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Newspapers are reaping what they sow
Published:  Oct 1, 2013 9:40 AM
Updated: 1:54 AM

YOURSAY 'Biased reporting contributes to the 'right sizing' and fall in circulation. The only unbiased reports are the obituaries and sports columns.'

Newspaper sales dip post-GE13

your say Gen2: One doesn't need brains to understand this trend. Newspapers are in the business to sell news. If they print news that are skewed or biased or half-truths, their customers will find out sooner of later.

Why should I fork out my money for someone to tell me lies? It is a simple issue of supply and demand. There is a demand for unbiased news. People will turn to a medium that can supply that.

Quigonbond: "However, (media analysts) noted that newspaper readership may bounce back when the anger subsides."

Yeah, hope the management in those companies are not holding their collective breaths. The mainstream media is nothing but a bane to democracy. There ought to be boycott on all of them.

Any right-thinking shareholders should think of selling down immediately. Sell at a loss if you have to.

FellowMalaysian: The Star's decline in readership was expected considering its highly skewed and prejudiced reporting during the run-up to GE13. Above its overall coverage of the election campaign, one journalist must be singled out for mention.

Wong Chun Wai was the master of deceit and foul-play and his spins was second to none. His one-sided reporting could only have come about because of The Star is beholden to its owner.

Wong has ditched journalism's most sacred and sacrosanct principle and that is to report only the truth. He has failed miserably in this respect and yet, in early September this year, his position was promoted from chief editor to managing director.

Just like when the voters had ditched BN component parties wholesale during GE13, we must not forget too that The Star needs a thorough overhaul in its style of reporting too before it could exorcise the curse that disgruntled and disappointed readers had cast on the paper.

Anonymous$&@?: Did anyone notice the "quality" of The Star's headlines on its front page in the past few years?

Important issues like how certain government legislation or acts that affects the rakyat's constitutional rights are made secondary and hidden between the inside pages while air fresheners - to cite a recent headline - are given top priority.

A thinking man's paper it is not. It does not engage the rakyat to think about the implications of how their daily lives will be affected by the actions or inaction of government policies. To proof my point, just compare the headlines of The Star and The Sun and you will notice the difference.

Ace: Serve them right, especially The Star and Utusan Malaysia . You can support one side, that's your right but you don't have to go overboard and come up with twisted news and even outright lies.

I have stopped my subscription to The Star and I told friends that even if they give a 90 percent discount, I will still not buy it.

Free, maybe - but just for the other news. Let's hope to celebrate the day when their circulation plunge by another 60 percent.

Satay Satay: The news writers of some papers consider the people reading their writings are all dotes. Their partial comments will lead to their closing shop soon.

Malaysians are not stupid. They think they can hookwink the people through their indoctrination ways.

SenyumUnta: Everyone has his/her choice to choose which media to read. This is a digitised generation, no need for any 'tuans' to say what you should or should not read.

Based on what Umno's claim of three million membership and based on the Utusan's 636,000 readership, 80 percent of Umno members do not read Utusan .

Cala: Mainstreamed media (MSM) forgets that in the age of Internet, information may be obtained readily from everywhere at no cost, so why bother to read rubbish from Jocelyn Tan of The Star .

To make things worse, MSM never fail to mislead its readers (by being partial and by not painting an honest account). As an example, which MSM would honestly portray Chin Peng in the context of colonialism, imperialism and Third World governance?

0berserver: I really hate it when I stay in a hotel and they give me New Straits Times or The Star for free. It makes me realise that I contributed to the sale of these papers.

Occasionally, I'll browse through a few pages and will consistently feel sick from what is written in these papers. It's so biased, so fake ('readers' letters, yeah right!), the groveling and sliming up to Umno's heels is just too much.

It must be really embarrassing to be a journalist for these papers. At parties, people would ask what you do, and all you can say truthfully is that you're a propagandist.

Telestai!: My simple question is: why waste money on print media? The days of reading newspapers surely must have ended.

In Australia, people don't buy newspapers anymore even though the media companies generally behave themselves. To increase readership, newspaper companies launched a special low priced subscription plan for three months.

After that, they delivered the papers even when we didn't renew the subscription. So people, do yourselves a favour, stop buying newspapers.

YouAreNotAlone: They are now reaping what they sow and they deserved it. This shall teach them a lesson for belittling their readers.

The Observer: Biased reporting, columns and editorials all contribute to the 'right sizing' and fall in circulation. The only unbiased reports are the obituaries and sports columns.

Soon the only right size will be the waste paper basket and the last obituary will be theirs.


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