The Malaysian Bar - Opening Remarks by Christopher Leong, Vice-President of the Malaysian Bar, at the 3rd Media Legal Defence - South East Asia Conference (27

Opening Remarks by Christopher Leong, Vice-President of the Malaysian Bar, at the 3rd Media Legal Defence - South East Asia Conference (27 - 29 July 2011)

Monday, 08 August 2011 12:11pm

Opening Remarks

Christopher Leong, Vice-President of the Malaysian Bar

3rd Media Legal Defence - South East Asia Conference

University Malaya, Kuala Lumpur (27 to 29 July 2011 )

HR Dipendra, Prof. Dr. Johan Shamsuddin, Prof. Yuen Ying Chan, Ladies & Gentlemen,

It is a pleasure to bid you all a warm welcome this morning to the 3rd Media Defence Conference, co-organised in Kuala Lumpur by:

Media Defence Southeast Asia
Centre for Independent Journalism; and
University Malaya.

I thank you for your kind invitation and the opportunity to say a few words this morning by way of opening remarks.

While in the title of today’s conference we speak of the “media” as a collective term for journalists of all descriptions, it is not so long ago that we used to, and often still do, speak more simply of the “press”, particularly when we refer to concepts such as the “freedom of the press”.

It is perhaps worth considering how one technological invention, the printing press, was so revolutionary that the word “press” came to represent what became in due course so powerful and important as to be described as the Fourth Estate of the Realm.

The Fourth Estate was a term used to refer to a societal or political force outside the traditional structures of power and influence. The First, Second and Third estates were references to the powerful clergy, the nobility and the House of Commons of Great Britain or later, England. France had their equivalent.

You may be surprised that the term “the Fourth Estate’ was in the past sometimes used in reference to lawyers. Due to the pervasive dissemination and thus influence of printed media which spoke directly to the people, the term has since come to be exclusively associated with the press. It is no mere coincidence that the spread of the printing press coincided with the spread of democracy and the spread of ideas in post-Renaissance Europe. Perhaps, in Malaysia and given the work of our lawyers, it may be apt to refer to the Malaysian Bar as the Fifth Estate.

In Malaysia, and indeed throughout the world today, we are coming to terms with another new technology, the internet, which has revolutionised the reach and scope of the media and severely curtailed the Government’s ability to control the information available to the common man.

For now, the dichotomy in Malaysia between:

the online media - free, unlicensed, and largely uncontrolled; and
the traditional media - censored, strictly licensed and largely owned by parties connected to political parties,

could not be starker.

While today’s online journalists have to deal with the occasional prosecutions for sedition and defamation suits, on the whole, internet journalism in Malaysia has largely benefited from the authorities’ guarantee that the internet will not be censored. In this regard, it is to be hoped that such heavy-handed violations of press freedoms as have occurred, such as the 2003 police raid on Malaysiakini’s offices and the barring of their reporters from Parliament in 2009, will continue to be the exception rather than the norm.

The situation of the traditional media, on the other hand, remains rather bleak. There are three major challenges that face the traditional media in Malaysia today:

The first is over-regulation. The requirement that newspapers and other periodicals obtain an annual publishing licence under the Printing Presses and Publications Act is a crude and, in my view, unjustified violation of the freedom of the press.

The second challenge is selective licensing. Almost all the traditional media, with few exceptions, are controlled by parties within the ruling coalition or those linked to it. In contrast, opposition and alternative interests are often denied publishing licences or only licensed for sale to their own members and not to the general public. While we are now seeing some opposition-controlled state governments using their exemption from the provisions of the PPPA to publish their own newspapers, we are still very far from having an independent media free from political control. An example of this is the recent debacle concerning the proposed media consultative council, where the Government proposed to stack its membership with representatives from the government ministries and departments.

The third issue is selective enforcement of the laws. Even if one does not usually read the Malay press in this country, with internet reporting, most of us have come to be aware of the hateful and incendiary material that is permitted to be published from one party’s racial and religious standpoint on a regular basis, while largely innocuous articles by those not in favour with the authorities result in prosecution or harassment in the form of show-cause letters and threats to suspend publication licences.

One example was a letter threatening the Catholic Herald with suspension for an editorial that asked Christians to pray for a just and fair by-election in 2007, which was later overshadowed by the subsequent suspension of the newspaper’s Malay language edition for the continued use of the word “Allah” to refer to God.

Another example, is the ban by the authorities on the publication of satiric cartoons or caricatures by Zunar. I highly recommend this to you if you are able to obtain a copy and in need of a good laugh. The recent censorship of an article in The Economist on the events surrounding the 9 July rally is yet another example.

More recently, we have had reports of a guidance note purportedly issued by the head of communications in the Prime Minister’s Office setting out a communications strategy of demonising the Bersih 2.0 movement for free and fair elections. It apparently goes on to say that the Home Ministry, which has jurisdiction over all print media, needs to exert its authority in ensuring that the press toe the line. While the authenticity of the note has not been corroborated, in light of the Government’s overwhelming power over the traditional media, which was highlighted just now, and the media’s actual coverage of Bersih both before and after the 9th July rally, it unfortunately seemed to most Malaysians quite plausible that the Home Ministry, police and internal security officials have put concerted pressure on the media for their conformity with the official government line on Bersih 2.0.

But the prospects for media freedom in Malaysia are not altogether bleak. Increased internet penetration and the growth of alternative and social media means that Malaysians have more access to independent sources of information than ever before. These new insights have led many, particularly in urban areas, to be more questioning of the government-controlled media, which have seen a corresponding drop in circulation and influence.

In the 19th century, the great political analyst Tocqueville (a 19th century French historian and political thinker) wrote that “The liberty of writing, like all other liberties, is most formidable when it is a novelty, for a people who have never been accustomed to hear state affairs discussed before them place implicit confidence in the first tribune who presents himself”. He noted that “the only way to neutralize the effect of the public journals is to multiply their number”. As the sources of information are ever more diffused and decentralised through the internet, Malaysians can be seen to be going on a highway that will lead them to become an increasingly discerning and critical readership. In this regard, we can safely say that the opponents of press or media freedom are fighting a losing battle.

With that, I wish all of you a stimulating, engaging and mutually reinforcing conference. Thank you.

Christopher Leong

Vice-President

Malaysian Bar

27 July 2011

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