« Rail Coffee, real coffee | Main | The country has moved on »

Mainstream Media vs. Blog

The Complaints Bureau of the Communications and Multimedia Content Forum will convene this afternoon to mediate a complaint filed on August 3 by P.Gunasegaram of theSun/Nexnews Sdn Bhd in respect of a comment posted by reader IImran in Screenshots.

This blogger was notified of the Complaints Bureau mediation in a letter from the Content Forum dated August 9, 2006.

Incidentally, this blogger has filed a complaint against Ho Kay Tat, Group Editor-in-Chief of theSun/Nexnews Sdn Bhd in a letter dated August 8 pertaining to a seditious article he published in theSun's news portal (www.sun2surf.com), which was a replica of the cited article published in the August 2 print edition of theSun.

The Chairman of the Complaints Bureau has decided to hear the two cases together, scheduled for this afternoon. See email attached below.

P.Gunasegaram is the Group Editor at Nexnews which publishes The Edge and theSun. Ho, who was the KL-based bureau chief of Singapore Business Times before joining Nexnews as Editor-in-Chief, was later promoted to Group EIC and MD of Nexnews Sdn Bhd and entrusted with sole responsibility over the financial and editorial controls of the media group.

Nexnews is majority-owned by Canada-based Tong Kooi Ong and construction/gaming tycoon Vincent Tan.

This blogger will testify that ( 1 ) reader IImran's posting was a reflection of a Malaysian's response to P. Gunasegaram's criticism of Dr Mahathir, and ( 2 ) Nexnews should be faulted for publishing online the cited seditious article.

This is notice issued by the Complaints Bureau of the Communications and Multimedia Content Forum:

From: J Matthews matthews@macomm.com.my
To: Jeff Ooi jeffooi.screenshots@gmail.com
Date: Aug 14, 2006 8:32 PM
Subject: RE: SEDITIOUS CONTENT in theSun Online Portal

Dear Mr Jeff Ooi

COMPLAINT

Your complaint dated 8 August 2006 was tabled at a recent meeting.

Under Clause 3.5 Part 8 of the Content Code which reads "On receiving a complaint and prior to adjudication, the Complaints Bureau shall provide the necessary assistance and guidance to the parties involved with the intention of mediating an amicable resolution by mutual consultation."

The Chairman, taking into consideration the complaint filed against you by Mr P.Gunasegaram of Nexnews Bhd, has decided to combine both the complaints into one single hearing.

The mediation hearing will be held 3.00pm, Monday - 21 August 2006 in the Conference Room, Unit 1206, Block B, Pusat Dagangan Phileo Damansara 1, Off Jalan Damansara, 46350 Petaling Jaya.

We look forward to seeing you then.

Thank you.

J Matthews
Secretaries

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.jeffooi.com/mt32/mt-tb.cgi/785

Comments

Walk tall, strike well...Good luck, Jeff.

...

Jeff, I know you'll say don't need la....But can some of us show up as supporters?

good luck and god speed..

right... filing counter complaint. apparently you are quite skilled in the ways of the malaysian politicians...

JEFF OOI says: Leave the politics to the politicians. I am just following up with what has been blogged with affirmative action -- to call a spade a spade even it's about theSun. I want to remind you that, as a committed blogger who shows up every morning with my identifiable identity -- and you pay me visit rather regularly to know exactly that -- I will not take it lying down whichever party that intends to stifle Internet in Malaysia. Unfortunately, it's only people like you who will always cloud the nobility of the blogs and bloggers with your recalcitrant innuendoes because talk is cheap to minions like you. You simply wanted to hijack people's intellectual discourse. You need to tell your kids that you have balls to stand up to issues and you don't take potshots like what your politicians normally did. You have sent out the wrong message to Malaysians, and your own kids.

As a blog reader, what I can say again is that Iimran's comment does not sound like shooting with a gun. Those who read blogs and leave comments would right away, at first thought, shoot Guna with more comments.

Yesterday, as I watched the Singapore series "I not stupid", I noticed a situation.

The "肉干" seller's wife told her children not to lie as that is not the right thing to do. Right after her conversation with her kids, the father was lieing to his one of his clients in front of their kids in order to save his business. Needless to say, the children questioned their parents' integrity.

Next time if anybody wants to shoot, make sure it does not end up at your own feet.

jeff,

you are a "shooting" star in the making and it happens after you "shot" yourself to stardom in the blogging scene.

disclaimer: no gun involved in the making of above sentence.

Good luck, Jeff. All the best. When we can move a BIG step forward?

Good luck jeff....
U are on the right track on this issue....

3 o'clock... and holding my breath....

Sending you positive vibes...and may the small (tak guna!)man look at himself in the mirror and not shrivel up in shame each morning!

4 o'clock....

Hope all goes well with your efforts to put Malaysian Blogging in perspective. We should all 'shoot' overselves down if we cannot unite for this single cause!

5 o'clock....

ilmran:

I've followed this "issue" since it broke, and you have been consistently here to support Jeff whom many of us look up to in Blogsworld.

As you "were" a key player in THAT 'shooting" episode, should you have been at the "hearing" with jeff? Just my thinking aloud...No offence meant, okay!:)

no offence taken, desi :-)

i only got to know of this 'call' through this blog, this morning.

Jeff,

Come what may, know that you had, is having and will continue to have an impact in the way how Malaysians regard press freedom in our beloved country. To me, our Malaysian bloggers- and particularly you- keep the flames of free thought and discourse burning in our ever bleak and dimming democracy. Take heed that this flame, once lit and no matter how small, if nurtured, could not be doused by the wind of government approved news spinning. We stand by you.

7 o'clock....

now i'm more worried for jeff than for the matter on hand...

unsubstanced?

IImran,

Why don't you go to the hearing and request to be heard and tell them you are solely responsible for what you wrote and why can't the Complaint Bureau understand something so simple. Secondly, please also say that you did not mean it (and we all believe you) when you suggested someone kill takGuna.

Hopefully this case will be SHOT down soon. I suppose that most of us Screenshot readers are just fed up with that particular in-duh-vidual who took an abstract expression a little literally.

INTERNET does not operate in a legal vacuum.
Read this before you post a comment in this blog!

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)