The truth about bloggers

AS I settled down to start on my Sunday column, this time in the invigorating cold of the Melbourne winter, I wondered what I should touch on.

A thought crossed my mind that it could possibly be therapeutic for my soul to reflect upon the nature and purpose of being a mainstream columnist in today's Malaysian society.

Twenty-two years of tight control of the media have had the effect of creating public cynicism about government policies and intentions.

All this surely cannot be good for us in the long-term. That many more people repeat what the blogs are putting out as the absolute truth than those who quote mainstream media reports is symptomatic of the mood of the country as a whole during these unsettled times.

It is a dangerous development that must be addressed imaginatively on an urgent basis.

Governing the multiracial, multicultural and multi-religious nation that is Malaysia has never been a vicarage tea party or a Sunday picnic at the best of times.

In this current political environment, the difficulties are compounded by the government having to pit itself against "cyber guerilla" forces whose rights to operate in cyber-space are unmolested because of the protection given them under the law.

It seems to me that the government has again found its flank exposed; it is trapped in a protracted argument without end in a desperate search for answers to the Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim saga that the nation has a right to know.

Argument Without End is, of course, the title of a book by Robert McNamara on the Vietnam War in which he rationalised his role as its chief architect.

It is unfortunate that the present government has been left to reap, by default, what can be fairly described as a harvest of discontent, disgrace and dishonour. The years 2003- 2007 can only be viewed, against the circumstances that we now see developing before our eyes, as wasted years as far as effective reforms were concerned.

The credibility gap has now grown beyond control. And, on present form, judging by the clumsy, tentative and muddled attempts by ministers and other officials to isolate what they regard as truth from fiction, I am not in the least bit sanguine that the government still retains the initiative to effectively challenge the problem posed by the growing influence of the blogs.

What all this has done is to allow the bloggers -- the overwhelming majority of whom, sadly, are adventurers of sorts -- to set themselves up as the sole purveyors of truth.

It is not surprising that there are people who believe columnists are told what and how to write and that this is subject to censorship.

When I was invited to write this column two years ago, I asked if there were editorial restrictions on what I could write.

There were none, I was assured, except that if there were anything that could possibly be considered or construed as libellous, an article would be rejected. Media sceptics choose what they want to believe, but that is their right.

In the two years I have been writing, every Sunday without fail, I have only had two articles withdrawn for legal reasons, and I am grateful to the editors for educating me in pitfalls of the laws of libel.

If that is censorship, then I am all for more of the same. It is in honouring the rules and laws that govern the members of a profession that they will be able to conduct their work in an orderly and ethical manner.

This is what ultimately sets the mainstream media practitioners apart from the rest. This is the difference between a code of practice and the law of the jungle that seems to dominate cyber-space.

The sceptics should not allow their deep-seated ambivalent, or, worse still, their ingrained anti-establishment attitude, to impair and distort their ability to judge the actions of others on merit rather than preconceived ideas.

We, all of us without exception, have at some time or other, fallen prey to this human condition or frailty. We can cure it, though, if we are prepared to embrace the most important truth of all in this context, and that is, that which is apparent is not always real.

Malaysia is still groping in desperate search of identity. It is still very much a society in transition, subsisting in the main on suspicion, intolerance, and prejudice. It is still a society that is not totally at ease with its ability to make the transition from form to substance.

For all his perceived shortcomings, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has given us the freedom and the space to go with it that we knew belonged to us.

For all that, the intolerance of dissenting views, a legacy from those unhappy years in the past, has now become a feature of public life in this country.

The government has an urgent responsibility to set the tone and develop a climate of confidence and trust before its legitimacy and effectiveness to govern is taken out of its hands, dictated and controlled by the new media buccaneers lurking behind the cyber-curtain.

Government by inaction is what the country can do without now, and that is why with all that is going on around us -- the ongoing Anwar saga, and the events surrounding the Altantuya case are just two examples -- it is a matter of concern that senior members of the government seem far more interested in their chances of winning coveted positions in the coming party leadership elections than in arresting the worsening state of affairs in our country in political, social and economic terms.

A balance has to be struck between personal and public interests.

The smart thing to do in the present climate is to err on the side of the public good.

And, while you are pondering the appropriate course of action to adopt to put matters right in our society, do come up with something imaginative to prove to all the sceptics out there that the bloggers, in spite of their claims, do not hold a copyright on truth.

The writer is a former special adviser to the United Nations secretary-general on ethics. He can be contacted at tunkua@gmail.com

-TMB