What if the world does boycott the Beijing Olympics? Would China rein back its systemic Han cultural immersion in Tibet? I don’t think so. The train to Lhasa has long left Qinghai station.

Boycotts do make strong political statements. But, often, weak is its desired outcome. Seldom do boycotts achieve practical solutions to political issues.

Each Olympic has come with similar calls of boycotts for varied ideological causes - Melbourne in 1956, Munich 1972, Montreal 1976, Moscow 1980, and Los Angeles in 1984. The Olympics, nevertheless, ran its course. The reasons for calling the boycotts, shortly forgotten.

What are remembered are the symbolical wins by athletes, despite the political odds, from within the arena. Remember Jesse Owens, a black American sprinter? He bagged four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics when Hitler was propagating his politics of white Aryan supremacy. Another defining moment was during the 1968 Mexico Olympics. Two American athletes, Tommy Smith and John Carlos, gave a ‘black power salute’ on the medal dais. That focused the world’s attention on the civil rights movement and the evils of racial segregation in the United States. The world watched, and remembered.

My point is: for radical change to happen, it must be moved from within the system, not out of it. Lately, this has been Barack Obama’s campaign pitch. Described as the ‘Obama phenomenon’ in an editorial by the Jewish interfaith publication, Tikkun , it says the phenomenon alludes to Obama’s capacity to transcend our human tendency to 'demonise' those we don't agree with, and to perceive the world through polarized lens - "you're either with us or against us"

The editorial reads in part: "Obama is telling his supporters, we are not in need of some magical leader, not even Obama himself. Rather, what we need is the confidence in ourselves to reclaim the public space, to break down our fears about ourselves and each other, and to recognize that it is only when we move beyond our personal lives and work together for our highest vision that anything substantial will change."

Obama focuses on what's possible when people are inspired to organise themselves to become part of the political process to challenge what is and work towards what can be – rather than resignedly disengaging from the system, such as ad hoc boycott campaigns. If there’s any outcome, boycotts tend to harden the hearts of the subject than persuade. Recall Libya, Cuba, North Korea.

The Malaysian election outcome on March 8 shows how fundamental reforms can happen from the bottom up, when the younger generation of voters, emboldened by freer political discourse on the internet, chose to become part of the political process. Recall the Philippines in 1986 and Indonesia in 1996.

Which makes me wonder if boycotting the Malaysian mainstream media on April 1 as called by bloggers and civil activists, will make any dent on the MSM to improve their act, apart from inconveniencing the local Indian corner stores with piles of unsold copies of fish-wrappers.

Collective despair

Boycotts reflect a collective despair that nothing else works. True, after years of disregard by the MSM of relentless complaints from media-watch groups circulated on the internet, and in many unpublished letters to the editor. Long-term boycotts may even dip the share prices of the MSM group. Which leads to lower year-end bonus. It may even close a few reporting beats and leave reporters out of work. The real victims are small time investors, and rank-and-file journalists some of whom are committed to the ideals of professional journalism, but whose creativity and drive for investigative work are stifled by bureaucratic editorial managers.

Which leaves us with another pathway, as far as I know, less journeyed by civil societies, media-watch groups and the reading public. That’s working with the remaining true believers in the mainstream newsroom, engaging in conversations with the editors, publishers and the authorities. Disengaging from the news making process, protesting and boycotting outside the gates of the media gatekeepers is self-defeating.

The faults of our mainstream media reflect the character flaws of those in charge, and to a large extent the primeval market fancies. Indeed, we deserve the media (and government) we get if constructive avenues of meaningful conversations are eschewed for divisive diatribe.

Interestingly so, mainstream journalism in an imperfect world has been criticized for its aberrations over time. Australian journalists, like their American peers, are seen by the public as not any more honest or ethical than politicians, car salesmen, insurance brokers and real estate agents. Journalists’ reputation for honesty and ethical practice has been in question since the late 19th century. A few quotes from the yellowed pages of my ‘International Thesaurus of Quotations’ (1970) illustrate my point:

• The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them: inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehood and errors. (third US president, Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Norvell, June 11, 1807).

• In America, the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion: within these barriers, an author may write what he pleases; but woe to him if he goes beyond them. (French political scientist and historian, Alexis de Tocqueville in “Democracy in America”, 1835-39).

• We write frankly and freely but then we “modify” before we print. (American journalist and satirist, Mark Twain in Life on the Mississippi, 1883).

• Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another. (English writer, G.K. Chesterton, in “On the Cryptic and the Illiptic,” All Things Considered, 1908).

• A newspaper, not having to act on its descriptions and reports, but only to sell them to idly curious people, has nothing but honor to lose by inaccuracy and unveracity. (Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, in The Doctor’s Dilemma, 1913).

• The trouble with daily journalism is that you get so involved with "who hit John?" that you never really know why John had his chin out in the first place. (diplomatic correspondent of The Washington Post , Chalmers Roberts, Newsweek , Jan 6, 1958).

Bold enterprise journalism

Anti-media sentiment across nations and cultures is no surprise when newspapers are run as commercial ventures, where profit maximisation, understandably an economic necessity, blinds editors and publishers from their moral obligations to their readers. And that is to provide fair and accurate coverage of public affairs, with full disclosure of editors’ affiliation with corporations and the government.

For every criticism of pro-establishment journalism, there are bold enterprise journalism that go unnoticed in countries in strife – where journalists are killed reporting in conflict zones such as in Sri Lanka and Iraq - and murdered for exposing the scums in public office such as in the Philippines and Zimbabwe. The worst scenario we’ve seen in Malaysia has been the ISA detention of journalists, a phone call from the authorities, and withholding of printing license. But that’s sufficient to cower our editors, who consequently extend this ‘fear’ of displeasing the authorities to the newsroom. Few are willing to push the boundaries by running stories written by their senior journalists or outside contributors ‘critical’ of the government. The outcome is a homogeneous dumbed-down same-old same-old coverage of public affairs across the mainstream papers.

The bigger question for civil society activists, media critics and well-informed bloggers is how it may be possible to move beyond the current diatribe and ad hoc calls for boycotts to support and work with dispirited journalists in the mainstream newsroom. For real change in the mainstream news culture to begin, the remaining dispirited journalists in mainstream press must believe that change is possible. As the ‘Obama phenomenon’ implies: only when we work together for our highest vision that anything substantial will change.

The winds of change have turned the wheels of reformasi at the last election. Next stop will be to gather at a roundtable dialogue to suss out the fundamental ideological differences so that all - the government, the newly elected Opposition, the MSM, the alternative media community - may work towards shared goals. The aim of a dialogue is to inform and learn rather than to debate and coax. It would be self-defeating in the Malaysian environment to deny the need for meaningful conversations between governments and journalists – alternative and mainstream - to serve the interests of a participatory democracy.