Utusan Malaysia is creating racial tension in Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 22 — DAP continued to harangue Umno-owned daily Utusan Malaysia today, claiming this time that the newspaper’s “obsession” in attacking the opposition party had likely caused its declining circulation.

Petaling Jaya Utara MP Tony Pua said in a statement today that there was a significant pattern to Utusan Malaysia’s circulation figures and the increase of its articles on DAP.

“It appears that Utusan is attempting to rationalise its loss of readership due to external factors instead of looking inwards at their incessant racial posturing, outright lies and inflammatory headlines such as ‘Bangkitlah Melayu’ as being the main causes.

“In fact, based on statistics, there is a correlation between the rapidly increasing attacks against the DAP and the rapidly declining circulation of the newspaper,” he said.

Pua pointed out that his theory was proven in how the increase in the number of articles attacking DAP could be matched with the paper’s plummeting circulation.

He claimed that a Google search with the keyword “DAP” in Utusan by year of publication would return 291 results in 2007; 876 in 2008; 12,400 in 2009; and a record 29,800 in this year alone.

“Never before in history has the DAP, a party that Utusan has previously regarded as irrelevant, become the object of obsession to the Umno-owned newspaper,” he said.

Pua also cited a list of examples that he said proved Utusan’s relentless attacks against DAP. Among them were articles like “Muslihat DAP”, “Guan Eng dikecam”, “Umat Islam perlu tolak DAP”, “DAP perkudakan Anwar”, “DAP alat politik negara asing”, “DAP salur maklumat kepada Kuan Yew?”, “DAP gentar dengan 1 Malaysia”, “DAP tiru strategi PAP”, “DAP yang sebenarnya memperalatkan 3R”, “DAP amal politik ala aparteid”, “Kebiadapan Guan Eng”, “Guan Eng semakin bersikap perkauman” and “Guan Eng perlu cermin diri”.

“The above hasn’t taken into account the fact that, for the past year, Utusan has often granted DAP leaders exclusive front-page coverage to (DAP chairman) Karpal Singh, (Serdang MP) Teo Nie Ching and even myself, for daring to suggest that the housing discount for the wealthy Bumiputeras be channelled towards helping the Bumiputera poor,” he said.

Correspondingly, Pua added, the newspaper’s circulation dipped from 256,247 in 2004 to 213,445 in 2006 and 169,548 in 2009.

This, he said, translated to a 33.8 per cent decline in just five years.

Pua also claimed that the newspaper group’s profit before tax had plunged from RM21 million to RM7 million in the past four years.

“It is most laughable when Utusan had to plead to its readers not to boycott the paper due to ‘political sentiments’ and blame Pakatan Rakyat (PR) for its affected business,” said Pua, adding that it was clear that Utusan had shot itself in its own foot.

He also mocked the newspaper for its “biased” stance, claiming that its continued attacks only proved that DAP and PR had made major inroads in proving its competency to the people.

“We have proven that despite having a DAP chief minister in Penang, Malays and Muslims enjoy greater rights and benefits than under a BN administration.

“This is due to a more caring government, which is able to fund its welfare policies through more effective and efficient administration, as well as reducing wastage and corruption through open tenders for all government projects,” he said.

The DAP publicity chief pointed out that Utusan journalist Hata Watahari, in his capacity as the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) president, had demanded that the newspaper stopped its “biased” reporting.

Hata, he pointed out, had also claimed that Utusan’s editorial policies infringed journalistic ethics as positive coverage was only given to BN.

“Even the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Aziz had accused Utusan of becoming ‘racist’ in its reporting in September this year,” said Pua.

He added that Utusan was a “proven liar” as even the courts had found the newspaper guilty of defamation, leading to the award of RM120,000 to PAS MP Datuk Mahfuz Omar and RM200,000 to Tegananita director Irene Fernandez in previous cases.

Recently, DAP’s Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng announced that he would be filing a defamation suit against Utusan for allegedly printing “lies” about him and the state administration.

The Umno paper had accused the DAP of being a tool of a foreign government and called for the party to be banned.

It also featured remarks by Umno leaders who, among others, called the DAP the “king of racism”.

“I had on November 1 challenged Utusan to an open debate on its many allegations against the ‘racist’ DAP but its editors chose not to defend their allegations with facts and figures in the open but continued to throw baseless, wild and wicked accusations against the DAP,” Pua said.

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