Courage, Clarity and Creativity: The Truth about Truth
By Jacqueline Ann Surin
Of all the challenges media outfits and journalists have faced over the past decade, I would say the most exciting has been the advent of the internet.
One question that most interests me as journalist with a history in the traditional print medium is this: With the internet and all it has produced, how do journalists continue to tell the truth in ways that are captivating, meaningful and incisive?
Shifting Power: MalaysiaVotes.com
In journalism, we know that the power has shifted from established media organisations to individuals. With the power of the Internet, and the affordability of gadgets, anyone with minimum resources can define, write and publish the news. Hence, defining what "truth" is no longer belongs to an elite few.
For example, MalaysiaVotes.com was set up by three seasoned journalists on a limited budget. Using our own handphones, digital cameras, laptops, free WiFi, some knowledge of Wordpress, and journalistic skills, we launched MalaysiaVotes.com in a week to cover the March 2008 general election.
Even though we were a small and new outfit, our daily average of 2,200 unique visitors in February 2008 went up to 4,500 unique visitors in March. On 8 March, the day Malaysians went to the polls, we had nearly 7,400 unique visitors.
My most favourite question while covering the elections was "Where's your headquarters?", followed by "Where's your office?" It is perhaps revealing that these questions came from traditional journalists themselves.
We had no headquarters. We didn't need one. And our office was wherever we could access the internet.
Shifting Power: The Bersih Rally
The traditional media were told we could not report on the 10 Nov 2007 rally that called for free and fair elections.
We were only allowed to quote official sources, so most stories before the rally in the traditional media quoted the police as saying they would take stern action against the demonstrators.
The Inspector General of Police's statement published in the traditional media a day after the rally said there were only 4,000 demonstrators. But the pictures on the internet told a different story altogether.
These photos, and the coverage by Al-Jazeera, clearly showed a much larger crowd, possibly 10 times more. Al-Jazeera's live coverage of the demonstration also showed the use of heavy-handed police tactics to disperse the crowd.
The Politics of Truth: Whose Truth?
With the availability of affordable technology and the internet, readers, who can and do have multiple readings of what is put across as the news, can now contest what is presented to them.
In some instances, readers can put out their own readings more quickly than the established media, as in the example below.
Responding to the New Straits Times' front page headline on 7 March 2008, an artist very quickly reconstructed the paper's propaganda message. In less than 24-hours, the artist's counter-propaganda was being disseminated to voters. Here was an example of how individuals could now take on established media outfits.
There is definitely a higher level of scrutiny and accountability - of both the media and those in power. And this, for me, bodes well for democracy.
Effective and Meaningful Truth Telling
But, how do we tell the truth about something or someone, and be heard above the noise of so much competing information?
How do we make people remember the truth long after we've told it? I reckon that what we need is courage, clarity and creativity as demonstrated in the examples below.
Example 1: An Open Letter to the PM
Published in my Shape of a Pocket column in theSun on 1 June 2006, this letter I wrote to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was a humbling experience. In this letter, I asked:
"But really, what I want to ask you is this: Why do I have to constantly feel afraid in my own country? Why am I continuously told I have less rights to discuss important issues affecting my community?
You promised to be prime minister for all Malaysians. We hope you will remember that promise." The response from readers was instantaneous and continued long after. It was not something I had expected as a columnist; that my sense of fear, disquiet and frustration about how the country was being run would resonate with so many readers.
Example 2: The Edge Financial Daily Editorial
Commenting on the high-level talks between Umno and PAS, the 22 July 2008 Financial Daily editorial stated:
"...we are disappointed that [the] Prime Minister, who has often proclaimed himself as the PM for ALL Malaysians, has taken a narrow approach in focusing only on unity among the Malays and Muslims in the country... Ideologies that divide communities cannot unite a nation."
Those who work in the traditional media recognise the dangers involved in taking on the country's political leadership so openly. In an environment where publishing permits can be revoked, without accountability, by the government under the Printing Presses and Publications Act, questioning the prime minister so boldly can result in a newspaper being shut down.
Example 3: Youth for Change Videos
Youth for Change (Y4C) is a youth network that empowers young people to participate actively and effectively in the political process and in the building of multi-racial Malaysia.
For the 2008 general election, Y4C posted a series of five videos on YouTube.com that collectively, as of late June 2008, attracted 1.2 million views.
Each video clip of less than a minute costs between RM3K to RM4K but Y4C had it done by volunteers. Compare this to the RM1 mil the Barisan Nasional (BN) reportedly spent on print ads alone (Source: TI-Malaysia). And that, according to Nielsen, the BN was the third highest ad spender in February 2008 at RM9.8 million.
Effective and Meaningful Truth Telling
Why do these examples resonate and ripple out? What makes them memorable at a time of information overload, and long after it's been published or aired?
The cited examples for me demonstrate that courage, clarity and creativity are essential ingredients in telling the truth well and meaningfully.
For example, writing my Open Letter to the PM with clarity was the easy part. The hard part fell on my editors who had to decide whether to publish it and whether it would cost the paper its survival to do so. My Open Letter to the PM would not have been possible without the courage of theSun newsroom, and its clarity of purpose as a newspaper.
That same courage and clarity of purpose was behind the Financial Daily's page 2 editorial.
Courageous writers cannot write truthfully without courageous editors or a supportive environment.
The courage of Y4C was to lend their organisation's name to public content that was obviously critical of the BN and certain Umno leaders. The creativity of the Y4C videos was to use satire to point out the failings of a ruling government. Its clarity was in identifying issues of national interest and tackling them in less than a minute each.
Truth Telling: The Nut Graph
For me, the challenge for online news sites like The Nut Graph is, how do we keep truth-telling meaningful in a churning ocean of 24/7 news? How can we write stories that make a difference?
Making the truth matter meant, for us, that we would also explore different ways of telling a story and of making a point. The illustrations below by Shieko for The Nut Graph demonstrate not just the ingredients of courage, clarity and creativity, they also prick and prod people into thinking and questioning.
By having clarity and courage about our role as journalists, and being creative about how we write and present the news, I believe that journalists can continue to make a difference in the challenging environment that we operate in.
(Pictures and graphics are from author's own collection)
1 This was a presentation that was first made at McCann Worldgroup's new office inauguration in Petaling Jaya on 25 July 2008.
2 Jacqueline Ann Surin is an award-winning journalist who is co-founder and editor of The Nut Graph. She also co-founded MalaysiaVotes.com with Cindy Tham and Danny Lim in early 2008. A journalist since 1994, she is also the author of Shape of a Pocket. She gained an M.A. in Media Studies at Sussex University in England as a Chevening scholar, and studied journalism in the United States under the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship. In 2007, she received the Excellence in Opinion Writing Award from the Society of Publishers in Asia for her Shape of a Pocket column. She was also named by London-based Article 19 as the Pioneering Women's Voices Candidate for Malaysia in commemoration of International Women's Day in 2007.
Jacqueline Ann Surin is an award-winning journalist who is co-founder and editor of The Nut Graph. She also co-founded MalaysiaVotes.com with Cindy Tham and Danny Lim in early 2008. A journalist since 1994, she is also the author of Shape of a Pocket. She gained an M.A. in Media Studies at Sussex University in England as a Chevening scholar, and studied journalism in the United States under the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship. In 2007, she received the Excellence in Opinion Writing Award from the Society of Publishers in Asia for her Shape of a Pocket column. She was also named by London-based Article 19 as the Pioneering Women's Voices Candidate for Malaysia in commemoration of International Women's Day in 2007.