Nanyang plays up MCA's "achievements"


Nanyang Siang Pau has been giving wide coverage to the MCA's promotion of its "developmentalism" ideology. Reports covered the allocation of funds for Chinese resettlement villages (20 Feb, A13 and A32), which was highlighted as an MCA achievement for the Chinese community.

Education was also used as a propaganda theme. The special 10 per cent allocation of places for Chinese students in Mara institutions this year was played up (22 Feb).
All these issues were portrayed as revealing the MCA's and BN’s essential goodness. The paper ignored what real good governance for the people is all about: respect for basic rights, social justice, holistic development.

Unfair coverage was clearly seen in the reporting of the the rivalry between UMNO and PAS. The paper is obviously biased against PAS. The coverage of the BN's criticism against PAS was not balanced by coverage of any response from PAS. There were more reports of attacks on PAS than actual coverage of PAS (20 Feb, A12; 22 Feb, A3 and A25). The DAP, however, received a certain amount of coverage.

The paper's commentators and columnists, though, were not entirely in favour of the BN. In this area, the coverage may be said to be fair and equal.


Kwong Wah's experiment in fair coverage

Readers of Kwong Wah Yit Poh are mainly in northern Malaysia especially Penang and Kedah; so the news coverage has been highly localized. The main political issue among the Penang Chinese community was the dispute between DAP and Parti Keadilan Rakyat. The news coverage as well as comments from reporters and readers showed that opposition supporters in the Chinese community would prefer a win-win solution between the DAP and Keadilan.

A meaningful commentary section on Sunday (22 Feb) was launched a couple of weeks ago. The editor invited four parties to write the commentary. The political parties given the opportunity were from the ruling coalition and the opposition parties: the MCA, Gerakan, the DAP and Keadilan). Writers from the four parties commented on various issues with their own views and based on their political agenda. This appeared to be an experiment in fair coverage for all quarters.

The paper sometimes highlighted political issues that were not relevant to the country’s political development; for instance, the childish guessing game on when the election would be held was given front-page coverage (21 Feb).