KUALA LUMPUR, May 15 — Communications and Digital Minister Fahmi Fadzil today said the government is working on a solution that would benefit news organisations, media personnel and their consumers.
Calling it a “win-win-win” solution, Fahmi admitted that the media landscape has much changed in recent years with the emergence of social media.
“We can see now people are talking about content especially in social media but not all content is deemed newsworthy.
“We realised that consumers’ eyeballs have changed from getting news from traditional media such as newspapers and television to social media. It has an economic effect towards media organisations,” he told reporters after officiating the pre-launch of National Journalism Day 2023 (Hawana) at Wisma Bernama here.
Fahmi said the government is ready to cooperate with the media industry to find solutions for these threats towards journalism.
“I believe that we should properly study this to know if there’s anything that we can do to help the media industry,” he said.
Fahmi cited an example of whether news publications erecting paywall for their readers is a viable solution towards addressing the public’s demand for credible news.
“The question of ‘do paywall works in order to attract more readers?’ were raised before. So we are discussing that.
“Readers are thirsty for information, they want it to come from a reliable news source,” he said.
Meanwhile, Fahmi stressed the importance of practising journalism ethics among media personnel.
“Media has every right to speak up but they have to do it under the current law. What they don’t have is the right to accuse or slander people,” he said.
Hawana 2023 will be held in Ipoh, Perak from May 27 to May 29, with the theme for this year being “Media bebas, tunjang demokrasi” or “Free media, the mainstay of democracy”.
It is believed that about 1,000 media practitioners will join the three-day event which will include forums, a treasure hunt, exhibitions, bowling and mini-carnivals at Hotel Casuarina@Meru there.
The event is scheduled to be officiated by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
