Last month, news portal Malaysiakini won the Social Media Excellence award at the World Bloggers and Social Media Awards 2014 event in Kuala Lumpur.
Malaysiakini Editor in Chief Steven Gan had received the award from Home Minister Datuk Ahamd Zahid Hamidi.
Zahid ‘s presence to present the award to Malaysiakini could be interpreted and seen to some extent as his acceptance of the important role played by Malaysiakini in providing accurate and independent information and news reports.
Yet yesterday in a parliamentary answer to MP for Sungai Petani, Zahid claimed that Malaysiakiniand FZ.com had the “tendency” to publish “sensational and controversial news” in order to attract public attention.
He said both Malaysiakini and FZ.com had their newspaper permits rejected in order to avoid the public “being confused” by “too many” newspapers flooding the marketplace.
Zahid’s answers are baseless, unacceptable and unfair.
It is a joke for him to claim that the public will be confused b too many newspapers.
He must show proof to support his claim that both news portals had the tendency to publish sensational and controversial news.
As BN government is always afraid of independent news portals which provide true and independent news, it is not a surprise that it will find excuses even ridiculous ones to reject their application of permits.
However, there could be a possible reason why Zahid had decided to attack both news portals as having had the tendency to publish sensational and controversial news.
Early this month, a group of NGOs led by Armed Forces Veterans Association president Mohd Ali Baharom had demanded the sacking of Zahid Hamidi for his role in the conferring of the Social Media Excellence award to Malaysiakini.
“We are saddened and angry that the Home Minister is insensitive and unwise, he could be described as ‘stupid’, said Mohd Ali.
I want to ask Zahid Hamidi has he been cowed by the threat made by the groups that he had decided to attack the two news portals as well reject their permit applications.
Last month, Zahid had dismissed the slap threat made against me by the “Coalition of Islamic NGOs”, saying that only a death threat is a threat.
His answer was so ridiculous and confused that he did not even have the courage to attempt to defend or explain it further in Parliament after I had strongly criticized him in my parliamentary debate a few days ago.
Yesterday, the Deputy Defence Minsiter Datuk Abdul Rahim Bakri gave an inaccurate answer on the issue of the turn back of MH370, further confusing the people.
So can Zahid deny that BN Ministers and Deputy Ministers have the tendency to confuse issues and the public?