Whither Objective Journalism in Digital Age: Malaysia's Mainstream versus Alternative Media

Abstract

In this digital age of online news, objective journalism is increasingly treated as unnecessary, if not obsolete. In the liberal West, news portals can offer different views to counter the political economic status quo proffered by traditional hyper-commercial corporate media. In more authoritarian Asian countries like Malaysia, alternative news portals are assumed to provide opposition political parties with favourable coverage to balance whatever bias the traditional, print and electronic media might have displayed towards the ruling political party. As a result, Malaysia's ruling political party, including many from the critical mass, has claimed that Malaysia's mainstream and alternative media, collectively, have attained the democratic principle of offering diverse, balanced and fair news coverage. This has strengthened the view that there is no need for objective journalism-as in providing fair and balanced news coverage. To what extent then are Malaysia's mainstream print media biased towards the ruling political party and to what extent Malaysia's alternative news portals biased towards the opposition party? Has the digital age finally rendered objective journalism obsolete, at least in Malaysia? These are key questions examined in a study that content analysed the coverage of Malaysia's general elections in 2013 performed by three mainstream newspapers and three alternative news portals based in Malaysia. The results show that even though partisan journalism continues to dominate, especially the mainstream newspapers, objective journalism is far from being abandoned. It is rendered unnecessary only by being politicized by the ruling political regime.