First of all, let me explain what I understand
from the terms online journalism and mainstream media. Online journalism as
referred to Online Journalism on
Malaysian Socio – Political Landscape book written by Dr. Rahmat Ghazali, a
lecturer from UiTM, he explained that the online journalism in Malaysia are divided into several categories which are
mainstream online journalism, non- mainstream online journalism and ‘shared and
discussion informative that include weblogs, bulletin board and chat rooms.
In current scenario where
mainstream media, especially Malay language newspaper shows that they fell
sharply due to several factors and among that factor is internet booming.
People retrieve information and materials from the internet which they think
they cannot get in in the printed form and most people who retrieve sources
from internet are the youngsters that are equipped with the latest technologies
such as smartphones and tablets.
However
that is not the issue, the main issue is how reliable is the source? Are they
enduring the same gatekeeping process that printed media need to go through?
And if gatekeeping process is one of the process that limit the freedom of
speech, how credible a writer would be in the sense of sending the right
information to the public?
In my opinion, Malaysian blogger are more focusing on
political issue rather than other issues which I believe is more impart to be
look into, there are more bigger issues should be discuss such as economy, how
to bring Malaysian together, how to reduce gap between races and so on. When we
talk about political, then personally, we would include emotion in our writing,
we will write on issue based on our own experience or based on our observation
and not through deep research.
Apart of that, there aren’t many
bloggers who reveal their true identity in their blogs, for the sake of
security but by hiding their identity, people are wondering and question the
credibility of the author as an independent writer who really understand the
situation happened in the society or they are just another writer or cyber
troopers (IT experts who being hired by political parties to attack or bash the
opposition’s parties).
As an example, the blogger, Papa
Gomo which had become topic recently, people are questioning the motives of his
writing and who is he in the reality. Same goes to Isu Semasa Politik, who uses
Facebook as a medium to expose stories in political parties, they did not use
their real picture as a default. Nevertheless, there are authors who disclose
their identity, Lim Kit Siang, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, Anwar Ibrahim, and A.
Kadir Jasin, just to name few.
The choice of words used by the
blogger or web authors reflects their intention is leading to disunity among
and within the society. Harsh to put the word in such manner but frankly
speaking they did not contribute to developing our country into a better
country and unity of our society. They cursed, labelled people without consider
on the effects of the youngsters and children who might accidentally read their
posts. What happened to the values that
the Asian, Malaysian and specifically Malay who always proud of?
All posts that being written
aggressively and severely invites reader to comment in a negative manner as
well. Everyone is defending their point of view but at the end no one has
really make their point except for there are showing how rude they are and did
not respect others.
I am strongly believe that in order
to practice democracy and freedom of speech, people should be matured enough
and sensible towards situation, they perhaps should consider few elements such
as sensitivity towards a particular issue, and as a reader I hope that people
be more selective towards their reading material, we should surf and read more
than a blog, and instead of reading write ups from blogger that is unknown, it
is better for us to look for political pundits, politicians, journalists who
will write based on facts and rational rather than some blogger who write
emotionally.
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