Set against a background of nation-building ambitions and control strate- gies, and the resultant sensitivity of the Southeast Asian post-colonial states (Atkins 1999), Malaysian political development in the context of the evolution of one party dominant models, or semi-democratic as Milner and others term them (Diamond 2002, pp. 22–3), is key in any understanding of the growth and the trends in the Malaysian media (Sued 1989, p. 44).
From the country’s first newspaper, The Prince of Wales, established under British rule in 1805, the media has had close links to the establish- ment. The role that the Malay newspapers played in fostering Malay nationalism before independence in 1957, and the natural link they then formed with the formation of political parties, further cemented such ties, leaving a ‘tame media environment, in which government influence and
self-censorship inhibit probing, critical journalism’ (Heuvel and Dennis 1993, p. 149).
Electronic broadcasting has been an even more direct tool of the Malaysian authorities. Radio, in the early days of its development, was a government information service, and was used to ‘prepare the hearts and minds of the people’ for independence (Sued 1989, p. 45). The birth of tele- vision in Malaysia coincided with the creation of the new post-colonial state, and television quickly assumed radio’s role, becoming a vital part of the government’s efforts to forge national unity or imagine the new nation along the lines described by Gellner (1983) and Anderson (1983).
It was both an achievable goal and a widely embraced developmental programme, at least for a time. Television and radio, until 1983, and the award of the first private broadcast licence, were a direct part of the gov- ernment information system through public broadcaster Radio Television Malaysia (RTM).3Moreover, while print companies were privately owned, they had gained a reputation for self-censorship and an emphasis on devel- opmental journalism. Many remained linked to political parties, as they were at the birth of the nation, and this economic influence was reinforced over time. In 1972, for example, UMNO investment vehicle Fleet Holdings bought a controlling share in the country’s largest media company, New Straits Times Press Bhd (NSTP). This gave it a seemingly unshakable grip on the popular English language daily, the New Straits Times, and Malay language broadsheet Berita Harian, as well as three Sunday papers, book publishing operations, industrial transport and other commercial interests (Wong 2000, p. 125).
To commercial control were added legal constraints. The ISA, the Sedition Act, and the Official Secrets Act (all inherited from the British colonial period and the Emergency of 1953–1956), were tools of control which were sharpened and brandished over an increasingly compliant media, as were new acts introduced during the 1980s: The Printing, Presses and Publications Act (PPPA) 1989, which covers the licensing of newspa- pers and magazines, and the Broadcasting Act of 1988, under which the Minister of Information controls the licensing of broadcast media.4
What developed in post-colonial Malaysia was a western-style media in form but not content. It was a ‘sophisticated combination of legislation and ownership concentration ensured the media remained under tight control’
(Williams 2000, p. 2). But, over the last decade of the twentieth century, the global media giants threatened this monopolistic position.
Keen to encourage economic development to maintain its legitimacy and ensure racial harmony and internal stability, by the 1990s Malaysia had opened its doors to the information industries and their attendant possibilities and problems. With a keen eye on similar developments in
Singapore, Mahathir introduced his Vision 2020, a centralist attempt to move Malaysia from being a manufacturing-based economy to one based on technology. Malaysia East Asia Satellite (Measat-1) was launched in 1996, and the Cyberjaya Multimedia Super Corridor, a high-tech zone near Kuala Lumpur, was created to attract the major players in the global elec- tronic economy, and move Malaysia into the information era (Rodan 1998, p. 138).
With the launch of Measat, Malaysian satellite broadcaster Astro took its place alongside RTM, TV3, Metro Vision and NTV 7 in the Malaysian broadcast media family. The smallest electronic media in terms of audience, Astro had about 2.7 per cent of the viewing audience in 1999 (Wong 2000, pp. 127–31). By March 2000, this number totalled about 380 000 sub- scribers in Malaysia and Brunei. It had 29 television channels and five radio stations. It produced one Malay language channel, and showed CNN, Bloomberg and, most important here, CNBC Asia.
At the time, Ananda Krishnan, a Mahathir sponsored businessman, owned and controlled Astro. A Harvard Business School graduate, Krishnan had been handpicked to lead the information revolution and the development of Cyberjaya. Alongside state investment companies, and through his stake holding in Measat Broadcast Network Systems Ltd, the satellite broadcasting operation, he worked to develop multimedia, inter- active services and new applications for mobile communications. Ananda also had commercial interests in the US among other countries, and helped to develop one of the most potent symbols of the new Malaysia, the 88- story, twin tower Petronas Centre (Gomez and Jomo, 1997, pp. 159–165 and Lopez 2000, pp. 1–2).
Despite this developmentalist approach, the attitude of the Malaysian government to the control of information had not changed materially.
Mahathir had followed a policy of ‘Asian values’, rejecting the universality of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, and the right to freedom of opinion and expression. By the turn of the century, Mahathir still insisted economic and social rights were more important than civil and political rights (Wong 2000, p. 117).
The threat mounted by the forces of political liberalization apparently unleashed by the unfettered flow of media information into the region only reinforced this perception. The role of the local and international media in Thailand’s domestic political crisis in May 1992, together with the racial and religious unrest in Indonesia and the fall of long-time President Suharto in May 1998, did not go unnoticed by the Mahathir Government.
The Malaysian government reacted against the perceived threat posed by the free flow of information. Using the familiar tools of ownership and patronage as well as legislation and commercial imperatives, the Mahathir
administration attempted to put in place an operational framework to maintain significant gatekeeping power. The government took on both the international media and a local media which felt it was operating in a more relaxed environment, by means of a ‘series of complex responses to the per- ceived threat to the political information order in the region’ (Atkins 1999, p. i).
Where the government had control, it limited the coverage of political opposition. Mainstream local journalists were co-opted into the system:
increasingly well rewarded financially, and encouraged to believe their role was to act in their country’s interests and keep the peace and maintain the UMNO-led developmental pact (Wong 2000, p. 135).
Alongside state holdings in the satellite and broadband cable systems, or at least close political relationships with owners of communications infra- structure and content, the government introduced the ‘politics of prohibi- tion’ (Atkins 1999, p. 147), in its attempt to limit local distribution. In 1992, satellite dishes were banned. Later this was amended to allow only Astro dishes.
New technological developments helped to reduce the opportunities for reception. Astro could delay the rebroadcast of both CNN and CNBC (by approximately two minutes in order to vet content). Likewise, the rise of pay- television models that limited new information services to a small proportion of the population, with expensive equipment for decoding the digitized satel- lite signal, and new satellite technology (KU Band), which allowed more focused footprints, further aided government efforts at control.
The government also sharply increased channel choice, with the aim of diluting exposure of international information services to the mass audi- ence, and encouraged local and international media partners to provide non-threatening programming trying to ‘marginalize the effectiveness of politically-oriented international programming which challenged state power’ (Atkins 1999, p. 5).
The continued use of the potent mix of legal and commercial pressure to stifle the media is well documented.5By the end of the twentieth century, Contempt of Court and defamatory laws were added to this legal arsenal, further discouraging debate and silencing critics. US media group Dow Jones had been subject to a number of these legal challenges, including the trial and imprisonment of journalist Murray Hiebert.6As we shall also see in the Singapore case study, for many media operations and their journal- ists (both local and foreign), the costs of defending and paying damages in these suits were particularly onerous.
But while the government attempts to reassert control over the main- stream media seem to have been fairly successful, there was one space that remained contested as the challenges of globalization continued to alert the
Mahathir government: the Internet was increasingly perceived to be a serious threat.7