KUALA LUMPUR, June 2 — Utusan’s recent headlines, most notably
“Apa lagi Cina mahu?” (What more do the Chinese want?), which appeared
on May 7, and “Chinese tsunami”, on May 8, reflected the apparent
betrayal felt by many Umno members in the wake of Election 2013,
Singapore’s the Straits Times (ST) reported today.
However, other prominent figures who spoke to the broadsheet said it demonstrated an unnecessary racialisation of what they felt was a voting pattern more accurately explained as an urban-rural divide.
“I felt very disturbed when I saw the headline,” Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah, Umno’s former Temerloh MP, was quoted as saying. “Why were we so angry?”
“Umno did well in the 13th general election. Even though I lost, I
felt thankful that Umno did better than in 2008. So why this headline?”
Utusan was once staffed by political activists fighting for independence from British rule and has long been a champion of Malay rights. But now, critics say, it has gone overboard in its defence of Umno, to the point of fomenting racism and intolerance.
Hata Wahari, an Utusan journalist for 16 years until he was fired in April 2011 for criticising the newspaper’s editorial policies, told ST the daily was not so strident during prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s tenure.
“Before 2008, you would not write off Utusan as a government propaganda machine,” he was quoted as saying. “But now it doesn’t question the government’s policies any more, it only acts as a propaganda tool for Umno and to slam the opposition.”
The newspaper’s defenders, however, counter that they see no difference between Utusan’s defence of Umno, the country’s biggest Malay party with 3.5 million members, and the sometimes incendiary commentaries in Chinese- and Tamil-language papers.
“Utusan is just doing its job as the government newspaper,” said Nazrul Azizi, a management consultant in Penang. “Malays must have a channel to express their sentiments.”
The ST pointed out that Utusan’s no-holds-barred defence of Malays and Islam has landed it in trouble before.
Last December, Karpal Singh, DAP chairman, was awarded RM50,000 after he sued Utusan over an article that said he had made an anti-Islam remark.
Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng has been awarded RM400,000 in two defamatory cases against Utusan. In one case, the daily had alleged that he wanted to abolish the New Economic Policy (NEP).
With crucial Umno elections due later this year, the ST said observers believe the party’s leadership will now use the daily to burnish the credentials of key leaders including Datuk Seri Najib Razak, whom many expect will face a leadership challenge.
During party polls, “the brand of politics normally becomes ‘I’m more Malay than you’,” said Saifuddin, an Umno supreme council member.
Observers cite 1961 as the year when Umno began to exert more pressure on the then Utusan Melayu.
In protest, the newsroom went on strike, which ended 93 days later with a change of editorial management.
The ST said Umno and Utusan are seen as so synonymous that criticism of Utusan is taken as criticism of Umno.
It cited the case of AirAsia X’s CEO Azran Osman Rani who, after calling Utusan “narrow-minded” in a tweet, was flayed by pro-Malay groups like Perkasa for being “arrogant and forgetting his roots”.
The newspaper gave another example, that of Datuk Abdul Aziz Ishak, the Utusan group’s chief editor, who testified last year at a defamation trial that the newspaper leans “towards siding with the aspirations of the ruling party”.
He had also identified the group’s chairman, Tan Sri Hashim Ahmad Makaruddin, as “Umno’s representative”.
As a result, upheavals in Umno can have direct repercussions on Utusan.
Back in 1998, a month before then Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was sacked by then Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the chief editors of Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian, Johan Jaafar and Ahmad
Nazri, resigned. Both were known to be friendly with Datuk Seri Anwar.
“Many read the resignations as a clampdown on the press as their respective newspaper groups had played up the issues of corruption, cronyism and nepotism, as well as the problems at the newly opened Kuala Lumpur International Airport,” wrote Universiti Sains Malaysia communications researcher Wang Lay Kim in an article titled “Malaysia: Ownership As Control,” for the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation.
With Johan gone, the board dithered over who should replace him — Datuk Khalid Mohamed or Rosnah Majid, a senior economics writer.
“So they asked Dr Mahathir to choose,” said Hata. “It’s an open secret that the Prime Minister’s Office has a large say on group chief editor appointments.”
Datuk Khalid, who took over from Johan, spent 10 years at the helm before passing the baton to Datuk Abdul Aziz. The latter did not respond to e-mail requests for comments on the newspaper’s direction.
The ST noted that Utusan’s editorial stance means it is no longer the best-selling Malay newspaper.
Its daily circulation dropped from 213,445 in 2006 to 169,548 in 2009, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, although it picked up slightly to 173,000 in 2011.
In 2011, Utusan had revenue of RM367 million and net profit of RM17.5 million.
Analysts say the rise of young, professional urbanites will continue to erode the newspaper’s influence, which is still strongest in the rural areas where Internet access is spotty.
By contrast, Utusan’s sister paper Kosmo! and Harian Metro both averaged more than 210,000 copies daily in 2011.
Malays, especially young urbanites, seem to favour them for their less politically charged content, Shaharuddin Badaruddin, a political analyst at Universiti Teknologi Mara, told the ST.
“Utusan needs to be more democratic and give fair coverage to all parties and be a Malay mouthpiece rather than an Umno one,” he said.
Yet, some also believe that Utusan’s stance might be its saving grace.
“People criticise Utusan so much but they actually want to read it for exactly the controversy that doesn’t come out in other papers,” said Datuk Muneandy Nalepan, a newspaper distributor for 40 years, in Kuala Lumpur.
“Some say they are courageous, some say they create problems. Either you can accept it or you can’t, that’s what a newspaper is.”
Source themalaysianinsider
However, other prominent figures who spoke to the broadsheet said it demonstrated an unnecessary racialisation of what they felt was a voting pattern more accurately explained as an urban-rural divide.
“I felt very disturbed when I saw the headline,” Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah, Umno’s former Temerloh MP, was quoted as saying. “Why were we so angry?”
Utusan was once staffed by political activists fighting for independence from British rule and has long been a champion of Malay rights. But now, critics say, it has gone overboard in its defence of Umno, to the point of fomenting racism and intolerance.
Hata Wahari, an Utusan journalist for 16 years until he was fired in April 2011 for criticising the newspaper’s editorial policies, told ST the daily was not so strident during prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s tenure.
“Before 2008, you would not write off Utusan as a government propaganda machine,” he was quoted as saying. “But now it doesn’t question the government’s policies any more, it only acts as a propaganda tool for Umno and to slam the opposition.”
The newspaper’s defenders, however, counter that they see no difference between Utusan’s defence of Umno, the country’s biggest Malay party with 3.5 million members, and the sometimes incendiary commentaries in Chinese- and Tamil-language papers.
“Utusan is just doing its job as the government newspaper,” said Nazrul Azizi, a management consultant in Penang. “Malays must have a channel to express their sentiments.”
The ST pointed out that Utusan’s no-holds-barred defence of Malays and Islam has landed it in trouble before.
Last December, Karpal Singh, DAP chairman, was awarded RM50,000 after he sued Utusan over an article that said he had made an anti-Islam remark.
Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng has been awarded RM400,000 in two defamatory cases against Utusan. In one case, the daily had alleged that he wanted to abolish the New Economic Policy (NEP).
With crucial Umno elections due later this year, the ST said observers believe the party’s leadership will now use the daily to burnish the credentials of key leaders including Datuk Seri Najib Razak, whom many expect will face a leadership challenge.
During party polls, “the brand of politics normally becomes ‘I’m more Malay than you’,” said Saifuddin, an Umno supreme council member.
Observers cite 1961 as the year when Umno began to exert more pressure on the then Utusan Melayu.
In protest, the newsroom went on strike, which ended 93 days later with a change of editorial management.
The ST said Umno and Utusan are seen as so synonymous that criticism of Utusan is taken as criticism of Umno.
It cited the case of AirAsia X’s CEO Azran Osman Rani who, after calling Utusan “narrow-minded” in a tweet, was flayed by pro-Malay groups like Perkasa for being “arrogant and forgetting his roots”.
The newspaper gave another example, that of Datuk Abdul Aziz Ishak, the Utusan group’s chief editor, who testified last year at a defamation trial that the newspaper leans “towards siding with the aspirations of the ruling party”.
He had also identified the group’s chairman, Tan Sri Hashim Ahmad Makaruddin, as “Umno’s representative”.
As a result, upheavals in Umno can have direct repercussions on Utusan.
Back in 1998, a month before then Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was sacked by then Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the chief editors of Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian, Johan Jaafar and Ahmad
Nazri, resigned. Both were known to be friendly with Datuk Seri Anwar.
“Many read the resignations as a clampdown on the press as their respective newspaper groups had played up the issues of corruption, cronyism and nepotism, as well as the problems at the newly opened Kuala Lumpur International Airport,” wrote Universiti Sains Malaysia communications researcher Wang Lay Kim in an article titled “Malaysia: Ownership As Control,” for the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation.
With Johan gone, the board dithered over who should replace him — Datuk Khalid Mohamed or Rosnah Majid, a senior economics writer.
“So they asked Dr Mahathir to choose,” said Hata. “It’s an open secret that the Prime Minister’s Office has a large say on group chief editor appointments.”
Datuk Khalid, who took over from Johan, spent 10 years at the helm before passing the baton to Datuk Abdul Aziz. The latter did not respond to e-mail requests for comments on the newspaper’s direction.
The ST noted that Utusan’s editorial stance means it is no longer the best-selling Malay newspaper.
Its daily circulation dropped from 213,445 in 2006 to 169,548 in 2009, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, although it picked up slightly to 173,000 in 2011.
In 2011, Utusan had revenue of RM367 million and net profit of RM17.5 million.
Analysts say the rise of young, professional urbanites will continue to erode the newspaper’s influence, which is still strongest in the rural areas where Internet access is spotty.
By contrast, Utusan’s sister paper Kosmo! and Harian Metro both averaged more than 210,000 copies daily in 2011.
Malays, especially young urbanites, seem to favour them for their less politically charged content, Shaharuddin Badaruddin, a political analyst at Universiti Teknologi Mara, told the ST.
“Utusan needs to be more democratic and give fair coverage to all parties and be a Malay mouthpiece rather than an Umno one,” he said.
Yet, some also believe that Utusan’s stance might be its saving grace.
“People criticise Utusan so much but they actually want to read it for exactly the controversy that doesn’t come out in other papers,” said Datuk Muneandy Nalepan, a newspaper distributor for 40 years, in Kuala Lumpur.
“Some say they are courageous, some say they create problems. Either you can accept it or you can’t, that’s what a newspaper is.”
Source themalaysianinsider
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