Last week the blogs were abuzz after Jeff Ooi revealed in his Screenshots that a column in the New Straits Times on Oct 30 under group editor Brendan Pereira's by-line bore a strong resemblance in style and structure to a column by Mitch Albom in the Detroit Free Press of Sept 10, 2006.

Whether Pereira was guilty of plagiarism, as many bloggers pseudonymously proclaimed before proceeding to call for his sacking or resignation, or whether it was a case of "creative coincidence" as it's often referred to in advertising circles, who knows - or, for that matter, really cares?

From the few articles I've read in the past that have been credited to him, and for what my opinion is worth, he's far too good a writer to have any need to crib anyone else's stuff. Far too good a writer, for that matter, to squander his talents on the two publications for which he's most recently worked, the Straits Times and the New Straits Times.

Let's face it, neither of these products qualify as a quality newspaper, or even a genuine newspaper at all. Both are owned and/or controlled by political parties, and devoted to peddling their respective party lines. So they're PR sheets, not organs of the press, and thus their editors and senior writers are party propagandists, not genuine journalists.

In other words, they're flacks, not hacks. And if they've perverted their professionalism and abandoned their responsibilities to this extent, whether or not they're also prepared to sink to committing or condoning plagiarism seems to me almost besides the point.

Typical response

The way the New Straits Times has handled the Pereira cause clbre has been absolutely typical; a copybook example of its modus operandi as an official Umno mouthpiece. First tactic it tried, as usual, was silence, apparently according to the principle that, as peculiar as it seems on the part of what purports to be a newspaper, no news is good news. Or, as every miscreant, Mafioso or errant marital partner knows, "Silence is golden."

Then, in the event that a dignified silence clearly wasn't cutting it, NST's next resort was spin. As in the small story that appeared a few days into the furore, reporting that the New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd had announced that as of Jan 1, Pereira will be replaced as group editor by Syed Nadzri Syed Harun, and included in the statement - "the company would like to extend its utmost appreciation to Pereira for his tireless efforts in turning around the editorial operations and improving the performance and position of the New Straits Times."

What, I wonder, are puzzled readers supposed to read between the lines?

That Pereira had been fired for plagiarism? Had admitted to plagiarism and resigned accordingly? That the issue of plagiarism had nothing to do with it, and that he had been replaced as a result of pressure springing from Dr Mahathir Mohamad's sarcastically rhetorical question some time back as to whether the name "Brendan Pereira" was Malay? Or had the man been finally granted his long-rumoured desire to leave?

The next stage in the spin process, of course, was "clarification" of such questions with an "official" statement that managed to be simultaneously plausible, incredible and unverifiable. In this instance, as it turned out, the "truth" according to Pereira himself was that his departure from the had been agreed two weeks prior to the publication of the column that gave rise to cries of plagiarism. And in any case, as New Straits Times Press CEO Datuk Sayed Faisal Albar was quoted as saying, Pereira's article was definitely not plagiarism, as Albon's original didn't mention Mahathir.

Simultaneously with this exercise in what's often referred to back where I come from as "bullshit baffles brains" came that other tried and true technique, "Shoot the messenger." New Straits Times Press threatened to sue the BBC unless it immediately retracted a story on its website by Jonathan Kent entitled "Malaysia Editor in Plagiarism Row".

Sex issue

As far as I could discern, the proprietors of the newspaper retained an elegant or even eloquent silence throughout this whole hoo-ha, or at least kept their comments and machinations in-club. But their stoicism cracked when on Nov 4, one of their down-market "newspapers", the Weekend Mail, went totally weak-end male with a sex issue so blatant and sophomoronic as to be reminiscent of a tabloid in the stable of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, or as some of us prefer to refer to it, News Corpse.

The MCA-owned and government-biased but nevertheless self-proclaimed "people's paper", the Star, quoted Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak as declaring in his speech launching the FT Umno convention that "the media going overboard in exploiting sex will only worsen our social problems."

Senator Kamarudin Ambok reportedly said that a resolution had been reached to "demand that the media preserve Islam's good image and not tarnish the religion's nobility." And Woman, Family and Community Development Minister Shahrizat Abdul Jalil stated that she was "very surprised with how a mainstream newspaper, owned by the government, could publish such an article."

My take on all this is that silence, spin and other manifestations of sleazy "journalism" are acceptable in, in fact expected of, government-owned newspapers, but sex is a big, fat no-no. And my bet is that by the time you read this, Weekend Mail editorial team will have joined Brendan Pereira in the ranks of journalists seeking exciting new career challenges.

Meanwhile, the front page of the Nov 6 Malay Mail carried an apology by Syed Faisal for the Weekend Mail's sex romp, under the big banner headline "We are Sorry". To which it seems to me the only appropriate response is yes, you sure are a sorry lot.