Selangor Journal

BN’s anti-fake news law was wrong; Kit Siang’s proposed version isn’t any better

By Marc Lourdes

As a journalist, one of the most heartening things I heard during the election campaign was Pakatan Harapan’s pledge to repeal the anti-fake news law that had been rammed through Parliament by the Najib Razak administration earlier this year.

 

With its vague definition of ‘fake news’ and broad powers to prosecute people in Malaysia and abroad, the law was at best poorly conceived and at worst, maliciously enacted in order to give the former administration the power to curb any form of dissent and to further stifle free speech in a country that already had precious little of it.

 

It was no surprise that the law came under intense criticism from NGOs, the legal fraternity, journalists and media, at home and abroad.

 

Once the bill was passed, was it a coincidence that one of the first people investigated under the newly-minted law was none other than Najib’s nemesis, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad? Had Barisan Nasional won the 14th general elections, we might very well be seeing current prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir languishing in prison instead of being safely ensconced in Putrajaya.

 

This is why Pakatan’s repeated attempts to walk back their talk on the anti-fake news law is incredibly disappointing. Dr Mahathir, fresh from his elections victory, began singing a different tune from the one on the campaign trail. Suddenly, ‘repeal’ had become ‘review’ and all of a sudden, it seemed like Pakatan’s appetite for change had dimmed. Fortunately, other senior Pakatan leaders reaffirmed the party’s commitment to repealing the law and the bullet was dodged.

 

But now we are seeing none other than Lim Kit Siang himself calling for such a bill. Of all that has come, this feels like the deepest cut. One expected Barisan to be heavy handed and to abuse its power — after all, what other form of governance do they know? One expected Dr Mahathir to be seduced by such power — authoritarian tendencies tend to not go away easily.

But Lim has for decades been one of the loudest voices for democracy in the country. For years, this man has been a stalwart of every democratic movement this country has seen. He’s been jailed for his stand, under the very kind of broad, sweeping laws the anti-fake news law mimicked. Of all people, he should know that no good comes out of such laws. Clearly, he doesn’t, or chooses to have a convenient case of selective amnesia.

 

That he has urged the press to draft this bill only seems like adding insult to injury. He is essentially asking the fourth estate to produce the instruments to be used for their own castration. One wonders if the man is simply being daft, or if presented with the seductive thrill of power, he is merely now just doing what his predecessors in government did but attempting to slap a veneer of respectability by getting the media involved?

 

But let’s take a step back and ask one fundamental question: is fake news a problem in Malaysia? Setting aside the point that ‘fake news’ is oxymoronic in the extreme (if it’s fake, how can it be news?), the answer to that question is, sadly, yes.

 

Fake news is all over the place. It’s on our social media feeds, it’s on our messaging groups, it’s on blogs and yes, it’s sometimes even on professional news sites. There clearly is a problem, and there clearly are sometimes malicious actors at play — read this story to find out about how one such malicious actor worked for Umno to spread fake news in the country.

 

But it’s pointless and self-defeating to curb the country’s news media in an attempt to stifle fake news. The news media, with its army of journalists and editors, should be the first line of defence against fake news, and not the ones thrown under the bus in the name of protecting against fake news.

 

These media practitioners not only work to professional standards, but are already governed by a plethora of laws, including the Printing Presses and Publications Act, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission Act and the laws of defamation, to name but a few. Other laws, such as the Sedition Act, the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act and the Official Secrets Act, all also serve to severely clip the media’s wings in this country.

 

Despite all this does the media still publish wrong things? Does the wrong information get into newspapers and onto websites and TV? Sure they do. But it more often than not is the result of human error and corrected. And when you consider the total amount of content created by these companies versus what is wrong, it is clear that the error rate is very low.

 

The real ‘fake news’ epidemic is the indiscriminate use and abuse of social messaging and social media platforms by people who create fake news — and none of them are news media companies — as well as those who share such content without establishing accuracy or veracity.

 

Yes, there are some countries — notably Germany — that have enacted or are considering laws against fake news. But let’s not kid ourselves – Germany ranks 15th in the press freedom index and is known to be one of the most democratic countries on earth. Malaysia ranks 145 on the same index and has frequently been listed as among the worst countries in the world for the press.

 

No, the solution to this problem is not another law. In fact, the reality is that there may not be a way to put this genie back into its bottle. But there are certainly ways to mitigate the problem.

 

Repeal the laws that currently stifle the media. Enact laws that prohibit political party or government ownership, in full or in part, of news and media companies. Enact a freedom of information law to allow for more robust journalism. Create more effective institutes of higher learning and continuous education to improve the quality of journalism in the country. Work with the news media on fact-checking and verification projects in order to reduce the amount of litter in cyberspace. Improve investigation and prosecution of malicious actors. Take a leaf from our neighbours in Singapore, and pressure tech companies like Facebook and Google to take more responsibility for the content on their sites. If necessary, re-word existing laws to more comprehensively cover social media and social messaging platforms, and to bring behemoths like Google and Facebook to heel.

 

None of these suggestions is a magic pill that will solve the problem. But they are certainly better than yet another law, regardless of who drafts that law. I expect a Pakatan administration to be better than the previous one, and not just a Barisan 2.0.

Marc Lourdes is a Malaysian journalist and editor. He is among Asia’s leading experts on digital news media operations. He was formerly the CNN digital director for Asia Pacific. Follow Marc Lourdes on Twitter.

 

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