NST reporter: Why engage Jeff Ooi and Rocky in debate? Hell, no! We go to court!

About Politics, Society, Media, ALL ARTICLES | February 13, 2007

By SHANNON TEOH

PART 1

One of the most startling things I read recently was that Exxon Mobil Corp. made over RM140 billion in 2006 alone. It was startling though, not because of the figure that represents record profits for the oil and gas giant. With oil prices doing a Sergei Bubka last year, obscene levels of profits for energy companies were as predictable as a romantic comedy.

What was startling, was how incensed I felt that a company that is either being taken to court for or has already been found guilty of unethical business practices, environmental damage and human rights violations, was raking in cash like autumn leaves. Why did I feel such a sense of injustice? Exxon Mobil runs a business, makes money, and if it has hurt anyone, courts have ordered it to pay up in damages.

Maybe it’s too many fairytales. Maybe it’s too much cheering for the underdog - i.e., yourself - that we’ve been brought up on in the movies.

And so, when the proverbial Goliath in the form of politically-linked New Straits Times decides to take a couple of bloggers to court, it’s easy to immediately hope that the slingshot is mightier than the sword. After all, many of us aren’t even armed with rubber bands, by comparison.

The case is simple. NSTP, its deputy chairman and editorial adviser Datuk Kalimullah Masheerul Hassan, group editor-in-chief Datuk Hishamuddin Aun and former NST group editor Brenden John Pereira have taken Jeff Ooi and Ahiruddin Attan (also known as Rocky) to court over alleged defamatory statements made in their respective blogs with NSTP chief executive officer Datuk Syed Feisal Albar Syed A.R. Albar and additional plaintiffs in the suit against Rocky.

Summarising the statement of claims - which incidentally are available for public consumption - the suit involves statements regarding plagiarism, being agents of Singapore, being owned by UMNO and being its de facto mouthpiece and well, downright lying. There are others, but these are the main bugbears.

However, in my position, the normal knee-jerk infuriation did not occur. Not because I’m any wiser or composed than any of you - I’m still a bit affected by the Exxon Mobil figure - but because one of the plaintiffs pays my salary. And because my monthly bread is earned by a lot of effort that has continuously been undermined by the work of said bloggers.

The question that the civil case is to raise in court, is a simple matter of whether the undermining was done legally or not. But the actual questions that are being raised from the rubber band-wielding masses are rather more crucial and Armageddon-esque.

But there is no doubt now that the script has been written, the word bubbles filled and the panels inked. Jeff Ooi and Rocky are the heroes of free speech and NST is its slayer.

Now, I’m not quite so original and creative to have come up with the Biblical analogy as above. It was Jeff himself who painted that cliched David vs. Goliath scenario. Rocky then went so far as to say that “I am now representing the aspiration of bloggers in the country. These bloggers represent my aspirations, as well. But I am now on the frontline, I suppose it is my neck now, and their future.”

Someone tell me who their PR adviser is. It is ironic how often NST is accused of spin-doctoring, yet when NST cries foul over Jeff and Rocky’s constant needling, it is the two bloggers who are viewed as the aggrieved.

The kind of hyperbole that has been thrown about has ranged from the astonishing to the purely laughable. Listen, I’m under no illusions here. I can’t imagine the majority of you reading this on this rather left-of-centre web portal could possibly not be in Jeff and Rocky’s corner - after all, isn’t the former a patron of this site, or at least of one of its contests? - and already I think all concerned can with due credit state that I am of a bias. After all, we’re talking about people who’ve made my own work less important than it could’ve been.

But the point I’m trying to make is, why has everyone and his neighbour’s aunty’s dog suddenly gotten so hot under the collar?

Sure, this is a landmark case. But seriously, much of what has been said would put the conspiracy theorists who believe the X-Files are true stories to shame.

Let me first refer to the most recent piece of vitriol that I have come across, one which saw Kakiseni.com associate editor Zedeck Siew, - a guy I once went to watch Mogwai with - say, “Ahirudin and Jeff Ooi (of Screenshots, who is also being sued) are de facto public intellectuals, providing commentary on Malaysian issues for the Greater Good; this censure — considering the NSTP has a plethora of alternative actions to debunk Rocky and Jeff’s opinions, avenues that would not stink of hammer-headed censorship — is like impaling someone just to improve his posture. A government sanctioned sula, too.”

While I have had - and from the evidence of this example, will continue to have - many reasons to applaud Zedeck’s fine language, it is his careless use of it that does him a disservice.

Let’s skirt neatly around the idea that Rocky and Jeff are doing anything for any good other than their own and move on to words like censure, sula (sula: the insertion of a foreign object with sharp projection(s) into one’s anal passage, usually for the purposes of torture, discipline and/or entertainment) and impaling. I’m sorry, but you’d think that Idi Amin was back from the dead.

But Zedeck does strike upon a valid point: NST has a number of options by which to answer Jeff and Rocky. All of them legal and perfectly fair. Question is, why is going to court the one that has the “stink of hammer-headed censorship?”

I am making an assumption here, but I think Zedeck would prefer NST to have had an ongoing debate with Jeff and Rocky on its pages. However, the same logic that presumes the bloggers Davids, also presumes that this would be a waste of resources for the Goliath.

Why use precious space in 150,000+ newspapers, hammering home points about blogs that many of your readers don’t even look at, and in the process, legitimise something you actually consider to be an infringement of your rights? Firstly, NST must pay for newsprint while Jeff and Rocky type their instantaneous postings on the seemingly infinite World Wide Web, putting the newspaper at an obvious disadvantage.

Second and most importantly, we don’t, when we believe we’re defamed by someone, seek to engage them and other observers about why they’re wrong about us. Hell, no! We go to court! Debates and discussions only exist when there is a valid point to be argued and neither party believes that their rights are being infringed.

And guess what? Rocky and Jeff are applying for the suit to be struck out. That seems fair to me. But I’m still in the minority.

PART 2 will be published in the next few days. Do check this space.

–
SHANNON TEOH is a contributing writer for theCICAK.

Shannon is in fact a flighty little lifestyle journalist for NST who’s more concerned about how to own his first BMW than freedom of speech. He’s just upset that everyone’s getting all excited while he’s still waiting to flip Paul Tan the bird in an Evo IX.

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12 Comments so far. Post your own comment

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Hmm.. Personally I am neutral in this issue (although I would love to see Jeff Ooi given some kind of spanking, that tart) and any reasonable human being would agree that it is up to the courts to settle this. I did find Rocky’s statement about fighting for ALL blogger rights insane. I didn’t remember giving him permission to fight on behalf of my name.

Comment published by Jon on 13 February 2007.
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____________________________
Desi’s random reactions, from a Journo-cum-blogger, hence rojak, point of view.

“Oh, NO! Shanon Teoh, you ingrate! You can’t do that!”
You admit being a beneficiary of JeffOoi’s generosity, now you take the side of the Goliath! How can?

JeffOoi is my sifu who motivated my entering Blogging endeavour with one eye shut. Te other eye is stll on journalism for I can’t live on air, sunshine and water, or WORDS, alone!

Oh, your greater beneficiary, thy paymaster, of course, you have to safeguard your rice-bowl. hen I read your INtro, I was seduced into believing you were throwing your weight behind an underDOG, but doggone year has les than a week left as the Fire Boar entereth on Sundae.

So we all have our own interests to jaga first okay! Even the former railway gatekeeper in the royal city of Port Klang. DZ satay ghouse was satayed — cos you nosey investigative reporters (mianly freom theSun!) and nosey Bloggers acting in cahoots, for once, or twice.

Now, you may ask what’s the relevance of digressing into that gatekeeper story? (Reading some so transparent minds around blogosphere, or am I wrong?)
I must counter then why is Shannon quoting the blardy “…Exxon Mobil Corp. made over RM140 billion in 2006 alone…” for starters?

Spin-doctoring? That’s the privilege of the MSM.
Us, the bloggers? We are crusaders, hell, we wanna save the world.

WE Malaysian bloggers wanna save NegaraKu from people who plunder our national coffers.
Petronas with its RM43.6billion net profits for FYE March 2006, up from RM35.5billion for FYE March 2005. I’m predicting the profit to breach RM50billion when it reports its current year profits soon come end-April. But will we the RAKYAT smell any fragrance of the oil profits?
NO, addig insult to injury — there’s some veiled signs of around round of petrol price rise at the dumps — Ooops, the pumps!

So Shannon, thanks for accomodating me — I’m caught in noman-’s land, being both a freelance journalist as well as a socio-political blogger. So I try to win brownie points from both the 4th and 5th estates. In fact, if any MSM offereth Desi 20million to shut up by buying over Desiderata2000, please see one of my PR mAnAgArS. Contacts are at my Archives — you must follow Buyers’ Beware doctirne — do some due diligence before investing!

PS: Sometimes I speak in tongue, so if you see no firm theme i my comments, the fault is not yours, it’s awe mine, if you don’t mind my CONfess this woeful wedNURSEdae.

Comment published by ylchong on 13 February 2007.
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i look forward to some objective discussion here, leaving emotions at the door

Comment published by hisham on 14 February 2007.
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Hello Shannon:

You raise valid points in this issue. However, in taking my editorial without the context in which it was written, I think you have committed a rhetorical disservice.

The same week my editorial was published Kakiseni ran an article written by Centre for Independent Journalism director Sonia Randhawa (you may find it in the site’s past articles). In it, she argued that the reason why the NSTP’s actions in this issue is detrimental to the Malaysian media climate is the fact that — while it is true that the paper feels it’s rights have been infringed and unfair comments on the part of the bloggers have been made; and, after all, defamation laws are there to protect a fundamental human right — they have gone straight for the most severe recourse available to them, with little warning.

The jugular, in other words. It is not a question of legality, but rather one of magnitude. Sonia compares this case to the one involving journalist MGG Pillai and Berjaya CEO Vincent Tan: a monolith falling on a gnat. As a media body, one would feel that a national daily would have the moral duty (though intangible, of course) to defend the freedom for different parties to express different views, and the subsequent freedom for both parties to have their say why they feel this way. Not, in essence, to start legal or cultural precedents that curtail contrary views (whatever the merit — or lack of it — in these views).

As for your conclusion that ‘the same logic that presumes the bloggers Davids, also presumes that this would be a waste of resources for the Goliath’, there has been no evidence that the NSTP presumed to engage the issue in any overt way, whether in its own pages, or on the internet (as you and I are now doing).

You first state that ‘my monthly bread is earned by a lot of effort that has continuously been undermined by the work of said bloggers’, then: ‘Why use precious space in 150,000 plus newspapers, hammering home points about blogs that many of your readers don’t even look at, (emphasis mine) and in the process, legitimise something you actually consider to be an infringement of your rights?’

Therefore, the undermining, I deduce, happened on the pages and in the readership of screenshots and rocky’s bru; so confined, it would have cost nothing for the New Straits Times to defend its practices there — and, if I’m not mistaken, the paper did carry news stories about their action to sue. Was this, too, a waste of space?

Jeff and Rocky have both stated for the record that the NSTP made no recourse in this direction (the engagement of the issue on the Internet). If the editors of the NST thought of the two websites as inconsequential a space to defend themselves, why consider them important enough to take to court? In this light, one questions the severity of the paper’s decision to take legal action; hence my use of rather colourful imagery.

(debate aside, how’ve you been? we should meet up and go for drinks, or something. do drop me an email …)

Comment published by Zedeck Siew on 14 February 2007.
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I pray to God that Jeff Ooi (real name: Ooi Chuan Aun) loses and NSTP wins. Jeff Ooi must be made to publically apologise (full page apology in NST and Berita Harian) and pay appropriate damages for spreading malicious falsehood and lies that is clearly defaming.

The average Malaysia supports NSTP because they understand freedom of speech does not include the right to libel.

Comment published by K. T. Ong on 15 February 2007.
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1. I’m neutral
2. NSTP wants to sell itself.How? Turn something big into something bigger, better still get exclusive content on certain issues.(ie. the ‘David and Goliath’ case. Doesn’t matter what anyone wants as long as the ‘higher ups’ in NSTP decide to ‘debate’.
3. I can see it both ways…but it all goes down to the credibility of these bloggers. Libeling is wrong, end of story.
4. This is my opinion.Feel free to disagree, but please don’t flame. XD

Comment published by Ng.M.X on 19 February 2007.
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You say, “Firstly, NST must pay for newsprint while Jeff and Rocky type their instantaneous postings on the seemingly infinite World Wide Web, putting the newspaper at an obvious disadvantage.“.

Mydeen thinks this is slightly less than accurate, given that webhosting, datacentres, energy for servers, bandwidth, routers, content aggregation servers and the like all do not grow on trees. Someone does pay for internet publications, though the cost is much lower than a print publication with a circulation of around 100,000 copies.

Mydeen does agree however that the right to publish is only mitigated by the right to sue for defamation and to cause the veracity of the defamatory statements to be proven in court. As Oliver Wendel Holmes succintly says, “The right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins”.

Comment published by Mydeen Aboo Backer on 21 February 2007.
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i’ve waited until both parts have been put up before commenting on my own. in fact, i had not wanted to comment at all, but i must point out something i feel duty-bound to correct.

Zedeck’s comment in rebuttal to mine mostly centres of difference of opinion except at a juncture where he attempts to point out a hypocrisy in logic.

there is however, no logical disconnect between saying that the bloggers have undermined my work and that it is a waste of resources to engage the bloggers in debate.
i say that the same readers who read nst mostly do not read the blogs. yet the blogs can affect my work. this is because both sets of readers contain people who are exclusive sets of people who dont read BOTH. the blogs have their own following which if said blogs did not exist, might actually be people who would be reading the nst. so my work is being undermined, since for eg, Jeff’s blog garners hits above 10k per day, if i’m not mistaken. i could be reaching a much bigger audience. plus, readers do tend to spread their opinions virally. so it’s a sphere of influence larger than the number of hits alone.
practically speaking though, there are overlaps, and the resources would still be wasted because newsprint costs a whole lot more than webhosting, which is basically the payment of an annual fee for nearly unlimited resources.

further to that, it seems ridiculous to expect a company plus several individuals to register with rocky and jeff’s blogs and then await comment moderation to seek recourse on their sites.
given the agenda of these two bloggers, there is a good chance they’ll hawk such an occurrence to high heaven and seriously, does anyone really think they’ll remove those posts just because they were asked to?

switch the shoes around for a moment. if nst had defamed the bloggers, do you think their first instead is to send an email to the letters to the editor page?
idealism really is, sometimes, the enemy of wisdom.

one last thing, yes we did carry news stories on the case. just like we carry news stories on rape, murder, CBT, and numerous other legal cases. i dont remember us ever trying to argue who was guilty in those cases on our pages tho.
we report the news because its newsworthy. but running commentaries on them isn’t always called for.

Comment published by Shannon Teoh on 24 February 2007.
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I am happy to read your well thought out posts. Well done. Congratulations. Let us all not forget that the NSTP and those suing for libel, have a right and they have gone to court to vindicate their rights. Those who think otherwise are doing this nation a disservice. They seem to argue that the plaintiffs have no right to go to court. Spot on you are: who on earth engages in public discourse when libelled. If someone can set me right here, please do. The sum effect of the some (vocal) bloggers’ stand here is that NSTP is censoring them ala Singapore. This, in my view, is nonsense. The real effect of these vocal bloggers’ stand is that they are not subject to the same laws that everyone, even the Prime Minister is subject to: the laws of defamation. Anyone who dares sue them will be made out to be the enemies of press freedom. Here is a further thought: the bloggers claim to being ‘journalists’ of sorts. Well, do not journalists get sued when they get it wrong? Or perhaps, again, could someone please let me know where has someone who has been libelled instead of going to court, commenced a public discussion (where he is likely to be further libelled). Nonsense. That is what I think. Keep up the good work here. Your blog is well reasoned, well-written and unemotional.

Comment published by James Quinn on 25 February 2007.
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Aiyo NST is a stupid biased paper lah..twin brother of Fox News lah…but u people can’t deny it say we are emotional lah or anti-government lah or traitor-lah bla bla bla

Same like those Americans gwei lo who believe everything Fox news tell them…don;t want to listen to other people so sleep lah in your la-la land nst people…you think you got respect by the people ah? nope as a matter of fact among the heng dai that do read papers a bit …their favourite is china press and the star lah. wat is nst? rubbish from government lah…don’t believe ah then ask you a few questions:

1)Why didn’t go ah to Sibu ask the people who the VIPs working with the big hot-shot asshole Wong Leh ying gang ah?
2)Why no investigate pai mo for corruption ah? scare ah please lah he really squeezing the rest of the societies profits lah
3)why didn’t ask about that gang 21 punya cibai leader..where is he now ah? who is his friends ah?
4)wat happen to the police report on those umno kui make rascist inflammatory statements ah?
5)wat the governemnt gonna do bout haze ah?forget liaw isit?very sanfu lah for us have to work outside breathe poison especially breathe very hard after whack Gang 21

- Edited for profanity -
Administrator

Comment published by samseng on 28 April 2007.
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Jeff Ooi is a cheap blogger full of false stories and without real proof. Debate about what? Lies vs lies? Nobody care about this lier.

Comment published by Foodball Blogger on 3 July 2007.
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Latest rumor! The week before 2008 General Election, Bloggers United get detailed and went missing! ISA got all the reason like capturing gangster or cult followers to take down Jeff Ooi and others in a group promoting false information and political defamation. Too late, the tracing has already begun! United we see each other in jail!

Comment published by United we die for childish work on 15 July 2007.
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