It’s been ten years – flitting in the history of the written word – but Malaysiakini editors are already patting each others’ chin and stroking themselves on the shoulders. Thus, they have declared: “Our Agenda is Press Freedom“.
How touching, their way of declaring victory. And so very Yankee, so ethically uplifting. They make it sound like it were a successful Christian evangelical mission, which then had to be endorsed by … someone bearing, not coincidentally, such a name, Janet Steele. (If you’re into manufacturing, consider her the onsite QC factory inspector despatched from Washington.) “Press Freedom” is the sort of tag line you’d expect from the NED/CIA, from which Mkini refrains from making public and overt in the seed money it had received in the beginning.
Note what is not publicly declared of Mkini’s agenda: improved political participation, wider national discourse or, simply, for a better informed Malaysia. Instead, they had to say “Press Freedom”. The tenth anniversary, you see, is also Mkini’s report card day to the NED, which must in turn report to the American Congress.
But, in Malaysia, look what Press Freedom offers by way of licence: Utusan doctoring photographs, Anwar sues the the New Straits Times for MYR100 million, Ridhuan Tee gets to name-call, in print, babies “bastards”. With Press Freedom, the police gets away with shooting dead (again) people, an act they then justify, through the print and the media, as shooting “criminals”. After street crimes, there will be a rise in political crimes, the cause of which Hishamuddin Hussein would then be able to attribute, by inversion of the logic, to the demonisation of Press Freedom.
Mkini’s problem is this: there is never any proof that Press Freedom, the greater or the lesser, will give rise to or will secure increased individual liberty, even democracy. In many cases, it is to the contrary. There are countries that get along pretty well without it, as they are those with it. This is why Mkini mouths platitudes after its Western masters, treating Press Freedom as an end, not human welfare which can be secured without its existence or without Utusan or NST. It never says what’s the big deal with Press Freedom because the argument against it is equally devastating to the editor’s job, hence salary.
Malaysia Today, although clearly partisan, deserves more respect than Mkini. At the minimum, the former does not claim to be “unbias”, whereas editors at the latter spew reports from all the holes on their faces and posteriors. That, to them, is the meaning of Press Freedom, free to say, write anything, hence deliver the power editors hanker after but can’t get at the ballot box or from the barrel of a gun. It is an idea shared with American foreign policy that uses the “Freedom” Index to measure a country’s alignment to Washington interest: those out of alignment are branded as unfree. This is all very double-speak – war is peace, freedom is tyranny – but not that Mkini editors are adept with these Orwellian methods. It’s just that they’re a naive, imbecile lot, readily given to Yankee persuasion and the New York Times.
