By Saadikah Hameed
GOMBAK, 20 April 2015: The western media is a ˜tool of war and consistently portrays disparity in the coverage of Muslims, said Al-Jazeera journalist, Samer Allawi, at the forum œMedia downplaying of issues involving Muslims conducted by IIUMToday’s team last week on Journalism Day.
The other two on the panelist were Datuk Azman Ujang and Datuk Yong Soo Heong, both have held the post of Editor-in-Chief of BERNAMA (Malaysia’s national news agency). The forum was moderated by Communication lecturer, Dr. Nerawi Sedu.
The speakers expressed their opinions regarding medias take on the recent Chapel Hill shooting and the Charlie Hebdo attack, whereby Samer spoke about the double standards of the western media while Datuk Azman and Datuk Yong (who call themselves ˜news animals) swayed on a different view.
Samer Allawi who worked in the media industry for 20 years, blamed the western media for its hypocrisy in terms of news reporting pertaining to Muslims and other religions. He attacked the western media for its undervaluing of Muslim victims, where a Muslim killer is termed a œterrorist but for a White killer, it is a matter of a ˜car dispute.
œThe mainstream media reported the Charlie Hebdo shooting as an attack and blamed the Muslims, calling the act terrorism before the investigation even started, Samer stated and commented that the Muslim media has no interest in revolting against the western medias misjudgment.
Samer ended his discussion by advising all aspiring journalists to never be afraid of reporting the truth and the reality, without “fearing your boss.”
Datuk Azman, a veteran journalist for four decades argued vehemently on this issue. His opinion was not justifying the western media but rather putting himself in their shoes and stating that the western media was not at fault because their priority lies in œnews value. In the eyes of the western media, one Israeli civilian is of higher news value than thousands of Palestinian lives.
He further commented that the Malaysian media comparatively has still a long way to go in terms of appreciating news value. Al-Jazeera, for instance, places a lot of news worth on Islamic news, whereas the western media has no sensitivity towards religion.
Datuk Azman ended his talk by advising the budding journalists to leave no room for inaccuracy. Hard work and diligence is the key to rise to the top, where job satisfaction doesnt lie in the amount of money, but in influencing the people and policy decisions through writings.
Datuk Yong told the forum that the pivotal issue here is rather “how to put the guns away from these ‘cowboys’.” He said a journalist should not be labeled as a Jew/Muslim/Christian, etc. He ended his talk with a valuable advice about being ‘a work in progress’ in the field of journalism.
Overall it was  a very enlightening and educative forum where all Communication students had benefitted and learnt a lot.***