Yesterday’s street protest in Kuala Lumpur, staged by 29 Muslim NGOs and political parties, against the Bar Council’s ‘Conversion to Islam’ forum predictably caught the attention of many interested and concerned Malaysians.
The forum as well as the accompanying street demonstration is indeed of public and national importance for both Muslims and non-Muslims in contemporary Malaysian society.
Thus, we, the Malaysian public, would expect the mainstream newspapers to cover the issue and the event as comprehensive and judicious as possible, given the ’sensitive nature’ of the issue at hand. And the dailies did report.
Two Malay-language newspapers, Berita Minggu and Mingguan Malaysia, splashed the news of the protest and the forum on their front pages.
What is noteworthy is that Mingguan Malaysia managed to give its readers a glimpse of what transpired in the first session of the forum before it was rudely interrupted by the protesters. It gave an account of representatives of three non-Muslim families narrating their anxieties, sufferings and problems as a result of conversion to Islam on the part of the fathers concerned. This account is in addition to the daily providing coverage of the street protest and the demonstrators.
In contrast, the front pages of both the New Sunday Times (NSunT) and the Sunday Star were silent on this issue. Instead, an account of the street protest and the aborted Bar Council forum was relegated to pages 10 and N18 of the NSunT and Sunday Star respectively.
Indeed, the issue of ethnicity and religion can be a tricky and sensitive one in most cases in Malaysia, or at least at times it is made out to be ’sensitive’ by certain quarters for reasons best known to themselves. Whatever the case maybe, there are questions that need to be raised in our effort to try to understand as regards ways of how a newspaper could report an issue/event without it being an unwitting (or witting?) party that can contribute to the worsening of a seemingly tense situation.
For starters, would ‘covering’ (as in concealing), say, a religious issue — as opposed to reporting it — help to ease, if not resolve, tension or conflict that afflicts two opposing parties? Or would hiding such a conflict from public knowledge further add to misunderstanding, confusion and/or suspicion among the people involved?
Would media focusing on, say, clenched fists, striking banners, colourful placards, angry faces and/or thuggish behaviour to the neglect or trivialising of the issue at hand help in promoting an understanding of the conflict among the people concerned? Wouldn’t a good grasp of the issue concerned become an important prerequisite to any attempt at having a meaningful dialogue between the two sides of a conflict?
In other words, wouldn’t it be useful for the media to also provide the context to a conflict or tension so as to ensure a better understanding of the issue concerned by the people? By doing so, wouldn’t the media be also able to avoid unnecessary sensationalised account of a conflict or tension that could consequently stoke the fire of hatred or suspicion among the people?
These are some of the questions that the media may want to think about when dealing with contentious issues such as ethnicity and religion.
