The minuscule minds behind a regressive newspaper boycott
NST (27/5/08): It’s a defiant charge but there is little to discern between the Nazis who celebrated the burning of books 70-odd years ago and the Malaysian politicians of the Opposition variety fond of calling for the boycott of certain national newspapers just because the reports/commentaries upset their ideological and existential scheme of things.
While the difference between Nazis and Opposition politicians is humongous, the difference between fascistic mass killers and mass humaneness, there is, unfortunately, a common strain bonding them: the feeblish minds quick to call for a boycott of reports, features, commentaries and analyses – tangible or tenuous – that criticise and humiliate them beyond shape.
Today’s expression of protest stems from Parti Keadilan Rakyat, their turn in as many years since the last demand was inaugurated. There was a grand initiative they organised in 1999 when they also threw in a TV station as part of their targets of abstention. Pas would regularly stage boycotts of certain Malay dailies in a pique of disgruntled outrage while the DAP committed environmental denigration by burning copies of a national tabloid during a paroxysm of moralising, led by the now stately Lim Guan Eng during his “tempestuous” years in the mid-1990s.
The boycott charges between the three political parties usually resonate in a universal montage of stark accusations – “gutter journalism, “lies”, “biasness”, “smear campaign”, etc. Today, add “criticising and painting PR members in a bad light as if still on an election campaign”, as articulated by PKR president Datin Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail at a press conference in Parliament House.
She and her opposition cohorts – Lim, Pas deputy president Nasharudin Mat Isa and PKR treasurer/Selangor Menteri Besar Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim – announced the boycott of Utusan Malaysia and Mingguan Malaysia after accusing the mass circulation junior broadsheet of running a smear campaign against the Opposition. She also charged that Utusan Malaysia “stoked narrow-minded racial sentiments to incite the anger of the Malays against PR leaders” but after reading the statement, she and the other three refused to field questions from the media.
That’s one chunk of a charge but can it be queried: on which day and on what page did Utusan Malaysia commit those heinous journalistic crimes? Nothing specific came out of the PKR leader’s indignant stance. Perhaps we will know in the days to come.
Nobody, most of all politicians, likes bad press and it’s understandable that the PR politicians hyperventilated over Utusan Malaysia’s reports, but is staging a boycott of the newspaper the sensible call? Is it even answered by their readers in the first place? Is it the most effective way to procure good press? Why the focus on national newspapers bounded under the collective label of mainstream media? Why not on alternative publications or mediums like the online news or blogs?
Raja Petra Kamarudin, he of the martyred kind after his untamed altercation with the police and the courts, has taken vicious digs against PKR’s de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, on top of his Stinger-like missives against DAP leaders and also several senior Cabinet Ministers. Why hasn't PKR launch a boycott of RPK’s extremely popular website, given that his condemnation of Anwar was tougher than any mainstream media could ever imagine reporting?
The answer smacks of commercialism: Raja Petra doesn’t make any money from his website and there’s no way of piercing his Teflon shield or emasculating his parables/writings. The mainstream media, on the other hand, are public companies sensitive to shareholder flip-flops and the buying sensibilities of the retailing public. In PKR’s terms, they will soon enough declare a moral victory even if ONE reader decides to answer the boycott. (Believe it or not, boycotts have little or no impact on newspapers’ circulations, which had either declined or stagnated by other “natural” occurrences, chiefly by the advent of the Internet, instant messaging, 24/7 online news, free-for-all blogs, non-stop RSS news feeds, viral social networking, and the “dying” of older readers but a dearth of replacement from the young).
Nevertheless, for the sake of argument, let’s concede to all of PR’s boycott reasonings, that there had been a damning effect on newspaper circulation and henceforth on newspaper advertising that compelled editors to roll over and capitulate to PR’s demands for a more flattering coverage. For the opposition, this would mark as a successful political campaign.
But that still doesn’t take away the fact that the Opposition had failed or refused to engage the Press by writing to them, lobbying editors and reporters, and owners, hectoring shareholders, some of them well-known CEOs leading major public corporations and institutions, picking out the contentious reports and debunking them one by one, engaging in written or oral debates while rallying a mass audience. It could have been a win-win situation, especially in this age of marvellous communications where there are many platforms to choose from to construct a confrontation with the media.
By all means, get entangled with the media where it matters most: words and meaning, ideas and concepts, abstracts and notions in the hues of black, white and grey by employing every form of democratic expression. Demonstrate in front of the newspapers’ premises if you feel feisty enough. Hand out leaflets and pamphlets on the streets or on the Net. It has been done before and it was praiseworthy. What happened to your free speech, free expression and free association idealism?
That’s why the argument that only a minuscule mind would prick a politician to shout the word “boycott” still holds true. Boycotting is just too convenient. Too pat. But here’s the speculative rub: if the situation had been reversed, and it looks like a possibility…if Anwar’s bragging that he has the “numbers” is true, would the PKR, or Pas, or the DAP – with the weight of government and governance on their backs and their souls – have not shot for a boycott but an outright ban of the publications? Just like what the Home Ministry would enforce if any publication runs foul of the variety of Press and sedition laws. The answer is moot but the possibility will always nag the mind.
And using this same perspective, would Suara Keadilan, Rocket and Harakah denounce their own leaders, expose all negative aspects of their leadership the same way they dissed Government leaders? Most likely not. So, why didn’t the PR leaders announce a three-prong attack using the three parties’ organs to rebut Utusan Malaysia? They don’t have the numbers perhaps, in influence and circulation. But we’ll see if Suara Keadilan, now that it has secured a Home Ministry permit for mass circulation, can stand toe-to-toe with the mainstream media and give them a pasting in the marketplace.
In any case, what the PKR or Pas or DAP is doing or had done in the name of boycotts over the decades is simply a form of populism, a virulent political philosophy no less; more anti-intellectual than anything else, while it baits the common guy and the gullible voter into supporting the parties’ cause. It’s also cheap for the parties.
On hindsight, the intellectual prowess the opposition so touts when it goads government leaders to enter into public debates or setting up commissions of inquiries becomes a sodden fallacy because in truth, a boycott of a newspaper, or any form of publication, including Suara Keadilan, Rocket and Harakah, will be entrenched as an exercise in intellectual idiocy.
While the difference between Nazis and Opposition politicians is humongous, the difference between fascistic mass killers and mass humaneness, there is, unfortunately, a common strain bonding them: the feeblish minds quick to call for a boycott of reports, features, commentaries and analyses – tangible or tenuous – that criticise and humiliate them beyond shape.
Today’s expression of protest stems from Parti Keadilan Rakyat, their turn in as many years since the last demand was inaugurated. There was a grand initiative they organised in 1999 when they also threw in a TV station as part of their targets of abstention. Pas would regularly stage boycotts of certain Malay dailies in a pique of disgruntled outrage while the DAP committed environmental denigration by burning copies of a national tabloid during a paroxysm of moralising, led by the now stately Lim Guan Eng during his “tempestuous” years in the mid-1990s.
The boycott charges between the three political parties usually resonate in a universal montage of stark accusations – “gutter journalism, “lies”, “biasness”, “smear campaign”, etc. Today, add “criticising and painting PR members in a bad light as if still on an election campaign”, as articulated by PKR president Datin Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail at a press conference in Parliament House.
She and her opposition cohorts – Lim, Pas deputy president Nasharudin Mat Isa and PKR treasurer/Selangor Menteri Besar Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim – announced the boycott of Utusan Malaysia and Mingguan Malaysia after accusing the mass circulation junior broadsheet of running a smear campaign against the Opposition. She also charged that Utusan Malaysia “stoked narrow-minded racial sentiments to incite the anger of the Malays against PR leaders” but after reading the statement, she and the other three refused to field questions from the media.
That’s one chunk of a charge but can it be queried: on which day and on what page did Utusan Malaysia commit those heinous journalistic crimes? Nothing specific came out of the PKR leader’s indignant stance. Perhaps we will know in the days to come.
Nobody, most of all politicians, likes bad press and it’s understandable that the PR politicians hyperventilated over Utusan Malaysia’s reports, but is staging a boycott of the newspaper the sensible call? Is it even answered by their readers in the first place? Is it the most effective way to procure good press? Why the focus on national newspapers bounded under the collective label of mainstream media? Why not on alternative publications or mediums like the online news or blogs?
Raja Petra Kamarudin, he of the martyred kind after his untamed altercation with the police and the courts, has taken vicious digs against PKR’s de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, on top of his Stinger-like missives against DAP leaders and also several senior Cabinet Ministers. Why hasn't PKR launch a boycott of RPK’s extremely popular website, given that his condemnation of Anwar was tougher than any mainstream media could ever imagine reporting?
The answer smacks of commercialism: Raja Petra doesn’t make any money from his website and there’s no way of piercing his Teflon shield or emasculating his parables/writings. The mainstream media, on the other hand, are public companies sensitive to shareholder flip-flops and the buying sensibilities of the retailing public. In PKR’s terms, they will soon enough declare a moral victory even if ONE reader decides to answer the boycott. (Believe it or not, boycotts have little or no impact on newspapers’ circulations, which had either declined or stagnated by other “natural” occurrences, chiefly by the advent of the Internet, instant messaging, 24/7 online news, free-for-all blogs, non-stop RSS news feeds, viral social networking, and the “dying” of older readers but a dearth of replacement from the young).
Nevertheless, for the sake of argument, let’s concede to all of PR’s boycott reasonings, that there had been a damning effect on newspaper circulation and henceforth on newspaper advertising that compelled editors to roll over and capitulate to PR’s demands for a more flattering coverage. For the opposition, this would mark as a successful political campaign.
But that still doesn’t take away the fact that the Opposition had failed or refused to engage the Press by writing to them, lobbying editors and reporters, and owners, hectoring shareholders, some of them well-known CEOs leading major public corporations and institutions, picking out the contentious reports and debunking them one by one, engaging in written or oral debates while rallying a mass audience. It could have been a win-win situation, especially in this age of marvellous communications where there are many platforms to choose from to construct a confrontation with the media.
By all means, get entangled with the media where it matters most: words and meaning, ideas and concepts, abstracts and notions in the hues of black, white and grey by employing every form of democratic expression. Demonstrate in front of the newspapers’ premises if you feel feisty enough. Hand out leaflets and pamphlets on the streets or on the Net. It has been done before and it was praiseworthy. What happened to your free speech, free expression and free association idealism?
That’s why the argument that only a minuscule mind would prick a politician to shout the word “boycott” still holds true. Boycotting is just too convenient. Too pat. But here’s the speculative rub: if the situation had been reversed, and it looks like a possibility…if Anwar’s bragging that he has the “numbers” is true, would the PKR, or Pas, or the DAP – with the weight of government and governance on their backs and their souls – have not shot for a boycott but an outright ban of the publications? Just like what the Home Ministry would enforce if any publication runs foul of the variety of Press and sedition laws. The answer is moot but the possibility will always nag the mind.
And using this same perspective, would Suara Keadilan, Rocket and Harakah denounce their own leaders, expose all negative aspects of their leadership the same way they dissed Government leaders? Most likely not. So, why didn’t the PR leaders announce a three-prong attack using the three parties’ organs to rebut Utusan Malaysia? They don’t have the numbers perhaps, in influence and circulation. But we’ll see if Suara Keadilan, now that it has secured a Home Ministry permit for mass circulation, can stand toe-to-toe with the mainstream media and give them a pasting in the marketplace.
In any case, what the PKR or Pas or DAP is doing or had done in the name of boycotts over the decades is simply a form of populism, a virulent political philosophy no less; more anti-intellectual than anything else, while it baits the common guy and the gullible voter into supporting the parties’ cause. It’s also cheap for the parties.
On hindsight, the intellectual prowess the opposition so touts when it goads government leaders to enter into public debates or setting up commissions of inquiries becomes a sodden fallacy because in truth, a boycott of a newspaper, or any form of publication, including Suara Keadilan, Rocket and Harakah, will be entrenched as an exercise in intellectual idiocy.
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