The document discusses media censorship and control in Malaysia and China. In Malaysia, the Prime Minister announced that ministers would undergo media training on how to deal with journalists, as they have been receiving criticism. Malaysia ranks low on press freedom indexes due to government restrictions on media. In China, the government also tightly controls the media. It implemented mandatory training programs to ensure journalists promote the Communist Party's views, and passed laws allowing imprisonment of online posters whose messages spread widely. China employs over 2 million people to monitor the internet and censors any negative stories about the country's leaders.

1. An Asian perspective: politicians and the media.
Russell Grenning
Ordinarily, any story about a politician having a whinge about how the media treats
him and his side in politics would get a “ho hum” reaction but when that politician is
the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak, we really should sit up and listen.
Last week, PM Najib announced that he and his Ministers were getting such rough
treatment from the local media that they were to undergo professional training on how
to deal with journalists.
Malaysia has what could be politely described as a robust attitude about what the
media can and can’t do – actually it’s all about what they can’t do – so if these pesky
reporters are still managing to get around all of the government strictures, then we
have come to a pretty pass indeed. Something needs to be done, and done fast.
It’s not that Malaysian journalists have the disgustingly unfettered rights that they
have in Australia – what the Malaysian Government considers to be prudent
management in this sensitive area has seen it drop to145 on the 179-strong list of
countries in the 2013 World Press Freedom Index compiled by the respected
Reporters without Borders.
Indeed, they concluded that Malaysia currently “presented a sorry record … despite
an all-out battle by rights activists and on-line media outlets, a campaign of
repression by the government … and repeated censorship efforts continue to
undermine basic freedoms, in particular the right to information.”
So, it is really isn’t the fact that local media are actually getting away with actually
reporting the facts that is the problem - that’s well taken care of.
The problem is that the PM and his Ministers are appearing to the locals as complete
dills without any help at all from possibly biased journalists.
The Singapore newspaper, The Straits Times last week quoted a Malaysian
Government source as saying, “The prime minister wants ministers to undergo media
training to avoid repeatedly delivering foolish remarks.” There probably isn’t a prime
minister, premier or president on the planet who would disagree with that.
It seems that the PM was less than impressed by a recent statement by the Domestic
Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Minister that Malaysians should be thankful
for having “sincere” leaders who “prioritise people’s needs”. That schoolboy howler
came hard on the heels of the government’s announcement to cut subsidies to reduce
its deficit and a further round of price rises.
The government’s so-called “economic czar” was somewhat less than sensitive when
he told locals that they should stop eating chicken if the price was too high and to use
alternative routes of they didn’t want to pay tolls on highways.

2. Mind you, PM Najib – despite all of his government’s eminently sensible news
management policies – hasn’t proven to be the sharpest knife in the drawer himself. In
what I’m sure he thought was a wonderful innovation in government news and
information, he decided to make his very own YouTube and posted it on-line.
In it he completely spat the dummy asking why his government was being taken to
task when prices rose but was not praised when prices came down. The local reaction
was one of unrestrained and very less than respectful mirth.
The trouble with censorship is that while you can tell people what they can’t write –
that’s the easy bit – telling them what they should write is a tad more difficult.
The People’s Republic of China has risen masterfully to this challenge. While a lot of
mainstream western media swooned with delight at the announcement of allegedly
great reforms – including media reforms - by newly installed Chairman Xi Jinping
and predicted this was the new bold beginning of a far more transparent and
accountable government, the Chinese Government was doing the exact opposite.
On 10 October last year, China’s State General Administration of Press, Publication,
Radio, Film and Television which is overseen by the Communist Party’s Central
Propaganda Department, announced a three month mandatory “training program” for
all journalists and editors.
Until this announcement, all Chinese media had their own “training programs” but it
makes sense to have the whole thing centralised so that everybody is singing off the
same hymn sheet and all of that, doesn’t it? And, joy of joys for the accountants, this
course will be free!
According to the State General Administration’s announcement, “Journalists need to
pass a post-training examination to obtain a press card or accreditation” and “The
training will focus on six subjects including theories on socialism with Chinese
characteristics, the Marxist view on journalism, journalism ethics, laws and
regulations, norms in news gathering and editing and content on preventing false
information.”
I bet there is one or even two topics in this list that Australian Universities’ Schools of
Journalism haven’t included although many would suspect that it basically covers the
ABC training manual.
And to emphasise the wholesomely patriotic nature of this three-month training,
participants will be required to wear military uniform on certain days.
That frightful kill-joy outfit the International Federation of Journalists, reported in
January that censorship in China now is “reminiscent of the Mao era four decades
ago” and was getting worse and worse or, from the Chinese Government’s point of
view, better and better.
You have to hand it to the Chinese Government – when they put their minds to
something, they go all out. No namby-pamby, half baked rubbish at all.

3. Last September, just to tidy up a few possible loose ends, they introduced a new law
which provides that should you post a message online that they don’t particularly like
and it receives more than 500 retweets or more than 5,000 views, then you could go to
jail for three years.
In October last year, The Beijing News proudly announced that the government
employed more than two million – yes, more than 2,000,000 – people to monitor web
activity and a recent case just showed how wise and necessary that is.
In January, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published
on its website a list of the rich and powerful in China who had extensive overseas
assets. Oh dear – so many of these were close family relatives of the leadership – so
action had to be taken.
Very swiftly, the ICIJ website was closed down – as was the website for The
Guardian which also carried the story – and links to the story on Sina Weibo, China’s
equivalent of Twitter, were censored. It was a blanket shutdown.
Chairman Xi Jinping, who got rave reviews from western media for his promise to
crackdown on corruption and all of that, certainly understands that you don’t want this
sort of nonsense to go to your head – after all, his brother-in-law was on the published
list.
Unlike Malaysian Government Ministers, China’s elite don’t need media training at
all – even if they appear self-serving and stupid nobody is ever going to tell them that,
are they?