The burying of The Malaysian Insider
By A Malaysian Insider
The lights went out this week on The Malaysian Insider news portal.
And as to why The Edge decided to bury the popular online news operation, commercial considerations only offer part of the answer.
The loss of jobs suffered by TMI’s roughly 60 employees isn’t about Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak getting back on his critics.
Crudely put, TMI was buried because it no longer served the needs of its owners.
It was acquired to provide the media power in the plot led by Muhyiddin Yassin and Dr. Mahathir Mohamad to get rid of Najib.
Tong, who has been in a hurry to secure a place as the go-to businessman in Malaysia, sided with Dr. Mahathir and Muhyiddin.
That plot was exposed in July last year and put down.
Tong’s role was laid bare with the arrest of Swiss national Xavier Andre Justo, who confessed that he had sold stolen emails from a company tied in the scandal at 1Malaysia Development Bhd to Tong and Clare Brown of the Sarawak Report.
Once revelations of the Justo affair became public knowledge, largely through mobile phone message between personalities leading the media charge against Najib, it was easy to connect the dots on Tong’s role.
The government’s decision to withdraw an earlier awarded daily newspaper publishing permit to The Edge pushed Tong into the Muhyiddin camp. When the former deputy prime minister decided to plot against Najib, Tong was picked to run the media operations.
The Edge, however, did not have the reach. Its daily financial newspaper was languishing with a circulation of less than 4,000 copies a day, while the weekend product was barely hitting the mark of 22,000 copies.
It’s a no brainer that TMI was purchased to broadcast, as widely as possible, stories by The Edge and Sarawak Report on 1MDB in the plot to remove Najib.
The reckless actions of Tong and his right hand man Ho Kay Tat have severely damaged The Edge brand name.
The move to buy stolen information is a no-fly zone for any responsible media. But to parlay the material in sustained media campaign under the guise of investigative journalism is an insult to the profession and its readers.
The handling of the TMI closure this week has exposed the deficit of ethical decency at the top management at The Edge.
The lights went out at TMI this week. But the dimming of the brand set-in way back in late 2014 when The Edge took it over.
