Whither Mainstream Media

Ladies and Gentlemen,

This is an interesting thought by Kam Raslan, published in his The Edge Weekly's column "Talking Edge", on May 20th, 2013.

His views are implicit and critical. And there are truth too in his view: that many Malaysians have renegaded from the mainstream media and switched to the popular social media to source for news, events, courses, and even jobs.

No doubt that some of the facts and news in the social media are questionable and some of them are not even credible to cited in scholarly publications. The authenticity of news in social media is highly questionable, but alas, it seems to improve bit by bit.

But you see, the good things about social media is that everyone can spread news from all angles and sources. Some news are even first-account news that is updated live from the location of the event or incident; and these type of news are what mainstream media would not publish even if it is supported by credible evidence, authentic photos and/or live recording of videos.

News in social media is not really a bias news; for anyone from any side of the political divide or beliefs can create, publish, disseminate and heck, even make news and headlines.

News in social media have already begun to garner popularity among the youths and internet-savvy individuals.

And what's best is that the news are available at their fingertip and can be accessed within a split of seconds, compared to mainstream media: we have to wait for 8:00 pm for TV news, and every morning for news in papers.

And the news on the social media too is consistently updated almost every hour or two hours, hence eliminating the need to wait for hours and hours.

On the other hand, the mainstream news are gathered, compiled and segregated; but the news in social media are open to all, and for all. There is no need for the news in social media to be gathered or compiled by (un)qualified journalists for everyone in social media are an alert and caring lot: they spread news from all sources.

And that is the good thing about news in social media.

Furthermore, another reason for most rakyat not interested in mainstream news is the fact that they are biased and controlled by political parties; or invidividal having good relationship with certain politicians.

Take for example, Utusan Malaysia. It is controlled by UMNO friendly organizations. The Star is controlled by MCA friendly company while Harakah is owned by PAS, a Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party.

The news published in mainstream media are often altered and manipulated to suit the objective and common belief of the higger echelons in the organization. And this is definitely part of selective journalism that is done for the benefit of certain quarters.

And the people are getting bored with selective journalism, and therefore turn to alternative media for more news ti feed their hunger

Let's admit it: mainstream news are getting more and more obsolete. These days, not many people are watching TVs due to the demand of work and busy nature of life.

Even if some people have all the time in the world to watch TVs, they make get sick and tired of all the hyped political bashings in the mainstream media.

Some attacks are personal, baseless, and also contain elements of racism and stereotype.

And Malaysians too are getting smarter and cleverer. Malaysians cannot be easily fooled like the time of before. Malaysians these days can think, critically analyse and differentiate the truth, the manipulatrd truth, the lies, the damned lies and the orchestrated statistics.

It is for these reasons that most Malaysians have lost some interest in mainstream media. Some of the Malaysians probably buy the maisntream media to look for certain scholarship opportunities or jobs posted in there. But even that is not all popular for we have Jobstreet whose classifications and target audience are much more wider than the newspaper.

And I thus agree with this particular view of Kam Raslan.