英语论文网

媒体被认为是社会的第四大支柱，而另外三个则是立法、行政和司法部门。它在社会福利方面发挥着重要的作用，作为一个告密者，一个教育工作者，一种娱乐和舆论影响者。在马来西亚，媒体和政治是相互依存的，因为通过这一点，民主形成了。在这个大背景下的民主，大众传媒起着重要的作用，通过提供媒体用户提供一个平台来获取信息，交换意见，同时反馈给政府；然而这是由州政府官员认为，媒体应该作为促进国家发展的一个必不可少的工具黯然失色，“国家”和“国家安全”。
主流媒体与政治
马来西亚主流媒体可以分为经历了改变自上世纪80年代初在所有权方面的一个主要时期以及繁荣的修正和政策，作为一种形式的把关和对媒体的控制。一切形式的媒体，报纸，广播和电视，直接受政府或与政府结盟的公司的控制。

Media is considered to be the 4th pillar of the society while the other three being legislative, executive and judiciary. It plays an important role in the welfare of the society, working as an informer, an educator, a form of entertainment and an opinion influencer. In Malaysia, media and Politics are co-dependent because through this, democracy is formed. Mustafa (1999) stated that in this broad context of democracy, the mass media plays an important role by supplying media users with a platform to obtain information, exchange views and at the same time give feedback to the government; however this is overshadowed by the state's official view that the media should be functioning as an essential tool to promote 'national development', 'national harmony' and 'national security'.

The Mainstream Media and Politics
The Malaysian mainstream press can be categorised as having gone through a major period of change since the early 1980s in terms of ownership and well as flourished amendments and policies that serves as a form of gate-keeping and control over the media. All forms of media introduced, newspaper, radio and television, directly went under the control of the government or companies that were aligned with the government.

In Malaysia, obtaining information is often a tedious affair and can be frustrating applied not just for journalists but for the public because there are no Freedom of Information (FOI) laws. One of the events that aided towards a tight control over the mainstream media was during the 1969 elections, Barisan National while retaining a majority, lost many seats to extremist Chinese and Malay parties Yesudhasan & Wong (2010) stated that Malaysia experienced one of the worst incident of ethnic violence in its history that came to be known as the 'May 13 incident'. As part of the government's plan to sustain social order then, the government suspended the publications for all newspapers for two days starting from 16 May 1969, subsequently introduced a censorship law and banned the circulation of certain foreign magazines and newspapers that contained reports of the violence in Kuala Lumpur (Mustafa, 1999)

Due to the incident, the government declared to have the rights to censor items that were deemed 'dangerous to national security'. The Malaysian government appears to be misusing arguments of religious sensitive and cultural issues to manipulate the political system by limiting political freedom of the opposition and civil society which makes Malaysia a less democratic state (Azizuddin, 2008) Then, a new established body, the National Operations Council (NOC) was formed to resuscitate parliamentary democracy, rebuild public confidence and engender ethic harmony and a form contributing towards forming ethic harmony; an amendment was form whereby it prohibited any act, speech or publication that has a tendency to bring feelings of ill-will and enmity between the various ethnic groups (Zaharom, 1999) Thus the strong hold over the mainstream media begins.

Many government leaders in the developing world j