How biased are our newspapers, online media?

Every media organisation follows the beat of its financiers.

COMMENT

By Aziff Azuddin

It’s been some time since I caught up with our political scene. The last time was when Budget 2013 was presented. It’s not that I am not interested in politics. It’s just that all the statements by our politicians are stale news.

Now, it has almost become impossible to go to a online news portal or pick up a newspaper and not lose any sense of objectivity. There are many who would argue that the mainstream media are biased and controlled by the establishment in one way or another.

Many would cite the PPPA (Printing Presses and Publications Act) that rules the media as the reason. And because of this the Internet is seen as the bastion of freedom.

This, of course, is not unfounded. Was it not the Internet and social network which rallied the people of Egypt to Tahrir Square in Cairo, and brought an end to the Hosni Mubarak’s regime?

Was it not through the Internet that the Bersih rallies gained support and grew in numbers? But, can the Internet also be controlled? The sad fact is that even online media cannot escape some form of control by their financiers.

That’s why some stories are slanted to favour certain personalties or organisations.This practice is not just a Malaysian problem.

News organisations the world over practise slanting and all it takes is a keen eye, logic and background knowledge.

As much as people would like to point towards the United States of America as the land of free journalism, this is hardly the case. An example would be in 2009, when Fox News was accused of slanting news towards the right-wing. It was accused of violating journalistic principles.

Vested interests

Recently Malaysiakini’s former editor YL Chong claimed that George Soros indirectly funded the online news portal and that the online news portal refused to allow this fact to be known and that the former editor resigned in protest.

Malaysiankini, of course, refuted these allegations.

In any form of media, biased reports will always exist. One can point fingers at publications such as Utusan and The Star and say they’re biased. But have these same people taken the trouble to also look at publications such as Harakah and The Rocket?

Most media organisations have vested interests and they will always run stories favouring their owners.

What the average Malaysian is lacking is perspective. We’re so drawn in by the Internet and (sometimes) take what’s published in it for gospel truth that we possibly forget that it, too, is biased in one form or another.

The remedy is simple: read everything and take not only the supporting views but also the opposing ones.

We have to remember that the media are tailored towards their audience to reflect their ideologies. The simplest proof would be to observe the groups that read the different varieties of news publications; an observation that would make an interesting social study.

This is what I’ve learnt so far being a final-year student in journalism: Nothing is what it seems and that the search for the truth often requires scratching under the surface, reading all sides and finally coming down with an objective conclusion.

Aziff Azuddin is a journalism student.