Just to show how an average person has been affected by our biased mainstream media. A few days ago, an MCA life member who is a retired civil servant and unexposed to internet news, challenged a fellow retiree to bet on the coming general elections. He thinks not in terms of who wins overall but in terms of just the existing 4 states ruled by Pakatan. He bet that Pakatan will lose Kedah, Selangor and Kelantan and retain Penang only! All because of the current so-called in-fighting highlighted in the msm on the Karpal-Ramasamy spat in Penang and the Kula-Nga spat in Perak. The reason for his optimism for Barisan seems to be because of what were highlighted by msm: all good news of BN and all bad news of PR. He was unexposed to the infighting within Umno and the mega corruption cases which were highlighted in the internet news portals.
Excerpt from Kim Quek's Electoral reform a farce without free and fair media coverage in CPI:
"The call by opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim for free and fair media coverage on the imminent polls strikes at the core of what have made Malaysian elections a mockery of democracy.
A shackled and unfair media is one of the fundamental flaws because electoral democracy is a game of perception. And perception is shaped by the media.
Hence, an electoral contest with one contestant monopolizing the media to the exclusion of his adversary is akin to a debating competition where one debater is using a microphone to speak to the audience while the other is without.
And the Malaysian media is notorious for its biased reporting, as Barisan Nasional (BN) has never been shy of exploiting it to the fullest. The ruling coalition’s iron-grip on the entire spectrum of the local mass media (save the Internet) is used to advance its political fortune.
Such complete control is made possible through a combination of repressive legislation and media ownership as the BN government possesses the arbitrary power to grant or terminate any media license (print or electronic) and all such media are owned either by the BN component parties or their allies.
Public TV and radio, which are legally bound to be politically neutral, have long been corrupted by BN to serve its parochial political interests – a practice that has emphatically breached our Constitution..."
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