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Sunday, September 30, 2007

Disappointed with this Story from malaysiakini

This is a little light-hearted so please don't click the link at the end if you are not in the same mood.

As we all know malaysiakini has been at the leading edge of free journalism in Malaysia and even people from the New Straits Times are assigned to peek at what they do.

But this story was a trite disappointing. I studied the article carefully but could not find any names in the article. I was hoping that perhaps some of those unruly and uncouth leaders and politicians would have been included on the assignment.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

My dear blogger,

If you would notice, the article ends with the initials AFP.

It's the acronym for Agence France-Presse, a European news wire service.

Malaysiakini subscribes to this service. It is not their article. They pay to be able to put up articles from AFP on their website. The cost for such a service runs into the thousands.

If you check your dailies -- in the foreign news section -- you would also find articles from other news agencies, such as Reuters and AP (Associated Press).

Normally, such dailies do not publish articles on Malaysia -- because they (local newspapers) have already covered the topic or because the editorial has no say in the manner in which the news was angled.

Most news on Malaysia by foreign services are quite general, although they provide an international perspective lacking in local newspapers.

On the most part, our government can be made to appear quite foolish because of certain policies. This is the third reason why such articles are not published.

For the most part, such foreign news service do not come with bylines. Bylines in such services only come with features or exclusives. General news, and even breaking news, usually not qualify a mentioning of the reporter's name.

H J Angus said...

john
thanks for your comments.

My writing was not to ridicule the AFP or any writer who may be offended by my use of the story.

It seems you have been sidetracked as I mentioned the absence of names in the article.