Should journalists be free from constraints and law, in order to ensure that articles are objective and fair?
Constraints define as embarrassed, forced even limitation while law define as rule or set of rules established in a community and demanding or prohibiting certain actions. Malaysia is a democratic country, which is a multi-racial country too. Therefore, there have constraints and law that controlling the mass media on reporting or publishing certain information. For an example, media will try to cover certain unwanted issues to certain extent even though they do not report fully in the newspaper. The journalism in Malaysia owned by political parties and this would let the political parties have a chance to controlling the issues in their parties. Therefore, is it the issues that journalism publishes are true or half-true? Should the public believe on the report? Are the reports is consider fair and objective?
According to Louis A. Day (1991, 10), credibility is to be believable and worthy of trust. As the journalist publish the information, public will believe the news without thinking it is fake. Most of the reader will immediately accept the issues that have been publish without doubting the validity of the information. Well, as a citizen, we have freedom of speech, communication and the press. According to Tan Sri Harun Mahmud Hashim, in any democratic country, media freedom equated with freedom of expression. This freedom would normally be enshrined in the national constitution as a right, not a privilege. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers’. From this point of view, if everyone of the citizen even the media have lots of freedom to speech on all the issues at the public, is it would let the public get more benefit? Is the truth of the information will not bring conflict to our society? The peacefulness of the country will not be safe because of the spread lots of information without controlling by the media. Therefore, journalists should not be free from constraint and law so that the conflict will not be happen in future even their articles have objectives and fair.
Obviously, in Malaysia, everyone have freedom to speech but this freedom is not fully freedom, there still have press inside it. This is because Malaysia is form by different ethnics and the media own by government and political parties. As government or political parties are controlling the press, readers will find out that the value of the information. The journalist is not able to cover the full story of the information because of the political constraints. As mentioned before, if the journalists were free from constraints and law, the conflict situation will happen in our society. As the journalists are free from constraints and law, they have the power to publish all the truth and information, which may create conflict or misunderstanding among the citizen because Malaysia is form by multi racism. Even through, there will have the economic constraints to the media and journalists as the media are depending on the advertisers and sponsorship. However, they should consider the economic situation in the country compare with the economic constraints for their own good. This is because if the country were happen conflict and fighting among the citizen, it would not help for grown up our economic in our country. The tourism will not come to our country to have a visit and citizen will no spend their money to purchase things. Citizen will just think on how to let them is in the safety situation. Based on the safety reason, journalists should not free from constraints and law and the constraints could bring benefits to the citizen too. From this point, citizen not only knows the half-truth of the information, and let them have the space to have their own opinion on it where to let the citizen live in a peace and harmony.
Legal constraints are able to control the journalists to report on certain issues. Journalists need to make sure that what had been covered are truth but do not touch on sensitive issues at the same time. For example, the status of king, status quo of Malay, issues of religion and so on. Journalists should consider on this issue and make sure that their report is not including this kind of issue that could let citizen have conflict and misunderstanding. Even citizen have the right to touch on this consider sensitive issues but what is the point that they want to have a conflict in the society? Therefore, journalists have the responsible to control this and should not report on these issues. Most of us are believe on the media, we just like a mainstream user who will just accept what people is sending the information. Well, legal constraints for journalists are able to control the media to reporting on these issues. Constraints are bringing benefit to the citizen while no one of us is discussing these issues in the public. As the media or journalists are not reporting on it, citizen will not know those things and they will not discussing on it. Citizen will just accept and appreciate what they have now.
According to Louis A. Day, the Nexus of law and ethics is the moral respect for the law that provides the foundation for our culture. Journalists should have the teleological theories. What they did is base on the consequence. They should follow the constraints and law even there might not cover the full truth for the report but it would bring the positive result to the public.
The journalist should not free from the constraints and law in order to make sure that have a harmony and peace in our society. By having the constraints and law might be protect the human rights.
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