ADOI Blog

So what happens to the scariest man in Malaysia now?

Ham on 02 11, 2008

Who is scared of who now?

TheSun’s most fearless writer R Nadeswararan aka Citizen Nades is on leave for the month of Feb and rumours have it he is weighing options should his curtain call come. Anything is possible, but as of press time, Malaysia’s most famous ‘expose’ man is staying put.

Nades with his mate in tow Terence Fernandez clinched top regional awards for journalistic excellence at the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) for “Low Cost Palace”. The report was an expose on the lavish mansion constructed, without local authority permission, by Port Klang assemblyman and former Klang councillor Datuk Zakaria Md Deros. It led to other exposes on Zakaria’s misdeeds, including defaulting on assessment fees, running an unlicensed satay house and serving as Senator while a bankrupt. These reports prompted responses from Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and even the Sultan of Selangor, which eventually led to Zakaria losing his councillor’s post.

Talk has been rife since tycoon Tan Sri Vincent Tan’s Berjaya Corporation announced it had bought 35.7% of Nexnews – the company that owns free daily The Sun and financial weekly The Edge.
To many in editorial circles and readers at large, this could mean that theSun may lose its ‘bite’ as the ‘unputdownlable’ paper it is today.

This month and the next may not be the best time for exposes perhaps? With Berjaya back in control of theSun, political observers expect the paper to toe the government’s line. But Berjaya boss Vincent Tan says editorial stance, which highlighted opposition parties’ issues and criticized the government, was not expected to ’significantly’ change.

It is no secret theSun has made a remarkable turnaround in recent years with Ho Kay Tat at its helm. After chalking up losses of up to RM200 million, they finally managed a small profit last year. Kay Tat now returns to The Edge in the new management structure.

The million-ringgit question now is: Will advertises keep flocking to the paper, if its editorial goes lame on issues? If they don’t, then theSun may set yet again. Because its business model is purely ad revenue driven.

Let’s look at a somewhat interesting scenario in India…

India’s boldest English-language news magazine, Tehelka, a crusading independent weekly is struggling to expand and take a bigger slice of a highly competitive print market. Like many anti-establishment publications around the world, Tehelka has garnered only lukewarm support from advertisers and relative disinterest from readers more interested in upbeat news.

Tehelka, which means “sensational” in Hindi, has lived up to its name with hard-hitting investigations that have often used undercover cameras to confront officials and expose corruption.

After beginning as a Web site in 2000, Tehelka rocked the country the next year with a sting operation in which its reporters secretly filmed senior politicians and army officers taking bribes and, in some cases, consorting with prostitutes. The scandal forced top politicians, including the defense minister, to resign. But shortly after the bribery scandal broke, a government- appointed inquiry turned its focus on Tehelka. Reporters were arrested and questioned and the Web site’s main financial backer was imprisoned for two months. Tax raids and judicial investigations followed, and its staff fell from 120 to three. The site went into debt and finally out of business.

In early 2004, Tehelka emerged from the rubble as a reader-financed weekly newspaper. Calling itself the “People’s Paper” and promoting what it called “free, fair and fearless” journalism, it was, and still is, backed by the intellectual and social elite – writers, lawyers, businesspeople and activists. Arundhati Roy, Shashi Tharoor and V.S. Naipaul lined up to support it. More than 200 people became founder-subscribers by paying 100,000 rupees, or $2,500, to be associated with the venture.

Will we see a true ‘People’s Paper’ in Malaysia? Or is it too scary a scenario for us?

Maybe Nades can tell us.

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