Please read. I agree with Jahabar completely in this!
Did The Star screw up with its Saturday front page? And is the outrage and official response enough, too little or too much? And is The Star doing enough, too little or too much by suspending two senior editors?
Let's get to the facts first. The Star lead story on Saturday was headlined Malaysian Terrorist Leader and below that with a thin divider was a photograph of a terawih prayer session that marks the Ramadan fasting month.
Two other newspapers, namely New Straits Times and Utusan Malaysia had similar layouts of similar themes on that day.
Remember, this is Saturday. Nothing happens, no reaction to the front pages of the three newspapers (let's leave their ownership or bias out of this, ok!)
Sunday, some people make noise about Saturday edition of The Star. In a nutshell, it would appear that combination of headline and picture would make Muslims appear to be terrorists.
Let's forget what happened in Mindanao, Jakarta and Bangkok or Manchester and other parts of the world. We live in our own microcosm and the rest of the world doesn't matter. No, really! 1MDB investigations around the world don't matter, do they?
The drama happens, politicians make noise, police reports are made, The Star is hauled up. Four editors turn up to see the Home Ministry people on Monday, and The Star then says 2 seniors will be suspended.
This is really no different from 2011 when The Star fouled up over a Ramadan supplement and added a pork dish to it. Insensitive? Clueless more like it.
Clueless is the word really, for those who don't know how to read newspapers anymore. There is a page, it has a headline, probably has a photograph too, and some advertisements.
No different from a digital page. The only difference is that it can be unrelated. And speaking of advertisement, some went further to castigate The Star for having a massage advertisement below the terawih picture.
So, did The Star screw up with the layout? I don't think so. This is pretty much its standard layout and it did clearly say FULL STORY IN PAGE 3.
Did it refer to the photograph in that article? NO!
Did the photograph refer to the article above it? NO!
Was it clear that the headline and article had nothing to do with the photograph on the front page? YES if you read newspapers regularly and don't think Muslims are generally terrorists. NO if you don't read newspapers and rely on a snapshot. And feel people think Muslims are generally terrorists.
See, it really is a matter of perception, and perhaps sensitivity. In this case, I think it is manufactured outrage. To emphasise, buttress the point on who is in charge of this country.
You don't think so? The NST and Utusan didn't get the same treatment as The Star.
And I don't think any of them should get that treatment. It is a matter of news sense, layout and picture of the day. The only failure to me is The Star did not choose a great picture.
Now the second and third questions. Did the authorities and The Star do the correct thing, under-react or over-react?
I'd say over-react. Why go hammer and tongs at the newspaper which apparently isn't being read by as many as before except by way of snapshots now?
If anything, put some sense into the editors about photograph selection. And maybe layout. Do we need to mention sedition?
What will happen, and perhaps that's the intention, is editors will now just do the bare minimum rather than push the envelope in Malaysian journalism. We will be left with propaganda (What am I saying? We are left with propaganda in print media.)
You know what I mean though.
We live at a time when the media is called an enemy in the US, or fake news. We live at a time when everyone can publish their own version of news in social media and blogs and it gets carried and believed.
We live at a time when journalists who go the extra mile get done in for going beyond ever-shrinking parameters set by those with vested interests and agenda.
The best journalists I know are jobless or have given up, and the few good ones try to do better in this business. Some keep quiet because they have jobs to keep, mouths to feed. Some dare and die for it.
I don't believe The Star senior editors deserve suspension. The Star screwed up on that. But I think I know why they did it. They want to avoid a suspension and keep jobs in an already difficult market.
If they get punished with a suspension, they will suffer what The Edge suffered two years ago. I know what that is like. The portal I worked at, The Malaysian Insider, suffered a block and was shut down within weeks of that block.
Malaysian journalists straddle a fine line of scooping, informing and being told to behave by all and sundry. Everyone just wants their version of news in their comfortable silos.
They don't want the truth, the facts, the reality. And when there is an opportunity to put down the media, they will do it. Not just the government, it's the rest of us.
It could be politics, it could be our own bias, it could be that we think print media is just a waste of time.
But you know, when you just see lifestyle news and anything that makes you spend money for no other reason than greed, you're basically picking up advertisements rather than news.
Journalism isn's the fourth estate any more here in Malaysia. It is the plaything of the rich and powerful; and the target of the sensitive and the outraged.
What The Star is going through this week is just another depth plumbed in Malaysia. How low can we go? Perhaps beyond bottom.
#journalism
