Where are you going?

Time to start writing for Hartalmsm Reconsecrated again, perhaps one requiring only a light comment.

Today I select Free Malaysia Today's article Saiful’s dad makes 360 degree ‘sodomy’ turn.

I wrote to FMT that it's not the article per se nor it contents that I have issues with, but its title "... makes 360 degree ‘sodomy’ turn ..." and the opening sentence "Making a full circle, Saiful Bukhari Azlan’s father admitted that ..."

Obviously the reporter wanted to indicate that Saiful's father has changed (belakang pusing from) his previous statement about the reported issue, a volte-face so to speak.

Then the correct directional term to be employed should have been "180 degrees", from, say, North to South, a totally different direction from his earlier northward thrust, and definitely not "360 degrees", which would then mean he turned around from a northward direction back to the north again, or making a full circle to return to the original direction.

I must say I have been impressed by the swift response from FMT's editor, K Kabilan who agreed with my observation. This is most commendable during a period when most editors and journalists must be very busy with election news.

Thank you Kabilan.

Malaysiakini failed to show up Chua Soi Lek's misinformation on Perak

Malaysiakini reported in its Coup for MCA as PKR founder-member joins up that a founding member of PKR Ng Lum Yong has joined MCA. But the item that caught Hartalmsm Reconsecrated’s eye was on the report of what MCA’s president Chua Soi Lek had said.


Malaysiakini reported: The MCA president continued to harp on the issue of Islamic state, citing the previous Perak Pakatan Rakyat state government as an example of PAS dominance of the opposition coalition.


He pointed out that PAS had only won six state seats in Perak in 2008 compared to DAP and PKR, which controlled 18 and seven seats respectively. Yet, the mentri besar was selected from PAS.


While Malaysiakini no doubt was only reporting what Chua had said, it failed to make mention of the fact that Chua was disingenuous, deliberately misrepresenting the situation.


Every adult who read a newspaper in March 2008 knows that it was not PAS which demanded Mohd Nizar Jamaluddin to be MB when Pakatan won rule of the Perak State. In fact a PKR ADUN had been chosen by Pakatan to be MB.


It was the regent, Raja Nazrin, who ignored the ruling party's recommended candidate for the MB's position and went on to personally appoint Nizar to the post.


Hartalmsm Reconsecrated’s job is not to comment on the constitutional correctness and intention of Raja Nazrin's action at that time, but to point out that Malaysiakini, while reporting faithfully what Chua Soi Lek had said, should be obligated to make a comment on the misinformation by Chua Soi Lek.

Bernama's credibility

Sometimes the blogger needn't write anything, because, as in this post, the editorial from The Malaysian Insider titled Bernama’s credibility says it all.

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JAN 20 - Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim took exception to state news agency Bernama’s coverage of his speech in Alor Star yesterday in which it reported that he wanted a discussion with Datuk Seri Najib Razak instead of a debate.

This after the letter the PKR de facto leader had sent to the prime minister inviting him to debate about the Pakatan Rakyat PR 100-day programme.

Whether Najib will eventually take up the challenge and make Anwar break into a “fever” is another question.

What is in question is Bernama’s coverage of Anwar’s comments.

The state news agency did not skip a beat and reported Anwar’s objection to the reporting but made no attempt to say its report was wrong.

Unlike the July 24 2010 article that made Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng livid when the national news agency filed a story with an incomplete quote and suggested when it was not so that he had accepted in good faith a reproach from the prime minister and deputy prime minister.

Bernama later apologised for the mistake.

Is there a pattern to Bernama’s reporting that upsets only one bench in Parliament

After all it is a federally-funded news organisation that must serve Malaysia not just the government of the day. Its duty is to report accurately and impartially not to favour the ruling government over its political foes.

Bernama has to be careful about its role. Its reporting is used by almost all media organisations in Malaysia and also by foreign news agencies and newspapers such as Reuters, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Kyodo and Bloombery to name a few.

And it counts The Malaysian Insider and other news portals as its clients.

If any of its reporting raises doubts then its credibility is at stake. And it will lose clients and only report the news that Putrajaya wants to hear which is not what any good media organisation is all about.

Malaysians have punished news organisations which abdicate their roles of reporting fairly by boycotting several newspapers and driving down their circulations and ability to make money.

Bernama should not tempt this fate It won’t just lose money - or get the government to top up its deficit - but it will lose its name pun intended.

As a client and more so as a Malaysian we expect Bernama to report accurately and fairly And if mistakes are made to correct them swiftly and apologise appropriately. Keep to professional standards and don’t go the way of some media outlets in the country.

Malaysiakini 'routed' in article on MTUC elections

Headlines on 29 December 2010 - PKR duo routed in MTUC polls

The Malaysiakini headlines for a report on the MTUC polls was perhaps too sensational. The use of the term ‘routed’ implies that the losers in the election were overwhelmingly defeated.

The dictionary defines 'rout' (present tense of 'routed') as:

(a) a defeat attended with disorderly flight; dispersal of a defeated force in complete disorder: to put an army to rout.

(b) any overwhelming defeat: a rout of the home team by the state champions.

But the details in the news article show that the new president of MTUC, Mohd Khalid Atan won 225 votes in the MTUC election while the former president Syed Shahir Syed Mohamud received 213. In other words, the majority was only 12 votes in a total turnout of 438. Hardly a rout!

Khalid's running mate Abdul Halim Mansur beat Syed Shahir's running mate Abdullah Sani Abdul Hamid in a three-corner fight for the secretary-general's post. The votes received by the 3 contestants were 188, 165 and 117 respectively, where the majority was only 23 in a total turnout of 470. It was certainly no landslide.

As Fred Tan, one of the readers commented: The majorities of the winning were hardly considered as routing. Please be more careful so as not to be misleading.

Another reader Victor Johan supported Fred Tan.

Maybe a better choice of words in the headlines would have been more appropriate.

Why Hartalmsm Reconsecrated?

On 30 July 2009, well-known socio-political activist Haris Ibrahim of The People’s Parliament blog, gave his blessing to a new blog called Hartalmsm. Haris warned:

Spin-doctoring editors, watch out!

The word ‘hartal’ is an Indian word (in several Indian languages) for strike action. According to Wikipedia, it was used often during the Indian Independence Movement. It is mass protest often involving a total shutdown of workplaces, offices, shops, courts of law as a form of civil disobedience. In addition to being a general strike, it involves the voluntary closing of schools and places of business. It is a mode of appealing to the sympathies of a government to change an unpopular or unacceptable decision.

In like fashion, it can also mean 'boycott', which had been the case when the Hartalmsm blog was created, while 'msm' stands for mainstream media.

At that time, the English language msm were the New Straits Times, Star, Malay Mail, etc, all in the hands of the ruling party Barisan National (BN). Today the msm has expanded to include The Malaysian Insider, The Edge, etc and even Malaysiakini, the last still a small online (only) news portal but which is gradually growing in stature and credibility as a propagator of news and current affairs.

There were and are of course msm in other languages such as Malay, Chinese, Tamil.

Because the ruling party used and still misuses the msm as a propaganda machine, Hartalmsm was set up to monitor and expose the lies in the msm news.

That’s what the image said: Have you had enough of lies? Boycott the local newspapers.

I don’t agree with the boycott call because that would be denying a sector of Malaysia a voice to reach out to the Malaysian public, much as it may differ in political ideology or stand to the founding members of the blog. The better solution would be to do what Hartalmsm was set up to do, expose the lies by msm. And that’s precisely what Haris Ibrahim, in his support of Hartalmsm, annotated as the raison d'être of the blog:

Spin-doctoring editors, watch out!

But in recent times I note with regret that Hartalmsm has lost the plot, and has seriously deviated from its objective of exposing lies. It has become a mere political blog, just like any other partisan political blog.

Instead of monitoring the msm for lies, distortions or misinformation, or deliberate omission of happenings that could and should be made known to the public, it has taken to criticizing politicians from certain parties.

While criticizing politicians or political parties (short of telling lies or being slanderous) is a legitimate activity in a democracy, obviously it is inappropriate to misuse and thus abuse the Hartalmsm blog as a vehicle for mere politicking, where the messages in some Hartalmsm posts have been immature, highly personal and even racist, with puerile caricatures and name calling - see this

Hartalmsm currently has 4 bloggers. Only one is known thus far to have misused the blog to indulge in politicking, at the behest of a 'friend', so he claims. Whether the other three bloggers have participated with him in his politicking penyelewengan in insulting a certain political party and its members, is yet unknown. Whether someone has hijacked and diverted the blog from monitoring msm lies into a political attack machine is also unknown, though this is a suspected likelihood.

But in the current situation where Hartalmsm has lost its way, I feel obligated to assume responsibility for the monitoring of msm, at least to honour Haris Ibrahim's advice to the blogosphere.

Initially I will limit my monitoring to only Malaysian English language msm, to include Malaysiakini, The Malaysian Insider, Star Online, New Straits Times and Malay Mail. Much later I will expand my scrutiny.

I will not include blogs under my volunteered scrutiny as these are not msm, save for one exception, Hartalmsm. Because Hartalmsm has endowed itself with the noble sheen of being a guardian of truth in msm publications for the benefit of the Malaysian public, a monitor of msm lies, but has now deviated badly from its original objective, it must also be subjected to the same monitoring it had earlier conducted on the msm.

I do not deem it the duty of this blog to, for example, defend Israel or attack Iran or Iranian President Ahmadinejad or Dr Mahathir, so long as the Malaysian msm report the international news in as accurate a manner as they possibly could. In some exceptions, where the news by international news media are obvious lies, gross distortions of facts or of a double standard or hypocritical nature, I may include these as fair game to comment on.

I promise a non-partisan approach and will abstain from attacking political parties or personalities, unless the personalities have been responsible for the msm publication of lies or misinformation or factual waffling, for example, columnists or guest writers (sometimes politicians) invited by msm to pen articles. Even then, I will only comment on the errors in the content of the publications. This blog is neither about the analyses of political trends nor assessments of the intentions or conduct of political personalities. It is also not a political medium for anyone.

This blog will be solely about msm lies, their incorrect or distorted reporting of factual events, misinformation or deliberate omission of actual happenings which could be significant news for the public. I will also bring to the attention of readers when two different sources in the msm published vastly differing reports about an event.

At a lower scale, the blog will also comment on obvious errors in the contents, such as incorrect use of English, spelling mistakes and exaggerations in news reports. I may also include what I opine to be funny, annoying or unique idiosyncrasies in media writings or grossly sexed-up headlines.

I’ll be basically doing what Hartalmsm was set up to do, supposed to do but in recent times did not do. Not only has it failed to do what its charter promises, but it has actually transformed its facility into a partisan political blog. Either due to hijacking or the personal political proclivities of a Hartalmsm blogger, I am convinced that Hartalmsm has already desecrated the high altar of its once noble aim. Suatu penyelewengan yang sangat serius.

This is why I call my blog Hartalmsm Reconsecrated.

I will depend greatly on and thus welcome the contributions of readers where I may be reached by email at guwawijaya1@yahoo.com

Thanks.