THE death knell of social media keeps tolling with the peals spelling the names Trump, Putin, Brexit and, somewhat ambitiously, Cambridge Analytica.

Privacy breaches, campaigns of misinformation and an increasingly fragmented society, yet culprit-in-chief Facebook still grew its users by 9% in 2018. Media outlets have to compete with social media on at least two fronts: commercially and in terms of credibility.

It’s on the issue of credibility that Malaysian media has been particularly hard hit. For as long as I can remember, since pre-internet days, we have trusted our friends and families as sources of information.

In a media landscape where we all knew that government owned the means of (information) production, directly or indirectly, we learned the art of reading through the lines, and of trusting who we knew more than what we read.

The epitome of this trend was perhaps the SARS virus crisis – where everyone I knew had heard of a friend’s aunt’s cat’s previous owner who had fallen sick with SARS, and nobody trusted the information being released by the Health Ministry, even though it was information that was accurate, timely and backed up by data.

Memories of other health crises made it impossible for the government to control the information flow on this one.

The internet provided a new source of information, less subject to government control, but subject to incessant attack from journalists in the licensed media, which reached its peak in the ad campaign run by the previous government under the guise of media literacy.

So, as The Malaysian Insight editor-in-chief Jahabar Sadiq said recently on an interview on BFM, while he isn’t sure where the public is getting its information from, he’s sure it isn’t from “us”, from trained journalists, from traditional-style media outlets, whether online, print or broadcast.

This problem besets journalists, media across the globe and as in the US, in Malaysia, political divides have been reflected in the media, with both sides decrying the “fake news” and misinformation of the opposing side, with public trust in all journalists, all news, even all experts damaged as a result.

There is no immediate panacea for this, but the media council presents one facet of the solution.

An independent body that can both set standards for the industry, that can accredit (or refuse to accredit) a media outlet as meeting those standards, and that can arbitrate public complaints, whether about invasions of privacy, about sensationalisation, or about “fake news”.

A media council’s main reason for existence is to build public confidence in the media, as part of the bulwark of activities that stem a perceived need for government interference and regulation.

For a media council to be effective in these tasks, it needs to both be, and be seen to be, independent from those who might want to control or censor journalists.

It needs to be able to uphold the principle that the journalists’ main responsibility is to the public and public information needs, rather than to either government or corporate owners.

Successful councils in Indonesia and South Africa are fulfilling these tasks and showing how self-regulation can succeed, and how to inoculate against industry capture.

A key aspect of this is representation of the public – who dominate South Africa’s council and make up a third of Indonesia’s council. Other aspects include a limit to government funding, the ability to set standards and credible sanctions.

Malaysia’s heavy-touch media regulation, encouraging a culture of self-censorship, has exacerbated the challenges of today’s competitive environment.

By building a responsive system of self-regulation we can build and buttress trust in both our media institutions and in the concept of media freedom. – February 27, 2019.

* Sonia Randhawa is Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ) director. For more information on the media council and to share your opinions, visit msiamediacouncil.website.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.