'FULL OF SCANDALS' NAJIB SENSITIVE OVER ALTANTUYA, 1MDB, JHO LOW? ARRESTED FOR ASKING 'HARD QUESTIONS'

Forget decorum, for there is no such thing in journalism when hard questions needed to be asked. Only politeness and decency need to be applied when questioning those who hold public offices.

And when the PM just avoids everyone and everything in his bid to stay in power and questions are burning for answers on billion dollar scandals involving the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, what can a reporter who is searching for the truth do?

They can either toe the line and be like everybody else, or they can hound the PM and try to get him to answer the questions. And be arrested.

Thus, the arrest of the ABC Four Corners reporter Linton Besser and camera operator Louis Eroglu for purportedly asking questions on corruption on the streets of Kuching must strongly be condemned, for it shows high-handedness by a public figure who thinks he is not answerable to the rakyat.

The police claim that they had crossed a security line, but then again it is puzzling why a foreign reporter should breach the security line of the PM when they know security will be at an all-time high. Besser better give his side of the story fast.

The Malaysian media, however, would never cross the security line or any line for that matter. It has always been a timid one - even the portals - and those who hold public offices are usually not asked the hard questions.

Yours truly would know, having been booted and banned from press conferences during the first year of news portal Malaysiakini. This includes press conferences of former premier Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, and even having been singled out to leave the room at a time when Malaysiakini was the only news portal in the country which was said to be funded by foreigners with an agenda.

Najib should be responsible if reporters hound him, for he has been avoiding the media like a plague while scandals abound.

There were many times I would sneakily wait for Mahathir to finish his press conference and then pounce on him as he leaves the room, jostling him with questions which he would cleverly dodge before he signals his guards to take me off the red carpet he normally walks on.

Many other reporters of news portals till today still have to perform stunts to get those holding public office to answer their questions, some of which have been banned from Putrajaya.

And even Najib himself, although he may answer the relevant questions, is often surrounded by his advisers who would tell the reporters to strike out certain questions asked and answers given from their reports.

His wife Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor, as much as she is open to answering questions and conducting interviews, has press officers who will call and hound the reporters who dare to ask the questions, to the extent even ensuring that the reports are not published, just because they do not fit into their pattern of things.

Ministers’ aides too often demand before press conferences that reporters do not ask anything other than about the event that the minister is attending.

Many a time, press conferences remain events of merely copying down prepared texts read aloud by those in the public offices, and if no questions are allowed from the media, the local media are quite happy to just report it as it is.

Those who ask hard questions are frowned upon, even by some media personnel themselves, and there is this unspoken rule that it is better to let someone else, better so the foreign press, to ask the hard hitting questions.

Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi is now talking about the need for the media to be ethical, but he himself has been pounced on reporters who he says strayed away from the subject of the press conference.

Reporters in Malaysia have far to go before they dare to ask the relevant questions face to face to public officials in the highest category without any fear. After all, we are the fourth estate, reporting for the rakyat.

Najib himself should be blamed for having reporters hounding him, for despite scandal after scandal plaguing the country, he has not held one press conference for all media for a long time, except the one after an Umno Supreme Council meeting on January 29. It was a press conference in which he had all the say.

For those not in the know, not all medias are allowed to attend press conferences after the Umno Supreme Council meetings - only selected media.

So, one wonders what the barred reporters have to do to get a chance to ask the PM the questions which the rakyat are burning to ask? Get arrested? http://www.theheatmalaysia.com/