Hack work from former top editor
Zaid IbrahimPublished: Oct 22, 2009 8:23 AM | Updated: Oct 22, 2009 8:38 AM
Journalist A Kadir Jasin's had me in his crosshairs in his latest posting (Zaid, The Hurricane Hattie of PR) on his blog, The Scribe. Nothing wrong with that: a politician must expect criticism, even condemnation, in his line of work. It's par for the course.
What surprised was the complete one-sidedness of his broadside. One would be hard put to recognise that the author is a former Group Editor-in-Chief of the New Straits Times Press, rising to which position he would have learned that, if he should attempt it, a balanced take on a public figure's work and career is required by his profession.
Kadir's salvo sported no pretence to even-handedness. One would think that someone who had an extended run in the top editorial position in the NSTP - I understand he was in the saddle from 1988 to 2000 - would be acclimatised to the need for a semblance, at least, of balance in his assessment of public figures. In Kadir's crosshairs, I was accorded no such courtesy.
In the event, it's fortuitous that I have been reading a blog, uppercaise.wordpress, which is enlightening on the decline and fall of the New Straits Times from the lofty perch it once occupied. The blogger is learned and compelling on the causes of the once profitable newspaper group's decline, which, needless to say, accelerated on Kadir's watch.
I bring the point up because Kadir's repeated criticism against me is that I am a troublemaker. He mentions I was once in charge of the largest Bumiputera-owned legal firm in the country; its success, he implies, attributable to Umno's largesse.
Not only is it not true that the firm I owned waxed rich on Umno's munificence, I ask Kadir how did he perform when he was the top man in the largest Bumiputera-owned newspaper group? Did he augment its public stature and its profitability or did he stare a gift horse in the mouth?
There are other calumnies Kadir deploys in his posting, such as the false claim that I was once involved with Umno's assets. But, frankly, these are of lesser import than his central and fallacious argument: That I'm can be depended upon to cause trouble wherever I go.
Now I am collaborating in a collective endeavour to restore vital institutions - Parliament, judiciary, etc. - that have become derelict from Umno's stultifying domination of Malaysian politics, a work in which Kadir Jasin was complicit.
That must spell trouble for editorial has-beens like him, content, as ever, to serve the plutocracy that runs the country, liberation from which Pakatan Rakyat is bent on.
What surprised was the complete one-sidedness of his broadside. One would be hard put to recognise that the author is a former Group Editor-in-Chief of the New Straits Times Press, rising to which position he would have learned that, if he should attempt it, a balanced take on a public figure's work and career is required by his profession.
Kadir's salvo sported no pretence to even-handedness. One would think that someone who had an extended run in the top editorial position in the NSTP - I understand he was in the saddle from 1988 to 2000 - would be acclimatised to the need for a semblance, at least, of balance in his assessment of public figures. In Kadir's crosshairs, I was accorded no such courtesy.
In the event, it's fortuitous that I have been reading a blog, uppercaise.wordpress, which is enlightening on the decline and fall of the New Straits Times from the lofty perch it once occupied. The blogger is learned and compelling on the causes of the once profitable newspaper group's decline, which, needless to say, accelerated on Kadir's watch.
I bring the point up because Kadir's repeated criticism against me is that I am a troublemaker. He mentions I was once in charge of the largest Bumiputera-owned legal firm in the country; its success, he implies, attributable to Umno's largesse.
Not only is it not true that the firm I owned waxed rich on Umno's munificence, I ask Kadir how did he perform when he was the top man in the largest Bumiputera-owned newspaper group? Did he augment its public stature and its profitability or did he stare a gift horse in the mouth?
There are other calumnies Kadir deploys in his posting, such as the false claim that I was once involved with Umno's assets. But, frankly, these are of lesser import than his central and fallacious argument: That I'm can be depended upon to cause trouble wherever I go.
Now I am collaborating in a collective endeavour to restore vital institutions - Parliament, judiciary, etc. - that have become derelict from Umno's stultifying domination of Malaysian politics, a work in which Kadir Jasin was complicit.
That must spell trouble for editorial has-beens like him, content, as ever, to serve the plutocracy that runs the country, liberation from which Pakatan Rakyat is bent on.
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