Unlike in past years, World Press Freedom Day yesterday in Malaysia revealed a glimmer of hope in an independent media free of political and other controls. Not for what is achieved, but for a sea change in its practitioner's approach to it.

For the past nine years, the World Press Freedom Day on May 3 was a semi-official function, cathedral in its reach, a restatement of principles as can only be done by a bureaucratic organisation like the United Nations Development Programme or its associate, Aidcom.

It would accept on its forums only mainstream media representatives or anyone the Information Ministry would not object to. These occasions are as lively as two drunks discussing how to be sober. Anything that could sully the solemn atmosphere is somehow diverted.

One year, it was done by the simple expedient of delaying proceedings by one hour and preventing any questions. Those who did not accept this cathedral view of their trade were not allowed in, except to fill the seats.

This year, three separate functions marked World Press Freedom Day - by Aidcom, by the National Union of Journalists and the alternative media. One did not accept the other's functions, each went their separate ways, and talked of their trade within their own worldviews.

At the alternative media function I attended, someone talked of the 'split' in the journalist committee. I pointed out that there is no split, only different worldviews. And these views must be given 'space' to strengthen their views, and the more discordant views expressed about the trade, the stronger it would eventually become.

Heretical view

This is a heretical view. But the difference in this year's functions from the previous years is the different views of the trade that emerged. Yes, it was within well-defined positions, each at loggerheads with the other. But it reflects also concerns about how the press strives out of its shackled past. For the first time this year, journalists talked about the trade, and how it has failed them. This is the first step to understanding the importance of a free press.

All journalism is a viewpoint. How one reports an event is subjective, though constrained by how it should be portrayed. In the Philippines, it is so free, and with few constraints, it is almost disbelieved, that one must reach three or four newspapers to get a sense of what goes on. In Thailand, with the freeing of censorship, it brought forth a lively media so bereft of controls and decorum that it had to be reined in.

The Indonesian media, freed from the shackles of the Sukarno and Suharto epochs, have survived best of all. This is partly because Indonesian journalism had a clear understanding of what the national interest is, and it was given the utter freedom to contribute to it. It is not without reason that a senior journalist at the end of his career is often rewarded with an ambassadorship.

Whim of government

In Singapore, there is a forced worldview of what the national interest is. And woe betide the journalist who strays from it. That editors of newspapers could only be appointed in conjunction with the government ensures, so artfully done, that it puts out decent newspapers though one would not get a sense of the undercurrent in the island. The foreign media reports on Singapore events combatively at its peril.

The media in the other Asean states is at the whim of the government in power. Of this, the press in Vietnam opens itself to more scrutiny, but it is caught in the authoritarian grip of its leaders as it has been for 50 years. But, again like Indonesia, its national interest is clear, and therefore it provides a wisp of the undercurrent that is not in the others - Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Brunei.

In Malaysia, the mainstream media are either government-controlled or owned by satraps of the ruling coalition. It makes no pretense of neutral coverage, often presenting itself as the government's combative voice. This works so long as there are no alternative media to challenge it. Not any more.

What challenged it is the Internet and how the Anwar affair was reported. Just as the infamous Anwar black eye challenged the Internal Security Act, the Internet and the alternative media, with their more scrupulous, even if combative, reportage put the mainstream media on notice.

Success brings failure

The Sun, for instance, made a mark on the Malaysian journalistic scene with its succinct coverage that its circulation rose to heights it never imagined. This was under new management, but its success was its failure. It was forced out and the paper returned to its previous owner. He does not want it but prospective buyers are chastened by what would happen to them if they tried to make their investment pay. The man who ensured the change now sits in virtual exile overseas.

The old owner is back at the helm, but he is closing bureaus and cutting down staff that half the journalist jobs are at risk. Its brilliant political coverage is wound up, the man who wrote it removed to non-consequential jobs, and now faces an internal inquiry as a prelude to dismissal. The management is given a reduced budget, told to confine the newspaper to the Klang Valley, and make it pay in two years.

What keeps the mainstream newspapers on its toes is the alternative media and the Internet. However you look at it, these newspapers have improved so dramatically that Malaysians now get some decent coverage of issues of the day. Political coverage is now so common that one would think it so ingrained. Not so. It came in the wake of the challenge the mainstream media faced. They had to keep up if only to prevent falling circulation.

But the media alone cannot make the difference. The reporter today, better qualified than the editors, is keener to make a career in journalism now more than ever. And having decided to, he wants to extend the boundaries of what is allowed. He, more often she, is not about to accept what is told, and question. Not only that, he challenges the cobwebs of the past, and holds his ground.

The three separate meetings to celebrate World Press Freedom Day convinced one of this more than ever. When the independent media mentioned as speakers a parliamentary secretary and the editor-in-chief of Bernama, the national news agency, they protested. They should not have. It gave them an open forum to explain the role of the media as they see it. They lost a good opportunity. But it also showed how divisive the issue of press and media freedom is in Malaysia.

It also showed that those in the media would no longer submit to official dictates on what is press and media freedom. When the mind is freed, and is no more afraid, changes, willy-nilly, must come.

You had to attend all three to get a whimper of this dramatic changes in our midst. The course of press and media freedom is no longer the preserve of the mainstream media. It is for this reason alone that makes one hope for more dramatic changes in the future.