Why is Malaysia so Polarised today?
Whatever PR does is RIGHT. Even if it is wrong, it is ok for their wrong is not as unforgivable as BN’s mistakes.
Citizen Times
In the good old days, citizens only had The Straits Echo, New Straits Times and later on, The Star, to feed them with the latest news. The advent of information technology and rise of Internet popularity has seen the proliferation of online news portals – independent and the not-so-independent ones. Since then, news readership of mainstream media has been steadily on the decline and the print media is being sustained mainly by advertising revenue. Beyond all those superficial issues, the fact remains that the rise of the new media has paved the way for more partisan media in Malaysia and triggered an insidious process of political polarisation of Malaysia.
Today, news audience seems to be divided into three segments – the Pro-BN, the Pro-PR and of course, the fence-sitters. Without prejudice, many seem to buy the tales of their preferred media – lock, stock and barrel without questioning the authenticity of the report, the implication of bias headlines, morals, objectivity and even the unhealthy slants of fanatically populist and anti-establishment, anti-corruption rhetoric, anti-PM articles that those independent news portals carried by TMI, FZ, The Ant Daily, MK, Malaysia Chronicle and other sites. Consequently, more are blindly pro-Opposition and narrowmindedly anti-BN with a one-track mind!
Hitler once said: “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
That is exactly what is happening in Malaysia. the last ten years or so, irresponsible sites have been filling the Internet with lies, distortions of truth, fabrications of concocted reality and all kinds of warped messages.
A very good example is the Altantuya case.
At the end of this post is a list of headlines from various news portals. Even without reading the whole report, citizens are being BRAINWASHED to hate the government!
Why?
What is the real agenda of those media sites? Why are they persistently seducing their audience with populist views?
Why are some sites so pro-Anwar and anti-Najib?
For that, we need to examine the content, background and ownership of those sites.
News content that is stems from simple and clear ideological slant e.g. Anti-BN headlines would naturally attract viewers who are ALREADY dissatisfied with the state of affairs. Hence, readers would perceive such websites to be more credible as the owners/writers seem to share their political attitudes.
By reading such distorted articles, these readers are unconsciously reinforcing their stereotypes of the status quo and thus political polarisation multiplies at a very dangerously worrying rate. Things can come to a head when the political ambiance in the country is heated and then fringes may be on the rise.
In reality, citizens have a few choices. They can treat these as the gospel truth or ignore them or accept it and think nothing about those deceptive messages. There is one thing which FEW would ever do.
That is to TEST and to VERIFY the information.
I am not saying we have a perfect government (none exists in this world by the way). We have an imperfect government that is trying to perfect its imperfections in sincere programmes such as GTP, BR1M etc. Along the way, we have little devils in irresponsible news portals spreading doubts, magnifying weaknesses, glorifying the Opposition.
I do not deny the presence of a strong Opposition is important BUT it has to be a wholesome, effective and upright Opposition and that is absent in Malaysia.
There is much irony in news reporting.
1. When the status quo tells the truth e.g. in AG’s reports, they are blasted to kingdom come for this and that. Fine – all in the name of efficiency.
However…
2. If the Opposition does something wrong and then the status quo gives them a dose of their own medicine via public criticism, all hell breaks lose and the citizens turn a blind eye to the weaknesses or failings of the Opposition and go into full throttle to blast BN.
Fair?
Read more at: http://msiacitizentimes.blogspot.com/2014/06/why-is-malaysia-so-polarised-today.html
