Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 24 November 2014 issue)

Dear Kam,
Does anybody read our newspapers anymore?
Paper Lama

The mantra is that the Internet has hurt newspaper sales around the world. Well, that’s not entirely true. Sales in some countries like India are bucking the Western trend and seeing increased sales, and this is despite the fact that 48% of Indians are under the age of 21. Asia has seen newspaper sales increase 16% in the last five years. These are countries with important issues, and often very local issues, that need investigating, and only a newspaper has the journalistic rigour and resources to do the job. These are countries where the stakes are high and the increasingly young voters believe that they are entitled to having a say in their nation’s future direction.

Malaysia has a much higher Internet penetration than India, but Japan is also seeing increased newspaper sales. Malaysia is, perhaps, going against the Asian trend by seeing decreasing newspaper sales. I saw a figure from the market research firm, Nielsen, that says The Star’s circulation dropped by a staggering 19.8% in the first six months of 2013 (although I’m going to take that with a pinch of salt). All measurements seem to agree that Malaysian newspaper sales have been dropping, and yet I think that Malaysians would also happily buy newspapers if we could believe they reflected and were championing our aspirations.

There was a time when I used to read The Star and New Straits Times every day, but that was a long time ago. I caught a glimpse of The Star’s front page the other day and saw the headlines. One of them was “Hospital sued by blind student”. To me, this little headline was the voice of the establishment. Why put the passive institution (hospital) before the active person (student)? Why wasn’t the headline “Blinded student sues hospital”? Not only would that be more impactful, it would also favour the plucky individual. The other headline was about the long-awaited returning of copies of the Bible, “Chapter closed”. Er, OK, if you say so.

What’s the point in buying a newspaper if you already know what it is going to say, if it is not going to tell you something you didn’t already know? It’s very tiresome feeling you’re being emotionally manipulated by newspapers that are focusing your attention on trivial matters and it’s tiresome being socially engineered when what you really want is to find out what the hell is going on. There’s a lot of strange stuff going on at the moment and I want a newspaper to probe, investigate and ask questions on my behalf. That’s probably asking way too much, so I’ll settle for a newspaper that treats me like an adult and doesn’t keep pretending that it’s 1957, that we’ve only just gained independence and that we just need to leave everything to our betters. Those days are over.

Eventually, our media space will be opened up and I think that it will lead to a flowering of old-fashioned things like newspapers and, perhaps, even television. It’s just a feeling, but it’s also the Asian trend.

Dear Kam,
Oil has gone down to US$80 per barrel! Where can I buy a couple?
Ron 97

Be careful what you wish for. We all want our petrol prices to go down and now they just might. The price of oil has dropped rapidly from above US$100 to US$80, and some analysts even project it will go down to as low as US$50 per barrel. I only just discovered this, but apparently oil-related income makes up 30% of the Malaysian government’s revenue. That’s not as bad as Saudi Arabia (92.5%) or Iran (60% in 2009), but is a 30% dependency healthy? I was talking to an Iranian émigré once and he was telling me how Iranian pistachios are the best in the world. They probably are, but after oil and then carpets, pistachios are Iran’s biggest export. Ouch. What kind of an economy is that?

A long time ago, I watched a Malaysian oil industry corporate video, and it began by swimming over a computer-animated seabed until some gas came bubbling out of the ground. It looked a lot like what might happen if you take a bath after a heavy meal, and it was essentially saying that our oil was a gift from God himself. Malaysia, it seems, had been chosen and blessed. And yet, oil has often been more of a curse than a blessing. Venezuela is OPEC’s fifth largest oil producer, with 95% of its income coming from oil exports, and yet, its supermarket shelves are bare. Meanwhile, Germany and Japan have no oil, but they’re doing quite well.

I’m probably cherry-picking because there are countries with large oil reserves that are doing well (Norway) and plenty of really poor ones that don’t have a drop. But to my mind, an economic dependency on oil revenue leads to a dependency culture. It allows us to come up with foolish and completely hare-brained schemes, safe in the knowledge that oil money will bail us out. But oil prices can go down, and oil will eventually run out. If oil makes up 30% of our revenue, then I’d suggest we remove that sector from how we imagine our economy and ask ourselves, how are we really doing? Thirty per cent is not good.

We may or may not be past peak oil. There may still be as much or even more left underground as we have already used. But if we do burn all those remaining hydrocarbons, then it would devastate the planet. The oil industry has plenty of years left in it, but it is essentially a sunset industry that is one invention away from redundancy. Are we even remotely prepared for a post-oil economy? Have we spent that oil money wisely? Have we, for instance, created an education system where young minds are prepared to be best able to face future unknown challenges, and not inculcated in a culture of dependency?

Dear Kam,
I want to understand my son, so I’m making the effort to listen to young people’s music. Where should I start?
YMCA

Every day, something comes along to further destroy the memories of my childhood and confirm that I was fooled and I am old. I grew up in the UK, so I have memories of celebrities who were only famous there, but some of whom, it turns out, were monsters. Well, one in particular, the radio DJ Jimmy Savile, had an eccentric and cheeky persona. He did a lot of work for charity and had the catchphrase, “Now then boys and girls”. It turns out he sexually molested hundreds of those boys and girls and got away with it, because he died in 2011. There are also stories of many politicians who were household names in the 1980s and were truly diabolical monsters. And now, Bill Cosby, loveable Mr Huxtable, is being accused of dozens of sex crimes. My memories have been built on dust.

But I am made to feel really old by the new version of 1984’s charity song, Do They Know It’s Christmas? The new version of the song was released to raise money to fight Ebola and sung by today’s top British singers. And I don’t know any of them. Back in 1984, I knew all the members of Band Aid, but now, when I scroll through the line-up, I am confronted with names like “Dan from Bastille”. Who? Or Olly Murs, who was apparently an X Factor runner-up. The line-up of the 1984 version could fill stadiums. This lot might be able to fill a bathtub.

Back in 1984, I was young and naïve, and I thought the song was very moving, but now, it’s just patronising. “Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?” (1) Probably. (2) What exactly is your point? But it’s for charity, so how can I complain?

Reprinted with the kind permission of