During the first decade of 21st century we have seen a rapid revolution in mass media. The widely expand of information and communication technologies had split mass media to main stream media (newspaper, television, radio and few others) and alternative media (online news or journalism). Meanwhile, the alternative media or online journalism itself are divided to online version of mainstream media, independent or non mainstream online journalism and shared or discussion sites. At the beginning of the decade, people slowly change their medium to get news by surfing it through internet because they have the thought that main stream media is biased, irresponsible and sensationalize. It is continuously spreading as one of the major medium of democracy because people felt they were given more access to express their thought without the “road-block” from the gate-keepers.
However during the middle of the first decade, there are some groups claiming that online journalism beginning to exaggerate certain issues or misstates the truth. There were some unethical online journalists began to be very aggressive and negative in their writing, and started to put fire on very sensitive topics and issues without doing any analathical thinking and deep research. Those unacceptable behaviors, not only cause domestic issues like the increase of racial tense and political imbalance but it also affected the sovereignty of some countries. At the same time, the self-judgments of these groups sometimes may humiliate and bring down the dignity of some individual.
If we flash back a couple years back, for sure we will remember the video uploaded by Wee Meng Chee in youtube.com that disgraces our National Anthem. It has also been a national issue where the lyrics of the anthem had been modified to be very unethical where he directly insult the Malay rights and Muslim believes. On the other side, it has jeopardized the image of the nation among the world community because it has widely broadcasted on the internet. This is the reason why every contents uploaded should be monitored because we will never know its implication towards certain parties.
At the same time, our country sovereignty also has been abuse when forty-ninth Australian members of parliament sent a memorandum to drop the charges of sodomy cases on Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim. The action was taken because they were influenced by unreliable sources of online news which only based on the blog and discussion made by the supporters of Anwar Ibrahim. Their action indirectly question the Malaysian judging system since the case is still on-going at the Federal Court. It also affected Malaysia diplomatic affairs with Australia government.
To sum up, even though online journalism have a significant value towards the media sector, we as the reader should analyze any post on internet before we started to believe it because obviously some of the article or news uploaded could bring more harms towards the current situation and society. It may also ruin the democracy value when it was practiced negatively. So online journalism should be controlled because our societies are still in the learning progress of making a judgments thus we need guidance for a better and clear understanding.
References:
•http://writingforonline.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/the-basics-of-online-journalism
•Rahmat, G. (2008). Online Journalism on Malaysian Socio Political Landscapes. Shah Alam: University Publication Centre (UPENA).
•http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_media_should_not_be_controlled
•http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/71511
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