LET’S face it, the outrage over The Star’s front page last weekend was faked for the sake of politics, and it was engineered in such a way that both sides of the political divide supported it for different means.

On one side, you had the so-called Islamofascists who wanted to purge what they perceived to be a liberal media company, regardless of how the paper has marketed itself as being a voice of moderation.

On the other hand, you have opposition supporters happily celebrating The Star getting into trouble, wishing it would be shut down simply due to politics – it’s a paper owned by MCA. So if a person supports DAP, therefore, it is good news to get it shut down.

Honestly speaking, this justification is just as ridiculous as Khairy Jamaluddin accusing Malaysiakini of being one-sided. Because, let’s be honest, The Star is by far the least politically biased of all government and politically owned media entities, and has done a lot better compared with other politically owned media outlets.

Don’t believe me? How’s The Rocket doing, DAP?

Or how about how Harakah, which actually thought Justin Trudeau converted to Islam?

Quite honestly, I find the whole basis of this fake outrage truly nonsensical. Who in their right mind, after expounding constantly that Islam is a religion of peace, would then turn around and look at that front page with a story of Islamic terrorists and tarawikh prayers, and say The Star has linked the two together?

I didn’t. Because I actually read it. Unfortunately, it seemed that the larger Malaysian population has the mentality of Beauty and the Beast’s Gaston, preferring photos and big lettering to go together.

I’m also surprised that some of the most vocal against The Star were trained lawyers – especially since they’re supposed to be the ones responsible for reading fine print. It doesn’t bode well for the profession as a whole.

Sure, a picture is worth a thousand words, but do you know what’s worth more? Actual words.

The Star, in all truth, is being made a scapegoat for the ritualistic sacrifice for emotive Muslims stuck in Ramadan and looking for someone or something to yell at as a substitute over their hunger.

For the Islamist headliners, it was their cry to further unite the people using non-Muslims as the bogeyman out to get them, using Ramadan’s period of peace to mock Islam. For politically inclined non-Muslims it was also advantageous – or so they thought – to get it to be suspended and out of circulation.

In that breath, politics will make morons out of us all, particularly if each and every media outlet is undone for the sake of politics. Imagine such a scenario, you would have every single government media outlet quaking over a change in federal government, while every alternative media outlet quaking against current government action.

And thus, questions of worth don’t get asked, even if it’s Datuk Seri Najib Razak and our drop in the Global Competitiveness Index, or even Lim Guan Eng’s obvious hypocrisy of using reclaimed land as collateral for a China Exim Bank loan.

Let us also not forget that The Star has the R.Age team that broke the story on child grooming, which subsequently made the government introduce a legal bill against paedophiles. It also brought out from obscurity the G25, a group of retired civil servants who spoke out against creeping conservatism and radical Islamic impositions on all Malaysians.

But more importantly, The Star is that gigantic, thick paper that you’ve all read even if you refuse to admit it. It is that paper you buy even when you say you don’t, for the news, the classifieds, sometimes even to read the StarTwo articles and comics, and sometimes wonder why they still print a television guide when nobody watches television.

It is that paper that goes wonky when an election comes around to the point that we had to laugh at just how badly they had to frame stories to become pro-government. Or even how badly they came up with an advertisement in Chinese script that ended up encouraging people to vote for PAS in the 2013 General Election.

It is that website you open up when you’re bored, and didn’t subscribe to Malaysiakini and want never-ending news content, and sometimes open up to read whatever weird story was translated from around the region to spice up your social network.

It is also the only paper with a social media moderator so interesting, witty and “punny”, that it has attracted traffic to stories, making it viral instead of remaining dormant.

It is that website which ages ago got me to start writing, as a freshman in college in 2003, through their Citizen Blog.

So to those working in The Star, chin up, I’m with you in solidarity, as I’m sure many of us writers and journalists are. Ignore the detractors, and do what you do best – keep writing. – June 1, 2017.
 

* Hafidz loves to ruffle feathers and believes in the EA Games tag line of challenging everything. Most times, he represents the Devil’s Advocate on multiple issues.

* 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.