Boycott the Newspapers? Now that's Interesting....

Helen Ang writes in malaysiakini urging people to stop buying newspapers.

Her main complaint is that the Malaysian Mainstream Media (3Ms)is worse than useless as the newspapers have become merely a sounding board to parrot whatever gibberish that ministers want published.

Perhaps we could all reflect how our draconian laws muzzle the press and make newspaper editors YES-men have brought such long-established newspapers to their knees.

But newspapers do have an important role to play in society as their reach to the common folks is so much more effective than the Internet.

So we should not kill the newspapers but help them to launch campaigns to become more independent and less subservient.

For example, the newspapers could publish a series of articles on "Election Observer Handbook" published by the OSCE.
This useful guideline decribes in detail how free and fair elections are conducted and is used by 56 participating states.

If you care to browse through the handbook, there are 3 salient points that attract attention:

Allowing people to form political parties
Unimpeded access to the media
Equal suffrage which allows to seats to have voters not more 10% of other seats.

So let's use the proposed boycott to help reform our media.