Sharing of Media Monitoring Activities in Malaysia
By Gayathry Venkiteswaran
Note: Power point presented at the launch of MEDIA INSIDE OUT Group, on 14 July 2012 in Bangkok
Brief background of media in Malaysia
- Language communities – ethnicised politics
- Private ownership with political ties – appointments of editor in chief are political
- State media, no public broadcasting
- Laws on licensing, criminal defamation, official secrets, sedition, national security
- Weakened trade union and societies’ laws
- Public apathy, until…
Examples of media monitoring in Malaysia
- Academic – content analysis, example trends in coverage of women, trade union, elections, political crises
- Civil society – National Media Monitoring Survey conducted by the All Women’s Action Society (AWAM)
- Citizen’s monitoring of 2004 general elections on the blog platform (hosted by Charter 2000)
- CIJ’s monitoring of election reporting 2008, topical issues
- Poll / survey – demographics and consumption trend, Merdeka Centre and CIJ
- Commentaries on specific stories – Hartal MSM, uppercaise
Monitoring of election reporting (2004, 2008, 2013)
- Pre-2004 : Academic, post-fact, content analysis, limited dissemination
- 1999 : independent online news and analysis platforms enter the media market, private TV station actually hosts credible talk shows
- 2004 : Charter 2000, a citizens’ initiative for free expression, hosts a blog to get people’s observations of media coverage of the elections campaign, voting and results
- 2008 : CIJ initiates with C2000 and WAMI a monitoring project with volunteers, but with a proposed methodology. Report confirmed the impact of the political control and ownership on the bias in the content, but it also showed the extent of the bias.
- 2008: Survey on public perception of media independence (CIJ/Merdeka Centre)
- 2009 : Survey on public perception of media role in reporting on corruption (CIJ/Merdeka Centre)
- 2009 – 2011 : CIJ’s monitoring of coverage on by-elections, water protests, Wikileaks saga, economic transformation program
- 2011 & 2012 : CIJ’s monitoring of the coverage on the electoral reforms rally (BERSIH)
Topical monitoring – BERSIH rally 2011, 2012
Public rallies to demand for electoral reforms – BERSIH (Clean) 2011 and 2012
Context:
- Why is the coverage of a rally important?
- Who are the sources/actors?
- How do they frame the protestors?
Findings:
- Reader would have got inaccurate information about the rallies from the print media
- But most people relied on the online and social networking sites (there were 263,228 tweets by 39,940 users using the #bersih tag over the period of a month)
Monitoring media reports : Conclusions
- Political bias exists, but studies show how and to what extent
- Increasing public discontent over the years, political bias has not reduced
- Bias replaced by outright lies
- Lack of professional reporting
- Raise understanding of the laws, processes through the advocacy
- People more engaged in discussion on ownership
- Social networking tools begin to challenge the mainstream media
Challenges
- Coverage of the monitoring – some sectors will always be left out
- Reliability – scientific data vs observation, margin of error, value to the bias
- Determining the purpose of the monitoring and how to use the information, follow up
Links
Centre for Independent Journalism, Malaysia http://www.cijmalaysia.org
Merdeka Centre http://www.merdeka.org
Charter 2000 – Aliran Media Monitoring http://aliran.com/category/malaysian-media-monitors-diary
Hartal MSM http://hartalmsm.wordpress.com/
Gayathry Venkiteswaran is currently an executive director of Southeast Asian Press Alliancee (SEAPA)
กายาทรี เวนกิท สวารัน ผู้อำนวยการบริหารสมาพันธ์เครือข่ายสื่อเอเชียตะวันออกเฉียงใต้ (SEAPA)
เวที สนทนาประสาคนส่องสื่อ
●วิษณุ ตรี ฮังโกโร, Institute for the Studies of Press Information, Samarang(สื่ออินโดนีเซีย)
●กายาทรี เวนกิทสวารัน, Southeast Asian Press Alliance (สื่อมาเลเซีย)
●ดร.เอื้อจิต วิโรจน์ไตรรัตน์, ผู้อำนวยการโครงการมีเดียมอนิเตอร์
ชวนสนทนาโดย รศ.ดร.อุบลรัตน์ ศิริยุวศักดิ์
14 กรกฎาคม 2555 งานเปิดตัวกลุ่ม มีเดีย อินไซด์ เอ้าท์
"Media Monitors in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand" Forum
- Wisnu T Hanggoro Institute for the Studies on Press Information (Media in Indonesia)
- GayathryVenkiteswaran Southeast Asian Press Alliance (Media in Malaysia)
- Dr. UajitVirojtrairatt Foundation for Media Literacy ( Media in Thailand)
Moderated by Ass.Prof.UbonratSiriyuvasak
At the launch of MEDIA INSIDE OUT Group, 14 July 2012, Bangkok
