The Malaysian Palm Issue in the European Union Press Report

Abstract

This article explores how the European media reports on the Malaysian palm oil to consumers in the European Union countries. The European newspapers allegedly mentioned that palm oil brings extensive damage and affects the environment, cutting down of forests, animal extinction and child labour. The consistent role and influence of the European media in reporting and giving a bad sentiment regarding the disadvantages of Malaysian palm oil to the European consumers have successfully launched an anti-palm oil campaign among the consumers. This matter has also caused a decrease in the export of palm oil into the European Union and indirectly affected the fate of 600,000 palm oil producers in Malaysia. This article uses the literature review approach on the resources such as the European Union newspapers which have a high number of readers in their respected countries such as the Guardian and BBC (United Kingdom), Gazeta Wyborcza and Super Express (Poland), The Brussel Times, Metro and Gazet Van Antwerpen (Belgium) to analyse the role of media in this matter. The results found that the issue of palm oil in the news reports propagated by the European media on the drawbacks of Malaysian palm oil did not happen as reported. In truth, the actual purpose behind their act was to ‘protect’ their real agenda, which is to replace palm oil with their soybean crops. The issues that were touted by the newspapers have given a bad image to the Malaysian palm oil industry. Keywords: European Union, Malaysian palm oil, MPOB, MPOC, biofuel.