How 'free' media manipulates the issue

Much has been said about one 'promising' young man's future was restored when the courts bound him over for rape.

In its written judgement, Justice Raus Sharif who presided with another two judge in an appeal hearing cited facts of the case that enabled the court to find the way it did.

Mitigating factors that helped the young man included his help with police investigations and the manner of which the police report was made. More importantly, there was no coercion from his part in his role in this crime.

All these factors helped in the courts binding him for five years instead of a custodial sentence.

However, there are those who are keen, for whatever reasons to look into this case and add fuel to fire by claiming that this young man was 'freed' by the courts.

For example, The Malaysian Insider chooses 'Rapists freed by courts match medical definition of peadophiles', when in fact they were not freed, and the findings of the court was that they were guilty of a crime but bound over in its sentence. Two very different scenarios.

Similarly, Anwar was freed from 'Sodomy 1' from technicality, but found that he was indeed invoplved in the act, but in 'Sodomy 2' his defence was not called as there was no grounds for a case.

Do you see the difference?

Stop. Evaluate, then comment.

Having spoken to a German guest the other day, it reaffirmed my belief that there are many people out there who do not subscribe fully to what they get on the internet, especially blogs and purportedly neutral 'news portals'.

Her statement more or less sums up what is being pandered around cyberspace. "Todays age of information is more of disinformation". Something like that.

And why did she say this? In her industry - food technology - there are claims and tons of information on the internet that misinform the public in general, and whilst proving that certain claims are wrong, she has spent more time in proving disclaims rather than proving the truth.

Take for example today's latest act of disinformation that 'Palm oil planters were killing wildlife in Sabah'.
It mattered not that there are NO Tigers and Tapirs in Sabah (it is like saying that there are Pandas in Malaysia), and that the reports on '300 orang utans killed' were depicted from pictures taken in Indonesia.

Clearly, there is manipulation of media to form public opinion and today, the flavour is Malaysia.

The headlines from The Star was used to depict the mistreatment of Orang Utans in Melaka Zoo, and in turn prompted an investigation based on Nature Alert's postngs. This in turn provided an explanation of the handling of orang Utans in the zoo.

My pint is this - what you see is not what it is. Most of the time.

Whilst we are quick in assuming that there are always hidden hands in the picture, we are also quick to judge on certain issues - for eample, land grabbing, and deforestation in Sarawak, yet some have not even been there.

Stop, evaluate and the comment. Perhaps we should also be mindful that we stand corrected based on our formed opinions rather than one that is based on witness accounts.