Is there no freedom of speech in Malaysia or is our media just inhibited?

By admin-s On Mar 14, 2024

I don’t know what Muhyiddin is referring to, but from my own experience, it isn’t obvious to me that the government is trying to control any narrative by blocking anything on social media. If it is doing so, it is certainly doing a bad job, because all sorts of information are indeed flowing freely through social media.

Nehru Sathiamoorthy

Tan Sri Muhyiddin recently accusing the government of trying to control the narrative on social media got me thinking. Is there really no freedom of speech in Malaysia today?

According to Muhyiddin, the answer is a definite yes.

According to him, the government is incapable of accepting criticism from the public, for fear that such a criticism will weaken the image of the government and make it unpopular.

It is for that reason, Muhyiddin is claiming, that the government is blocking the flow of information and controlling the narrative on social media.

“Why should it (social media) be blocked? Weren’t they the most vocal advocates for media freedom? It is said that they are advocates for democracy and human rights.

“Why is it that when they become the government, they greedily use power to restrict freedom? Turns out they are all hypocrites,” he said while speaking at the PN Representative Convention Council a couple of days ago.

Just take me for an example.

I have been a writer for a year, and the more I write, the more I doubt the premise that the government is controlling everything you say and if you don’t toe to line, you will find yourself harassed or ruined.

I have said some pretty harsh things about some of the most powerful people in the country from the very first day that I wrote. Just this month alone, I have issued a warning to Anwar, referred to Bersatu as reject, referred to Muhyiddin as weak and used the term king and out of line in the same sentence.

Despite this, I have never encountered a situation where I feel I am intimidated or harassed by the government or authorities.

Actually, the only case that I know of about the government trying to control the social media narrative is the restriction that is placed on Raja Petra’s Malaysia-Today. As some of you might already know, Raja Petra’s Malaysia-Today is inaccessible using most of the internet service providers in the country. But even in the case of the block placed on Raja Petra’s website, you can’t say that it is because the government is trying to control the social media narrative. Raja Petra, after all, is considered as a fugitive from the law by our authorities, and thus they might simply be blocking his website in a tit-for-tat move. It is perhaps their way of telling Raja Petra that he can run to England to escape from their reach, but they can block his website so that he can’t reach his readers in Malaysia either. This sort of back and forth between Raja Petra and the authorities can perhaps more aptly be described as a case of tit-for-tat than it can be as an attempt to control the media narrative.

In any case, even with the block, or you even say that the government of Malaysia has managed to muzzle Raja Petra, but he is still very much active in social media sites like Twitter and YouTube.

The fact that it is not difficult for you to criticise the government on social media and the fact that there are plenty of people who are criticising the government in the social media, is making we wonder just to what degree is Muhyiddin’s claim that the government is restricting the freedom of speech or is press freedom in the country real?

I am not saying that I believe that the Madani government does actually believe in freedom of speech, although this could also be true. I am just saying that even if the Madani government doesn’t believe in press freedom, it doesn’t matter, because in this age of social media, it might just be impossible to control the narrative anyway.

If even the government of the United States, which is the most powerful government in the world, can’t control the media narrative in the social media age, what chance does our government have?

In this age, when anybody can say anything on social media, and get what they say blasted across the social media landscape and reach hundreds of thousands of people by just paying the social media companies a few hundred ringgit, the government will only be wasting its resources trying to control the information that the public has access to.

To tell you the truth, I truly believe that if there are journalists or reporters who are of the opinion that they can’t express what they think freely, it is most likely not because the government will censor or prosecute them if they do so, but simply because they just don’t have the skills to express themselves freely or because they themselves are limiting themselves from expressing themselves freely.

You would be surprised by the number of journalists or media practitioners who either can’t express themselves freely or have nothing much to express. Expressing what you have in your heart and mind is a skill. It is a skill that someone like a writer has to hone and master. Not everybody can express what they have in mind. If your job is to run a restaurant or fix cars, you probably will struggle to write an article like the one you are reading now. You will likely take hours to do it and when it is done, you will likely feel that what you have written did not come close to expressing what you originally had in your mind.

If your job is to run a restaurant or fix a car, however, this is ok, because to write an article or express yourselves through your writing is not your job.

You will be surprised however, by how many people in the media industry, whose job it is to express themselves, are bereft of the skills to do so.

Their ability to express themselves is so poor that often, they can only express themselves by following a format or template. Most of the things you read in the media, if you notice, are formulaic. No matter what the subject is, it will be regurgitated using the what, who, when, how, why and where template. This is probably why journalism is probably one of the professions that is most in danger because of the advent of A.I. The sort of writing that is expressed via a formula or a template is exactly the sort of writing that A.I can do quicker, faster and cheaper.

If they don’t use a formula or a template to express themselves, then they will often just badger you with their ideology to compensate for their lack of skills. When a writer keeps badgering the reader to “don’t be a racist like those people, be a non-racist like me, shame on you if you don’t agree to what I say” or “you are not respecting my beliefs, you are evil, you are a sinner, you are going to go to hell,” they might likely just be doing so because they lack the skills to express themselves better. It is equivalent to a person using profanities to express themselves. The reason they have to cling to such methods as badgering or using profanities, is precisely because they lack the skills to express themselves properly.

Other than because they don’t have the skills to express themselves, those in the mainstream media also do not express themselves freely, because they themselves are limiting themselves from expressing themselves freely. They are limiting themselves, because they desire to rub shoulders with the politicians, ministers and authority figures that they write about. The government is not going to go after them if they say something negative about the government, but the media is refraining itself from being more critical of the ministers and politicians, simply because it wishes to have a good rapport with the ministers and politicians.

Many people who work for or own the media actually desire to rub shoulders with the politicians and ministers for no other reason than because it makes them feel good about themselves. They can still do their work even if the ministers and politicians are not their friends or frown upon their work, but they don’t want to have the ministers and government officials frown on them, because they wish to be close with these ministers and officials. Many people who work in the media actually see their rapport with the politicians and ministers as a sort of a status symbol. When they develop ties with officials and ministers, they feel like they are important people who are somewhat of an authority themselves.

While we tend to assume that the role of the media is to speak truth to power, we cannot underestimate the desire of the media to itself feel powerful, and it often indulges in this desire by associating too intimately with the power that they are supposed to speak the truth to.

Also, let us not underestimate the effects of negative views and mental states that the media personels might have on their ability to express themselves. Like many Malaysians, the media is also run by people who might have very negative views about the country and the people, to the point that if they were to express their views freely, they actually become afraid of what they might say.

When you yourself know that your views are full of hatred or malice, of course you are not going to say it, because you will automatically be fearful of your own thoughts. You are afraid not because the government is going to come after you because of what you say, but simply because having hatred and malice engenders fear.

The truth is, our government might not be trying to control the narrative as a lot of people, like Muhyiddin, believe.

I am living proof that the government is not trying to control the media narrative. The Newswav company is also living proof that the government is not trying to control the media narrative. If you want to criticise the government for anything, all you really have to do is write to Newswav, and I will guarantee you that 99.9 percent of the time, it will be published, and you can share it with all of your friends and family without fear or worry.

Despite the government not trying to control the media narrative, the media narrative might still be controlled, blocked or constrained, simply because
1) our media is so mediocre that you can count with the finger on one hand the number of people it has that can express their thoughts and views with skills,
2) you cannot underestimate their desire to rub shoulders with the authority figures in order to feel like they are authority figure themselves and
3) because they are so overwhelmed by such negative qualities like cowardice, hate and malice, that they are silenced by their own quality of thoughts.

Instead of admitting their shortcomings as the reason why they cannot express themselves, they might just be conveniently blaming the government as stifling their freedom, as an alibi to cover up for their own shortcomings.