With regards to your report ' Freeze on newspaper licenses, claims NST editor ', I believe I tried to impress upon your reporter, when she approached me after the ERA Consumer panel discussion on Suhakam last Saturday at Holiday Villa Subang Jaya, that I was speaking entirely in my own capacity, and what I had to say about the unlikelihood of new media licences being issued in the immediate future was entirely my own perception.

Although this perception of mine was based on some degree of personal communication and 'sensing the ground' of the administration's thinking, as it were, I certainly did not intend even to imply that this was in any way official policy.

The leap of presumption in your headline, as indeed in the text, was in my opinion unwarranted.