boycott the newspapers!

so cried helen ang, columnist for malaysiakini.

have you read her latest column in malaysiakini? ok lah if you are not a subsriber to malaysiakini, you can read it at beritamalaysia.

i had met helen ang at the bangsa malaysia do in penang. she’s a nice, gentle soft-spoken lady. it was very nice of her to give me a lift home in the middle of the night and all the way from tg. tokong (venue of our get-together after the do) to bayan baru (where i stay), then back again to tg. bungah (where she stays)!! can you imagine that? at tg. tokong, she was near her home already but yet she had to go all the way down south to my place and back again to her place.

i mentioned this because i remember long ago at one of our penang bloggers gathering, there were two persons who, one stays in gelugor and one in green lane, which are very much nearer to my house than tg bungah, when i asked for a lift, retorted that it was too far for them to come and fetch me! imagine!! contrast that to helen’s tg bungah to bayan baru! guess they were not as nice and kind as helen. oops. sorry, they might get offended so i will say instead guess they did not know me well enough to be as nice to me as to give me a lift. er… but helen also didn’t know me that well…in fact we just met that day and she agreed to give me a lift already. ok lah, i’ll just said it’s up to the individuals, whatever their response may be; it’s ok to turn me down.

oh dear! there i go again, being long winded to go off topic. ok so what was i going to talk about? oh yeah, helen’s call to boycott the newspapers.  she’s calling for a hartal on the mainstream media. hartal, if you remember is where there is a total shut-down of all shops, offices, businesses . so i guess helen is hoping that  we would all stop buying newspaper to shut down the paper.

er… sorry, i can’t stop buying the star because my sister need to read it (she doesn’t surf the net at all) and since it is in my house, of course i will read it too. also, like one commenter (which blog i forgot)  mentioned that the papers like the star, have  other non news section that are beneficial/interesting for us to read. and i remember a friend saying he won’t support the call for boycott (not only on the newspaper i mean but on all things), as the implications are wider than we think, for example it will affect the poor workers who are merely trying to cari makan. well i don’t know if helen meant that we stop buying the papers completely or stop buying for one day (but must be on the same day). whatever, i’m sorry to say, helen, i can’t!

however, at helen’s request, i am drawing people’s attention to her plea and i had done my part to post it up and circulate it to beritamalaysia. so please don’t forget eh, to read her article and help to circulate it. gracias.