Bloggers Should Thread With Caution

A Kadir Jasin

[Anonymous comment WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED. Your real identity is preferred. But a suitable pseudonym is accepted. If you have to use anonymous, please print your name or pen name at the bottom of your message. Please avoid seditious, defamatory and libelous statements. Unrelated comments will not be given priority.]

MANY commentators have been extremely critical of the RTM’s handling of the first blog programme on its TV1 prime time news on April 20.

As I have stated in the previous posting, we should give the station time to improve the show and to prove its sincerity in having the programme.

It is a positive move considering that RTM is the bastion of state propaganda and that only months ago it was the principal channel for maligning the bloggers.

It is decidedly a brave move on the part of the new Information Minister, Ahmad Sharbery Cheek, to sanction the programme.

Not so much that his predecessor was virulently anti-bloggers but because the change of stance constitutes a major shift in its psychological warfare approach.

Ahmad Shabery’s decision carries two major implications. First, RTM is changing its stance from maligning bloggers to befriending them.

This could have something to do with Ahmad Shabery’s own experience as the Information Chief of the now defunct Parti Melayu Semangat 46.

Without access to the mainstream media, he had to make do with whatever he could get from the smaller independent newspapers and the alternative media, which at that time was still in the formative stage.

Second, Ahmad Shabery is acknowledging the fact that the blogs and other Internet-based media are beginning to become a competitor to RTM.

By engaging bloggers and owners of independent news websites, RTM may benefit from their growing popularity and authority.

It’s ironic that only months ago that instructions were issued to the mainstream media not to quote from the blogs and during the recent general elections Barisan Nasional politicians dismissed blogs and news websites as minor irritations.

Some time last year, while addressing an All Blog seminar in Kuala Lumpur, I made the following observations:

1. For some time to come, proponents and opponents of blogs will continue to define and refine their positions;

2. Some components and participants of the blogsphere will evolve into serious challengers to the existing traditional media;

3. A minister recently said that blogs depended on the mainstream media to establish their credibility. The opposite can also the true. The blogs can cause the credibility of the mainstream media to be questioned;

4. In the Malaysian context, some segments of the blogsphere have benefited from the handling or mishandling of the blogs and bloggers by the authorities. It helps to create awareness and increase the popularity of blogs even among the non-traditional readers;

5. Serious blogs and bloggers must make clear who they are and what they want to be. Are they journalists writing in the form a blogs? Are they journalists using blog to turn themselves politicians and activists?;

6. With growing access to the Internet and the awareness of the people about their democratic rights, more will read the blogs for information and to express their views; and

7. A word of caution – like all members of society, bloggers are subject to the same laws, rules and regulations.

Today, much of these have become a reality. Even the Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, grudgingly acknowledged that blogs played a role in determining the outcome of the March 8 polls.

But it’s wise for bloggers to treat with caution this new and supposedly more open environment. They should not take things for granted. It’s good to be aware of who the bearers of the gifts are.