Meesh is a writer, friend, and fabulous party girl when she gets her booty out at night. You may have encountered her work in magazines like Off The Edge, Tell and recently, KLUE. Most relevant in this case is that she’s intelligent and has a fierce sense of justice.
Last week, one of her notes on Facebook caught my attention - a letter to the editor regarding the slew of bad press Bernama has been dishing out to homosexuality, sodomy and half the world (on the Western side, of course).
This is what she had to say:
I have never really held BERNAMA in high regard, choosing to get my news elsewhere, but what they are doing with the homosexuality issue and the features they are coming up with this week, given it’s timing with the DSAI case, is in one word - disgusting.
I urge you all who read this, to please write a Letter to the Editor too. Show they that we are not so easily manipulated with such ridiculous stories, that they try to pass off as “News Features.”
Thank you.
*
Here is what I sent in, after reading this rubbish:
http://web7.bernama.com/bernama/v3/news_features.php?id=344763
Letter to BERNAMA
Dear Editor,
I refer to the piece, “Homosexual’s Life Of Moral Decadence, written by Melati Mohd Ariff, written July 8th on your News Features section.
I have a huge contention with this article and the views of the writer that is expressed in it.
Firstly, all Malaysians have their views on homosexuality based on their personal religious and cultural beliefs, and that is their right as citizens of this country.
I also think the people interviewed for the piece have a right in expressing their views as seen in the statements they provided in the writing of this piece.
However, your writer/journalist Melati and her overbearing views do not give any merit to this story, in fact it ruins the credibility of this story instantly. She is judgemental, biased and places more importance in injecting her views into the story than actually sticking to the facts.
As a journalist myself, I understand that in news features the writer is given a little more freedom with what they are to write, which is well and good. But, upon reading the article any discerning reader can see the bias and slant that she takes.
Here is one example:
“In the West, the morally wrong and corrupt homosexual act has turned into a sort of plague, spreading its tentacles far and wide, engulfing individuals with the tendency of adopting this immoral self-indulgence.”
Who is Melati? Is she from a religious body? Is she a psychologist? An anthropologist? A person who studies different cultures or human behaviour? Is she God?
How does a writer come to these heavy handed judgemental statements? What references does she have to make these claims? I don’t understand. She is merely a medium. This is not some personal blog, where she can push forth her agenda and platform, her duty in working for a national news agency is to produce QUALITY well-research stories with truth, fairness and accuracy. And by truth, I do not mean a truth she makes up in her writing.
She does it again in the following statement:
“This act, which is like a malignant cancer, should not be allowed to spread its tentacles, as it threatens to bring destruction and devastation to the society.”
Firstly, your writer writes horribly. And your sub-editors aren’t doing a good job either. Cancer IS malignant, there are no benign cancers, so her words are redundant, and the entire article is written with horrible, unprofessional English, grammar and sentence structure, but I will leave that part out, although I shouldn’t have to.
You are a national news agency, don’t your writers and editors take pride in their work?
I am forced to think that you do not. That statement she made is vile and bilious. She is of no authority to be pontificating on these issues, or to be making such claims of moral devastation and degeneration.
As a journalist she is merely a medium to the message, no one cares about your opinion unless you have standing. Why is hers so important?
The fact that you have published such a ridiculous, half-baked piece with little to no facts, and a complete inadequate examination of the situation at hand, and simply allowing Melati here to lay blame on the West for homosexuality is utterly disgusting.
You have no statistics, no figures and this piece is just completely unsubstantial and in my opinion used to fuel hate to minority groups in this country.
How you, BERNAMA, a mouthpiece for the nation’s dissemination and providing of news have allowed your quality to be so compromised is beyond me.
I hope you will not allow this to happen again, it is one of the shoddiest displays of journalism I have had the misfortune to see recently.
The public are the stakeholders in this country and the timing of this article is suspect as well. Suddenly, after certain persons in the public eye are accused of sodomy allegations there is a scathing attack on homosexuality, with no substantial facts and figures too I might add, is a little odd, don’t you think?
The Malaysian public reading this piece may very well agree with some of the views expressed, if they are ignorant and have no intention of being inquisitive and learning more, because if this is going to cause the devastation your writer claims, then more attention to the FACTS are necessary, aren’t they?
But, I assure you, there are many of us who are watching the news intently and it is not in your favour to publish articles like this which further go to ruin yours and the mainstream media’s already fragile credibility.
With this, I take my leave, and ask you humbly to uphold some semblance of journalistic integrity and honour in your content.
Michelle Gunaselan, AMPANG
On a personal note, I made it a point yonks ago to boycott various local sources of news, and usually won’t even click on the website urls provided (eg: The Star, NST) unless I have a very good reason to. Still, the flaw in this is that I am reliant on people like Meesh to inform me that there’s yet more published stupidity out there - if Meesh tags me on a note in Facebook, I cringe because that usually means something uber salah has appeared in the news recently.
These are other letters that online that discusses this issue:
Homosexuality & Moral Decadence? by Mabel Teoh.
Homophobic Bernama by Praba Ganesan.
What is Happening to Malaysia??? by Patrick Teoh.
An Unbridled Ignorance by JJ Ray.
Those are the links I have, if you know of any more, feel free to drop them off here :).
July 15th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Good article and an even better letter from Meesh! I feel it’s so sad that these sort of people use religion as a weapon to dictate other’s lives or lifestyles.
Oh and kudos to you for starting this blog! =)
July 16th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Hahahaha, Bernama got totally pwned by Meesh. Funny how ‘opinion’ is given a platform when it agrees with our distorted Islamic, patriarchal and hetero government, but is blacked out or deemed as seditious and/or immoral when it isn’t.
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Fabulous party girl?! What the *bleep*? But that’s okay, you made it up to me with the “intelligent with fierce sense of justice” bit.
Kisses!
August 6th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Here is my reply:
In reference to the two articles that appeared in your syndication, I
am alarmed by the tone of the article. Instigating paranoia and
abhorrence, perpetuating ignorance and calling out for extreme measure
to curb ‘ this moral decadence’ all seem to bode a Nazi future for
homosexuals in Malaysia.
Some excerpts from Melati’s article in describing homosexuals and
homosexuality such as:
“morally wrong and corrupt”, “immoral self indulgence”, “serious
immoral and criminal offence”
“this sin”, “moral decadence”, “debauchery”, “this felony”, “menace to
society”, “malignant cancer”
“those who are out to draw the people into the dark ages of morality”
are alarmingly similar to what was used in Nazi propaganda to produce
and maintain an untainted Aryan race. Nazi has criminalized
homosexuality because homosexuality was perceived as a societal
deterrent to creating the Aryan race.
Nazi Germany under Hilter, in an attempt to create a pure German
society and uphold the morality and greatness of the ‘Aryan master
race’ had victimized and executed millions of Jews, Soviets,
Communists, Poles, the disabled and homosexuals. One portion of
German history comes into mind in regards to homosexual prosecution -
the execution of Ernst Röhm. Ernst Röhm, a homosexual, was at one
point personally appointed by Hilter to run the SA, a paramilitary arm
of the Nazi party. However, later in his career, Röhm’s influence
with the SA and the increasing political clashes with Hilter caused
him to be perceived as a political threat to Hilter during Hilter’s
rise to power. Through operation “Night of Long Knives” that ran
between June 30 to July 2 1934, Hilter justified the murder of Röhm,
his supporters and many of Hilter’s personal and political enemies as
an effort to maintain racial purity and extracting homosexuals from
the morally and genetically pure Germany. Through 1945, Nazi
continued on to arrest an estimated 100,000 people who it deemed as
homosexuals and incarcerated an estimate of 15,000 into the
concentration camps.
(http://frank.mtsu.edu/~baustin/homobg.html,
http://www.holocaust-trc.org/homosx.htm,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_R%C3%B6hm)
The relatively short interval between of the two anti-homosexual
articles from your publication with the announcement of intent to
throw Anwar Ibrahim into jail for a second term under the pretext of
homosexuality is too obvious to be a coincidence. Have we lost sight
of humanity and ourselves to the level where we are moving our society
towards a Holocaustic genocidal path for political pursuant? Will we,
like Nazi Germany, ruin the lives of men and women under the pretext
of public morality for political motivation? Will the citizens of
Malaysia walk in fear in the wake of a possible Gestapo-like JAKIM? Do
we not think that criminalizing what two consenting adults do
privately in bed in itself an immoral self-indulgent act?