PH allowed media freedom: Aidila Razak
Aidila Razak, special reports editor at Malaysiakini says the Pakatan Harapan government did not curb on media freedom.
But under the new government, the media is cautious and journalists and editors are on their toes.
“When I first started about 10, 11 years ago, there were more consistent examples of prosecution. You would be held up at the police station over some small thing or the other,” she says.
But when Pakatan Harapan came to power, there would not have so much or none of the prosecution.
“When the Pakatan Harapan government came in, there was not any of that at all in the 22 months that I recall.
“And then now that we have this new/old government, it’s all coming back.”
She told editors at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists things does not look good for the media world under the Perikatan Nasional government.
“So, we’ve got a book that got banned. Journalists being investigated for reporting on the lockdowns. Things that you wouldn’t think would ever be there.”
It’s happening all over again,”
According to Aidila, starting from around the 1980s, Malaysia started to have really heavy regulations on the press.
A CHILL ON FREEDOM
The Printing Presses [and Publications] Act would require Newspapers and stations to have licenses.
“And that really put a real chill on freedom of reporting, this massive censorship, even self-censorship, because of this. People were really afraid of losing their license and losing livelihoods.”
Aidila says here were various times after the law was enacted that it was imposed and some newspapers lost their license and newsrooms have to shut down.
“So since then, it has been very much a very kind of muted type of journalism. Always finding a way to tell the story without being so overt, that they can catch you, or something like that,” she says. on the need for journalists to be careful with their reporting in the past.
There has been very much a very kind of muted type of journalism
“That has been the case for Malaysian journalism since then, and I feel sometimes that yes there will be periods where we’ll be brave, and we think that we might be safer, and then we would try to push the envelope.
“And then something happens and people get scared again and then there is a whole series of censorship again and that might take another decade to come back out.”
Based on the recent storms surrounding Malaysiakini (fighting a court case) and surely the Al Jazeera episode on foreign workers, Adilla believes now is a bad time for Malaysia’s press freedom.
“Yeah, it feels like that because, one by one, these small cases are coming up again – which we have not had for like 10 years.”