KUALA LUMPUR, April 3 — Some 60 people representing three non-governmental organisations (NGOs) demonstrated outside the US embassy here today, demanding its government take action against two of its broadcasters for allegedly “irresponsible” coverage of the Malaysia Airlines aviation crisis.

The demonstrators accused broadcasters CNN and Fox News of skewing their coverage of the missing Flight MH370 to mount a “smear campaign” against Malaysia, painting it as an extremist country.

“We hope that at least the US government can discipline these news organisations...the lies that they are spewing, is smearing the image of Malaysia as a moderate nation.

“We know that there is freedom of speech, but that freedom cannot be limitless… at least the US should advise them against practicing gutter journalism,” Nadzim Johan, the president of Malaysian Muslim Consumers Association (PPIM), told reporters.

The two other NGOs were the International Muslim Consumers Association (PPIA) and the Malaysian Media Foundation.

Both Nadzim and another PPIM activist Sheikh Abd Kareem S Khadaied represented the NGOs and handed over a memorandum of protest to an official inside the embassy, which was heavily guarded by police.

Malaysian Media Foundation president Dzulkarnain Taib said that both Fox News and CNN should take lessons from Malaysian journalists on “ethical reporting.”

“If you want to lie, use facts....you cannot even do that properly.

“CNN and Fox News are prostituting journalism,” Dzulkarnain said.

Sheikh Abd Kareem urged Malaysians to boycott the two US media outlets, as well as to rethink sending Malaysian students to the US to study journalism.

The protesters hold banners in the demonstration against CNN and Fox News outside the US Embassy.
The protesters hold banners in the demonstration against CNN and Fox News outside the US Embassy.

“If this is their level of intelligence, then perhaps people should not send students to study journalism in the US,” he said.

Flight MH370, carrying 239 people on board, disappeared from civilian radars less than an hour after departing the Kuala Lumpur International Airport for Beijing on March 8.

But military radars and satellites picked up the Boeing 777’s signal after that, which enabled investigators to plot its erratic flight path that ended several hours later over the Indian Ocean.

A multi-nation search for the missing plane is taking place in the southern waters off West Australia after several objects were spotted there.

The search is now into its 27th day.