KUALA LUMPUR, May 26 — How should a deputy minister respond to a media query on a report, even if he has not read the article in question?

Senior journalists said yesterday that Deputy Home Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Junaidi Tunku Jaafar should not have been non-committal when asked by a Malay Mail reporter to comment on the newspaper’s special report on a transit camp for Rohingya and Bangladeshis near the Malaysia-Thai border.

National Union of Journalists Malaysia (NUJ) president Chin Sung Chew said it was the duty of government officials to cooperate with the media to ensure credible information is disseminated to the public.

Chin, who has been in the media industry for the past 23 years, said Wan Junaidi should have taken the newspaper and passed it to his assistant so that he could read it later.

“As a deputy minister, he can’t run away from his duty to answer questions from the media. This is not the proper way to respond to the media even when he is not clear on the issues being asked,” Chin told Malay Mail yesterday.

“It is very hard for people to accept his excuse and the way he handled it wasn’t polite. He is obviously trying to avoid the issue,” he added.

National Press Club president Mokhtar Hussain said media personnel needed cooperation from government officials to clarify issues that the public should know.

“The media plays a major role in disseminating vital information to the public and provides government officials a channel to respond to queries that matter.

“We need prompt and official answers from the authorities to foster a strong relationship with the public. If they are not forthcoming, the public will have a negative perception,” said Mokhtar who is also deputy editor-in-chief (domestic news service) of Bernama.

Former New Straits Times group editor-in-chief Datuk A. Kadir Jasin said elected representatives must pay attention to what was being said in the news as the media was the people’s voice.

Kadir said he was not commenting on the deputy minister, but the attitude of most elected representatives towards media personnel.

“I am referring generally to the responsibilities of elected representatives to hear the voice of the people through the media. It is unacceptable that they don’t read or they don’t bother to know what is being carried in the media,” he said.

They were responding to the incident last week in Parliament when Wan Junaidi declined to read the Malay Mail special report.

He was quoted saying “What is this? You write this and give it to me? I can’t read it (now). I don’t even have time to read the papers (nowadays).”