Monitors of Malaysian election report widespread media bias

PA 345/13 During the 2013 Malaysian election campaign and in the days immediately afterwards, a team of experts at The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC) kept a close eye on the performance of the country's press. Their aim was to encourage fair coverage of this crucial election campaign and encourage better performance in providing access to information and a platform for diverse views and voices. The 'Watching the Watchdog': Media Monitoring the 13th General Election' project released five preliminary and two comprehensive final reports, as well as 28 individual publication reports. The team found that Malaysian citizens relying on the state news wire, the English and Bahasa Malaysia language print newspapers, as well as television news in all three major languages, did not receive fair and balanced information. The only Malaysian media in the study which were found to provide relatively balanced political information were the online news portals and Mandarin-language print newspapers. Dr Tessa Houghton and Professor Zaharom Nain, from the Centre for the Study of and Culture , collaborated with the Malaysian Centre for Independent Journalism on the project: 'Watching the Watchdog'. They put together a team of around 70 research assistants or 'coders' who gathered data from the most popular and influential media across Malaysia.