In this digital age of online news, objective journalism is increasingly treated
as unnecessary, if not obsolete. In the liberal West, news portals can offer
different views to counter the political economic status quo proffered by
traditional hyper-commercial corporate media. In more authoritarian Asian
countries like Malaysia, “alternative” news portals are assumed to provide
opposition political parties with favourable coverage to balance whatever bias
the traditional, mainstream print and electronic media might have displayed
towards the ruling political party. As a result, Malaysia’s ruling political party,
including many from the critical mass, has claimed that Malaysia’s “mainstream”
and “alternative” media, collectively, have attained the democratic principle of
offering diverse, balanced and fair news coverage. This has strengthened the
view that there is no need for objective journalism-as in providing fair and
balanced news coverage. To what extent then are Malaysia’s “mainstream” print
media biased towards the ruling political party and to what extent Malaysia’s
“alternative” news portals biased towards the opposition party? Has the digital
age finally rendered objective journalism obsolete, at least in Malaysia? These
are key questions examined in a study that content analysed the coverage of
Malaysia’s general elections in 2013 performed by three “mainstream”
newspapers and three “alternative” news portals based in Malaysia. The results
show that even though partisan journalism continues to dominate, especially
the “mainstream” newspapers, objective journalism is far from being
abandoned. It is rendered unnecessary only by being politicized by the ruling
political regime.