Chapter 3: Media Imperialism

Media imperialism is a phenomenon of a big and wealthy media industry or company control or monopoly over the media industries. When an owner is actually controlling the media, the media output can be biased. The owner can decide on what information to be shown as well as what to censor. For example, in Britain, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) operates its own form of media imperialism. The BBC has an annual television license that needs to be bought before you can own a television, regardless of whether you watch the BBC or not.

The same thing happens in our country, Malaysia. As example, our newspaper is control by the government under the act of PPPA1984 Malaysia’s Printing Presses and Publications Act. The PPPA provided the Minister for Home Affairs with discretionary powers concerning the granting, suspension and revocation of printing licences within Malaysia and the import and distribution of foreign publications. Licensing offences under the Act are punishable by up to 3 years’ imprisonment or fines of up to RM 20,000 or both. According to Press Freedom Index by Reporters without Borders, Malaysia is ranked 131 out of 175 nations.

A famous example of media imperialism is the BERSIH Protest on 10 November 2007. The event organizers intended to have a peaceful, non-violent rally, advising participants in the days and weeks beforehand how to keep the rally peaceful. However, the rally was marred by the government sanctioned police violence. After the incident, foreign media such as Al-Jazeera covered the event with detailed videos and ground and satellite images. BBC and CNN featured the news in their online papers as well.

On the other hand, ironically, local papers such as The Star only managed to feature a traffic jam on page 8 of its Sunday edition. Most of the local papers did not feature this as an important event despite the magnitude of the rally whereas protests in other countries were covered almost daily in full detail. The local media cannot report the rally because of the act of PPPA 1984.

OK, spot the differences: