00:10Hi, welcome back to Consider This. I'm Melissa Idris. Let's continue our discussion about a new
00:15report by the Centre for Independent Journalism, which shines a light on the economic realities
00:21facing media workers in Malaysia. Can a media industry under economic strain continue to
00:27deliver independent and public interest journalism. Joining me on the line to discuss this further is
00:33Premish Chandran, who is Deputy Chairperson of the Malaysian Media Council and co-founder of the
00:39news site Malaysia Kini. Prem, good to have you on the show again. So the CIJ report, it frames
00:47journalists' economic security as a press freedom issue. I'm wondering, Prem, whether you agree with
00:54this framing? Well, it's a good question, you know, where does the economic rights of journalists
00:59lie in this kind of press freedom environment? I like to think of it as, you know, on one hand,
01:06regulation being kind of like the soil, the fertile soil on which journalism grows. So I think regulation
01:13is, you know, if you don't have good regulations, it's hard to have, you know, freedom of expression,
01:18independent media and, you know, a strong media playing a role. And the journalists and economic
01:24rights of journalists are, you know, essentially the farmer, you know, who's working the soil, right?
01:28So you do need the healthy soil, but at the same time, you need healthy farmers, you know, and they
01:34need to get a good return on their living in terms of, you know, working the soil and producing the
01:40fruits,
01:40you know, in terms of the stories and the news that we get. So I think they're half right that
01:45the economic
01:46rights of the journalists are important, but so this is very important to have a regulatory framework
01:52that supports press freedom. Okay, so I'll come back to the regulatory framework in a bit,
01:59but I want to interrogate further the current economic reality of the Malaysian media landscape.
02:06From your vantage point, Prim, how economically fragile, how financially fragile is Malaysia's media industry?
02:15Well, you know, ever since the internet has grown, on one hand, it's got more
02:20freer because the government has decided not to license the internet. So sites like Malaysia
02:25Kinney, other online sites have grown in this sort of, you know, more regulatory environment,
02:29which is more free. But at the same time, the media industry has become more constrained
02:33because especially online, a lot of advertising actually goes into the pockets of the big tech companies,
02:39the Googles, the Facebooks of the world. So the same amount of money which used to go into print and
02:44broadcast is not coming to online journalism. So it's kind of, you know, paradoxical. It's more
02:49freer, but at the same time, more fragile. Okay. So the advances in social media and
02:59the availability of news online for free without a paywall has really disrupted the industry.
03:07How you've been in the Malaysia Kinney newsroom. We're not specific to Malaysia Kinney, but I'm
03:13just wondering, newsrooms in general are very expensive to run. And quality journalism requires
03:20investment and, of course, money. So how sustainable is that? Is quality journalism today becoming
03:27economically unsustainable? Do we, the public, underestimate how expensive quality journalism is?
03:38Yeah, I think that's very true. I think they, because they see a lot of advertising on news
03:42sites, they think we're kind of minting money. But actually those ads, most of it, like I said, goes to
03:47another party, not the news sites. So it is becoming pretty fragile and difficult. And the economics of the day
03:54does not sustain or support long-term investigative journalism. So that the workforce is shrinking and
04:01each journalist is asked to do more within limited time. And that puts severe constraints on the
04:05quality of the stories, the amount of time we have to devote to a story. And also because it's less
04:11upward trajectory, we tend to lose a lot of the senior journalists. So you get more young people coming in,
04:17but they don't stay. As soon as their family, their kids,
04:21their financial priorities are challenging and they move on. So a lot of people enter journalism
04:26with a passion, especially at a young age, but find it hard to sustain in journalism throughout their
04:32careers. How expensive is it really? Maybe you can give us a ballpark, maybe not specifics, but
04:40there is a decision that's made in newsrooms whether or not to invest in investigative pieces. And
04:48while investigative journalism is celebrated, sometimes we say, oh, why don't we see more of this?
04:52I think people rarely think about it in economic terms. And give us some insight into this, Prim.
05:01Well, a small newsroom can be anything like 20 or 30 people. A medium-sized, maybe 100. A large news
05:07organisations, 300 to 500. You know, the global ones like New York Times and Guardians, you know,
05:125,000, 10,000, right? So there's a whole scale. You can even do a one-person show, right? Even
05:16one
05:17person can, you know, can produce content, etc. So there's a great variety. But typically, you're
05:22looking at an operation of between 10 to 20 million a year. So you're looking at an income, you know,
05:27you need at least, you know, 1-2 million a month of income. And that's hard to drive purely on
05:34advertising. It's not just, you know, money going on to the big tech companies. For now, for example,
05:39a lot of brands have switched to using influencers to market their product. Some, you know,
05:45good-looking person appears on your TikTok, you know, selling a particular product. And there's
05:51zero journalism in that. And they're capturing all that value from advertising. It previously used to
05:58be that, you know, that some money goes to our brand content, somewhere in the brands, but a lot
06:04of money would then go into the journalism. But now all that value is being captured
06:08in platforms that don't reflect, you know, strong journalistic values and integrity.
06:14Yeah. And so what happens to journalism when newsrooms are constrained, when newsroom resources
06:21are cut too deeply?
06:23Well, they suffer, you know, you get, you know, it gets, there are more mistakes, things are rushed,
06:30things are less in-depth, less informative. You tend to have a bias towards quick, you know, quick stories,
06:36just like how we have a bias for fast food. You know, everything wants to be quick and easy and
06:40quick, right? You know, you have lots of salt in the food, but it may not be nutritious to you.
06:45So that's another analogy. You can have a lot of news out there, but not all news
06:49really is nutritious and healthy for the person consuming that news.
06:53Yeah. And your experience, Prim, are audiences willing to pay for quality journalism? I'm quite
07:02curious to know what determines that willingness, you think?
07:06Well, that's what Malaysia Kini was banking on. So we launched our subscription way back in 2002,
07:12some three years. So we found very quickly after we launched in 1999, that advertisers were very
07:18hesitant to put money behind provocative, you know, independent investigative journalism because those
07:24kind of stirred an issue. So, but we were banking on subscribers to pay and support a good journalism.
07:31And that really happened for a good 10, 15 years. Our subscriptions have grown. But the older generation
07:37are still paying for subscriptions, but the younger generation are not. And it's not so much that they
07:43don't want to invest in good content. There's so much of free content out there. So they're asking
07:49themselves, you know, why should I pay for something if it's coming to me on my WhatsApp or my TikTok?
07:54So it's a challenge. I understand it, you know, both from the publisher's point of view, but also the
07:59consumer point of view, you know, why would I want to pay for something which I can get for free?
08:03So that's a challenge that we have to show what's the real value in a subscription. And it's a support
08:09for independent media. So we always encourage our readers to subscribe and support whether it's
08:13Malaysia Kini or any other media, but it's definitely a challenge.
08:18I think for full transparency, I'm a paying subscriber to Malaysia Kini. I also wanted to ask you to put
08:27your Malaysia Media Council hat on, Prim, and talk to us a little bit about the role of MMC. You
08:34mentioned
08:34a bit earlier that the practitioners are farmers, essentially, and just keep them healthy is one
08:39thing. But the regulatory framework, ensuring that the ground is conducive for good journalism is also
08:46equally important, or if not more important. So talk to me about the Malaysia Media Council's role
08:52in ensuring a healthy regulatory framework for the industry.
08:58Sure. I think, you know, for past governments, media has always been something which they wanted to
09:04control to censor. For example, the Printing Presses Act was under the whole ministry. So it became
09:09like it's more of a security issue, rather than a service to society. So we're kind of moving to the
09:16idea of having the Malaysian Media Council is to move from a heavily censored and regulated industry
09:21towards one that he promotes press freedom. So the current government, the Minister of Communication, YB
09:28Fahmi, the Prime Minister have been strong advocates for this transition. And yet it's still
09:33in a bit of limbo. We kind of created the Malaysia Media Council, but we haven't really unwound the
09:39previous laws that exist that regulate and could censor the media. So we're kind of moving forward,
09:45but it's a bit of a journey. So the Media Council, the idea is now to sort of trigger law
09:51reform and move
09:52away from the previous law so that the media can self-regulate through a professional code of conduct,
09:59towards the grievance mechanism, so that the Media Council is made up of the media companies, the
10:05media practitioners, journalists, editors, as well as civil society. We can come together and set the
10:11rules of which media should operate. And just zooming out, when you look at the landscape today,
10:19what are you most concerned about? There's lots of things to be optimistic about. I see a lot of change
10:25in
10:25the industry. But as you know, looking back at all the things that we've discussed today with the
10:31changes in technology and the economic insecurity of the industry, what concerns you the most, Prem?
10:40Well, on one hand, we don't want to go backwards. The proposals coming out of the whole ministry to
10:45introduce licensing for all media. So we don't really want to go back in that direction. That's the one
10:50thing. But the forward area we need to claim is around freedom of information. At the moment,
10:56we have the Official Secrets Act. So a lot of information that we believe should be in the public
11:02sphere is actually deemed secret. And it's very difficult for citizens to be informed and have a
11:08good discussion around policy if there's no freedom of information. So we're finding hard to move forward in
11:15that area to reduce the Official Secrets Act and replace it with the Freedom of Information Act. At the
11:20same time, we don't want to go backwards and have more and more licensing for media.
11:26Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us on the show. Premis Chandran there,
11:30Deputy Chairperson of the Malaysian Media Council and co-founder of Malaysia Kini,
11:34wrapping up this episode of Consider This. I'm Melissa Idris, signing off for the evening.
11:39Thank you so much for watching and good night.
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