I DON'T know if it was reported prominently by the mainstream press but I didn't catch it in the only paper I buy nowadays. Read it online and decided that I must have my say on this.
The news was about the response by former PM Mahathir Mohamad when asked about press control during his time after he had launched another online news portal recently. According to Mahathir it was nonsense to suggest that there was such a thing when he was our CEO. Instead he took the now expected route of taking another dig at his successor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi by saying the latter did control the press.
My impression was that Pak Lah didn't meddle much with the Umno-owned media because he was seldom on the ball. The story was that he was not into reading a lot of things that landed on his desk, unlike Mahathir who some say read everything, even anonymous poison-pen letters, as was the case concerning me following a senior appointment at the NSTP Group in mid-1990.
Because he read very little Pak Lah wasn't aware about many of the issues around him and what he didn't know could not have affected him. However he was the only one amongst our six PMs so far to have put his men directly in the media -- one at TV3 and another at NSTP. So they ran the show for him, did his bidding.
Mahathir on the other hand left matters of the Umno media to Daim Zainuddin in his capacity as Umno treasurer and thus in charge of Fleet Group, then Umno's main investment holding group. Mahathir's deputy Musa Hitam thought this power would be vested in him, as was usually the case with previous PMs, but it turned out to be a gross miscalculation. So what happened was that Daim decided who he should appoint as the chief editors but based on the trust given him by Mahathir. But it wasn't as if Mahathir distanced himself from these decisions; he had to consent.
I don't know much about the Tunku's time but contrary to popular belief, the Tunku did apply control his own way and did use his power when the situation warranted. The way he acted during the Utusan strike was a clear example that the centre did have control if the press showed signs of going out of control. The man running the Straits Times in KL those days was also the Tunku's regular partner on the golf course.
His successor Razak Hussain left it more to his aide Abdullah Ahmad to deal with the Umno press and word had it that in most instances the editors believed that Dollah took advantage to make his own decisions, give his own directions. Not much is talked about Hussein Onn's time as PM but just as Mahathir left it to the Umno treasurer, Hussein left it to Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah in a similar position as Daim. But during this time there was also another man who used his position to put fear in the editors and journalists -- Home Minister Ghazalli Shafie.
So was Mahathir correct in insisting that he did not control the press when he was PM? From what I know he can't be right on this one. In fact not many news reports escaped his eyes. His aides said that before he walked into his office every morning Mahathir would have read at least the NST, the old Business Times and Utusan Malaysia. Was Mahathir more liberal than any of the other PMs we have had? No.
I think Mahathir's pride in his country overwhelmed him. If there was anything negative that could be buried beneath the surface he would not hesitate to do it. I remember the case about eight years ago when the NST carried a story of some people complaining about the dirty water coming out of the taps in their homes. The NST received a call from a Mahathir aide to tell them that the PM wasn't happy at all because it was as if the NST was telling the whole world how dirty the country was!
A PM overly concerned with a press report about dirty water you may say but that was Mahathir for you. The problem for the NST in such a situation was that hardly a week later the rival Star carried more stories and pictures on the same problem, highlighting the issue over two pages.
And is it any different now under Najib Razak? It's too early to tell buy the usual way of appointing editors the political route cast doubts in a lot of people's minds.
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