPA) was amended last year as part of the law reform promised by Prime Minister Najib Razak.
Among other things, the annual renewal of publishing permits was done away with. So was the absolute power of the Home Minister which cannot be challenged in court.
I had written then that the amendments do not address the critical issues of press freedom at all. Thus, the new PPPA continues to be bad law
