GE15 media

 One of the biggest complaints in past elections was that BN controlled the media.

Well, obviously this is not true anymore.

In fact it has not been true since the 2008 general election when social media started to become the most important platform for political parties to send their message to voters.

The so-called mainstream media had been rendered almost useless from then on and now it's almost dead.

Now we have all those news portals such as Malaysiakini, Malay Mail, The Vibes and FMT reigning supreme over the likes of NST, The Star, Utusan etc.

Even rouge websites such as Malaysia Today and Sarawak Report are now more influential than those old established media outlets.

As for the political alignment of those portals and websites, well, that I let you judge for yourselves.

Just look at their headlines and you can tell, okay.

Some of them were pure propaganda works for their preferred political parties.

Or, you can just check on who are the personalities financing those portals and websites.

Definitely, BN no longer control the media in Malaysia after its defeat in 2018.

Just look at NST, which till today was said to be financed by Umno. It now published an almost equal number of stories favourable to Pakatan as those in favour of BN.

My own observation concluded that Pakatan actually have an advantage on media coverage over BN for the coming GE15.

There are more news portals and websites which sided with Pakatan compared with those supporting BN.

The majority of journalists in Malaysia, especially the young ones were pro-Pakatan too.

BN however had been catching some ground in the social media ever since its defeat in 2018.

For instance, Najib's much improved popularity after BN's defeat was almost completely thanks to his exploits in Facebook.

I believe BN has more or less realised by now that traditional media platforms no longer work for it.

Previously the appointments of top editors at news outlets were big news but now no one, except those in the media circle, care about such things.

A smart housewife filling her free time posting and commenting on Facebook and Tic Tok nowadays could be more influential and effective as a political operative than a group editor of a news outlet, who has to spend more than half of her working hours having to manoeuvre the minefields of stupid office politics.

Yup, that's the way it is now.

Journalists, even the good ones are simply not the opinion leaders they used to be.

Definitely not for the coming GE15.