Star editors have no sense of fairplay

The MCA paper, The Star, is not surprisingly at it yet again.

As we pointed out before, the paper on 18 March ran a big splash of a feature story on the MCA's Chew Mei Fun. We did not believe then that it would have the guts or sense of fairplay to give equally generous coverage to any one these DAP incumbents—Theresa Kok of Seputeh, Fong Po Kuan of Batu Gajah, and Chong Eng of Bukit Mertajam.
We were right.

What’s more the paper on 20 March shamelessly devote the first three pages of its Metro section to focus on Lim Boo Chang, the incumbent MCA candidate for Bukit Gelugor.

This is on top of a personal ad of Lim himself, taking up a quarter of page 9 of the same Metro section.

Sure must be nice to have the MCA paper in your corner, eh Lim?

Blog visitor Lucia groans in despair: "Aarggh! I guess we have been fed with a BN overdose these days from the paper that cares. It gets so bad that one just feels like puking.

"Yes, remembering your earlier post 'Newspaper or newsletter', I guess The Star's Metro section has been turned into an MCA newsletter for the election.

"Wow! It pays to be an MCA candidate: campaigning done for you and spread far and wide."

Blog visitor Zhang warns that there is a danger that the MCA may overdo it. "Too much rich food served continuously can repulse even the most indiscriminating glutton.

"Nevertheless, our cynical awareness of such unfair 'play', the fact that the (electronic) Information Age is here to stay, and a changing and educated new group of voters may bring about an entirely different ball game altogether in the future.

"In this respect, electronic newspapers like Malaysiakini and Aliran can contribute enormously to growing political awareness and people's power. The difficulties for both Malaysiakini and Aliran will be to stay relevant and (editorial) independent, and to keep abreast if not ahead of information technology.

"Don't forget, the political parties themselves will also be trying to stay ahead of the new information game."