MAY 22 — The change of government sends a wave of impacts across various expanses in the Malaysian life. One of the most important changes that can be observed is the fact that the old media platforms, especially television, will no longer be bound to the conservative roots that they had to conform to in the past.
Ethno-religious discourse almost seemed like the raison d'etre of the state media under Umno rule, because of their suffocating iron claws which had mostly controlled the information allowed in the media.
Even if you think that smartphones and social media sites are increasingly dominating the information consumption behaviour among Malaysians, researches iterate that the reachability of the Malaysian free-to-air television and radio channels is considerably wider, closing in to reaching almost every household in the country.
Thus, where old media platforms lack in reaching the younger generation, they make up in their sway over older and rural areas viewers.
But as they advance in reachability, old media platforms pathologically lack in inclusivity and progressive voices. Programmes on RTM TV1 like Forum Perdana: Ehwal Islam for example, had on occasions been a mouthpiece for ultra-conservative ideas which dip into the righteous mentality of the Malays.
These programmes concretise the Malays’ sense of supremacy and moralise the need for Malays to repudiate other races in the Malaysian political space. Some of the programmes aired on these channels even rolled out the red carpet for scaremongers, the likes of Ridhuan Tee Abdullah, who unabashedly scare Malays by creating pictures of liberal and pluralist boogeymen.
These pundits feed them unrealistic possibilities of the country falling into the hands of other races, and allude to the absurd possibility where Islam as the religion of the state is eradicated by their alleged agendas.
Not only that, we have seen how extremists like Zakir Naik had enjoyed a buttressing support by the Umno-BN government, how they have been invited into the country and given ample airtime on television and multiple other platforms.
To make matters worse, there is no programme on state or privatised television that could sufficiently challenge conservative, ethno-religious ideas which had pervaded on-air discourses. Even the supposedly more scholarly programmes like TV3’s Soal Jawab or the Buletin TV3 are filled with spices of bias and pessimism directed at non-Malay leaderships, aggravating the fears of their viewers and indirectly fanning the flames of racism.
Programmes on RTM channels moreover, are across the board designed, almost exclusively for Malays. Where it is given that RTM and Media Prima Channels take the cake in their viewership, it should also be pointed out how even their drama slots are mostly prepared for the Malay palate.
RTM, the state media which once championed the 1 Malaysia slogan, has ultimately failed to cater to the taste of all Malaysians. Races other than the Malays and lifestyles other than Islam are severely under-represented.
All these produce two-pronged undesirable results: Firstly, the refusal of the non-Malays to select these channels as their source of infotainment due to the inability to identify themselves as a result of their scarce representation; and secondly, the racial essentialism that Malays in rural areas espouse, and the crystallisation of the Malay or Muslim world bubble that they dwell securely in.
Looking at the data provided by the EC in the recent 14th General Election, there is no room for doubt that the 76 seats which were swept by BN, 54 of them being Umno seats, were majorly seats in the rural areas.
The same holds true for PAS which had won 18 parliamentary seats and evinced in two East Coast states. At the same time, we have journals published by local academics on the topic of Malaysian old media’s viewer statistics confirming the fact that the central demography for old media consumption are the people in more rural areas in the country. These statements should make one stop for a second to reflect on the uncanny concurrence of the facts.
This quite largely means that the pattern of media consumption among people in rural areas markedly differs from the people in sub-urban and urban areas. It conveniently coincides with the voting pattern that we have seen in the recent election.
And if old media consumption is one of the consistent factors shaping the mentality of people in rural areas, the upheaval in our politics that has ushered in media freedom can mean that a whole section of the society is ripe for a new tone of political discourse.
This is why saving television, radio and other old media platforms from right-wing voices should be something that matters significantly to our now self-proclaimed progressive government. Seizing this now volatile space in the Malaysian old media which is attempting to reinterpret itself means that progressive voices can extend their reach to the most rural areas to reconstruct the political discourse.
Malaysia Baru forces should not just stop at media freedom. The very fact that we are going to have freedom of the media and a better democracy, means that these platforms will still be available and open to the conservatives, even racial and religious extremists, and rightfully so.
Because of that, the effort to propagate counterbalancing voices on these avenues should not merely be encouraged and engaged in passivity. We should reform the media by incentivising more academic, inclusive and unbiased programmes, and by flooding it with the voices of moderates and progressives.
After decades of the fermentation of right-wing values, the effort to provide alternative voices for moderation and progress should instead be incisive and concerted to challenge the narrative which has been fed throughout the decades by the Umno-BN government.
It should be a priority in the suggested media reform that the government should go on to undertake. The objective is not only to end the dominion of Umno over the rural areas. It is to circumvent extreme racial and religious views, to effectively evolve our political space into a more mature and inclusive one, whereby religion can be used as a force for good and for the unity of the people, instead of the divisive identity tool, which it is used as now.
Once this happens, even Umno will not be able to return to its usual scare tactics. Umno will then be forced to transgress its old ploys, and participate in a more healthy and constructive discourse in a new era of politics.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
