Bottomline: MCA is owner of The Star. The party also faces the very real prospect of political annihilation. A vehicle/weapon of the MCA destruction would be its own senjata makan tuan. MCA has not managed to get the ear of public opinion over the last 5 years despite it owing a large circulation newspaper.

As I’ve said, The Star is profit-motivated and writes what its readers in Damansara Utama and Subang Jaya want to hear so as to sell copies and please big advertisers (e.g. property developers).

Utusan, as a comparison, does not have the same business orientation of The Star and is suffering its sales plummeting by maintaining a pro-establishment (coinciding with Umno-Malay ketuanan) slant despite the changed political climate post-2008.

Media around the world endorse any political party they want. Look up all the major UK, US papers. In the run-up to the elections, they will openly support candidates — say Obama, or H. Clinton (in run-off) or the Tories or Labour.

The Economist is even more opinionated: “This newspaper endorsed Mr Sarkozy in 2007″, “The Socialist who is likely to be the next French president would be bad for his country and Europe”.

So the fact is that newspapers do choose sides, only just don’t be partisan to the extent of false reporting or putar-belit like DAPsters are fond of doing, and like you’re wont to do.

The reality of the situation is that The Star is functioning as a successful business (which it is) and somewhat keeping up its sales (despite the inevitable dip) as well as collecting the ad revenues which gives its shareholders profits and its editors, fat bonuses.

Is the reality of the situation also that The Star is MCA mouthpiece and party organ?

Pragmatically, if the MCA via Huaren Holdings (the party investment arm) is paying the reporter salaries, then why should they allow the editorial staff – with the exception of those at the very top like Datuk Seri WCW, Datuk WSW, JC & a handful of others – to badmouth the boss (MCA and by extension its Ministers) as well as to covertly promote & publicize the rival (DAP)?

If Star was neutral and objective to begin with, then I have nothing to fault the paper on.

But if Star is seen by many readers here as a Rocket sibling, or S’gor Times cousin and its biases hurt the interests and even threaten the very survival of its owners, then shouldn’t MCA stop being a foolish cuckold (Salhas’s comment: “The Star’s eclipsing of CSL is like your wife shutting you out of the house while she’s having a liaison with your sworn enemy. How sad!”

I leave it to my readers to decide what you are.

If you were so concerned with the legitimacy of The Star as a newspaper as a result of its (alleged by you) partisan pro-DAP reporting, you would have asked it to stop ALL partisan reporting.

You would have said something like: “Yo, The Star, stop promoting DAP and act like a proper newspaper.”

But no, what you did was accuse The Star of being pro-DAP and then recommend that it be made pro-MCA instead, through the mysterious and no doubt gentle persuasion of its owners and paymasters, the Malaysian CHINESE Association or MCA.

If that is not unethical, I don’t know what is.

As every ethical person knows, a newspaper is for reporting the news and nothing else. If a publication is used to promote a political party, or anything else for that matter, then it is nothing but a brochure and should be treated as such.

For example, the DAP publication “The Rocket” is clearly a brochure and makes no bones about it. In this case, since you are advocating The Star become a brochure for the MCA, then it should be called “The Pocket” or something similar for readers to distinguish it from many genuine newspapers around the world called The Star or The (Something) Star.

But lest you again say I’m putting words in your mouth, let me quote you, in full paragraphs:

Quote 1: “MCA is behaving in a similar Profit-seeking First way. It wants to be given seats to contest but not pulling its weight. The media is part of any election machinery but the MCA paper cannot be relied on by BN.”

Quote 2: “MCA must stop relying on the pro-establishment Malay blogosphere to counter opposition attacks against the party and instead compel its own mainstream media machinery to immediately start pulling their weight!”

I leave it to your readers to decide what you are.

Its coverage is two-faced, like certain evangelical politicians, and definitely profit-seeking like certain evangelical politicians too.

In Dr Jekyll-Mr Hyde mode, the paper (under order from the bosses) cries about the dying hills in Penang due to hillslope development.

Then a week later, prominently on Pages 4 and 5 promoting the Star Property fair, it writes about Ivory Properties – The Latitude residential project in Mount Erskine (The Ivory website says: “Perched 500 feet above sea level, its elevated facilities level allows residents to enjoy the stunning cityscape of Penang.” )

In my quote, I’m suggesting MCA curb The Star‘s money-mindedness that last Ramadan saw the paper taking in an advertorial (collecting ad revenue) for Pork Ribs and putting the pictures of pork dishes in its buka puasa restaurant feature.

In my quote, I’m proposing that MCA deal with its paper’s DAP-promoting inclination so that there is no sabotage of BN during the election campaign. Imagine a scenario where its DAP-supporting staff tweet ‘Big Mama’-like comments during their assignments and these comments get widely circulated in the alternate universe of social media.

Last, your ranting about ethics is most tiresome as you’ve shown yourself to be the last person possessing it.

On the contrary, I’m asking MCA to pull its weight as a member of BN to rein in the newspaper it owns which is behaving like the DAP media machinery.

I’m asking MCA to ensure that The Star is not allowed to get away with burying news items, blacking out unfavorable news, and giving disproportionate coverage to DAP personalities while ignoring MCA, Wanita MCA and Beliawanis office holders as well as Umno’s.

Some senior staff of The Star are clearly unprofessional, as can be seen by their public tweets disparaging Rosmah, the MCA ministers, Rais Yatim and a host of other BN-related public figures.

They tweet during their working hours and while on duty — their tweets describe the assignments they had been sent to cover, e.g. “Oi Big Mama. U r already 70mins late”. This act is a breach of protocol (their terms of service in employment contract).

“Newspapers are for reporting the news.” Absolutely. Such a news as the CHC-SJ alleged by the S’pore authorities to have laundered RM5.3 million is not reported by the paper which is seen as “The Rocket‘s sister publication”.

As for my reference to “pro-establishment Malay blogosphere”, they have reported news covered too by other media like NST, Malay Mail, Chronicle, Mirror, etc but which were glaringly missing in The Star despite the maligned party being an MCA minister or MCA being slurred.

Is this pattern of missing news (that would affect DAP negatively) indicative of a lack news sense in The Star or something else?

Let’s say MCA is the owner of a kedai dobi. Wouldn’t the businessman want to know why his shop is publicizing his rival instead?

You come here to this blog to religiously promote DAP, saying “Malaysians must put aside their ‘considered’ selves and OVER-VOTE for Pakatan”, saying M’sians must change the govt b’cos “BN is beyond redemption”, that you’re “sick to the teeth of BN’s crimes and incompetence”.

It is exactly due to DAPsters putting aside their ‘considered’ selves that they’re now rampaging like Mao Zedong’s Red Guards.

While you have stridently urged voters “to get rid of BN”, I on the contrary have never in this blog promoted any party (be it MCA, Gerakan or Umno) to be preferably voted. In fact, I replied readers several times that I’ve never voted BN and do not intend to in GE13.

And unlike you, I’ve never dissuaded readers from voting any party pinpointed (be it DAP or whichever) either. And I’ve defended DAP leaders like Kit Siang and Boo Cheng Hau. Have you ever defended any Umno leaders? Are you capable of that?

As I’ve proven to you in a previous comment, 99.999 % of DAP leaders are not mentioned either at all or disparagingly in my blog.

Unlike you, I do not make sweeping statements that everyone in DAP is bad.

Now compare you. You have written, vote election candidate “who has a track record of upholding the Rule of Law. Oops, that excludes most of BN. Too bad then.”

BN is a big coalition, not just Umno but consisting the Sabah, Sarawak parties and small parties like PPP.

What do you know about them that you can so confidently declare responsible lawmakers “excludes most of BN”?

You are so imbalanced that you see BN as only black and DAP as white, and you come preaching to all of us from your high horse when the pseudonym you’ve chosen – Makin Cuci Makin Kotor – is reflective of the spinning you’ve been doing here.

So puhleez lah, you’re the last person fit to be thundering about ethics and to accuse me.

Here’s another one of your unethical quotes, found in your Muhyddin-slapping-the-MCA-around story, suggesting that The Star was to be reviled because it was “not pulling its weight” as part of MCA’s “election machinery”:

Quoting Helen: “MCA is behaving in a similar Profit-seeking First way. It wants to be given seats to contest but not pulling its weight. The media is part of any election machinery but the MCA paper cannot be relied on by BN.”

Newspapers are for reporting the news. A publication that promotes a political party is called a brochure.

In your quote, you are suggesting that a newspaper that refuses to become the puppet of a political party be reviled.

You’re supposedly an ex-journalist? Why are your journalistic standards swimming in the gutter? Oh wait!! Don’t tell me!!! It’s them 1.13% of the population Chinese evangelical Christian Anglophiles again!!!!!

You said, and I quote: “MCA must stop relying on the pro-establishment Malay blogosphere to counter opposition attacks against the party and instead compel its own mainstream media machinery to immediately start pulling their weight!”

Newspapers are for reporting the news. Nothing else. If a publication is part of any political party’s election “machinery”, it is no longer a newspaper but a brochure.

When you advocate for MCA to “compel” The Star to “immediately start pulling its weight” to act as the MCA’s “mainstream media machinery” you are in effect asking for a national newspaper to abdicate its proper role and instead take on the role of an MCA salesman.

If that is not unethical, I don’t know what is.

Thanks for clarifying on the Constitution. Yeah, I took some shortcuts when describing it! And yes, I know of these important distinctions you pointed out, but I have put them on the backburner as they don’t seem to have hindered the BN from ignoring, amending, steamrolling over and misinterpreting them in any way they want.

Also, I am fully aware that the Constitution’s role is to protect us from the Executive, but in practice it seems to be doing nothing of the sort. This tattered and 700x amended document has been debased beyond all recognition and the only way to restore the authority of the Supreme Law of the land is to get rid of BN.

Over the past few years, and even more so in the past few weeks and months, BN has been relentless in its efforts to spew contempt for the Rule of Law in this country. Hardly a day passes without some lawless thing being said or done with impunity by a member of the ruling coalition.

I have come to the conclusion that BN is beyond redemption in its current form, and a change, even a materially flawed one, is better than allowing BN another 5 years.

Thanks also for your highly considered views on the current political landscape. It is comforting to find someone like you in this blog who can think so deeply and is able to articulate his/her views without fuss.

Technically, I am in agreement with your views, even those critical of PR and the DAP, but there is a practical problem which throws a spanner into the works – cheating – which you have not addressed.

Once cheating is taken into consideration, I believe there is no more room for highly considered candidate-by-candidate issue-by-issue evaluation of BN vs PR. It has become an all-or-nothing battle.

I don’t for a moment doubt that very large scale cheating has taken place, and is going to take place in GE13. Just the gerrymandering alone, which is a documented fact beyond any conjecture, is off-the-charts. Constituencies have been progressively mutilated by the EC so much so they can differ by a factor of 20x, with BN oh-so-conveniently winning most of the “low-voter” seats.

Someone has actually calculated that with our current constituency boundary delineation, a party or coalition can attain a simple majority in Parliament with only 18% of the popular vote by winning all the “low-voter” seats. If this is not a travesty, I don’t know what is. It is also a mathematical certainty that if all constituencies were the same size in GE12, BN would have been soundly trashed.

When gerrymandering is added to the other GE irregularities like instant citizens, phantom voters, dubious postal votes, BN’s media monopoly, the abuse of public institutions, etc. I am inclined to think that BN already has 30-40 seats “in-the-bag” through cheating alone.

Thus for change to happen, Malaysians must put aside their “considered” selves and OVER-VOTE for Pakatan, to counteract the effects of BN’s cheating. Come GE14, when cheating has been hopefully expelled from the electoral system, we can go back to our considered selves, and scrutinise manifestos and CVs, and weigh issues with a fine tooth comb.

But not GE13. This GE is kick first, ask questions later.

Therefore it’s hardly surprising that many readers of this blog see the paper acting like it was a part of the DAP election machinery.

The Star through its blackout and burying of salient aspects of a story (Guan Eng and the DAP’s many gag orders come to mind) has not behaved like an objective media possessing the basic news sense which any Journalism 101 student would have been taught in class.

And puhleez lah MCMK, quit with the DAPster thuggery of calling everyone else “unethical” lah, no integrity lah and putting word’s in people’s mouth … you people obviously do not have mirrors in the house.