Week 5 : Who owns the newspapers and TV stations in your country? Do you think this has an effect on the news that you hear?

     In Malaysia, the government owns most of the informative media outlet, ranging from the newspaper to the TV stations most of the information media outlet seems to be in controlled by the government (e.g. Bernama) or owned by component parties of the Barisan Nasional coalition government (e.g. the Media Prima group, which is owned by the United Malays National Organization. Media Prima Berhad (Media Prima), a company listed on the Main Market of Bursa Malaysia, is Malaysia’s leading integrated media investment group. The Group currently owns 100 percent equity interests in TV3, 8TV, ntv7 and TV9. In addition, the Group also owns more than 98 percent equity interest in The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad (NSTP), Malaysia’s largest publisher which publishes three national newspapers; New Straits Times, Berita Harian and Harian Metro. The Group also owns three radio stations, Fly FM, Hot FM and One FM. Since the informative media is controlled so highly by the government, the alternative media which are Malaysiakini and The Malaysian Insider take advantage of the government's pledge not to censor the Internet despite its stronghold on most of the mass media.

There are over 30 newspapers and tabloids published mainly in Malay, English, Chinese and Tamil. The most prominent newspapers include The Star, New Straits Times, theSun, Berita Harian, Utusan Malaysia, Sin Chew Jit Poh and Nanyang Siang Pau.  

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_of_Malaysia | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Prima)

(source: http://tristantsk.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/a-brief-guide-to-the-malaysian-newspaper-industry/)

     Based in the above information found around the internet, I'm surprised by the results that most of the mainstream media are sharing or controlled by the same owner. That's mean that the informations that we heard and watched from the radio to television and the newspaper are all being filtered down to the same kind of altered or distorted informations. Media imperialism is one of the most common governing method that you can see in any country because it can be used to control the people in the country to think what the government wanted them to think about. For this reason, most of the sensitive issues are being censored and we won't get the chance to see them in the mainstream media and we can only hear this from the alternative media which is the Internet. For me, I would usually get the news directly from the Internet but we should be always beware that we can't only relying on one source of the information, it's always a good practice to have two to three reliable source for the serious issues before we  can come to our own conclusion to the news that we are concerned about.