Regulating Online News Portals In Malaysia – Reference To Independent Press Standards Ogranisation

Abstract

Online news portals in Malaysia are at present not governed by any specific legislative controls. Neither the licensing regimes of the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 nor the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 that govern the traditional print as well as the new communications and multimedia industries respectively apply to online news portals and other online publication platforms. The present setup is detrimental to the media industry since only the print media are controlled by pre- and post-publication laws, whilst online news portals appear to enjoy greater freedom due to the government’s guarantee not to censure the Internet. The discriminatory treatment between the traditional and new media has contributed to the change in the media landscape as online news portals and other online publications are continuously preferred and gaining wide acceptance by the people in the country. In line with the proposed establishment of an independent media council in Malaysia, it is therefore pertinent to examine the regulatory mechanism that has been adopted to self-regulate the print and online media in other countries. For this reason, the present study, which is qualitative in nature, will adopt legal doctrinal and comparative analysis to examine the Independent Press Standards Organisation in the UK and to determine the possibility of adopting such system to the media industry in Malaysia. To sum up, it is submitted that in this era of IR4.0, the same regulatory framework should be applied to both the print and online media.