Into the newsroom

Me, at the town square, Vladivostok, Russia.

I STARTED reading newspapers when I was about seven. It was 1968 and America was getting increasingly involved in that senseless war in Indochina, trying to stave off a strong unification effort of the two Vietnams then (the Communist North and democratic South) by the frail but lion-hearted North Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Minh
 Stories coming out from the war zone interests me at the time. In fact I am still intrigued by that 30-year war fought in that small arena, which spanned from the time Ho Chi Minh launched a campaign to drive the French out of the region to the time of America's humiliating defeat on April 30, 1975.

 At the same time, there was also a bloody war being fought in the Sinai peninsula in Egypt. The beleaguered Jewish state of Israel was being pinned in the corner by a still united Arab armies comprising those of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and fighters of the Palestinian Liberation Front, led by the still young and fiery, Yasser Arafat whom I eventually met in person sometime in 1996.
 Those two wars captured my attention and attracted me towards reading newspapers every day. My late father subscribed to two newspapers then -- The Straits Times and its Malay sister newspaper, Berita Harian.
 When riots erupted in Kuala Lumpur in May 1969, pictures of the city appearing in newspapers at the time resembled those I saw of the then South Vietnamese towns patrolled by soldiers. It was not a pretty sight.
 When American astronaut, Neil Amstrong stepped on the moon in July that same year, I followed the news both on television and then got more in-depth stories in the newspapers.
 I continued reading newspapers as they were the primary source of news then. We only had our first black and white television in late 1968 when we were living in Port Dickson and there weren't much focus given by the sole station then towards news. I fact, I was more interested in tuning in to watch the Japanese superhero series 'Ultraman' than anything else. The radio was hopeless.
 As I entered my teenage years, I was sent to study in a boarding school in Kuala Pilah. It was a bit difficult to get my hands on newspapers then as we had to share and I had to wait a long time before I got to read bit and pieces of the editions.
 At the time, I thought of newspaper reporters as living interesting lives. I dreamt of actually being there in the war fronts, writing stories for the world to read. I never knew that one day I would be joining the very newspaper that I had read almost everyday since 1968.
 When I eventually joined the New Straits Times in December 1989, I was assigned to its financial newspaper, the Business Times, which was then the only full-fledged financial daily in the country. I had requested to be sent there because by then I had acquired some interests in reporting news in the world of commerce.
 When I started, we were grossly overworked and grossly underpaid. But I enjoyed the working atmosphere.
 The newsroom was far from anything glamorous. It was filled with pieces of papers, dark, always untidy and always noisy. And there were always people in the newsroom, even on Sundays. The phones were always ringing and the editors were always shouting.
 I quickly learned the intricacies of publishing a newspaper. While a prospective journalist may sharpen his idealism based on Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's (of the Washington Post newspaper) reporting of the Watergate scandal which brought down the Nixon administration, such may not necessarily work elswehere.
 Woodward and Bernstein both won the Pullitzer prize for their work and the episode was eventually made into a movie called 'All The President's Men'.
 Every news organisation has what is known as its 'editorial policy' which essentially dictates where they lean towards. A newspaper can lean either to the right or the left. Nobody reads a newspaper that constantly sits on the fence as society would look upon such publication as one that's afraid of making decisions.
 And no journalist can walk into a newsroom with his ideals and his own worldview. Ultimately, even the editor is governed by the newspaper's set editorial policy. But as a general rule, journalists are governed by a common principle known as the 'truth discipline'. Simply put, they cannot lie, although they are expected to practice a certain degree of biasness in their reporting as demanded by the editorial policy of the news organisation they represent.
 The newspaper I represent has set its own editorial policy of being in support of the government of the day long before I came to the job. And I believe that it will continue to subscribe to the policy long after I leave. It is not my job to change that but I must not lie even in my writing of news that meets such policy.
 This is a free country and I always believe that society is quite capable of making their own decisions of whether to read newspaper A or newspaper B. In fact, a newspaper is not there to make the final judgement call for society.
 Furthermore, the Internet later changed the landscape tremendously. Citizen journalism is fast gaining grounds. I think this is a healthy development as a society that has plenty of access to different sources of news are expected to be able to make more informed decisions regarding their future.
 Publishing a newspaper is therefore not easy. It is made more difficult by the fact that every news organisation is ultimately a commercial enterprise. They must make money to continue publishing and also to provide some returns to their shareholders.
 Every newspaper in the world makes a bulk of their revenue from advertisements. It is quite common for newspapers to make 70per cent of their annual revenue from advertisements and the remaining 30 per cent from the newsstands or circulation.
 The problem often comes in publishing news concerning aa advertiser. There have been times when advertisers pull out their advertisements from newspapers that published news they perceive as negative about their companies.
 There have been times too that newspapers were accused of being too focused on digging for negative news. My answer to that: Newspapers must publish the truth and more often than not the truth are hidden and almost alway, they are negative in nature.

The Thomson Foundation, Cardiff Wales where I did my advanced journalism course

 I was sent for an advanced journalism course in Cardiff, Wales in 1994. Several of participants in the course were from news organisations in South Africa which at the time had just gotten itself free from the shackles of apartheid. They were full of idealism and in the evenings we would get together and I would hear them speak about nation building for the new South Africa.
 Frankly, though, I don't know how far such idealism has been successful in transforming especially the  blacks in the country.
 But being in the newsroom is fun. As a journalist I am not bound by the 9-5 working hours. I have travelled the world, been to places I never thought I'd be, and met people I thought I never would meet.
 When I was small I had a friend named Razif. We often played 'war games' before it was time to go to school. When we played, Razif would be an Israeli soldier and I, a Palestinian. We knew who Yasser Arafat was because we often see his face in the newspapers.
 Eventually, I met Arafat in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1996 while covering a news assignment. I wished I could tell Razif about the meeting but we parted ways when I moved to the kampung in 1971. We simply lost contact with each other.

ENDS