Malaysia Forum

Malaysiakini CEO and co-founder Premesh Chandran’s opens the conference, speaking about new media in Malaysia. Premesh argued that a significant reason BN lost so much ground in the recent general election was its failure to take notice of how much impact new and alternative forms of media have had on the political landscape.

Looking into the reasons why, Premesh observed that only urban areas have significant internet penetration rates. In his view, this lulled BN into ignoring issues that bloggers and others brought up on the internet. What they overlooked was how this information could spread — it could be done as simply as by distributing a VCD. Premesh observed that the impact of the internet is there for all to see — Khairy Jamaluddin lost a lot of his standing after the immense publicity of Raja Petra Kamarudin’s “Khairy Chronicles”. The mainstream media has had no choice but to since follow the lead of alternative media outlets like Malaysiakini, Premesh stressed.

Replying to questions from the audience, Premesh dealt with issues such as possible bias in online media, and means of policing them. Pointing out that practically all mainstream media firms are owned by the ruling party, Premesh suggested that online media is simply filling the niche of opposition news that the mainstream media refuses to cover. In response to a question on controlling online content, Premesh argued that offenders are being caught and punished, and suggested it would be largely self-policing — after all, Malaysiakini can hardly afford to get something wrong when it has a 100,000 people reading it.

Posted by johnleemk / NMF 2008