KUALA LUMPUR — When thousands of protesters calling for electoral reform took to the streets here July 9, Malaysiakini, one ofMalaysia’s most popular news Web sites, received 5.2 million hits, making the day one of the site’s busiest since it was established in 1999.
An increasing tendency to seek news online is hardly unique to Malaysia. But here, it is not just technology driving readers to news Web sites. It is also that — by design, and in contrast to countries like China, with its infamous Great Firewall — in Malaysia the Internet operates outside the stringent laws that regulate the traditional media.
So while newspapers, radio and television can operate only with a government license and books and films must be approved by censors, who insist that controls are necessary to avoid social problems like inflaming religious sensitivities in this predominantly Muslim country, the Internet has remained largely free of government interference.
But now that disparity — between media restrictions so stringent that Reporters Without Borders ranked Malaysia a low 141 out of 178 on its 2010 Press Freedom Index, and a relatively unfettered Internet that allows citizens to easily circumvent those restrictions — has called into question whether the censorship laws are worth upholding in the digital age.
Last month, Prime Minister Najib Razak called for a re-examination. “I have decided the old ways of censorship needs to be studied,” he said. “It is no longer effective and should be reviewed.”
His announcement followed the blacking out of parts of an article in the print edition of the British newsmagazine The Economist about the July protests and a court ruling upholding a ban on a book of cartoons critical of the government. Meanwhile, all the material remained available online.
Mr. Najib acknowledged that censoring The Economist had brought more harm than good. “The very act of censoring it made a bigger story than the article itself,” The Star newspaper quoted him as saying.
The Internet exception stems in part from a pledge by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad in 1996, when he established the Multimedia Super Corridor. The aim of this government-designated zone near the capital was to help catapult Malaysia into the ranks of advanced nations by attracting foreign investment with inducements like tax incentives and high-speed Internet access.
But one, perhaps unanticipated, result was to clear the way for the rise of local news Web sites, many of which published critical stories and commentary rarely seen in the mainstream news media. Where once Malaysians eager for independent news coverage might have looked to foreign newspapers, now they could simply log on to homegrown sites.
“Web sites now provide Malaysian content by Malaysians for Malaysians for those who have access to the Internet,” said Jahabar Sadiq, editor of The Malaysian Insider, a news Web site established in 2008.
Such sites have made it increasingly difficult for the government to control the narrative in this country, where one party has dominated national politics since independence from Britain more than 50 years ago. And they are intensifying the pressure on politicians to be more accountable.
“They have lost the monopoly on truth,” said Steven Gan, editor in chief of Malaysiakini. “For a long time, the government had complete control over the news agenda through the control of the mainstream media. That is gone. They can continue to tell the mainstream media what to report, but that doesn’t stop Malaysians from knowing that there’s another version of the truth out there, and they get it from the Internet.”
The number of Internet users in Malaysia, which has a population of 28 million, has grown from 3.7 million in 2000 to 16.1 million last year, according to The Economist Intelligence Unit. Numerous Web sites offering news and analyses have sprung up in recent years; the country is home to a vibrant community of bloggers; and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are immensely popular.