The General Elections and the media

AT the centre of the period leading to the 13th General Elections (GE) is the media. It would not be too much for me to say that never in past GEs has the media been put to as great a test as it is being put through now. Indeed, the media is living in a very different time.
 The primary agent for change as far as the media is concerned, is the internet and the advent of telecommunication. With arrival of the internet and advancement of telecommunication, the media as we know it in the past have lost its monopoly in the dissemination of information to the public.

 Newspapers as we know them, are fast becoming obsolete as the public no longer need to wait for breakfast time tomorrow to read of an event that happened this evening. With the ease in which real time news can be obtained, newspapers have had to overhaul their operations as hard news, as newsmen calls them, is no longer a commodity in the information business.
 Along with the freedom from the limitations of time the internet presents also came the wider freedom of expression. Anybody can disseminate information to the public today. All that they have to do is to start a blog, have a Facebook or a Twitter account.
 The only barrier left are legislations that governs misdemeanours such as defamation, libel and slander. Internet or otherwise, it is still a civil offence for one to defame and slander another. Even tougher, are laws governing sedition.
 Suddenly, the traditional media now found new competitors and what formidable competitors the internet has given rise to.
 The new media has also allowed dissenting views and opinions more space in the public fora. In the past, the traditional media which mostly adopted pro-establishment editorial policies, have been seen as not being balanced in their dissemination of information, especially when it comes to politics.
 Society now has alternative sources of news and information, besides just the newspapers, television and radio stations.
 In the 2008 GE, bloggers and internet news portals played a pivotal role in the then Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and the Barisan Nasional coalition party's mediocre performance. Abdullah was disliked by the blogging community for reasons I shall not discuss here.
 But what is clear is that bloggers and news portals are now influential forces in as far as information dissemination is concerned, never mind what level in the standard of truth they observe in their blog postings.
 The primary reason is that for too long the state has taken for granted that society will just accept as the truth whatever is being told to them. What the state did not notice was that with the increasing level of intelligence amongst members of the public, they seek alternative views and different perspectives before making their decisions which to subscribe to.
  It turned out that society liked and in turn, believed what was posted in the blogs and news portals about the then Barisan Nasional government in the period leading to the 2008 GE. I am sure we remember the outcome.
 Although we can say that the expression of dissenting views via the internet started with the sacking of the then Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in the late 1990s, it was in the 2008 GE that the internet gave the traditional media its greatest challenge.
  The situation has not changed. In fact, the sitting government and the traditional media themselves have taken to cyberspace like ants to sugar. Every newspaper now has an online news site and the number of bloggers writing in support of the government too has increased exponentially.
 Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak was right when he said recently that the forthcoming 13th general elections will be fought largely in cyberspace.
 As for the traditional media, especially the newspapers, it is yet another sign of their declining influence. It will be up to newspaper publishers how they will respond to the situation.
 However, even for online news portals and bloggers, the coming elections will be an important arena for the public to assess their worth. While the public seems to have adopted online news as a fast source of information, they will surely also demand the truth.
 Indeed, the general sentiment among the public is that they have had enough of being fed just one side of the story and will tolerate no more, be it from the traditional or even the new media.

ENDS