Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 1 February 2016 issue)

Dear Kam,
Finally, it’s over. The prime minister has been cleared by the attorney-general.
Innocent Until Proven Guilty

“Case closed”. It’s a phrase I’ve only ever heard in Malaysia and in US TV cop shows, where it is usually followed by the caption, “The preceding story was fictional. No actual person or event was depicted”. The phrase has an impressive and satisfying finality about it because it sounds kind of legal. How can you argue with it? I mean, the case is closed. Okay.

And so the case is closed with the vast sums of money that were in our PM’s personal bank account. It seems it was a gift from the late king of Saudi Arabia. Case closed. If it had been a gift from Vladimir Putin or Barack Obama, then that might have been weird but it was from the top Arab king and it was given to help Umno win the general election. So that’s okay. Phew.

This recent pronouncement came immediately after the return of The X-Files. Coincidence? There are no coincidences, Scully.

Dear Kam,
I watch all the major international news stations: BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera. How come they never have the same news headlines?
News Junkie

The internet can create an intellectual echo chamber because we can choose to receive news reports only from sources that simply confirm our pre-existing beliefs. And why not? It makes life bearable when we can ignore the nonsense. Some of us are old enough to remember when we had no choice but to accept news from a single source and now feel embarrassed that we actually believed that stuff. I’ll always remember how somebody said that an early bout of haze was being caused by barbecues in Australia and I actually believed it. Now, we have an array of sources but I still try to watch and read the news from sources I don’t agree with. Much like handling radioactive waste, it can be a very dangerous and depressing experience and it must be interspersed with videos of cute kittens, but it must be done. And I think I’ve learnt a few things along the way.

Along with the local media and selected voices, I also watch America’s Fox News (owned by Rupert Murdoch) and US right-wing radio blowhards. When I listen to the radio, I get to hear the adverts and they are all aimed at old people, especially drug companies selling pills. Fox News is hugely successful and is easily the top-rated cable news network in the US. It achieves this success by focusing on pleasing a very narrow demographic group. The average age of Fox News viewers is 68 and its entirely white audience appears to appreciate the array of angry old men and beautiful blonde female hosts. There’s a commonly held belief that Fox News supports Republican candidates. Dick Cheney used to insist that every time he went to a hotel, he must have Fox News on in his room. Republicans usually do everything they can to please Fox News and its viewers, but ultimately, Fox News is in the business of selling Fox News and it does not require having a Republican in the White House to achieve great ratings.

Fox News is outrageously blunt in its hatred for Obama, but go to Britain’s Sky News (also owned by Rupert Murdoch) and you’ll find a much subtler right-wing message. In many ways, Sky News is quite even-handed and exhibits some good journalism in its reporting but its genius lies not in how it reports, but in what it reports. God does not hand down each day the list of headlines that TV news must prioritise. BBC, CNN or Al Jazeera all make choices for their lead stories and Sky News always leads with stories about migrants, dangerous Muslims or people being murdered in their beds, interspersed with British people doing something noble and pluckily British. They’ll always make a point of saying that some mad cleric is not representative of all Muslims but the fact that they only show mad clerics would kind of suggest that they are representative. The calm but deliberate repetition helps create a sense of uneasiness, even panic, in the viewer, which is sadly typical of British TV journalism. When I was living there, I got increasingly annoyed with the way that TV news would always turn every story into something menacing with a little “big picture” coda at the end. Somehow, even an innocent story about a cat being stuck up a tree might be a forewarning of a nuclear apocalypse.

With the possible exception of The Star, there are no outlets in Malaysia that can match the subtlety of Sky News or the Daily Mail newspaper in engendering an emotional response from its audience. These are independent companies in the business of protecting their market share and they are not in the business of telling the news as if it is the truth or trying to persuade you to believe in anything at all. They want to create an emotional response, a sense of unease that your world is under threat, and then you’ll go running back to find out about the next threat. It’s not how they report but what they choose to report, and it’s all about emotions.

Reprinted with the kind permission of