I refer to the New Straits Times article Malaysiakini grovels like a teenager in trouble by Azmi Anshar.

To be clear on this, I’m not giving excuses for Malaysiakini ’s lapse in judgment and procedural error with regard to the Najib Razak episode . It was an editorial gaffe, no question about that.

And I can see where Azmi is coming from when he says, ‘... it was not so much a case of publish and be damned as it was a routine that was all in a day’s work’.

The gist of Azmi’s contention is that the report on the purported ‘Najib manifesto’ was ‘published all too casually’ because doing so is right up Malaysiakini ’s alley.

The ‘anti-establishment’ tag has long dogged Malaysiakini ; its co-founder Steven Gan had to once again address the charge in a new book interview:

‘I always explain when people ask me what is Malaysiakini ’s agenda, I would tell them Malaysiakini is non-partisan, in the sense that we do not support any political parties. When it comes to elections, we say vote opposition, we don’t say vote PAS, vote DAP.

‘We ask people to vote opposition to make sure that we have a stronger opposition in order to provide checks and balances.’

But Steven conceded that ‘ Malaysiakini readers tend to be a little bit more pro-opposition’. Please allow me to put a context to this.

When Malaysiakini started, it was to bridge the gaps. If the mainstream media (MSM) had in the first place given fair airing to the opposition, Malaysiakini would not have had traction or taken off.

Malaysiakini was not born in a government hospital simply because the unequal coverage existing back then required it to tell the other side of the story.

Contrary to Azmi’s assertion, Malaysiakini faces a real problem of logistics. Unlike the newspapers, Malaysiakini does not have bureaus in the states. Its operations are confined to the Klang Valley, and hence its tone largely that of federal politics.

Malaysiakini likes to complain it’s got little money – lack of resources makes it a David against the Goliath juggernaut of funds and other forms of support, including corporate networking, that MSM is granted.

Constraints to access are genuine. Malaysiakini was once barred from covering Umno press conferences and police functions. Until March 8 happened, it did not receive media accreditation, meaning, Malaysiakini reporters were not recognised as journalists and allowed to do their jobs unimpeded.

You can imagine also how government departments and personnel, and other authorities, would cautiously keep Malaysiakini staff at arm’s length.

It is unfair of Azmi to say that Malaysiakini ’s journalistic credo is ‘to err towards gung-ho recklessness’. Don’t blame the annual print licence restriction for the relative openness of Malaysiakini (it does not require one).

Malaysiakini did want to join the Suratkhabar Club ; its application to publish has never been approved and is still in cold storage. Nor is it that Malaysiakini circumvents censorship in cyberspace, merely the case that it does not practise self-censorship to the emasculating extent the MSM does.

People can sue Malaysiakini and they have. Police can take action against Malaysiakini and they have too, when they wouldn’t otherwise against Utusan Malaysia and other Barisan Nasional assets. So just because Malaysiakini is not ink-and-newsprint does not automatically make it irresponsible.

As for the allegation that Malaysiakini is so one-tracked and it can’t report in any other way, here’s a D-I-Y test. Write an anti-opposition ‘Letter to the Editor’ to Malaysiakini and see whether it is not published. Be critical of the government and see if the newspapers allow you a full say.

Nowadays, government figures are appearing plenty on Malaysiakini pages. A whole gamut of BN top leaders – present and retired – have been interviewed. In earlier times, they would not have touched Malaysiakini with a barge pole. During its wilderness years, Malaysiakini took what it could get, such as sourcing Dr Mahathir Mohamed (in his own recent period as an outsider).

On the other hand, were the likes of Lim Kit Siang and Abdul Hadi Awang – let’s not even mention Anwar Ibrahim – given column inches in the print media before BN suffered losses in the general election? And were opposition figures treated justly, the little that they were covered?

Old Media has been hitting back at New Media and one accusation is that the latter is somehow less professional compared to their colleagues working in the traditional format. I don’t think so.

Sharifuddin A Latiff representing Hartal MSM (a media monitor group in The People’s Parliament to which I belong as well) articulated our stand when he wrote Malaysiakini, you’re no longer ‘alternative media’ .

Azmi is of the opinion that the Malaysiakini base audience expects it to condemn everything about the BN. I agree with Azmi that Malaysiakini was to some degree an enfant terrible but I disagree that this news outlet has not evolved and matured.

Whatever my personal misgivings about BN, I support the trend of Malaysiakini necessarily giving them air-time. I expect that the Malaysiakini readership shares our Hartal MSM view:

‘Just as the Pakatan Rakyat has now become a ‘mainstream’ political player, so too has the equation changed for what was previously dubbed MSM’.

Sharifuddin, on behalf of Hartal MSM, wrote: ‘We’re living in a different world now and our understanding of this changed environment in the terms we choose to describe it must be adjusted accordingly’. Malaysiakini has indeed re-calibrated and not limited itself to opposition turf.

Steven declared, ‘We stand with the underdogs, no matter who they are’. The Malaysian reading public will hold him to that, and his outfit to the same standard of accountability and decorum demanded of the MSM.