The Hypocrisy of Main Stream Media and Broken Promises of the Najib Administration

Organisers of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s talk told news editors today to only send Malay reporters and television crew to cover the event.

Majlis Bekas Wakil Rakyat Malaysia held a discourse entitled “Malay race and the future” at the Tun Hussein Onn Memorial here.

An Indian reporter from the news portal Malaysiakini was barred from entering the hall and later was also barred from the press conference.

A representative from the organising committee told reporters that Dr Mahathir had said that he did not want the news portal to cover the talk.

However, an aide to the former prime minister denied such an order was given and said the allegation was ludicrous.

When the representative was confronted again, he said he had “received orders from the top”.

“We received orders from the top. We didn’t want any controversy from the event,” he said.

When pressed if the reporter was barred because of her race, the representative just walked away and refused to comment.

 

This column is probably my most severe criticism of Dr Mahathir Mohamad‘s logic system currently made apparent by some of his incoherent statements. The New Straits Times quoted him as saying with a headline that, “having too many parties will split the nation.”

He was of course agreeing with the Registrar of Societies who had given a professional opinion on the matter. The registrar’s logic was defensible from a public policy point of view, although yet debatable but probably meant to elicit comments.

As for Mahathir’s (left) comments, I failed to see his logic. In the 1980s when Mahathir became prime minister, among the first and earliest books he instructed senior government servants to read was Kenichi Ohmae‘sThe Mind of a Strategist. I was registrar at INTAN (National Institute of Administration–Institut Tadbiran Negara) and was advised by the director to read the book. In fact, the entire leadership of INTAN also read the book.

Among the ideas promoted in this book is the skill of how to deconstruct reality into relevant base parts and then to reconstruct the same reality into new wholes but of different permutations or combinations. Therefore, I fail to understand why and how Mahathir’s current logic system operates; it appears that he does not understand this model of the strategic thinking any more.

Many small parties or groups can conceivably always still form new governments (BN has 14 parties at last count) and therefore regardless of what they believe as their party positions on issues, they have to finally coalesce into two alternatives for governance, right? Even in Thailand this is already happening so evidently.

What is the new and shifting reality of the newer world order? At the ELLTA, the Leadership and Learning Conference I attended, one of the questions we discussed and debated was whether “theories are still universally valid?”

There were of course two distinct schools of thought and arguments about these alternative models. One, belonging to the school of objectivists, mostly of the physical science alma mater, argued the need for some kind of applied universality. The other were subjectivists and from the school of ethnicists who argued for local and contextual imperatives for all realities, including their Universalist theories.

Defying rational logical deduction

But, even that statement about reality was only relative or, an oxymoron at best, in terms of logic systems. It defies rational logical deduction.

Now, let us revisit the Mahathir hypothesis that, “too many parties will split the nation.” First, there are two levels of units of analysis involved in any such discussion. One is the obvious but idealised level of reality we call the nation-state. The other is the reality of “numerous parties,” as political and legally approved formal organisations.

Mahathir is saying that too many small splinter political groups of sub-optimising and will lead to the destruction of the nation-state ideal. True?

I think his logic system is erroneous. Why? The nation-state is always an ideal in one’s mind or heart. Vision 2020 was the idealised picture that Mahathir himself painted about Malaysia “as a developed society in our own mould.” Najib Tun Razak has called this same or similar dream or envisioned reality into the future, as 1Malaysia. That is now our brand of nation-state ideal.

Our very Distinguished Professor of UKM, AB Shamsul, will call this a pipe dream because he rather vehemently states, “we are only a state but not yet a nation.” So, Mahathir, whither are you really headed with this kind of logic system of yours? And the mainstream media blindly quotes you and repeats the mantra for the whole world to appreciate such ‘illogical logic?‘ Good and able leaders must send younger nations in newer directions coherent with newer realities.

Colonel Muammar Gadaffi is now finding out that managing and leading a nation is more than those of a mere battalion. He must not have gone to strategy school. But, who then is Mahathir’s real audience? At the 1st NCOI, I publicly applauded Mahathir’s first seven years of leadership in Malaysia as “those of a statesman.” I was immediately and severely attacked and condemned by some NGO-types present; for they described his leadership as “the destroyer of the judicial system in Malaysia”, and rightly so I think now.

But, was it not in the second half, after the UMNO A and B split that the period of rot set in?Are his statements today therefore consistent with his first period of leadership of the nation, or are they only reactions now, in the third generation period of leadership? And, that too merely to “protect and preserve the failedMalay Agenda, as defined by himself?”

But, why blame others for the failure? Mahathir had all the time and opportunity but he failed? Why then did you really fail, Mahathir? Is that not why also you cried over spilt milk with your, “perjuangan yang belum selesai” poem?

What then can we all learn about true, good and real paradigm leadership ofNelson Mandela (right), or Martin Luther King Jr, or Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Teresa ? Can you ever achieve their paradigm leadership status, Mahathir?

Nation-state Politics of Statesmanship’

I honestly do not know, but I do think that you still can; but your role and posture must change radically. You should move beyond the politics of parties; you should begin to assume the role of a retired mentor-minister and begin the nation-state politics of statesmanship.

So dear Mahathir, please stop all your petty politicking and start becoming a statesman as you can and have the capacity for. Please get all the other equally qualified “famous Tuns” and start a Wise Person’s Council which we can call our national treasury of knowledge or National TOK. And yes, include Tok Nik Aziz of Kelantan too and ex-Minister Rafidah Aziz.

Some others too who should join that group sooner and retire from active politics. But please do include NH Chan; for he is not your eternal enemy but really someone who thinks differently from you and holds to different worldviews and values. Giving him space is also wisdom.

Finally, Mahathir, worldviews are never wrong but only always different. A worldview can be inconsistent but never wrong; they are the deeply held belief system of values, morals and ethics, reflected by attitudes and behaviours of individuals. We do not really know others until we get to understand and listen more comprehensively to the actors themselves; without relying on false reports and lies about others.

Therefore, to me, while you became prime minister, you did many good things; my frank and greater admiration and respect is rather currently reserved for people like YB Lim Kit Siang  who transcends three generations of quality service to this nation. To me he is a true nationalist politician par excellence, much like the late Dr Tan Chee Khoon.

This column is also therefore dedicated to LKS for his 70th birthday. Happy Birthday Brother Kit and May the Good Lord richly bless you.

KJ JOHN was in public service for 29 years. He is now  Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Policy Science at UCSI University, Malaysia. The views expressed above are truths that matter to him as an individual citizen wearing private and civil society hats and therefore are not opinions of the university or faculty. Do send feedback to him at kjjohn@ohmsi.net

It's common knowledge that no broadcase news organizati­on is self supporting­.  I wonder where Fox News gets its income from to pay the money they pay their talking heads.  Surely it is not from their weak advertisin­g base so it must be from Fox Sports and Entertainm­ent.  Or is it from foreign sources?  The public would sure like to know.no fan of murdoch but SkyNews has also done a great job during this Libyan crisis. Fox has never been much more than a tabloid news channel and should be embarassed at what they have done over the last decade or so. Al Jazeera English are superb with real news -- no wonder so much of the BBC staff has defected and joined their ranks. The US needs to get back to serious journalism and not the lovefest they pawn off as analysis. Murrow and Clinton is merely saying the obvious, the US Media today is far from unbiased, fails to report the News on a plethora of issues that may cut the profits of the media company. Is this a fair and open media? Hardly.

I was out in Los Angeles at UCLA talking about the Peace Corps' 50th anniversary this week. (The Corps started when John F. Kennedy decided it was a good idea getting young people out there helping countries to develop and in the process learning something about how the rest of the world looks at things). It came to me that everything good about that idea is being assaulted these days. Huckabee was out there trashing learning anything from the rest of the world.

The whole stupidization that began with Bush's inane attempt to rename French fries. Now this guy Huckabee is going on the radio singing a song that the president isn't really 'one of us,' because his father, who stayed with him until the age of 2, infected him with some kind of foreignness. You know: He's a Kenyan, a secret Muslim, he's over there where those African people are, where those different people live. I thought we were beyond this yahoo talk, this fear of the world, this monkey trial nonsense.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

But we're not, are we? We have knuckleheads playing to the god-knows-who crowd saying how Obama was somehow involved with the Maus Maus, hanging around madrasa schools. All he did was right as a regular American kid, playing basketball on a championship team in Hawaii. That's what i wanted to do growing up, be a championship basketball player. He went to Catholic school, like I did. He got into occidental college, then he went to Harvard law and made the law review. What more do you want his kid to do? He's done everything right. Look at his marriage. Michelle has done everything right. Her brother is a top basketball coach out of Oregon State. Their kids look like they're from a picture book. This isn't just the American Dream -- it's darn near perfect. And what is this right wing goon squad doing? They keep talking about his father? His grandfather? What about his grandfather that fought under Patton in World War II? What are these people looking for -- some evidence that he's black? Is that it? They ought to be ashamed of themselves. You know what's un-American? Huckabee and Newt and the rest of this.

The media is 'told' what to report by the Plutocrats in charge- aka BIG Special interests.

Al Jazeera has been upfront and honest about the increasing dangers of climate change- the US Media has been mute. Clinton is righA decade ago the U.S. government attacked Al-Jazeera as a propagator of anti-American propaganda. Now Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is citing the network for fine news coverage – and tweaking the U.S. media in the process.

The Arab broadcaster says it's ready to take advantage of what it considers a major boost in its acceptance in the United States. Clinton, on the week many U.S. television outlets were preoccupied by the spectacle of actor Charlie Sheen, suggested during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that American networks were falling behind in the competition for information.

Al-Jazeera has been a leader in changing people's minds and attitudes, Clinton told lawmakers Wednesday.

"Like it or hate it, it is really effective," Clinton said. "In fact, viewership of Al-Jazeera is going up in the United States because it is real news."

"You may not agree with it, but you feel like you're getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news that is not providing information to us, let alone foreigners."

In fact, Al-Jazeera's television viewership hasn't gone up much in the U.S. because it is still not widely available, seen only on scattered cable systems in Vermont, Ohio and Washington, D.C.

But online viewership of Al-Jazeera English spiked during the demonstrations in Egypt – up 2,500 percent at its peak, with nearly half of the followers from the United States, the network said.

Al-Jazeera has taken advantage of the moment, asking visitors to its website to click a tab that automatically generates a letter to the users' local cable system encouraging them to add the network. More than 40,000 e-mails have been generated, spokeswoman Molly Conroy said.

The network's leaders in the past two weeks have also visited with Time Warner, Comcast and Cablevision executives to seek space on their systems, she said.

"The events in Egypt have convinced an increasing number of Americans, the secretary of state included, that the coverage Al-Jazeera has provided for these events is something that is seen as a dramatic shift in perception of the network," said Abderrahim Foukara, Al-Jazeera's Washington bureau chief.

Fox News Channel's Michael Clemente said he was "surprised and kind of curious" by Clinton's remarks.

"We've got leadership issues there, the safety of people, the safety of our own people," said Clemente, senior vice president for news. "Some big issues. All of a sudden there are headlines about Al-Jazeera versus the news in this country? It's just surprising. Curious more than surprising."

Representatives from CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC news all declined comment Friday on what Clinton said.

But former CNN Washington bureau chief Frank Sesno agreed with her assessment.

"She's right," said Sesno, who is now director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.

"Cable news has become cable noise. It was intended to be an opportunity to inform people, and instead it has become an opportunity to inflame people."

The cable news shift toward opinion has paid off handsomely for ratings leader Fox News Channel and, to a lesser extent, MSNBC.

CNN has resisted a partisan drift to concentrate more on news and has suffered in the ratings the past couple of years. With budget cuts, the influence of the major broadcast news divisions has been waning.

Even with the move toward opinion, the news networks often provide informative coverage when there is breaking news, such as the Egyptian revolution, Sesno said.

What's lacking is an attention span – a willingness to stick with stories and provide context. There's an addiction to "this just in," he said.

Clinton's complimentary assessment of the Arab broadcaster is an about-face from just a decade ago, when the Bush administration complained that Al-Jazeera promoted those who opposed the United States. Former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld calling it "inexcusably biased."

That hostility played a big role in the network failing to get any traction with U.S. cable systems.

Al-Jazeera's Foukara said that with overseas audiences, particularly in the Arab world, the broadcaster finds a hunger for news.

"You can stay focused on a story for hours or days or even weeks on end," he said, "while in the U.S., the assumption is that people are not as interested in news, particularly news outside of the United States."

Sesno said the unrest in the Arab world could prove as important to Al-Jazeera as the first Gulf War was for establishing CNN in the United States.