A New Day or Not

KUALA LUMPUR: The death of the two RMAF pilots in last week crash in Langkawi highlighted the top to bottom mentality that continue to prevail over Jalan Padang Tembak. Instead of highlighting our soldiers, airmen and sailors, Kementah, especially its website continue to be a platform for its political masters.

Just look at their website.

So my colleagues in the daily press (see Utusan story) had to disturb the bereaved family members for interviews and even worse, pictures. I remembered doing just that several years back. I know its sad but we simply trying to honour our fallen heroes but the powers that be seemed oblivious to the fact.

Click here for examples from other countries which had realised that while the politicians come and go, its the soldiers, airmen and sailors that are the focal point of the services.

Australia
Singapore
UK

The Malaysian syndrome has been going on for years now as long as I could remember. It happened before I joined the media, it happened during the time I was a full time reporter and I half expect that it will continue into the near future. Of course they could still could include the politicians in the website but hogging the bandwidth is simply sacrilegious. Whatever happened to the 1Malaysia concept of Putting the People First, just another slogan?

I had hoped that with the new administration, Jalan Padang Tembalk will revolutionise its PR since the department now got a new civilian boss, brought in from the outside to bring in new ideas and concepts. Furthermore, the Minister got two PR types working for him and nation’s media behind him. There is no need for him to hog the Kementah bandwith. But it seemed nothing has changed.

–Malaysia Defence

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Utusan Malaysia and Malaysian Defence

To be honest I was flabbergasted. I was searching for the most search word for Malaysia on the net and the answer was Utusan Malaysia. It even topped the most searched word for March.

Anyhow, Utusan Malaysia (its a Malay-language paper) seems to be the only one interested to write about the military, even in its most inane way, that the rest of the Malaysian newspaper industry seemed to forgets.

The rest only reports when something bad (airplane crash, allegations of bullying and such). New Straits Times did not even bother to attend the Army Media Day.

During my days at The Malay Mail, I also do not cover the bit news of the military but I always had the time to attend any function which offers me the chance to interact with the officers.

Utusan is also probably the only paper that travelled to Lebanon with the Armed Forces chief to visit the Malaysian UNIFIL contingent.

Yes, ordinary news coming out from MINDEF is boring. But from my experience last time it is the ordinary that usually helps when it comes to the extra-ordinary. But I guess front-page news is more important at Jalan Riong these days.

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