‘Give Najib a chance’
We are living in interesting times.there has been a flurry of activity in Malaysiakini menu for DAP .Every day new posts pop up, arguing that Second Finance Minister Johari Abdul Ghani IS wrong and MP Tony Pua.is right also read this Malaysian lawmakers lack of maturity and self-awareness
Malaysiakini Journalists, self-proclaimed neutral political watchers and average social media commentators have all been rattling a litany of praises forTony Pua. who, unfortunately, has had a steady record of making incendiary remarks, has a slew of criminal Criminal Intent: cases against him, and is a known rabble-rouser.But the most common refrain of the backers is this: give Johari Abdul Ghani a chance, as he will be controlled by Najib. Only time will tell if the commentators are right or if theirs is a delusional hope springing from a misplaced faith in dog-whistle politics.
Datuk Johari Abdul Ghani extraordinary act upon his ideas. They are not afraid of losing; the only thing that matters to them is realising his dreams. not afraid of being wrong either, or of accepting mistakes and stepping back. You cannot hope to be more than ordinary if you do not believe in yourself and your own strengths.An extraordinary person lives his life fully. The trick to leading an extraordinary life is to lead your simple, ordinary life and be open to experiencing the extraordinary you find within it. Striving too hard to be different is not the way to stand out; rather it is the way to becoming an object of ridicule. Just live your life fully and by your rules; do not make compromises you do not believe in. Stand up for what is right and work with focus and sincerity.
is one who has a strong sense of what is right or wrong, and who chooses to stand by the right, no matter what the compulsions not to do so. The moment people compromise with morality, they become very, very ordinary for me. Ordinary people will witness an accident or a victim of violence and carry on, allowing themselves a myriad excuses about why they cannot get involved. It is the extraordinary person who will step up and offer help or call up the cops or a helpline and ensure help reaches
An important objective of financial sector reforms is to move Malaysia towards a more rules-based system. In particular, it means that financial sector regulators have to be made more accountable and their actions should not be arbitrary.memoirs of a turbulent stint confirms something that quickly becomes apparent to journalists who cover the beat. Regardless of the party in power, neither finance ministers nor senior bureaucrats in the ministry believe in a rules-based system. There have been exceptions, but generally arbitrariness marks their decisions.to report on their monitoring activities which handicapped their functioning.
But there are some striking similarities between this expression of hope and the faith reposed by the liberal West in the intentions of Nazi Germany in the early 1930s. Of course, I don’t mean to make apocalyptic comparisons between the two eras and regimes; I am only trying to find similarities in the approaches taken by the western press then and Malaysiakini now.
In today’s India, socialism is a taboo word; and if you criticise the government of the day or the party in power, or Najib himself, then you are branded a “Leftist” and traitor, and therefore a “traitor” and “anti-national”. But as history has shown, it were the same derided socialists who had realised what Hitler or Malaysikini was even before the rest of the world took note.Malaysiakini haves been particularly nasty in the last few years against UMNO and Najib
journalists and still biased against Najib,The difference between stenography and journalism is that journalists have the right to twist a fact, bring in alternative facts, make a fact check and question the very premise of presentation. they are supposed to report honestly about, so that their readers,Malaysian who are mostly ignorant, get enlightened? should be to report truthfully and create some empathy amongst its readers or viewers for a country that is unique and endearing and whose Malay civilization, that viewed the world as One family, has survived centuries of savage onslaught, including by the British, who are still trying to lecture Najib AND UNMO also read this Malaysiakini an unconscious sense of superiority Separating facts from alternative facts
“Newspapers are owned and published by rich men. Rich men all belong to the same club. Sure, there’s competition — hard, tough competition for circulation, for newsbeats, for exclusive stories. Just so long as it doesn’t damage the prestige and privilege and position of the owners. If it does, down comes the lid.”
This is not from any book of quotations. But it does suggest that truth finds a better home in fiction than anthology. The author is Raymond Chandler, an authentic master of modern fiction who created the shabby and sharp private detective Philip Marlowe. Marlowe — and Chandler — lived amid the shadows that enveloped wealth and crime in mid-20th century Los Angeles; they knew that the difference was marginal and the price was high if you talked too much. Marlowe talked too much. He did something even more risky. He spoke the truth.
Newspapers in his time made the rich richer with their explosive mix of political influence and advertising monopoly. A British Prime Minister of the 1930s famously charged newspapers with enjoying the privilege of a harlot, exercising power without responsibility. But this was a self-serving taunt. Media barons can give Prime Ministers advice from a pillow, but it is Prime Ministers who let them into the bedroom. Be that as it may, money has always chased power through media, and every democracy has provided this incestuous opportunity.
Transition destabilises any industry, and this is happening with newspapers. At least some of the rich are becoming poorer, thanks to newspapers they own. The most dramatic illustration has been the sale of the Washington Post by the Graham family to Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon. This transfer does not suggest, as many have moaned, that news is going out of business; at worst, it could suggest that paper is going out of business. Bezos bought the Post with spare change in a forgotten trouser pocket, but he rose from denim to riches through the information trade. Newspapers will be reshaped, as they should be from time to time, but this does not change the fundamental need for an information carrier.
It is a car with two drivers. Owners step into journalist space through a conundrum called “publisher”. Editors comfort themselves with the romance of independence, and perhaps there is the occasional powerful personality who dominates a newsroom at the expense of the shareholder. But that is the exception. Editorial decisions are a shared enterprise. The Washington Post became an indelible chapter in media history when its series of reports, familiar to us as the Watergate exposé, brought down Richard Nixon just after he had won a landslide endorsement from the people. But the decision to run the investigation was made as much by Katherine Graham, the owner, as by Ben Bradlee, the editor.
Bezos is a wise chap. He has appointed Bob Woodward, one of the stars of Watergate, as managing editor. The key to media does not lie in ownership, but in credibility. Without credibility, a newspaper is just wrapping for fish and chips if not a rag for rubbish. Credibility makes journalists indispensable to publishers.
Are publishers indispensable to journalists? Yes. Journalists may be know-alls, but the one thing they do not know is how to run a business. The newspaper industry is also an industry. It is not an accident that owners of an old Indian media conglomerate like Times of India and a new one like Zee have a very healthy respect for profits. They understand what journalists should acknowledge, that a newspaper or television channel cannot stand up against any government without a healthy bottom line. They do not have to look over their shoulder if they want to break stories at the cost of a ruling family’s displeasure.
A media house fails when it forgets that both credibility and cash flow are important. The list of Indian media companies who have forgotten this basic rule is long and growing. Behind very thin curtains, big names are crumbling. The cost of plaster being applied to disguise this collapse is the transfer of shares and control. We will not find out the full truth till the end arrives, suddenly, and not without a residual whiff of bitterness, as in the case of the Washington Post.
But media will survive, whether in America or India, even if owners do not. Information is not an aggregate of everything on the highway. It is a cull of that which is relevant. Of course, there are interests, as the cynic Raymond Chandler noted, with his usual caustic flourish. But even the super rich cannot hold on to these laser scalpels called newspapers if they do not understand that while their personal interests may occasionally dent the integrity of a product, they should never damage it.
A good newspaper proprietor feeds the goose that lays golden eggs. He does not put it on the menu of a last supper.
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