Dear Jayathas,
Re: Mischievous Malaysiakini.com & Steven Gan
This email and corresponding post in your website has been brought to my attention. I will respond to the comments made here and since as a human rights party, you respect freedom of speech and respect the right of reply, I understand that you will post this email out to your group and post it on your website as a clarification from Malaysiakini.
Firstly, you suggest that we are being “mischievous” with our renaming of a Bernama story headline. Please note that rewording the headline is a common practice and we do it to many Bernama stories, in line with our own editorial direction on headlines. Such changes in headlines is only wrong, if the headline misrepresents the story. Is this case, our headline is an accurate for the accompanying story.
Secondly, Malaysiakini has not claimed to be the “voice of the voiceless and the underdogs”. From day one, our sole claim as been one of “independence”, which in the Malaysian context, given that most traditional media is owned by one political party of the other, means that we are not owned or take direction from any political force, or individual. All editorial decisions are made by the editorial desk through daily discussions among the editors headed by the Editor-in-Chief Steven Gan. Even as CEO, I am not involved, nor do I interfere with day to day editorial decisions.
Our mission statement speaks of using the Internet to promote freedom of speech, justice and democracy. As such we do our best to cover stories that does involve human rights, abuse of power, injustice and politics. Nevertheless, there are stories that we miss or cannot report on due to our very limited resources. HRP can certainly bring issues to our attention and we will do our best to cover such issues. Do keep in mind that we are not a human rights advocacy organisations or media. We report on human rights abuses as part and parcel of our daily coverage. More detailed coverage of human rights, readers can visit sites of human rights organisations in Malaysia.
We do not classify our coverage by which ethnic group it affects. Nevertheless, your allegation that “problematic Indian issues are blacked out” cannot be substantiated by an analysis of our coverage over the last 10 years. We have given coverage on Tamil schools, bonded labour, wages, conditions and wages of plantation workers, temple demolitions and deaths in custody. If there is any issue that we have failed to cover, do let us know.
For every “Indian” story we miss, there is the same claim among Chinese New Villagers, Trade Unionists, Women’s organisations, Migrant Labour organisations, Islamic groups, Indigenous people, local communities, consumers and just about every other group in Malaysia.
Please keep in mind that the editorial team, made up of people of all ethnic groups meet on a daily basis to decide what stories to cover. There is no one person who dictates editorial coverage.
You also claim that Malaysiakini removed the links to HRP contents in our “Top in Blogs” section “under PKR’s pressure” Can you substantiate this allegation?
Malaysiakini does not take direction from any political party. Neither has PKR tried to intervene in our editorial decisions. When PKR has been unhappy with our coverage, they have written formally to Malaysiakini. (http://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/116187) just as others have similarly done so.
The Top in Blogs section is meant to highlight a variety of interesting articles in blogs. Malaysiakini did explain that having linked to your site, we found HRP doing too many posts, crowding out other posts in the Top In Blogs section. We have suggested that either you limit the number of posts, or give us another appropriate blog to point to. You are fully aware of this, and yet you have chosen to make an unsubstantiated allegation against us.
We accept that Malaysiakini is not above criticism. Even when we disagree, these opinions are still published on Malaysiakini, most recently Zul Nordin’s claim that we are “anti-Islam” and Ibrahim Ali’s claim that we are not responsible with what we publish. In fact, we are often our harshest critics, asking ourselves where we are making mistakes, and how we can improve.
To conclude, Malaysiakini is just down the road from the HRP office. You know many of our reporters, as you know Steven and myself. Most of you have visited our offices for interviews etc. The fact that you have launched this attack against us, I find non-sensical and unbecoming of a political party. I suggest that in future, if you have a problem with our coverage, you are free to make comments in the comments section of the story. You can also write a letter to the editor.
I hope to see better from HRP.
Premesh Chandran
CEO Malaysiakini.com
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