Glaring omissions in NST's article on blogging

Chow Kum Hor, who normally writes mostly ho-hum pieces on the MCA for the New Straits Times, offered something different yesterday: a feature article on blogging in Malaysia. It was largely a survey of the Malaysian blogosphere - but what a shamefully inadequate one. What Chow omits suggests a deliberate bias, one aimed at keeping the many Malaysians without Internet access in the dark about the major blogs or bloggers in Malaysia.

Chow was interested in downplaying, even dismissing, blogs offering socio-political commentaries. While he rightly pointed out that the number of such blogs “are few and far between”, he, however, cited only two such blogs – "Aisehman" and "TV Smith" – as examples.

Followers of bloggers will instantly see a glaring omission: where is Jeff Ooi’s “Screenshots”? Is it not a lot more visible, provocative or controversial than the other few Malaysian socio-political blogs? Has it not been creating a lot more waves in blogosphere as well as the traditional media, including the mainstream ones?

Remember back in October last year when someone wrote in “Screenshots” using derogatory language to compare Islam Hadhari with money politics in UMNO, and how the NST Group Editor-In-Chief Kalimullah Hassan slammed him unfairly? Also, remember how Berita Harian made unfair and inaccurate accusations of Ooi and his blog without getting his side of the story?

Where was Chow the last few months when France-based Reporters Without Borders together with Deutsche Welle conducted a contest to see which was the best blog promoting freedom in the different regions of the world, and that “Screenshots” was in the running? Indeed, just three days ago, Ooi’s blog was voted the best Freedom Blog in Asia.

It may be excusable for Chow to miss out on the results of the contest as his article might have been written earlier. But it is inexcusable to ignore the fact that “Screenshots” was nominated because the voting took place for over a period of two months prior to the announcement of the results. Had Chow bothered to do his basic journalistic duty of researching for his survey piece, he would have noticed that Ooi had clearly indicated in his blog that his blog had been in the running ever since it was nominated.

Still, it is hard to accept Chow actually failing at the basics of journalism here. Instead, his glaring omission suggests that that there is an editorial policy at NST Press to ignore “Screenshots”.

But that is not all.

Chow’s article is shoddy for another major reason. His survey left out altogether blogs that partly or wholly focus on monitoring the perfomance of the Malaysian media. “Screenshots” is a good example of blogs that partly monitor their performance.

As for blogs devoted wholly to monitoring the media, there is, of course, the one here, "Malaysian Media Monitors’ Diary". So, Chow or NST, why is this blog omitted? Is it because it is linked to Aliran, an NGO the paper has come to consider as non-existent, judging by its refusal to publish anything Aliran has to say or do? And why the lack of any mention of blogs monitoring the NST and other Malaysian media?

Chow’s article in the NST just shows how corrosive media bias is to journalistic professionalism and integrity as well as the truth.