KUCHING: The media industry in Malaysia needs to engage with multinational international corporations in order to stay afloat, said Centre of Independent Journalism executive director (CIJ) Wathshlah G. Naidu.
She pointed out that cooperating with corporations would enable media organisations to improve their advertising revenues.
“As initiated in a number of countries as well as by the Malaysian Newspaper Publishers Association, the media has to find ways and means to engage with international corporations like Google and Facebook and share advertising revenues generated through contents from local media outlets,” she said in a statement issued yesterday.
Highlighting that the media in the country was currently experiencing a double-edged sword, Wathshlah said print media could no longer rely on traditional means of revenue and business models.
“The traditional print media has been facing financial difficulties way before the Covid-19 pandemic due to the migration of readers to digital online news.
“The deficit in advertising revenues and paid online subscriptions will suffer all the more now due to reallocation of spending by advertisers and dwindling incomes of subscribers, leading to drastic drops in incomes for media companies.
“In the interim, certain financial assistance such as tax incentives, short-term loans or government advertising, among others, could be considered to enable media outlets to stay afloat during this crisis.
“However, these should be short-term to ensure they do not damage the credibility or independence of the media, or in turn, become tools for the government to exert greater control over the media towards propaganda and censorship,” she added.
The current trend of downsizing, explained Wathshlah, was risky to the future of media freedom in Malaysia impacted by the drastic drop in revenue amongst traditional media organisation.
“Downsizing hit the traditional media before we were hit by Covid-19. In December 2019, media conglomerate Media Prima Berhad announced a “manpower rationalisation” exercise which resulted in the redundancies of staff from the New Straits Times (NST), Berita Harian (BH) and Harian Metro. Just prior to that, Utusan Malaysia, one of Malaysia’s oldest papers, closed.
“Since then, there have been increasing reports of newspapers closing down or reducing the number of times they print in a week amid the pandemic; The Edge Financial Daily printed its last issue on April 21, 2020; Oriental Daily is only printing on weekdays from May 1, 2020 onwards and Sin Chew Daily stopped printing its night edition copies from April 1, 2020 onwards.
“On the one hand, there is increased media consumption due to the movement control order (MCO) issued by our government and the heavy reliance on news providers for timely and reliable information,” she said.
The setting up of an independent self-regulatory body as proposed for Media Council, she said, would enhance the future of press freedom.
“Such regulatory body will provide as an avenue for arbitration of public complaints to be further explored by media organisations and thus, will enhance the credibility of news media organisations according to the international standards,” she said.
