KUALA LUMPUR: Senior minister Rais Yatim today defended Astro’s move to censor BBC’s Bersih 3.0 rally coverage.He said it was the prerogative of the satellite television provider to air the “best parts” of the poll reforms rally.
The information, communication and culture minister told reporters here that Astro should “be given credit” instead of providing its viewers with “quality” news through stylised in-house editing.
And the veteran leader, who had described the rally as “Kotor 3.0 (Dirty 3.0)”, rejected accusations that the censorship was made to block footage of the police violence used to disperse Saturday’s protest.
“Each broadcasting house is free to exercise its own style of eliciting the best news item for its station.
“(Astro) has to be given credit for knowing which part of the news is newsworthy and therefore they should exercise that within their rights as a broadcasting firm,” he said.
The British Broadcasting Corporation had demanded an explanation from Astro for snipping off 30 seconds of its two-minute news clip on the Bersih 3.0 rally on April 28.
The clip, which was produced by a senior BBC journalist Emily Buchanan, gave a detailed run- down on the rally.
It was learnt that Astro allegedly broadcasted a doctored-version removing three separate sequences, one of which showed a policeman allegedly firing at demonstrators.
The other two sequences were interviews with demonstrators who gave first-hand accounts of why they took to the streets demanding for clean and fair elections.
‘We have the right’
In a statement yesterday, BBC said: “The broadcast of anti-government protests in Malaysia was apparently edited before it was re-broadcast on Malaysian satellite television, with sequences removed from the original BBC version.”
“The BBC is making urgent enquiries to the Malaysian operator, Astro, to establish the facts.
“We strongly condemn any blocking of the trusted news that we broadcast around the world including via distribution partners.”
It was learnt from Sarawak Report that Astro had also allegedly “tampered” with an Al-Jazeera’s broadcast of the massive rally in Kuala Lumpur.
According to a news report, Astro broadcast operations senior vice-president Rohaizad Mohamed said that the clip was cut in accordance with national content regulations.
He also said that his company had the right to edit contents from any international providers as it deemed fit.
“We are surprised and somewhat disappointed that our long-standing partner, the BBC, when, issuing its statement, did not take cognisance of the duty of Astro to comply with local content regulations,” Rohaizad was quoted as saying in a statement.
Despite the censorship, the original clip of the news had been made available on the video sharing site Youtube.
News Source: FreeMalaysiaToday
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