The Responsible Blogger Dilemma

The defamation suit filed against two Malaysian bloggers demands a clarification of the concept of “responsible blogging”

By Zara Kahan

I have to be honest: Jeff Ooi bores me.

I don’t have anything against him, in a personal sense. It’s just that I am just amazed at the number of people who frequently visit his blog. In all my ventures to the kingdom of Screenshots, I have not found anything particularly inspiring or witty; nothing to knock my socks off; no ‘wow’ factor anywhere. The blog is just a hodgepodge mass of cut and paste entries, with a few absurdly dull comments inserted in between.

I would imagine that for one to stir a hornet’s nest, you would need sharp sticks and fire-starters. But Ooi’s blog is neither ’sharp’ nor ‘flaming’; it is more likely the product of a sad child who was forced to listen to two decades worth of Enya’s Greatest Hits. Hell, dulled over. Yet he still manages to work an inordinate amount of people into varying forms of rage.

This does not mean that I would ever suggest that he stops writing. Modifying the words of Voltaire, I might be bored to death with what he says, but I will defend to the death his right to say it.

However, there are some people who are suggesting he put a halt to those words, albeit for reasons different to mine. On 11 January, Ooi and Aharudin Attan (aka writer of Rocky’s Bru) were served with slips of paper courtesy of the News Straits Times Press (NSTP), informing them that their articles managed to inspire such discontent that the offended individuals were willing to use money to prove just how angry they were.

Ah, the sweet smell of lawsuits.

OF PITCHFORKS AND LAWSUITS
The main offending article, it seems, is an entry on Screenshots highlighting Rocky Bru’s comment on Kalimullah Hassan, the NSTP deputy chairman. In the entry, Ooi stated that Kalimullah “had stopped being a journalist a while ago” and “he does not believe in press freedom because a free press would have devoured him—and his friends—alive.”

Now, let’s backtrack a bit. Strong words, naturally, bring about a fierce storm of retaliation. When a human being’s character is devalued in public, you generally wouldn’t expect him or her to smile and turn the other cheek, or burst into song like a Disney character. Slap a man, and expect him to reciprocate with physical harm. It doesn’t mean that it is necessarily the smart thing to do; it is simply the expected reaction.

When choosing the perfect come-back however, it should also be assessed by what the end objective is. If it is to let him experience as much pain as you did, a punch to the left kidney will certainly leave you feeling satisfied. It might not, however, entail respect from your peers.

And on the Internet at least, the response to the form in which Kalimullah has chosen to manifest his objection has been anything but pleasant. Contrary to the stereotypical Malaysian attitude of sugar-coating words and using double-speak, the statements made throughout the blogosphere have been blunt, disapproving and quite ruthless. A Bloggers United fund has been set up, with the main intent being to aid Ooi and Aharudin with their impending legal costs as well as provide general financial assistance for bloggers who face legal action from disgruntled citizens, corporations and other forms of evil.

All this points to one obvious question: what will happen to bloggers in Malaysia?

BLOG AGAINST THE MACHINE
It used to be that bloggers could post as they pleased; no one would find you in that massive entangled web that is the Internet. Post silly pictures of your Aunt Jemima, describe your fantasy that involves lollipops and hedgehogs nibbling on your toes—do it all without a care in the world. Blogs are an escape from a place where you are forced to filter your every expression.

This lawsuit may be the beginning of a very sad end. Not only is there a fear of big corporations going after ‘small bloggers’, fingers froze on keyboards everywhere when the Prime Minister stated his support towards the suit. In commenting on the limitations of blogging, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi used the term “sedition”—and anyone who knows anything about the law will understand just how broadly this term can and has been applied.

But what is perhaps most disconcerting is the fact that although parties have talked about “responsible blogging” and how important it is, no one has truly qualified and defined the term. In his blog, Aharudin tried to define it. He declared that he was being a responsible blogger by disclosing his true identity, and in that manner was being accountable for anything he wrote.

While Aharudin is certainly not an irresponsible writer, his definition is incomplete. Truth be told, responsibility should be applied from the very first keystroke, otherwise identifiable as ‘responsible after the fact’. What good is a sense of responsibility that only deals with the matter after the damage is done? It is equivalent to chopping up my neighbour’s annoying puppy into tiny little pieces and then standing by the body so that I may be identified as the culprit.

The term ‘responsible’ is an adjective that cannot stand alone. I can say, for example, that I am very responsible when it comes to my daily satanic rituals of killing babies and slaughtering wide-eyed kitties, hence fulfilling my responsibility to the Dark Lord. But I would not be responsible in fulfilling my civic duty as a human being; to respect the sanctity of human life and the intolerable cuteness of kittens.

Another question surfaces: to whom does a responsible blogger owe this responsibility to? This is largely dependant on the content of the blog, and the intent with which it was formed. If it is a personal blog, for friends and family to view, you must take care not to bore them with simpering details of your insignificant life; you should make up scandalous stories in place of the deathly dullness which is the reality you truly live in. Alternatively, a gossip blog must update its readers on the daily life of celebrities (unless it is Paris Hilton, because she is a praying mantis and not a human celebrity).

Consequently, when a blog is done with the intent of improving the standards of democracy and to provide readers with a critical analysis of a nation’s current issues, who does the blogger become accountable to?

The truth.

Even if delivered in the most stunningly dull manner, truth is the only master. The only thing that should weigh upon such a blogger’s conscience is whether the content being spewed is authoritative, with no deliberate design to mislead the public. This is especially true if the blogger knows that a massive amount of people follow his or her every word.

Now here comes the tricky part. Blogs are less about facts and figures as they are about opinions on facts and figures. And because no opinion is 100 percent valid, and most opinions can be rebutted—how does one fulfil the onus of being ‘truthful’ about a point of view?

Simple: by saying what you really feel.

It could be stupid, vapid, hurtful or, sin of sins, dull; one way or another, you should not be punished for having said what you truly believe. To say anything else, or to pander to the views of another to save your skin, would be an act of lying—to your readers, and to yourself.

CAN WE HANDLE THE TRUTH?

Lies are usually caused by an undue fear of men.

Nachman of Bratslav

One common habit of many Malaysians is to agree with the idea that the media, free speech, public thoughts and expressions should be free “to a certain limit”. We give the nod to gags being put to our mouths, like the proposed one to subject bloggers to legal restraints.

Many point out the supposed ‘dangers’ of free speech, otherwise known as the “what about the crazy people?” argument. Apparently if people spoke as they pleased, we would all turn into a group of bloodthirsty maniacs, hacking away at anything in sight.

But laws are not made with crazy people in mind. If that were the case, we shouldn’t sell knives, drive a car or sharpen our pencils. The possibility that crazy people will drink while driving, stab someone or poke your eyes out with 2Bs does not mean we should lose our access and freedom to use knives, cars, pencils—and the right to say what we feel.

Of course, there are some who, upon receiving information of a certain nature, resort to violence to demonstrate their displeasure. They start it with noble intentions, but their actions show them out to be as uncivilised as monkeys. Because of them, Malaysians have to walk around with sticks up their rear ends. For fear of sparking up the wrong plugs, we do not thrive to be politically correct, and we work hard at erasing the formation of words at the very beginning.

But I do not want the restrictions put on me, made based on the same standards as the ones used to control the “crazy people”. A law made in anticipation of the antics of a few enraged people judges us all as unfit before proven to be.

SUING THE MOON
Coming back, then, to the blogging fracas. The NSTP’s decision to sue Ooi and Aharudin is certainly not unexpected. Heck, if you have the time and the money, sue the bloody moon for not being bright enough.

But in doing so, the NSTP has unwittingly created heroes out of Ooi and Aharudin. The two now have a place in history, and have become icons of the continuous struggle for freedom. In the struggle of big corporates versus small bloggers, who do you think gains the moral advantage? The small, skinny guy. Always.

Perhaps a much more respectable alternative would have been to take Ooi and Aharudin on and seek to disprove the validity of their claims. They could have pointed out the articles that screamed ‘journalistic integrity’, outlined their non-partisan methods of screening articles, and demonstrate the paper’s commitment to truth. Messier perhaps, but ultimately more credible.

Unless, of course, the paper is not a slave to truth, but to some other exterior force. In that case, their attempt to regain respectability has achieved the exact opposite effect. And in taking the battle for truth to court, it might prove to be the most irresponsible course of action yet.