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Strategic Censorship in a Hybrid Authoritarian Regime? Differential Bias in Malaysia's Online and Print Media

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We analyze and compare three separate efforts to code bias in Malaysia's media and find strong empirical evidence of an ongoing and profound progovernment bias in coverage. We also find, however, significant variation in bias between different types of news outlets. While Malay and Anglophone sources tended to be strongly progovernment, Chinese-language and online outlets were far more impartial. We demonstrate that both the general bias and the variation in it are largely the result of two factors: (1) government censorship and (2) ownership structures that link many major outlets to the ruling coalition. These findings provide a detailed view of the struggle for media independence in a less-than-democratic regime and supply insight into media bias across both authoritarian and democratic regimes in Asia, as well as outside it.
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Journal of East Asian Studies 15 (2015), 455–4
SINCE MALAYSIA GAINED ITS INDEPENDENCE IN 1957, THE BARISAN
Nasional (BN) coalition, of which the largest constituent party is the
United Malays National Organization (UMNO), has won decisive vic-
tories in every one of the country’s thirteen general elections.1A major
reason for their success is the extensive influence they have exercised
over Malaysia’s media, which has led to a strong media bias in favor of
the BN and against opposition parties. Indeed, in recent international
rankings of press freedom, Malaysia has consistently placed among the
worst-performing countries, falling from 96th place in 2006 to 132nd in
2008 and 147th in 2014, its worst ever ranking.2
The BN’s control of the Malaysian press is extensive and operates
through two primary mechanisms. First, legislation restricting freedom
of speech allows the government to censor articles, harass journalists,
and even shut down uncooperative media outlets. Second, ownership
structures link many of the major outlets to the BN and its cronies
455
Strategic Censorship in a Hybrid
Authoritarian Regime? Differential Bias
in Malaysia’s Online and Print Media
Jason Abbott and John Wagner Givens
We analyze and compare three separate efforts to code bias in
Malaysia’s media and find strong empirical evidence of an ongoing and
profound progovernment bias in coverage. We also find, however, sig-
nificant variation in bias between different types of news outlets. While
Malay and Anglophone sources tended to be strongly progovernment,
Chinese-language and online outlets were far more impartial. We
demonstrate that both the general bias and the variation in it are largely
the result of two factors: (1) government censorship and (2) ownership
structures that link many major outlets to the ruling coalition. These
findings provide a detailed view of the struggle for media independ-
ence in a less-than-democratic regime and supply insight into media
bias across both authoritarian and democratic regimes in Asia, as well
as outside it. Keywords: censorship, new media, elections, Malaysia,
electoral authoritarianism, newspapers, political bias
456 Strategic Censorship in a Plural Society?
(Rodan 2004). As a result, the media in Malaysia is at best “shackled”
(Brown 2005) and at worst subject to stringent controls (Sani 2005).
Yet it has been widely recognized that there is significant variation
between different types of outlets. In particular, the Chinese and Anglo-
phone presses have traditionally been viewed as less biased than the
Malay-language media (George 2007). Additionally, over the past fif-
teen years, vibrant online news portals have emerged to give a greater
voice to dissident and opposition viewpoints (Abbott 2001, 2011; Ab-
bott, MacDonald, and Givens 2013; George 2007; Gong 2011; Liow
2012; Surin 2010; Tapsell 2013; Weiss 2013).
This shifting mediascape suggests a broader theme visible in both
harder authoritarian regimes like China and semi-authoritarian regimes
such as Russia and Singapore: that control of the media is an important
political battleground, with government seeking to impose greater con-
trols and more independent media outlets seeking to evade them.
In this research note we review a variety of projects, including our
own ongoing effort, to code bias in Malaysian print and online media
and provide a clearer view of political influence on these media; these
projects are of wider interest to an understanding of media bias across
both authoritarian and democratic regimes in Asia, as well as outside it.
We find substantial variation in the extent of bias across outlets, which
can be at least partially explained by variations in ownership, as well as
legislation and the enforcement of government censorship.
Overview of Print Media
According to Nielsen, the overall daily readership of newspapers in
Malaysia stands at approximately 9.1 million, equivalent to just under
half of the population aged over fifteen years (Thean 2013). Malay-lan-
guage papers account for approximately 55 percent circulation, while
Chinese and Anglophone papers each make up about 22 percent
(Malaysia Audit Bureau Circulations Various Years). The majority of
readership is dominated by a handful of papers, which are consolidated
in the hands of a small number of tycoons and holding companies.
The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Bhd (NSTP) owns both
the Anglophone New Straits Times, Malaysia’s oldest still-printed news-
paper, and Berita Harian (Daily News), which was the leading Malay-
language newspaper until 2005. In 1991, the NSTP added to its
dominance by launching the Harian Metro, a compact (tabloid) targeted
at a young urban audience, which became Malaysia’s best-selling news-
paper by 2005. Although the NSTP is not directly state owned, it is
Jason Abbott and John Wagner Givens 457
linked to UMNO by close personal connections and share ownership in
various holding companies, especially the publicly traded Media Prima,
one of Malaysia’s largest media conglomerates (Chin 2015 ). As a result,
the NSTP’s papers are considered to be at best progovernment and at
worst semiofficial mouthpieces for the ruling coalition.
Utusan Malaysia (the Malaysia Courier) was founded in 1939 as a
vehicle for Malays to express their opinion on British colonial rule. Be-
fore its readership began to decline in 2004, it was one of the country’s
leading Malay-language newspapers by circulation and readership. With
UMNO directly owning a controlling stake in the paper, it has attracted
widespread criticism from the country’s opposition parties and liberal
intelligentsia for allegedly stoking racism in a country in which racial
identity remains the principal societal cleavage (Abbott 2011).
Currently, the best-selling Chinese-language daily newspaper in
Malaysia is Sin Chew Daily (formerly Sin Chew Jit Poh). In 1987, Sin
Chew suffered significant financial woes following its temporary sus-
pension during a political crackdown known as Operation Lalang. This
led to the takeover of the company by Sarawak timber tycoon Tiong
Hiew King, who four years later acquired Guan Ming Daily, Malaysia’s
third-ranked Chinese paper (Eng 2003). Nanyang Siang Pau had been
the best-selling Chinese paper in Malaysia until the 1980s when it was
overtaken by Sin Chew Jit Poh. In 1993, its parent company, Nanyang
Press, also took over China Press, currently the country’s second-most
popular Chinese paper. Nanyang suffered a severe downturn in its cir-
culation in 2001 following protests from readers and advertisers about
the takeover of the newspaper by the investment arm of the Malaysian
Chinese Association (MCA), the BN’s primary Chinese party. Unable to
recover its earlier market share following the controversy, Nanyang was
subsequently reoriented as a niche business newspaper. In 2008, Tiong’s
Sin Chew Media Corp merged with Nanyang Press to create Media Chi-
nese International (MCI) and two years later the MCA sold its stake in
the company (Ting 2010). Thus, today a single media conglomerate con-
trols three of the main Chinese newspapers, which between them com-
mand more than 70 percent of Chinese readership (Malaysia Audit
Bureau Circulations Various Years).
The only major Chinese-language challengers to MCI’s dominance
come in the form of papers owned by Lau Hui Kiang, a competitor of
Tiong’s. Kiang owned East Malaysia’s most popular Chinese paper, See
Hua Daily, and supported the founding of the Oriental Daily by journal-
ists who left Nanyang after its acquisition by the MCA (Sun 2009).
Despite having divested from its Chinese-language holdings, the
MCA still exerts significant influence on Malaysia’s media through its
ownership of The Star, which dominates the Anglophone market with a
circulation over twice that of its main rival the New Straits Times
(Malaysia Audit Bureau Circulations Various Years). First published as
a regional newspaper in Penang in 1971, The Star became a national
weekday tabloid from 1976 onward. A commercial success, its online
version vies with the online-only Malaysiakini for the title of most vis-
ited news portal.
In sum, the largest papers in Malaysia, accounting for the majority
of circulation, are in the hands of a few major holding companies, indi-
viduals, and parties. Yet, a linguistic divide is evident. Most major
Malay and Anglophone papers are linked to the BN, while the owner-
ship of Chinese-language newspapers is largely split between two ty-
coons. As will be seen, these ownership differences have material
effects.
Online Media
A survey of the top news websites in Malaysia reveals a very different
picture from that of the print media. While all of the major newspapers
have an online version, only four make it into the top fifty Malaysian
websites, where they are joined by Malaysiakini and the Malaysian In-
sider. Although it is difficult to compare the readership of websites with
that of newspapers, both Malaysiakini and the Malaysian Insider have
sizable readerships that have made them insurgent players in the over-
all Malaysian mediascape. Malaysiakini records on average 9 million
page views a month (300,000 per day) and 664,000 unique visits3a
month.4The Malaysian Insider has rapidly developed a substantial read-
ership exceeding 500,000 unique visitors a month.
Founded by former Star journalist Steven Gan and businessman
Prem Chandran in November 1999, Malaysiakini is the country’s old-
est news portal. While the site proved immediately popular, it was
plagued with political controversy over funding from George Soros and
the US-based National Endowment for Democracy. The site has also
been subject to repeated denial of service attacks since its inception, and
its journalists have frequently been denied official press passes. Despite
such challenges, Malaysiakini was one of the first online news portals
in the world to adopt a subscription paywall to provide the company
with a consistent revenue stream, which has been supplemented by ro-
bust growth in private advertising following a surge in traffic to the site
during the 2008 election campaign. By 2011–2012, advertising revenue
458 Strategic Censorship in a Plural Society?
Jason Abbott and John Wagner Givens 459
surpassed subscriptions as the largest source of income for the news
portal and even the BN began advertising with them. As Gan explains,
“Najib [the prime minister] realized that urban voters were not reading
newspapers like The Star and so the BN was no longer reaching them.”5
During the election of 2013, traffic to Malaysiakini again surged, peak-
ing at 4.3 million page views on election night alone.6
The Malaysian Insider was created in February 2008 by a group of
businessmen and journalists who were joined in 2010 by Jahabar Sadiq,
a former Reuters television producer, as CEO and editor. While the news
portal generates revenue from advertising, the bulk of its funding comes
from anonymous businessmen who, according to Jahabar, “liked the
idea of an impartial website.”7For these investors, Malaysiakini was
seen as essentially being pro-opposition by default: “Malaysiakini was
pushed into a corner . . . a reaction to the mainstream press. They hated
the fact the press was so pro-government and wanted to balance the
news. As a result they became too pro-opposition with not enough cri-
tique and analysis.”8
Free Malaysia Today (FMT) is both the newest and smallest online-
only news portal. Prior to 2010, FMT had been a blog affiliated with
the Pakatan Rakyat opposition coalition, but reoriented itself as a news
portal when K. Kabilan took over the site. FMT has recently sought to
carve a niche out for itself by launching a dedicated news portal cater-
ing to Sabah and Sarawak, the states of East Malaysia.9
The limitations of online media notwithstanding, the contrast with
Malaysia’s traditional media is striking. As opposed to strong print-
media links to the BN, major online outlets tend to be owned by inde-
pendent or even opposition-linked figures. This relative independence
may help explain the success of online news portals in increasingly win-
ning larger audiences and major advertisers.
Coding Bias and Data Analysis
In this article we examine three separate efforts at coding political bias
in Malaysia’s media. First, we look at the most comprehensive study to
date of media coverage in Malaysia, “Watching the Watchdog,” a 2013
project conducted by the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus
and the Center for Independent Journalism. Second, we address content
analysis of three major Malaysian websites conducted by Linda Lums-
den, a professor of journalism at the University of Arizona. Third, we
explore our own ongoing efforts, started in 2010, to code several major
Malaysian print outlets. While each of these coding projects has its own
460 Strategic Censorship in a Plural Society?
advantages and drawbacks, using data from three separate studies,
which rely on different units of analysis and techniques of data collec-
tion, allows us to provide a wider overview of Malaysia’s media. Per-
ception of bias in media sources is inherently subjective, but broad
agreement among these three studies suggests that the patterns of bias
we find in Malaysia’s media can be measured empirically and are pro-
found.
Study One: Watching the Watchdog
In 2013, Watching the Watchdog (WtW) employed a team of approxi-
mately seventy coders who analyzed twenty-seven news outlets, con-
sisting of seventeen newspapers, six television stations, four news
websites, and two news agencies. Our study makes use of all of these
sources except the TV stations, as we focus exclusively on written
media. The sources were monitored in the run-up to Malaysia’s 2013
general election, from April 7 to May 7. From the twenty-seven outlets,
the WtW team selected for coding front-page stories, editorials, articles
in the Malaysian news sections of news websites, or other articles that
were more than one-third about the election. Coders identified the tone
(positive, negative, neutral, or attacked) of individual sentences based on
the emotive, descriptive, and subjective language and vocabulary used.
The project employed sentence-level content as the unit of analysis in
order to generate extremely conservative estimates of bias.10 Perhaps
surprisingly, this did not result in large differences in measures of bias
produced by WtW and the other studies examined here, which used ar-
ticle-level bias.
To date, WtW has not run any extensive statistical analysis and has
released its data only in a fairly aggregated form through five medium-
term and two comprehensive final reports, as well as twenty-eight indi-
vidual media publication reports. The most disaggregated data made
available by WtW are tables published in the individual media reports,
which provide statistics on how often forty-five prominent Malaysian
political figures were mentioned and whether the tone was positive, neg-
ative, neutral, or attacked. These include eighteen BN figures, twenty-
three PR figures, and four independents. By collecting the data on these
forty-five figures across each of the twenty-seven outlets, we have con-
structed a dataset of 1,215 cases, which we use to test biases across
media outlets by language and type. For each figure we construct a sim-
ple measure of net bias. This was done by adding the total number of
positive and neutral mentions minus the total number of mentions in
which the figure was portrayed negatively or attacked.
Jason Abbott and John Wagner Givens 461
Table 1 shows that WtW finds a strong and statistically significant
bias in favor of BN political figures and against PR and independent
figures in both the Bahasa Malay and Anglophone media. The measure
we constructed for the WtW data subtracts total negative from positive
mentions for each figure, producing increasingly large positive num-
bers the more often a figure is covered in a positive light. Using this
measure, BN figures in the Malay-language media received an average
net number of approximately four mentions, while PR and independent
figures ranked an average net of 2.68 negative mentions.
In terms of the Anglophone press, WtW’s data (Table 1) demon-
strate large and statistically significant biases in favor of BN figures and
against PR and independent figures in the five Anglophone newspapers,
two websites, and one wire service they examined. Indeed, WtW’s data
show a pro-BN bias in the Anglophone media that is almost identical to
the level of bias it found in the Malay media. The BN netted an average
of 4.1 positive mentions to the PR and independent net average of 2.7
negative mentions.
WtW’s analysis of five Chinese-language newspapers shows a dra-
matic difference between it and the Malay and Anglophone press. Table
1 confirms the established wisdom that Chinese outlets did not provide
significantly more positive coverage for the BN.
Table 1 Bias in Coverage Found by Watching the Watchdog
(2-tailed T-tests)
Standard Standard
NMean Error Deviation
Net Bias in Coverage of Political Figures by Bahasa Malay
BN figures 144 4.02 1.51 18.10
PR and independent figures 216 –2.68 0.73 10.71
Difference: –6.70 P-value: 0.00
Net Bias in Coverage of Political Figures by Chinese Outlets
BN figures 90 0.86 1.29 12.25
PR and independent figures 135 –0.57 0.63 7.37
Difference: –1.43 P-value: 0.14
Net Bias in Coverage of Political Figures by Anglophone Outlets
BN figures 144 4.10 1.49 17.90
PR and independent figures 216 –2.74 0.61 8.94
Difference: –6.84 P-value: 0.00
Net Bias in Coverage of Political Figures by Online Outlets
BN figures 72 –0.06 0.59 4.98
PR and independent figures 108 0.04 0.51 5.26
Difference: 0.10 P-value: 0.45
WtW’s data also support the impartiality of online news. WtW
coded articles from two of the same websites as our second study,
Malaysiakini and Malaysia Insider, but coded both the Anglophone and
Malay-language versions of each site. This could be crucial given what
we have learned about the significant differences in media bias across
Malaysia’s linguistic divides. Table 1 shows that average net mentions
of both BN and opposition/independent figures were almost zero. This
means not only that online outlets treated both parties equally but that
both were praised almost exactly as often as they were criticized.
Study Two: Lumsden
Our second source of data comes from content analysis conducted by
Linda Lumsden, a professor of journalism at the University of Arizona.
Lumsden selected for analysis Malaysia’s three most popular online-
only news websites: Malaysiakini, the Malaysian Insider, and Free
Malaysia Today. Lumsden identified the top ten news stories for each of
the sites every day for fifteen days, from April 21, 2013, through Elec-
tion Day. She examined the headlines and text and coded the 450 arti-
cles according to theme and vocabulary. Articles were classified as
positive BN, negative BN, positive opposition, or negative opposition,
as well as additional categories not relating directly to either party. Un-
like the other studies addressed here, a single person conducted all the
coding in Lumsden’s study. While this decreases the chance of an appar-
ent bias emerging merely from a difference in opinion between coders,
it increases the influence of a single perspective, especially given the
coder is also the primary researcher.
As was the case for WtW, Lumsden’s raw data were not made avail-
able to us. She does, however, provide fairly disaggregated data in the
form of tables that list how many of each category of article
(positive/negative and BN/opposition) were present daily on each news
site during the period. We collected these data and then constructed a
simple measure of net bias by subtracting the total number of positive
articles by the total number of negative articles for each website each
day. This yields forty-five cases that we use to test for bias.
Our analysis of Lumsden’s data (Table 2) makes it clear that
Malaysia’s top three online news portals presented largely balanced re-
porting. When we create a net number of pro-BN/pro-opposition articles
per day,11 we find a less-than-one article per day difference, which is far
from statistically significant. While not visible in the aggregate data pre-
sented in Table 2, Malaysiakini and Free Malaysia Today were more
critical in their coverage of the government than the Malaysian Insider.
462 Strategic Censorship in a Plural Society?
Yet, none of the papers could be accused of being strongly biased in
favor of the opposition. By demonstrating a willingness to be critical of
the opposition, as well as the government, the online news media in
Malaysia is demonstrating that “they are not just mouthpieces for the
opposition . . . [but] play the role of journalistic watchdog” (Lumsden
2013, 20).
Study Three: Abbott and Givens
In 2010, Jason Abbott began a process of coding Malaysian newspapers
in order to measure whether they exhibited progovernment or pro-oppo-
sition bias. The project began with two Malay-language newspapers,
Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian (Abbott 2011). Both were coded
for the month preceding the federal election of March 8, 2008, as well
as the same period two years earlier as a control. Since then, further
coding was conducted to include the 2013 election. To date, coding has
been completed for Utusan Malaysia (2006, 2008, and 2013), Berita
Harian (2006 and 2008), the New Straits Times (2008 and 2013), and
Sin Chew Jit Poh (2013).
The coding of the data by Abbott followed a detailed codebook and
coding instructions modeled on one created by the Comparative Na-
tional Elections Project12 for the 1992 US presidential election. For all
the newspapers coded in 2008 and 2013, the time period selected was
approximately a month preceding national elections. For 2008, this pe-
riod ran from February 11 to March 8; in 2013, from April 17 to May
5.
The coding of Malay-language newspapers was conducted by two
native Malay speakers, one Singaporean and one Malaysian, while the
coding for Sin Chew Jit Poh was conducted by a Malaysian-Chinese re-
searcher studying at the Australian National University. The New
Straits Times was coded by Abbott with the assistance of a graduate
student. To address questions about objectivity, the decision was taken
not to employ researchers solely from Malaysia in order to avoid pre-
Jason Abbott and John Wagner Givens 463
Table 2 Top Three News Sites Bias in Online Coverage Found by
Lumsden (2-tailed T-tests)
Standard Standard
NMean Error Deviation
BN bias 45 0.16 0.38 2.52
PR bias 45 0.96 0.33 2.24
Difference: –0.80 P-value: 0.47
conceptions the coders may have had that could have colored their as-
sessment of the bias in the newspapers under investigation.
Coders were instructed to code any and all stories that were prima-
rily about government and/or politics from the target newspaper or web-
site during the selected period. They were instructed not to include
sports, lifestyle, or finance (unless a financial story was explicitly polit-
ical). As a result, the numbers of items coded vary between publication
and time period based on the number of articles in the publication and
the percentage of articles with political content.
Five variables were explicitly coded for degrees of bias/partisan-
ship: government bias, opposition bias, reporter tone, evaluation of actor
in article, and evaluation of actor in photo. The coders were instructed
to code for the article as a whole and from the perspective of the Barisan
Nasional and opposition separately. We make direct use only of the gov-
ernment bias and opposition bias variables, which were coded on a
seven-point Likert scale (1 being extremely critical to 7 being extremely
positive). Since the Likert scale uses separate numbers for positive or
negative bias, there was no need to create a net measure of bias as we
did for the previous studies. In comparison with the previous studies an-
alyzed here, the Likert scale allows for greater nuance in the coding of
bias, so that fawning praise (7) looks very different from mild approval
(5). The downside of such a scale, however, is the inherent subjectivity
of differentiating relatively fine degrees of bias, especially between
coders. The fact that our own findings so closely match those of the
other studies suggests that our results are not simply the product of cod-
ing specifications.
Our findings (see Table 3) demonstrate that Utusan Malaysia was
predictably biased toward the government and virulently anti-opposi-
tion. Looking back to the 2008 data, which analyzed both Utusan
Malaysia and Berita Harian, we see that this bias is consistent with their
coverage of the last election. On a 7-point Likert scale, the data from
2008 show a difference of 3.27 between the opposition and the BN,
while 2013 ranked a 3.59. In his 2011 paper, Abbott found that in the
nonelection period from 2006 the opposition is rarely mentioned at all.
This contrasts dramatically from the pre-election periods in 2008 and
2013, when the opposition received frequent negative mentions. Indeed,
our coding of Utusan in 2013 actually demonstrated that the opposition
was mentioned more than the BN.
As we turn our attention to Sin Chew Jit Poh, the most popular Chi-
nese-language daily, Table 3 shows that its coverage of the election cam-
paign was remarkably evenhanded. Both the governing coalition and the
464 Strategic Censorship in a Plural Society?
opposition received coverage that was balanced (neither negative nor pos-
itive) with only a very slight and statistically insignificant advantage for
the Barisan Nasional in terms of positive coverage. With a mean of 4.20,
bias toward the government is only slightly higher than a midpoint on the
7-point Likert scale. Perhaps more interestingly, the opposition is also
treated favorably with a mean of 4.08, making this the only newspaper we
coded where coverage of the opposition was generally positive.
In our analysis of 2008 coverage we found that the New Straits
Times did betray a progovernment bias (Table 3), but one that was much
smaller than those of Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian for the same
period. This makes sense as the New Straits Times has traditionally pro-
jected itself as a more somber and professional publication than these
Malay tabloids. Looking at their coverage during the 2013 election,
however, we see that the paper has become far less neutral since 2008,
proving slightly more biased than even Utusan Malaysia. Some famil-
iar with Malaysia’s media believe that the paper’s increasingly progov-
ernment tone has begun to seriously alienate the educated middle-class
Jason Abbott and John Wagner Givens 465
Table 3 Bias in Online Coverage Found by Abbott and Givens
(2-tailed T-tests)
Standard Standard
NMean Error Deviation
Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian, 2008
BN bias 534 5.62 0.05 1.14
PR bias 459 2.35 0.05 1.16
Difference: –3.27 P-value: 0.00
Utusan Malaysia, 2013
BN bias 172 5.67 0.06 0.76
PR bias 258 2.07 0.03 0.56
Difference: –3.60 P-value: 0.00
Sin Chew Jit Poh, 2013
BN bias 45 4.20 0.27 1.83
PR bias 39 4.08 0.28 1.72
Difference: –0.12 P-value: 0.38
New Straits Times, 2008
BN bias 669 4.92 0.03 0.73
PR bias 388 3.49 0.05 0.92
Difference: –1.42 P-value: 0.00
New Straits Times, 2013
BN bias 189 5.98 0.07 0.94
PR bias 133 2.05 0.09 1.06
Difference: –3.94 P-value: 0.00
readership of the newspaper.13 This may explain why the paper has seen
its circulation fall precipitously from approximately 180,000 prior to
the “Reformasi” protests in 1998 to fewer than 75,000 by mid-2014
(Malaysia Audit Bureau Circulations Various Years).
Understanding the Mechanisms of Repression:
Directions for Future Research
The results of the previous section strongly suggest two major features
of Malaysia’s mediascape: (1) there is a statistically significant progov-
ernment bias in the Malay-language and Anglophone media, and (2) on-
line and Chinese media outlets are much more balanced and neutral in
their reportage. In the next section we examine two factors that are com-
monly believed to be responsible for the strong bias in Malaysia’s
media—a legislative framework for censorship and a structure of media
ownership that closely ties outlets to the ruling coalition.
The Legislative Framework
As Abbott (2011), Brown (2005), and others have noted, one of the prin-
cipal factors in explaining the progovernment bias of Malaysia’s print
media is the multiple legislative checks that allow the state to restrict
freedom of speech promised by Malaysia’s constitution.
The Official Secrets Act (OSA), passed in 1972, gives the govern-
ment the power to prosecute any journalist who publishes official in-
formation without authorization. In addition to its use against political
figures,14 the OSA has been used against several journalists, including
James Clad and Sabry Sharif in 198515 and two journalists at the Har-
ian Metro in 1995.16
Originally passed by the British to contain anticolonial unrest dur-
ing the Communist insurgency, the Sedition Act (1948) prohibits
“prompting disaffection” with the administration of justice in Malaysia
and the public questioning of “sensitive” constitutional issues.17 Addi-
tionally the act makes it a crime to publish or be in possession of any
publication that could be deemed seditious. The Sedition Act has been
wielded frequently against government opponents,18 bloggers,19 and
even cartoonists.20
The most explicit legislative control of press freedom is the 1984
Printing Presses and Publications Act (PPPA). The act allows the home
minister to revoke publishing and permit licenses and provides for a jail
term or heavy fine for any editors, journalists, publishers, or individu-
als who “maliciously” print false information. The PPPA has been used
466 Strategic Censorship in a Plural Society?
on numerous occasions to ban or restrict press freedom. In 1987, four
newspapers had their licenses revoked including Sin Chew Jit Poh and
The Star. During the “Reformasi” protests of 1998–1999 the act was
wielded against a variety of outlets including the magazines Detik,
Tamadun, and Wasilah. It was also used against Harakah, the newspa-
per of the Islamic party PAS, in March 2001;21 the Tamil newspaper
Makkal Osai in 2007;22 and the satirical artist Zunar 23 in 2010.
As is the case with many similar regimes, actual cases of censorship
are just the tip of the iceberg. In Malaysia, as in many countries, the
threat of censorship or even jail leads to extensive self-censorship by
journalists, editors, and owners (Hassid and Stern 2012).
To some extent, the greater neutrality of online media can be ex-
plained by the fact that some laws restricting press freedom did or do not
apply to online sources, for example the PPPA, and that those that do
have been less rigorously applied online. This is not the result of a
greater commitment to online press freedom but rather the unintended
consequence of a policy of promoting the information technology sec-
tor as an engine of development (Abbott 2001; Lepawsky 2005). This
relative freedom, especially in contrast to the constraints placed on
Malaysia’s traditional media, has been partially responsible for rapid
growth in the readership of online news (Abbott, MacDonald, and
Givens 2013). Prem Chandran, the CEO of Malaysiakini, when asked to
comment on the respective roles of print and online media, remarked,
“more people get their political news online than in newspapers today.
Online media is now the mainstream.”24 Jahabar Sadiq, CEO of the
Malaysian Insider, was scathing in his opinion of his print media coun-
terparts, stating that “the editors report directly to the Prime Minister
. . . they reflect the siege mentality of this government, they need good
news, they need to believe the hype, they won’t change!”25 Leslie Lau,
executive editor of the Malay Mail Online, argued that the effect of
media bias was to create “a credibility gap and trust gap between the
government and the urban middle classes, that’s where online media
comes in. . . . Online media is leading the charge.”26
While the policy allowed online services to build this firm founda-
tion, part of the ruling coalition’s initial laxity may have been the result
of a lack of understanding of the possible impact of online media. In the
words of former prime minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, “when I said
there should be no censorship of the Internet, I really did not realize the
power of the Internet, the power to undermine moral values, the power
to create problems and agitate people.27As the Internet has emerged as
a powerful voice in Malaysian politics, there has been increasing evi-
Jason Abbott and John Wagner Givens 467
dence of the government’s intent and willingness to censor online
sources. In 2001, Hishamuddin Rais, a social activist and columnist for
the online news service Malaysiakini, was detained under the ISA for
two years.28 In 2006, there was an attempt to force all news-based blogs
to register with the Ministry of Information.29 In 2008, the prominent
civil rights activist and blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddin was detained
for two months.3 0 On March 31, 2015, three editors and two
executives from the Malaysian Insider were arrested in connection with
an article about a proposal for the strict enforcement of Islamic law.31 A
few weeks later, Malaysia’s parliament approved amendments to the
sedition law that grant broad new powers to censor online media.32 In
short, while it has generally enjoyed greater freedom than its print rivals,
the online press in Malaysia has not been immune to harassment or cen-
sorship and recent events suggest that the government is ramping up
censorship online.
As we saw throughout this section, the Malaysian state has used
harsh censorship laws to target outlets and individuals that it sees as
problematic, generally because of their criticism of the BN and its allies.
To some extent, less-harsh restrictions and censorship of online sources
help to explain the much greater neutrality of new media outlets. How-
ever, the government has, at times, proved willing to bring tools of cen-
sorship to bear against online journalists. Different levels of censorship,
therefore, can only explain part of the large difference in bias between
the print and online media. Additionally, the Chinese print media is sub-
ject to the same censorship mechanisms as the Malay and Anglophone
media, yet has proved to be significantly more independent. The next
section, therefore, will show that part of this variation is the result of
varying ownership of Malaysia’s media.
Ownership Structures
A major mechanism through which the BN has been able to ensure a
progovernment bias in the print media is the ownership structure of the
country’s leading newspapers, which have long been linked to accounts
of cronyism among Malaysia’s political and corporate elite (e.g., Gomez
1990; Gomez and Jomo 1999; Abdul Aziz 2005). Ownership structures
closely tie several major Malay and Anglophone papers to the ruling
coalition. By contrast, Chinese-language papers are almost entirely in
the hands of two Chinese tycoons and online media is privately held by
a greater variety of individuals and companies. This section delves more
deeply into these ties to highlight the difference between the highly bi-
ased Malay and Anglophone press and the much more neutral Chinese
and online outlets.
468 Strategic Censorship in a Plural Society?
Between 1972 and 2001, the New Straits Times Press was owned by
three different holding companies linked to the United Malays National
Organization, specifically the Fleet Group, Renong, and then Malaysia
Resources Corporation Berhad. In 2001, the corporation’s media sub-
sidiaries were divested and subsequently acquired by Media Prima,
which today publishes Berita Harian, the New Straits Times, and Har-
ian Metro as well as owns all private free-to-air television networks in
the country. The largest shareholder in Media Prima today, at 18.4 per-
cent, is the Malaysia Employees Provident Fund (EPF),33 followed by
the private firm Gabungan Kasturi with 11.5 percent. The former is a
government agency charged with encouraging long-term banking to mit-
igate for retirement, unemployment, or sickness. While little is known
about Gabungan Kasturi, a 2005 report in Business Times claimed that
it was owned by Amanah Raya, a trust management company wholly
owned by the Malaysian government through the Ministry of Finance.34
Thus, while nominally under private ownership, Media Prima is a good
example of the complex web of relations between corporate Malaysia,
the government, UMNO, and the media. While the NSTP is indirectly
linked to the ruling coalition via such ties, UMNO directly owns a con-
trolling interest (approximately 50 percent) in Utusan Melayu Press,
which publishes Utusan Malaysia, the daily tabloid Kosmo, and the
weekly newspapers Mingguan Malaysia and Utusan Zaman.
In 1977, Huaren Holdings, the investment arm of the Malaysian Chi-
nese Association, bought a controlling interest in The Star. In 2010, the
MCA took direct control of the newspaper by buying out Huaren’s 42.4
percent share. The MCA argued that the decision was solely motivated
by a desire for Huaren to focus its efforts on other investments.
In 2001, Huaren Holdings also acquired over 70 percent of the stock
in Nanyang Press, the publishers of the major Chinese-language papers
Nanyang Siang Pau and China Press.35 However, protests against this
acquisition led to a collapse in the market share of Nanyang Siang Pau
and forced Huaren to divest the majority of its holdings five years later
to Sarawak timber tycoon Tiong Hiew King, who had previously ac-
quired both Sin Chew Jit Poh and Guan Ming Daily.36 In 2010, Huaren
sold its remaining stake in Media Chinese International, the new hold-
ing company for all four Chinese papers. Lau Hui Kiang, another Chi-
nese tycoon, controls Malaysia’s other major Chinese newspapers the
See Hua Daily and the Oriental Daily (Sun 2009).
Not only do the major online news sources in Malaysia lack direct
or indirect ownership ties to the Malaysian state, they are generally
founded and funded by individuals and organizations explicitly inter-
ested in providing Malaysians with impartial news. Malaysiakini has re-
Jason Abbott and John Wagner Givens 469
ceived funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
and other international donors interested in a free press. The publication
is also 70 percent owned by its cofounders and staff.37 The newer Free
Malaysia Today, originally an opposition coalition blog, is largely funded
by anonymous private donors.38 In contrast, the ownership of the
Malaysian Insider is less clear-cut. It is claimed that the anonymous busi-
nessmen who provided the funds to set up and run the news portal had
close political ties to Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi.39 After Abdullah
stepped down in 2009, however, the news portal took a much more im-
partial position and was even barred from attending UMNO’s General
Assembly in 2009 because of its critical coverage of the BN.40 In June
2014, the site was bought by The Edge Media Group, which publishes the
business weekly The Edge. While the newspaper is widely praised for the
quality of its reportage and its editorial independence, critics point to the
parent company NexNews’s links to Vincent Tan, a controversial corpo-
rate ally of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad.41
This section shows that while most major Malay papers and some
online outlets maintain ties to the state and the ruling BN coalition, sub-
stantial differences in ownership structures seem to explain part of the
greater independence of Chinese and online outlets. As we have shown,
the BN maintains a much closer relationship with major traditional
Malay and Anglophone outlets. UMNO has relatively direct ownership
of Utusan Malaysia, Mingguan Malaysia, and Kosmo! (Guan 2010) and
is tightly linked to Berita Harian, Harian Metro, and the New Strait
Times through Media Prima.
While the MCA retains its direct ownership of the best-selling An-
glophone paper, The Star, its relinquishing of two major Chinese pa-
pers helps explain the greater independence of the Chinese media.
Although the tycoon owners of the major Chinese papers do maintain
cozy relationships with key figures in the BN (Straumann 2014),42 their
substantial fortunes and influence may help ensure that their papers are
not mere mouthpieces for BN politicians and place more emphasis on
factors other than politics, such as readership and profits. Finally, the
ownership of online publications is generally even further removed from
the influence of the ruling coalition.
The argument that ownership explains much of the variation in bias
in Malaysia’s media is strengthened by the dramatic increase in bias
we saw in the New Straits Times. Losing their parliamentary superma-
jority for the first time in 2008 arguably served as a wake-up call to
the BN and one of their reactions appears to have been to ramp up their
influence on the media. Since most of the major papers directly or in-
470 Strategic Censorship in a Plural Society?
directly owned by the BN were already highly biased, it was primarily
in the formerly more neutral New Straits Times that this extra influence
was most evident.
Conclusion
This piece has reviewed three independent projects to code bias in
Malaysia’s media. With surprisingly few discrepancies these studies
show that Malaysia’s media is generally biased in favor of the ruling
BN coalition, but that online and Chinese-language sources are notably
less biased. These results have important implications both for
Malaysia’s future as well as other hybrid and authoritarian regimes.
The variation in bias across Malaysia’s media shows both the ef-
fectiveness and the limits of authoritarian attempts to influence the
media. The BN has managed to entrench a significant and ongoing bias
into many of Malaysia’s most important newspapers. Yet the BN still
lost its supermajority in 2008 and, despite the further ramping up of its
efforts at influencing the media (as was particularly evident in the New
Straits Times), it managed to lose the popular vote in 2013. This lack of
effectiveness may arise from the fact that a number of outlets, such as
the major Chinese papers, still manage to resist BN pressure. Addition-
ally, these long-standing outlets are increasingly being joined by ever
more important and remarkably impartial online sources.
As online news sites proliferate, increase in popularity, and become
more commercially viable, it is possible that traditional print media may
become less overtly biased in order to compete and survive. Nonethe-
less, any prediction that online news will erode the overall pro-BN bias
of the country’s media is probably overly optimistic. For decades the
Chinese media has provided fairly evenhanded coverage, but this has
done little to force other outlets to be more impartial. Additionally, on-
line news sites are still far less established than their traditional competi-
tors, with even the most successful, Malaysiakini, employing a fraction
of the staff of its print rivals.43 Moreover, for the time being, none are
commercially viable without additional sources of income from anony-
mous benefactors44 or foreign grants. Even more worryingly, threatened
by their loss of the popular vote in the 2013 elections, the BN seems to
have ramped up repression of online sources.
Malaysia represents a hybrid regime that seeks a degree of demo-
cratic legitimacy through semicompetitive elections and democratic
practices while simultaneously constraining those practices with repres-
sive and coercive powers (Schedler 2006). The country’s mediascape
Jason Abbott and John Wagner Givens 471
therefore offers a number of lessons for scholars of hybrid regimes such
as Russia and Singapore as well as more coercive regimes such as
China: First, control of the media is an important political battleground.
Indeed, maintaining control of the media has helped the BN and its pred-
ecessors to win every one of Malaysia’s elections since independence.
Second, ownership (especially indirect) and control of news outlets can
prove far more effective and less obviously damaging to legitimacy than
draconian censorship. Ownership links have allowed the BN to highly
bias Malay and Anglophone outlets in its favor. Three, some level of
media dissent is easily tolerated and minority opposition voices may
even help legitimacy. For decades, the BN has managed to win elec-
tions easily despite a relatively independent Chinese and, to a lesser ex-
tent, Anglophone press. Four, online media may eventually prove a
game-changer. The BN’s share of the popular vote has begun to slip se-
riously in the last two elections, a phenomenon that is at least correlated
with and linked to, if not caused exclusively by, the rise of popular in-
dependent online news. If new media does help to unseat the Barisan
Nasional in some future election, leaders from both authoritarian and
hybrid regimes will certainly take note.
Jason Abbott is the Aung San Suu Kyi Endowed Chair in Asian Democracy and the
director of the Center for Asian Democracy at the University of Louisville. Dr. Ab-
bott previously held positions at the University of Surrey, the School of Oriental and
African Studies at the University of London, and the Nottingham Trent University.
He is the author/editor of five books and over thirty articles and book chapters on is-
sues of democratization, economic development, political economy, and regional se-
curity in Southeast Asia, and Malaysia in particular.
John Wagner Givens is a Center Sssociate at the Asian Studies Center, University of
Pittsburgh. He previously held positions as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the
Center for Asian Democracy, University of Louisville, and as a Clarendon Scholar
at the University of Oxford. Dr. Givens’s research focuses on politics and law in
China and research methods in Asian comparative politics.
Notes
1. Prior to 1973 the ruling coalition was known as The Alliance and con-
sisted of UMNO, the Malaysian Chinese Association, and the Malaysian Indian
Congress.
2. “Malaysia’s Press Freedom Ranking Drops to All-Time Low of 147,”
Malaysian Insider, February 12, 2014. www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia
/article/malaysias-press-freedom-ranking-drops-to-historic-low-of-147 (accessed
March 26, 2014).
472 Strategic Censorship in a Plural Society?
3. One of the difficulties in measuring an audience on the Internet is deter-
mining the difference between page views and unique visits. The former repre-
sents the number of times a page is tracked by analytics software and is not
necessarily indicative of audience share since any time an individual user clicks
on a page during a visit it records it as a page view. Unique visits, on the other
hand, simply track the entrance of a user to a webpage. It represents therefore the
first hit. The problem with unique visits is that it does not count what the user
subsequently does and, since today a user can visit from multiple devices, one
user can also make multiple unique visits.
4. Figures courtesy of Malaysiakini. http://advertisemalaysiakini
.blogspot.com (accessed March 26, 2014). Figures from the Malaysian Digital
Media Association for October 2013 gave Malaysiakini 906,000 unique visitors
and the Malaysian Insider 663,000.
5. Ibid.
6. Interview with Prem Chandran, Petaling Jaya, July 18, 2013.
7. Interview with Jahabar Sadiq, CEO and editor of the Malaysian Insider,
July 22, 2013.
8. Ibid.
9. FMT Borneo Plus was officially launched on January 14, 2014.
10. Email correspondence with Tessa Houghton, University of Nottingham
Malaysia Campus, March 12, 2014. Houghton was one of the leading collabo-
rators in the Watching the Watchdog project.
11. For example, if Malaysiakini had three progovernment articles and two
anti-opposition articles on one day that is coded at 1; if those numbers were re-
versed it would be –1.
12. The Comparative National Elections Project is run out of the Ohio State
University. The project involves a multiyear, multicountry study of how citizens
in democracies worldwide receive information about issues, candidates, and pol-
itics during election campaigns. For more information, see Richard Gunther,
“Comparative National Elections Project,” Mershon Center for International
Studies. http://mershoncenter.osu.edu/expertise/institutions/cnep.htm.
13. Email from Steven Gan, editor of Malaysiakini, February 14, 2015.
14. Kit Siang was convicted for receiving information concerning the pur-
chase of Swedish warships by the Malaysian navy (Sani 2005).
15. Barbara Crosette, “Malaysian Secret Laws Used as New Curb,” New York
Times, November 4, 1985. www.nytimes.com/1985/11/04/world
/malaysian-secrets-law-is-used-as-a-news-curb.html.
16. Ibid.
17. Such sensitive issues include Malay special privileges, the status of Malay
as both the official and national language, the status of Islam as the official re-
ligion, the citizenship rights of non-Malays, and the sovereignty of the Malay
rulers.
18. In 2013 Tian Chua, vice president of the opposition National Justice Party
(PKR), and Hishamuddin Rais were charged with making seditious speeches at
an opposition event in Selangor, while in February and May 2014 Karpal Singh
and Teresa Kok, members of parliament for the opposition Democratic Action
Party, were convicted and charged, respectively, for seditious comments.
Jason Abbott and John Wagner Givens 473
19. On July 18, 2013, bloggers Alvin Tan and Vivian Lee were charged and
imprisoned for promoting enmity between different groups of religion or race for
posting a Ramadan greeting with the two of them eating pork. See K. Pragleth,
“Alvin, Vivian Charged; Bail Rejected,” Free Malaysia Today, July 18, 2013.
www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2013/07/18/bak-kut-teh-couple-
charged-bail-rejected.
20. On February 11 cartoonist Zulkiflee Anwar Ulhaque (Zunar) was arrested
for tweeting critically about the decision by the Malaysian Federal Court to find
opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim guilty of sodomy.
21. PAS was forced to restrict the publication of its newspaper Harakah from
biweekly to bimonthly (see Abbott 2001).
22. “Paper Shut Down for Breaching Guidelines,” Star (Malaysia), April 18,
2008. http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/4/18/nation/20987996
(accessed November 25, 2009).
23. Bob Dietz, “No Joke: Malaysian Cartoonist Stands Up to Government,”
Committee to Protect Journalists, February 27, 2012.
https://www.cpj.org/blog/2012/02/malaysian-cartoonist-zunar-stands-up-to-gov-
ernment.php (accessed March 26, 2014).
24. Prem, interview.
25. Sadiq, interview.
26. Lau, Interview.
27. “Dr. M: Rethink Absolute Freedom on Net,” Malaysian Insider, June 3,
2012. www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/dr-m-rethink-absolute-
freedom-on-net/#sthash.MD8z2Fan.dpbs.
28. “Hishamuddin Rais: We’re Excellent at ‘Bodekcology,”’ Malaysian Di-
gest, January 13, 2010. www.malaysiandigest.com/features/42-personality/1631-
hishamuddin-rais-were-excellent.html (accessed February 18, 2010).
29. Peter Walker, “Malaysia’s Mission Unbloggable,” Guardian,! December
5, 2006. www.theguardian.com/news/blog/2006/dec/05/malaysiablogb (accessed
June 19, 2015).
30. Rowan Walker, “Malaysia Blogger’s Arrest Creates Dangerous Prece-
dent,” Guardian, September 12, 2008. www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog
/2008/sep/12/malaysia.internet (accessed December 11, 2009).
31. Austin Ramzy, “Editors and Executives of News Website Malaysian In-
sider Are Arrested,” New York Times, March 31, 2015. www.nytimes.com
/2015/04/01/world/asia/malaysian-insider-arrests.html?_r=0 (accessed June 19,
2015).
32. “Malaysia Extends Sedition Law to Allow Online Censorship,” Commit-
tee to Protect Journalists, April 13, 2015. https://cpj.org/2015/04/malaysia-ex-
tends-sedition-law-to-allow-online-cens.php (accessed June 19, 2015).
33. www.mediaprima.com.my/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/an/MediaPri-
maAR2011.pdf.
34. “Gabungan Kesturi, EPF Raise Stakes in Media Prima,” Business Times,
January 8, 2005.
35. Siow Chen Ming, “A Cash Cow for Huaren,” The Edge, March 23, 2009.
www.theedgemalaysia.com/features/3961-a-cash-cow-for-huaren.html (accessed
March 14, 2014).
474 Strategic Censorship in a Plural Society?
36. Ng Tien Eng, “Daily vs. Daily: Challenging the Big Boys,” Aliran
Monthly, July 23, 2003. http://aliran.com/archives/monthly/2003/7l.html (ac-
cessed March 10, 2014).
37. “Malaysiakini Admits to Receiving Foreign Funds,” The Star Online,
September 22, 2012. www.thestar.com.my/story/?file=%2F2012%2F9
%2F22%2Fnation%2F12067491 (accessed June 19, 2015).
38. FMT Borneo Plus was officially launched on January 14, 2014.
39. Interview with Gan in ibid.; interview with K. Kabilan, editor of Free
Malaysia Today, July 19, 2013; interview with Leslie Lau, executive editor of the
Malay Mail, July 2013.
40. See Deborah Loh, “Internet Media Barred from UMNO,” The Nut Graph,
March 29, 2009. www.thenutgraph.com/internet-media-barred-from-umno.
41. Malaysiakini, “Newcomer NexNews Buys Sun and Edge for RM54 Mil,”
January 22, 2002. www.malaysiakini.com/news/6357.
42. Tiong was particularly close to Abdul Taib Muhamad, who from 1981 to
2014 was chief minister of Sarawak and leader of the largest political party in the
state, Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB). The PBB is currently the largest
political party in Sarawak and since the 2013 federal election is the second-
largest constituent party in the Barisan Nasional after UMNO.
43. Malaysiakini employs approximately sixty staff, the Insider about thirty
(including ten reporters), and Free Malaysia Today a similar figure to the In-
sider following its expansion to East Malaysia. The Star, by contrast, has a 1,600-
strong workforce.
44. Interview with Jacqueline Surin, editor of The Nut Graph, July 30, 2013.
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478 Strategic Censorship in a Plural Society?
... In contrast, the mainstream newspaper, 'The New Straits Times' (NST) is the oldest printed newspaper from Media Prima Company founded in 1845 and in 1974 re-established its presence. It comprises complex relations between the Malaysian corporate atmosphere, the government, ruling political party, and media (Abbott & Givens, 2015). 'NST' as a mainstream printed newspaper, its decline in readership was observed to 34%, and to cater the readership downfall, 'NST' had shown its presence online (Ho K.C et al;2003). ...
... It is seen that the ruling government in Malaysia has a lot of shares in Media Prima Company and the government operates by the investment arm (Sankar, 2013). The company is not directly owned by the government but has linked with the ruling government by social connections and having shared ownership in many holding companies (Abbott & Givens, 2015). Like, the largest shareholding company is the Malaysian Employment Fund (EPF) in Media Prima with 18.4%, followed by the private company Kubungan Kasturi by 11.5% (Abbott & Givens, 2015). ...
... The company is not directly owned by the government but has linked with the ruling government by social connections and having shared ownership in many holding companies (Abbott & Givens, 2015). Like, the largest shareholding company is the Malaysian Employment Fund (EPF) in Media Prima with 18.4%, followed by the private company Kubungan Kasturi by 11.5% (Abbott & Givens, 2015). Generally, the media of Malaysia is biased in favor of the ruling political party and NST has always an inclination towards government as per its status and position. ...
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The study aimed to identify the hidden meaning lying behind the text of two Malaysian Online newspapers i.e. ‘Malaysiakini’ (alternative newspaper) and ‘The New Straits Times’ (mainstream newspaper). The language of the newspaper always depicts its ideology through its stances. To discover the stances of newspapers, Martin and White (2005) ‘Appraisal Analysis’ framework was employed on 5 news reports (3,265 words) from ‘Malaysiakini’ and 3 news reports from ‘The New Straits Times’ (2,456 words) which were based on the performance of social actors during the 17th and 18th August 2018. It has been found that Pakatan Harapan (PH) government (Dr.Mahathir) was represented the most in both newspapers as compared to the Barisan Nasional (BN) as an opposition who lost the election in 2018, the very first time after independence. By ‘Appraisal Analysis’ it is found that both newspapers have represented Dr. Mahathir the most by positive attitudinal results in ‘Appreciation’ resource as ‘Malaysiakini’ has shown 37%, while; ‘NST’ given 56% positive attitudinal instances being a governmental influenced newspaper.
... In contrast, the mainstream newspaper, 'The New Straits Times' (NST) is the oldest printed newspaper from Media Prima Company founded in 1845 and in 1974 re-established its presence. It comprises complex relations between the Malaysian corporate atmosphere, the government, ruling political party, and media (Abbott & Givens, 2015). 'NST' as a mainstream printed newspaper, its decline in readership was observed to 34%, and to cater the readership downfall, 'NST' had shown its presence online (Ho K.C et al;2003). ...
... It is seen that the ruling government in Malaysia has a lot of shares in Media Prima Company and the government operates by the investment arm (Sankar, 2013). The company is not directly owned by the government but has linked with the ruling government by social connections and having shared ownership in many holding companies (Abbott & Givens, 2015). Like, the largest shareholding company is the Malaysian Employment Fund (EPF) in Media Prima with 18.4%, followed by the private company Kubungan Kasturi by 11.5% (Abbott & Givens, 2015). ...
... The company is not directly owned by the government but has linked with the ruling government by social connections and having shared ownership in many holding companies (Abbott & Givens, 2015). Like, the largest shareholding company is the Malaysian Employment Fund (EPF) in Media Prima with 18.4%, followed by the private company Kubungan Kasturi by 11.5% (Abbott & Givens, 2015). Generally, the media of Malaysia is biased in favor of the ruling political party and NST has always an inclination towards government as per its status and position. ...
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Full-text available
The study aimed to identify the hidden meaning lying behind the text of two Malaysian Online newspapers i.e. 'Malaysiakini' (alternative newspaper) and 'The New Straits Times' (mainstream newspaper). The language of the newspaper always depicts its ideology through its stances. To discover the stances of newspapers, Martin and White (2005) 'Appraisal Analysis' framework was employed on 5 news reports (3,265 words) from 'Malaysiakini' and 3 news reports from 'The New Straits Times' (2,456 words) which were based on the performance of social actors during the 17th and 18th August 2018. It has been found that Pakatan Harapan (PH) government (Dr.Mahathir) was represented the most in both newspapers as compared to the Barisan Nasional (BN) as an opposition who lost the election in 2018, the very first time after independence. By 'Appraisal Analysis' it is found that both newspapers have represented Dr. Mahathir the most by positive attitudinal results in 'Appreciation' resource as 'Malaysiakini' has shown 37%, while; 'NST' given 56% positive attitudinal instances being a governmental influenced newspaper.
... It is interesting to note that Bangladesh's media system has been transformed into a complex and hybrid system under the current hybrid regime. Research shows that authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes consider controlling media as an important function of the government (Abbott and Givens 2015). Direct control of media is neither possible nor viewed as an acceptable norm in contemporary societies. ...
... Other hybrid regimes similar to Bangladesh utilize legal framework to tilt media narratives towards the ruling elites. Abbott and Givens (2015) traced long-term pro-government bias in Malayan and anglophone media in Malaysia and attributed that partly to the legal frameworks, namely the Official Secrets Act (OSA). The Malaysian government systematically uses OSA to prosecute journalists found responsible for publishing official information without authorization. ...
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We analysed the responses of the Bangladesh government and media over the airing of an Al-Jazeera investigation that alleged corruption charges against the then army chief of the country. The report was damaging for the regime as it implied that the country's prime minister knew about it and apparently rewarded the general by appointing him army chief because he helped her quell political protest when the general was the chief of the country's paramilitary force. We used multiple analytical frameworks including Schedler's concept of informational uncertainty (2013) to analyse how the Bangladesh government operated within the country's media system to shape the narrative in its favour and manage the scandal. Like other contemporary hybrid regimes, the Bangladesh regime, with help from the country's divided and compromised media system, squashed the effect of the report by employing tactics such as denying the allegations, attacking the credibility of Al-Jazeera, trivializing the report and creating doubts about the investigation. Understanding these tactics can inform policy-makers and media watchdogs about the vulnerabilities in hybrid media systems, emphasizing the need for robust mechanisms to uphold journalistic integrity and hold the power accountable.
... As a result, the Internet has been seen as a mechanism for potentially altering the structure of an otherwise closed nation's political sphere. On SM, political mobilization, communication, and the dissemination of information can all occur, changing the very nature of political players and the ways in which they engage with society as a whole (Abbott & Givens, 2015). This is especially true where political information reinforces the undemocratic nature of state institutions or, as in the case of the Philippines, challenges the dominant elite political-corporate ties. ...
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Survey research focused on the effects of social media (SM) on protest behavior outside Western democracies is limited. In response, we designed and conducted a large N face-to-face survey in the Philippines, where pro-government elite families control the traditional press, but the same constraints do not apply to SM. This helps us to isolate SM effects on protest behavior since the online environment in the Philippines is one of the few places where there is an open flow of information. Adding gradations to common indicators of SM consumption (by measuring general SM use, political SM use, and the exchange and consumption of dissident information on SM) helps clarify the mechanism by which SM influence protest behavior. Our results indicate that online exchanges of dissident information have a stronger connection to protest behavior than general or even political SM use.
... Recent framing studies on elections during the 13th General Election, Azizuddin (2014) found that most mainstream newspapers, with the exception of Sinar Harian and the Chineselanguage newspapers, were still biased towards the Barisan Nasional, which is the ruling coalition. However, two Chinese newspapers-China Press and Sin Chew Jit Poh-provided significantly more fair coverage of the government and opposition alliance (Abbott & Givens, 2015). Luan and Lee (2018) (Yang et al., 2020). ...
... Recent framing studies on elections during the 13th General Election, Azizuddin (2014) found that most mainstream newspapers, with the exception of Sinar Harian and the Chineselanguage newspapers, were still biased towards the Barisan Nasional, which is the ruling coalition. However, two Chinese newspapers-China Press and Sin Chew Jit Poh-provided significantly more fair coverage of the government and opposition alliance (Abbott & Givens, 2015). Luan and Lee (2018) (Yang et al., 2020). ...
... Second, autocratic control over Malaysia's extensive and robust institutions means that they can be easily deployed in service of the BN's electoral interests. Through institutional packing, rigging, and circumvention, Malaysia's successive prime ministers, from Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad to Najib Razak, have managed to seize control of the country's judiciary, corporations, election commission, and media networks (Abbott and Givens 2015;Slater 2003). In this manner, Malaysia's elections have frequently seen electoral districts being gerrymandered, electoral rules being applied with bias, and voters bought with extensive patronage and induced with partial views of government performance (Dettman and Gomez 2019;Gomez 2016;Ostwald 2013;Pepinsky 2013;Weiss 2013aWeiss , 2019. ...
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The importance of the Chinese diaspora is widely recognized. Wanning Sun examines the key role of the media in the Chinese diaspora. She focuses especially on the media's role in communication, in fostering a sense of community, in defining different kinds of 'transnational Chineseness' - overseas Chinese communities are often very different from one country to another - and in showing how media communication is linked to commerce, which is often a key activity of the overseas Chinese. Revealing a great deal about the vibrancy and dynamism of the Chinese-language media, the book considers the Chinese diaspora in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Australia, showing how it plays a crucial role in the changing nature of the Chinese diaspora.
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