Sunday May 18, 2008 MYT 7:57:55 PM
‘Police report against dailies not a curb on freedom’
By HAH FOONG LIAN
LUMUT: Police investigations into several newspapers for publishing the Royal Commission of Inquiry report on the V.K. Lingam video clip before it was made public is not aimed at curbing press freedom, Information Minister Datuk Ahmad Shabery Cheek said.
“The Government has the right to protect certain classified information before making a public disclosure,” he said.
The matter was a problem of national secrets being leaked out before it was approved for public disclosure, he said Saturday after closing a Lumut Umno convention here, about 90km from Ipoh.
He pointed out that the Commission was set up by the Government and its findings would eventually be made public.
However, he said it would be more proper for the findings to go to the Cabinet first before they were made public.
He cautioned that there could be other government secrets such as matters pertaining to security and military that could have been leaked to the public.
“We don’t know where the leak is. It could be from the journalists who used their investigative intuition or the printers or the officers involved,” he said.
“If there is a leak, how can we ascertain that there would be no future leaks on matters of security?” he added.
On Saturday, DAP national adviser Lim Kit Siang had urged the Government to retract its police report against the newspapers, including The Star, because it ran counter to a more open, accountable and transparent society as pledged by the Prime Minister after the March 8 polls.
Earlier this month, Shabery had also announced that press freedom is the trend of the future because it was no longer practical to fully control the media.
Assuring that the media is freer and the days of what can be published or not are becoming fewer, Shabery said:
“We feel that there is a need to manage (information) and the people have to be educated on what is good or bad information.”
He added that he did not foresee the Printing Presses and Publications Act being used against the newspapers to suspend their licences in the case of the commission’s report.
“It would not be like the time when The Star had its licence suspended,” he quipped.
He added that the “danger” would be if the Government talked about press freedom but felt uneasy about it and suspended the licences instead.
“In this case, it does not touch on the question of national security,” he said.
If the Attorney-General felt that there was a need to prosecute the newspapers, those involved would have the opportunity to defend themselves in court, he said.
He added that the process of law allowed all parties to prove their innocence.
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