SHAH ALAM: Education Minister Dr Maszlee Malek (pix) today chastised media practitioners to stop focusing too much on sensational news, urging them instead to produce more reading materials that could educate the public.
He said media practitioners should use the existing space well to cultivate pure values that would educate the public as the quality of society lies in its reading material.
Citing the writing style of media practitioners 20 years ago, Maszlee described the write-up then was seen to form a positive aura to the readers even though the material was based on an accident.
“Unlike today where news headlines are more of controversial and sensational nature,“ he said this in his speech at the launch of the Read @ Uni Higher Education Institution programme at the Universiti Teknologi Mara, here today.
He added that newspapers during that time played an important role because not only as news disseminators on things that were happening in and outside the country, but often brought forth words that were ‘buried’ in the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka dictionary.
Maszlee said that today’s media practitioners’ roles that were seen to be more ‘friendly’ with sensational news and often propagate certain issues in order to attract high number of readers, should be changed to improve the quality of reading materials.
“I hope we can produce more media practitioners who can use their writing to benefit the people and to develop better civilisation,“ he said. — Bernama
