public service media?

attended the public service media forum on saturday. disappointed that gayathry from CIJ did not turned up. anyway, the three speakers (picture here) gave interesting talk about public service media.

the moderator was teo sue ann, master of social sciecne USM student (far left in picture).

ng eng kiat (2nd from right in picture) was the first speaker. first he mentioned about  the 4 different medias: state media, political media, independent media and alternative media.

he said in setting up a public service media, many questions ought to be look into like how to run it, who is to fund it, the content of the media, who is the audience and so on. so far, he pointed out the only public service media in our country is RTM (radio tv malaysia).

anil netto was the next speaker. the topics he covered include:characters of good public service media
public service media is  important to counterweight to corporate media values
Risks of public service media
sources of funding
trend
repercussions
situation of public service media.in malaysia
excluded voices and issues 

he also listed out some alternative citizens media, which are:
community radio, campus radio, trade unions and NGO publication, independent internet websites, blogs, youtube.

anil said that to work for a public service media, civil society must play a key role in pushing for it. also, they must campaign for abolishing of repressive laws like the OSA and PPPA.

ong, the last speaker spoke at length about the independent paper that pakatan rakyat will start. he gave some suggestion on how it should be run. most important, he said, the paper must be ‘people friendly’ i.e. e.g ready to respond to readers who write in and to give priority to readers e.g. to have their letters publish on 2nd page (like some foreign magazines eg newsweek does) instead of somewhere hidden far away on pg 20 or pg 34.

as for funding, ong said it is important for the paper to be state funded because in this way, the paper will feel obligated to respond to readers.

all the 3 speakers join in to discuss about the independent paper. here is what anil netto wrote in his blog of the forum:

We also critiqued the Pakatan Rakyat’s plans to set up its own newspaper for five states and discussed whether this was a good move.

Ong felt that steps should be taken to make it more independent than what was being planned.

For my part, I felt that any attempt to set up a state government-backed newspaper would run into problems as it would suffer from credibility issues as a result of public perception of it being backed by the state – especially if editors and key staff are appointed by the party. Such journalism would serve the interests of political masters rather than the public.

Good journalism should challenge and critique oppressive power structures. And it would be difficult to do that if a newspaper is funded or owned by the state or if its editors and key staff were appointed by political parties. Surely, that would compromise its editorial independence and journalistic integrity.

the forum started with shu shi from suaram launching the ‘sign the petition for an independent paper‘ campaign in a creative way. yellow ribbons were pinned to a board that covered up some letters. each participant were asked to pull out the ribbon (of which then they were to wear it), and when they do, some letters will fall out. these fallen letters spelled out repressive laws that hinders an independent, free paper (eg OSA, ISA, PPPA).

here is a picture of shu shi (right) and the board. she’s a nice lady and it’s a pity to hear that she had to spend a night at the police lock-up, and will be charged tomorrow. let’s hope the charges can be drop!