The wages of sin and spin
Dean JohnsPublished: Sep 8, 2010 4:50 AM | Updated: Sep 8, 2010 5:20 AM
Whether or not the wages of sin is death, as many religionists claim to believe, the wages of spin certainly seems to be.
Whether or not the wages of sin is death, as many religionists claim to believe, the wages of spin certainly seems to be.
According to a Merdeka Centre poll, almost 60% of Malays and Chinese now mistrust Malaysia’s mainstream media (MSM). And the Malaysia Audit Bureau of Circulations reports that the readerships of major newspapers including Utusan Malaysia, Berita Harian and The Star are all falling fast, with that of the once-proud New Straits Times now languishing at a little over 100,000.
But though these diseased organs may be dying as fast as their readers’ credulity, their demise is not nearly quick enough for those of us who’ve long detested them for their lying and spinning.
Not nearly painful enough either, as the mainstream ‘news’ media and their ‘editors’ and ‘journalists’ aren’t just incompetent or careless of the truth that they’re professionally bound to tell. They’re accessories after the fact to the crimes they corruptly cover-up, play down or justify on behalf of the Barisan Nasional regime, and thus every whit as deserving of prosecution as the perpetrators themselves.
They’re accessories to improperly-investigated homicide in cases like that of Altantuya Shaariibuu or the countless culpable deaths in police shootouts and in custody that they’re as aware of as the rest of us are, but about which they peddle the official story, the better to protect the killers and their political bosses.
And they’re accessories to all the massive financial misdeeds of BN politicians and cronies that they so routinely fail to reveal and report on.
Of course they claim that they’d love to be free to tell the Malaysian people the truth if only they weren’t so gagged and bound by the Printing Presses and Publications Act. But many of these pariahs of the press are political appointees; stooges and propagandists hand-picked and lavishly paid to betray their families, friends and other fellow Malaysians by peddling the lying BN line.
A farrago of falsehood
And what a farrago of falsehood the BN line is. Back in 2009, shortly after he assumed the premiership, Najib Abdul Razak told the audience at the MPI Press Awards, in a speech entitled ‘Policy, Politics and the New Media - A new Way Forward’ that he intended to “encourage respectable and fair dialogue on the country’s future involving the whole nation that takes place with a vibrant, free and informed media.”
“The country needs a (sic) media - both old and new,” he continued, “that is empowered to responsibly report what they see, without fear of consequences, and to hold government and public officials accountable for the results they produce.”
He called for “a new national discourse” on the principles of transparency and accountability; service to all, not just a few; and respect and fairness in the public dialogue, adding that institutions, parties and public servants “must work for the public interest, not narrow opportunism of political interests.”
Of course his mouthpiece media faithfully reported this pack of sanctimonious lies without comment or criticism, just as they hung on his every weasel word at the inaugural National Press Club-Naza Awards Night earlier this year.
As I wrote at that time, he told his captive audience that that “I would like you to be my partner in my journey to transform the country,” thereby falsely implying that he intended making some changes for the better.
He then went on to categorise the criminal conspiracy between the mainstream media and the BN regime as a “symbiotic relationship” that is “absolutely critical to the future and Malaysia’s development as a nation.”
“The press needs to report on the government just as the government needs the press to communicate its message effectively to the people,” he continued. “I need the press to understand and appreciate the situation in the country, and to communicate effectively and educate the people.”
He rounded-off these risible remarks, as you may recall, with the preposterous proposition that “accusations that Malaysia lacked press freedom were grossly unfair” and added the ridiculous rider that “as long as the reports do not run afoul of our existing laws, the press is free to report on pretty much anything.”
Role to suppress inconvenient or unpalatable facts
Now, despite the fact that his false-reformist rhetoric has resulted in no change whatever in the rotten BN regime or the pernicious role of the press in propping it up, he’s delivered himself of some more platitudes along much the same lines to an audience of 500 staff at the near-death New Straits Times.
Ignoring the burning issue of why 500 people are needed to produce such a pathetically poor and moribund ‘newspaper’, the BN ‘news’ agency, Bernama, reported Najib as rallying the troops with the call for the mainstream media “to continue reporting news based on facts to remain relevant to the people.”
Even “based on facts” seems a gross exaggeration to me, given that one of the mainstream media’s most vital roles on behalf of BN is to utterly suppress inconvenient or unpalatable facts, if possible.
But having uttered the word “facts” and apparently enjoyed the sensation, he went on to weave a web of fiction around it. “The mainstream media,” he claimed, was “now faced with intense competition from new media like blogs and websites that “do not provide news based on accurate facts.”
So, he continued, “if we follow the mainstream media, we will know intuitively that the reporting cannot be disputed, in terms of fact or perspective, because the basis is facts.”
“As such, I wish to encourage the mainstream media to hold fast to its role as providers of factual-based reporting and well-thought-out opinions, intellectual and based on the actual facts.”
But increasingly, it seems, the Malaysian populace is judging BN by its acts, not its fraudulent ‘facts’; by its works, not its weasel words. And the more honest citizens who refuse to take its lies lying down, the closer this criminal coalition and its crooked media come to paying the proverbial price for their sins and spins.
DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he mentors creative writing groups. Already published in Kuala Lumpur is a third book of his columns for Malaysiakini, following earlier collections ‘Mad about Malaysia’ and ‘Even Madder about Malaysia’.
According to a Merdeka Centre poll, almost 60% of Malays and Chinese now mistrust Malaysia’s mainstream media (MSM). And the Malaysia Audit Bureau of Circulations reports that the readerships of major newspapers including Utusan Malaysia, Berita Harian and The Star are all falling fast, with that of the once-proud New Straits Times now languishing at a little over 100,000.
But though these diseased organs may be dying as fast as their readers’ credulity, their demise is not nearly quick enough for those of us who’ve long detested them for their lying and spinning.Not nearly painful enough either, as the mainstream ‘news’ media and their ‘editors’ and ‘journalists’ aren’t just incompetent or careless of the truth that they’re professionally bound to tell. They’re accessories after the fact to the crimes they corruptly cover-up, play down or justify on behalf of the Barisan Nasional regime, and thus every whit as deserving of prosecution as the perpetrators themselves.
They’re accessories to improperly-investigated homicide in cases like that of Altantuya Shaariibuu or the countless culpable deaths in police shootouts and in custody that they’re as aware of as the rest of us are, but about which they peddle the official story, the better to protect the killers and their political bosses.And they’re accessories to all the massive financial misdeeds of BN politicians and cronies that they so routinely fail to reveal and report on.
Of course they claim that they’d love to be free to tell the Malaysian people the truth if only they weren’t so gagged and bound by the Printing Presses and Publications Act. But many of these pariahs of the press are political appointees; stooges and propagandists hand-picked and lavishly paid to betray their families, friends and other fellow Malaysians by peddling the lying BN line.
A farrago of falsehood
And what a farrago of falsehood the BN line is. Back in 2009, shortly after he assumed the premiership, Najib Abdul Razak told the audience at the MPI Press Awards, in a speech entitled ‘Policy, Politics and the New Media - A new Way Forward’ that he intended to “encourage respectable and fair dialogue on the country’s future involving the whole nation that takes place with a vibrant, free and informed media.”
“The country needs a (sic) media - both old and new,” he continued, “that is empowered to responsibly report what they see, without fear of consequences, and to hold government and public officials accountable for the results they produce.”
He called for “a new national discourse” on the principles of transparency and accountability; service to all, not just a few; and respect and fairness in the public dialogue, adding that institutions, parties and public servants “must work for the public interest, not narrow opportunism of political interests.”
Of course his mouthpiece media faithfully reported this pack of sanctimonious lies without comment or criticism, just as they hung on his every weasel word at the inaugural National Press Club-Naza Awards Night earlier this year.As I wrote at that time, he told his captive audience that that “I would like you to be my partner in my journey to transform the country,” thereby falsely implying that he intended making some changes for the better.
He then went on to categorise the criminal conspiracy between the mainstream media and the BN regime as a “symbiotic relationship” that is “absolutely critical to the future and Malaysia’s development as a nation.”
“The press needs to report on the government just as the government needs the press to communicate its message effectively to the people,” he continued. “I need the press to understand and appreciate the situation in the country, and to communicate effectively and educate the people.”
He rounded-off these risible remarks, as you may recall, with the preposterous proposition that “accusations that Malaysia lacked press freedom were grossly unfair” and added the ridiculous rider that “as long as the reports do not run afoul of our existing laws, the press is free to report on pretty much anything.”
Role to suppress inconvenient or unpalatable facts
Now, despite the fact that his false-reformist rhetoric has resulted in no change whatever in the rotten BN regime or the pernicious role of the press in propping it up, he’s delivered himself of some more platitudes along much the same lines to an audience of 500 staff at the near-death New Straits Times.
Ignoring the burning issue of why 500 people are needed to produce such a pathetically poor and moribund ‘newspaper’, the BN ‘news’ agency, Bernama, reported Najib as rallying the troops with the call for the mainstream media “to continue reporting news based on facts to remain relevant to the people.”Even “based on facts” seems a gross exaggeration to me, given that one of the mainstream media’s most vital roles on behalf of BN is to utterly suppress inconvenient or unpalatable facts, if possible.
But having uttered the word “facts” and apparently enjoyed the sensation, he went on to weave a web of fiction around it. “The mainstream media,” he claimed, was “now faced with intense competition from new media like blogs and websites that “do not provide news based on accurate facts.”
So, he continued, “if we follow the mainstream media, we will know intuitively that the reporting cannot be disputed, in terms of fact or perspective, because the basis is facts.”
“As such, I wish to encourage the mainstream media to hold fast to its role as providers of factual-based reporting and well-thought-out opinions, intellectual and based on the actual facts.”
But increasingly, it seems, the Malaysian populace is judging BN by its acts, not its fraudulent ‘facts’; by its works, not its weasel words. And the more honest citizens who refuse to take its lies lying down, the closer this criminal coalition and its crooked media come to paying the proverbial price for their sins and spins.
DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he mentors creative writing groups. Already published in Kuala Lumpur is a third book of his columns for Malaysiakini, following earlier collections ‘Mad about Malaysia’ and ‘Even Madder about Malaysia’.
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