mymedia02 - cybermedia

March 21, 2001 Malaysian Opposition Web Sites Are Wiped Out by Lycos Glitch By CHEN MAY YEE Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL When U.S.-based Tripod, the Web site-building service of Terra Lycos SA, wiped out sites over the weekend that were critical of the Malaysian government, a minor political storm erupted in the Southeast Asian country. Malaysian opposition groups who rely on the Web to mobilize supporters immediately suspected that the unit of Lycos, an Internet portal, had succumbed to pressure from the Malaysian government to shut down opposition sites. "If Terra Lycos has been at the receiving end of pressure from the ruling party of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, then the company should make it known to the world," Lokman Noor Adam, an official of Malaysia's Parti Keadilan Nasional, or National Justice Party, wrote in an impassioned plea Monday to Terra Lycos's executive chairman, Joaquim Agut. Technical Blunder The two-and-a-half page letter, which cites the names of 12 other affected sites, ends with an appeal to Lycos to restore the party's youth-wing Web site, Pemuda Keadilan, for the sake of "individual freedoms and the upholding of justice." But the company said the sites, which were expected to all be re-activated by Wednesday, were hit by a mere blunder. A Tripod representative said the company accidentally removed some member pages while clearing other unrelated pages that violated its terms of service. The company wasn't able to say how many innocuous or offending sites in the U.S. or elsewhere were affected, and didn't directly address the Malaysian case. Tripod and a second Lycos Web-community site, Angelfire, collectively have more than 100,000 Web sites created by members around the world. The episode highlights the sensitivity of Internet users to perceived corporate restriction of free speech, and underlines the question of how local standards -- and national laws -- are applied to what is essentially a global medium. In the past couple of years, Malaysians frustrated with the government-controlled mainstream media have increasingly turned to online news for information about the country. These news sources have ranged from neutral foreign news sites to fledgling online newspapers such as Malaysia kini.com to Web sites supporting jailed political dissident Anwar Ibrahim, whom Dr. Mahathir sacked as his deputy in 1998. There are also virulently anti-Mahathir Web sites that depict the prime minister as an evil pharaoh-like figure. Web-site editors working on the more strongly antigovernment sites are often anonymous, and like to talk ominously of a possible police crackdown. For the most part, however, Dr. Mahathir's government has left the Internet alone. The prime minister wants to promote his Multimedia Super Corridor, a wide-ranging plan launched in 1996 to build his own version of Silicon Valley and has promised not to censor the Internet as part of his guarantees to foreign investors. Still, before Tripod's acknowledgement of the error was publicized, the shutdowns fed an outcry about free speech in Malaysian domestic politics. Syed Husin Ali, a veteran opposition politician whose Parti Rakyat Malaysia, or Malaysian People's Party, is aligned to Parti Keadilan, joined in the fray Tuesday. "We do not believe that it is purely coincidental that over 20 Web sites have been 'terminated" by Tripod," Mr. Syed Husin said. After some of the sites were restored, opposition leaders appeared to have calmed down. Mr. Lokman acknowledged that his site was up and running Tuesday, adding that he had read that the problem was a technical glitch. Seditious Material Fears of government involvement aren't totally unfounded: A few weeks ago, the editor of the Free Anwar Campaign Web site, Raja Petra Kamaruddin, was arrested and investigated for allegedly posting seditious material on the site. For Tripod, violations of terms of service might include copyright infringement, promotion of illegal activity, child pornography or "clear expressions of bigotry, racism or hatred," according to the company's Web site. But the decision isn't clear-cut. In deciding what to remove, Lycos also takes into account the laws of each country, said Bernard Chan, vice president of marketing at Lycos Asia Ltd. Since laws vary from country to country, it is often "a tough call," Mr. Chan said. Write to Chen May Yee at may-yee.chen@awsj.com.

malaysian media

Friday March 23 Web vital for aiding reformasi, says Chandra Celine Tan 2:10pm, Fri: The Internet has been credited with playing a pivotal role in sustaining the reformasi movement beyond the political tumult of 1998. Keadilan deputy president Dr Chandra Muzaffar yesterday acknowledged the vital contribution of the world wide web in facilitating dissent in Malaysia by providing a means for which information can be disseminated in a heavily-regulated media environment. Comparing the 1998 political crisis with that of the late 1980s, Chandra noted that the current movement for reform has been able to sustain itself and mobilise grassroots support largely due to alternative news and analysis available through the Internet. “This (dissemination of information) is not confined to the level of the middle classes,” said Chandra at a seminar in London today. “Children of rural villages download information and pass it onto their parents and this is important to the movement.” The political tumult of the late 1980s which precipitated a constitutional crisis was unable to garner much popular support for opposing views in spite of it triggering more opposition from within Umno than the unceremonious sacking of heir apparent Anwar Ibrahim. This, Chandra attributes to the lack of alternative channels of information dissemination 10 years ago. On the contrary, resentment towards Umno and the Barisan Nasional government sparked off by the Anwar episode has been fueled substantially by the proliferation of websites critical of the government, be they party-political portals, such the homepages of PAS or DAP; cyber forums for reformasi news and debates, such as Mahafiraun or independent news and analyses websites, such as malaysiakini or the now defunct agendamalaysia. Political commentator Sabri Zain’s jottings of his forays into downtown Kuala Lumpur at the height of the street demonstrations - now consolidated into print as Face-Off: The Reformasi Diaries, first saw their publication as email instalments. ‘No censorship’ pledge Chandra was optimistic that the BN government would not censor the Internet, partly due to the technical difficulties in erecting such barriers, and partly due to the desire of the current administration to maintain a censorship-free environment to facilitate investments in its Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) project. Last week, the ‘disappearance’ of several reformasi websites hosted on Tripod.com due to technical glitches resulted in premature panic among reformasi supporters that the government was clamping down on the freedom of the Internet. Webmasters feared the loss of thousands of bytes of valuable information stored on the websites, many of them dating back to September 1998. Chandra was speaking at a seminar entitled ‘Politics, Democracy and Human Rights in Malaysia’ organised by Amnesty International in London. The Keadilan deputy president also cautioned Malaysians against fostering blind loyalty to leaders, both of the government or opposition. He said that members of the opposition must develop a more profound appreciation of the challenges which lay ahead in shaping a new political landscape for Malaysia not built on feudal or communal politics.

Wednesday April 11 M’sian journalism presses ahead in cyberspace Johan Saravanamuttu 11:07am, Wed: ‘It is trite but true that one cannot lose anything which one has never possessed nor appreciate a loss which one has never known, possessed or experienced. This is an essay on one such precious loss - the freedom of the press" - Francis T Seow (The Media Enthralled, Lynne Rienner, 1998). Malaysian journalism has been not so much in a state of crisis as it has been in the doldrums for a long while. Most of us are acutely aware of how this has come about but would find it hard to suggest a way out of the impasse. I believe, however, that certain recent developments augur well for Malaysian journalism to lift itself out of its ignominy. A glimpse into the past tells us that the history of journalism in Malaysia was never an illustrious or happy one. Often too much is made of a supposedly golden era of journalism, sometime during the British presence and early years of independence, when, it is contended, journalists, schooled in the British tradition, evinced some of the timeless values of the Fourth Estate in the various newspapers in which they worked. As a young journalist with the Straits Times Press stable of papers in the late 1960s, I sensed little of that exalted tradition. Of course one did find in the likes of a Leslie Hoffman, Tan Siew Ee, Samad Ismail, MGG Pillai, Syed Dahari, Ambrose Khaw, Felix Abishigenagan and others, certain individualistic attributes that were worth emulation. But, even in those days, the cloak of self-censorship was much in evidence, as I recall. Political writing was closely monitored and assigned selectively by the editors and often heavily ‘subbed’. The leader writers, ensconced behind their glass cubicles, wrote editorials carefully slanted so as to not to displease the powers-that-be. Nor would they stray too far into forbidden territory. Mortal blow This notwithstanding, it wasn't until after the May 13, 1969 event that a mortal blow was dealt to journalism in the form of the Sedition Act. Thenceforth, the cloak of self-censorship shrouded all of Malaysian journalism. Some of the old-timers and younger idealists went on to join the Singapore Herald in July 1971. This appeared to be a valiant attempt to launch an independent-minded daily albeit in the heart of a deeply authoritarian state. Here, the journalists soon met perhaps a worse fate - the sword of Damocles, wielded by the PAP government. Within the span of less than a year, the Herald was hounded, battered and destroyed. It was hauled onto the carpet for so-called ‘black operations’ and anti-government stances and pilloried into non-existence because of its foreign financial backing. Charter 2000 alludes to the debilitating laws that govern media space and freedom. Worse perhaps is the capacity of governments to enforce and deploy with impunity a deadly surveillance over the Press even without the use of such laws. The culture of self-censorship has not only flourished in the ensuing years following May 13, 1969. It was further refurbished with Operation Lalang, in 1987, when the media was again muzzled by the authorities because of our supposed twice-proven lack of ethnic probity. Internet vanguard If the mainstream press stays defeated, pacified or cowed, a new vanguard of press freedom must be found. And, fortuitously, there has been a development growing out of the throes of reformasi politics. This has been the use of the Internet for political protest, mobilisation and everyday forms of resistance to the Mahathir regime. One of its most salutary developments has been the revival of the Fourth Estate in cyberspace. They say nature abhors a vacuum. In the absence of any decent journalism from the mainstream, we are now seeing the flowering of a radical independence of mind and journalistic fearlessness emanating from the non-mainstream cyber-media. Mind you, there's still much naivetéé in the Internet; the sites are a legion and many have shut down or failed, but the overall picture is an uplifting one. And all of this did not get into full swing until the mainstream press lost ground to an emerging alternative Malay Press in such publications as Harakah, Eksklusif, Detik, Tamadun and a host of other mosquito operations. To his utter discredit, the Home Affairs Minister deemed it fit to close down some of these regular publications. Harakah's story is now legend - a party organ that hit the stratosphere with a circulation over 300,000 in its heyday in 1999. The government has since been forced to order the twice-weekly paper to published only twice a month now. I'm convinced that the energy of the closed publications is now finding its way into the Internet. Alternative press The other egregious development no doubt has been Malaysiakini.com, which appeared on the scene in 1999. This independent and professionally run cyber news portal now boasts daily visitors of well above 100,000. Malaysiakini has become the alternative to the mainstream English Press, and to a lesser extent, the Malay Press. A Chinese version of malaysiakini may also be in the offing. Yet, even a cyber newspaper is not free from the long arms of government surveillance, control and manipulation. It should remain vigilant always and maintain a balance in its coverage of news and critical commentary. There is also the opposite danger that it becomes too open a forum and loses its distinctiveness. Clearly, a vanguard of sorts for an alternative press has been born in cyberspace. This is by no means a fully satisfactory situation. Until Malaysian citizens are ready to usher in a new government, with enough gumption, foresight and vision to allow the Fourth Estate its rightful, legitimate role in the social and political life of citizens, press freedom will remain illusive and ephemeral. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DR JOHAN SARAVANAMUTTU was a professor of political science at a local university and is now based in Toronto. The above article first appeared in Aliran Monthly.