Archive for October 10th, 2019

Dewan Rakyat’s second Repeal of Anti-Fake News Act – a fake anti-fake news act as it was really a “Protect Najib’s 1MDB Scandal Act” – paves the way for the nation to fully address the grave problem of fake news and hate speech from destroying plural Malaysia

Dewan Rakyat’s second repeal of the Anti-Fake News Act – a fake anti-fake news act as it was really a “Protect Najib’s 1MDB Scandal Act” – paves the way for the nation to fully address the grave problem of fake news and hate speech from destroying plural Malaysia.

This is what Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2018 has to say about the Anti-Fake News Act which was passed on the eve of the 14th General Election and repealed for the second time by the Dewan Rakyat without having to get any more approval by the Dewan Negara:

“No one was under any illusions – not even the then government – that the reason for the law wasn’t essentially political.

“As media academic Gayathry Venkiteswaran has put it: ‘ For most observers, the obvious reason behind this rushed law is to keep the scandalous 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) wealth fund and other financial misappropriations out of the electorate’s focus. This is a punitive law that fails to provide any clarity on the meaning or parameters of ‘fake news’, but criminalises a wide array of speech online and offline’.”

With the fake anti-fake news legislation out of the way, the country should now fully focus on the dangers not only to democracy but the existential threat to plural Malaysia posed by fake news and hate speech specially those designed to incite inter-racial and inter-religious polarisation and conflict, even conflagration. Read the rest of this entry »

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