Paper Deletes Anwar From Group Photo
International Herald Tribune
November 23, 1999
Thomas Fuller

Malaysia's largest-circulation Chinese-language newspaper issued an apology on Monday for having altered a photograph of the country's political elite that appeared in the paper last week.

The photograph showed jubilant politicians at a rally five years ago. But editors at the paper, Sin Chew Jit Poh, removed from the photo the face of Anwar Ibrahim, who was then deputy prime minister, and replaced it with the face of the man currently in that position, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

"Modern technology was employed to render the picture more reflective of the situation today," the newspaper's editor, C.C. Liew, said in the apology. "Of course, the appropriate action will be taken to ensure that such lapses in judgment do not recur."

With national elections less than a week away, the altering of the photograph has been interpreted as an effort to blot out any trace of Mr. Anwar, the opposition's candidate for prime minister.

But perhaps more significant is that most readers of Sin Chew Jit Poh, which has a circulation of more than 250,000, know nothing about the deletion from the newspaper.

Mr. Liew's words of contrition were not printed in the paper but instead were-e-mailed to members of an Internet forum that had detected the alteration.

Angry postings on Web sites complained of "adopting a Stalinist approach to historical photos." One site (Malaysiakini.com) ran the photograph side-by-side with an unaltered photo of the same event. "It was common in Communist countries to doctor certain photos so that out-of-favor leaders would somehow disappear from history," the site's editors wrote. "Malaysia has now learnt that same art of deception."

The controversy over the photo highlights the role that the Internet is playing in politics here one week before what has been described as the first "cyberelection."

The global network has broken the government's quasi-monopoly over information and offered Malaysians access to alternative sources of news — but only up to a point. The Internet's reach is still limited, especially in rural areas.

And as the controversy seems to illustrate, some issues that are hotly debated on the Internet never leave the confines of cyberspace.

"I don't think we're going to make much of an impact for this election in terms of what we're doing on the Internet," said Steven Gan, founder of Malaysiakini.com. "We can make a small contribution of making people more aware. But the reach of the Internet is not deep enough to affect the majority."

Mr. Gan's Web site, which he says attempts to counterbalance the local media's pro-government stand, points out that Mr. Abdullah was not a top party leader five years ago and thus would not have been present at the elite gathering shown in the photo.

"Readers have a more questioning attitude as a result of the mushrooming of the Internet," said James Wong, a senior columnist at Sin Chew Jit Poh. "They say, 'Why did you select this? Why did you select that? What is your motive or intention?"'

There are nearly 600,000 subscribers and 1.5 million users of the global network in Malaysia, a country of 22 million people.

It was Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad who helped promote what has become an important tool for his political opposition.

"The Internet has opened up a channel of communication which would otherwise be closed to us," said Raja Petra Kamarudin, spokesman for the National Justice Party, formed earlier this year by Mr. Anwar's wife.

Officials at the party say they use the Internet to distribute political tracts and other information that is not carried by local television and newspapers.

In rural areas, party workers print the material from the Internet and distribute it.

Copyright © 2006 the International Herald Tribune