(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
The ability of the government to dominate is known as hegemony, the concept that was
developed by Gramsci. According to him, hegemony rfers to a group and its representative which
exercise power on them through a combination of force and concillation. That is:
“In his notes on Machiavelli’s Prince, Gramchi evokes the mythical
Greek centaur, half animal and half human, as a symbol of the dual
perspective in political action – the levels of force and consent,
authority and hegemony, violence and civilisation. Hegemony is a
relation, not of domination by means of force, but of consent by
means of political and ideological leadership. It is the organisation
of consent”.
(Simon: 21:1985)
In the context of Malaysia, the freedom to voice or more relevantly as the freedom of
press which forms the basis of democracy failed to florish due to two manjor constraints namely
(1) The ownership of the media by the government (2) The implementation of laws relating to
media and its practitioner. Numerous articles and researches were carried out on the matter
relating to the ownership of the media in this country. One significant development was that in
1974 the law of Malaysia stipulated that the press in Malaysia should be wholly owned or
controlled by the Malaysian. This situation had permitted the involvement of major polical parties
to participate in the business and thus controlled almost all the press at that time. For the scholars
who solely focussed in the research of ownership this phenomenon was not foreign to them
(Gomez 1990; 1991; 1996; Jomo & Gomez, 1997)
For example the principal political party of the Malay, United Malay National
Organization (UMNO) itself had directly controlled the media specifically through the taking
over Utusan Melayu in 1961 (Safar Hashim, 1996), Gomez also noted that the control of UMNO
in Utusan Malaysia was not solely for the motive of business but more towards the control of
media (Gomez, 1990). This development had been confirmed by the remarks made by Means;
In 1972, Pernas, the government –owned national trading
company, acquired 80 per cent contro lof the Straits Times
(which changed its name to the New Straits Tinmes in
1974). Later, a majority of shares were transferred to Fleet
Holdings, an investment arm of UMNO under the
chairmanship of Dr. Mahathir’s close political associate,
Daim Zainuddin. By the early 1980s UMNO had direct or
indirect ownership of the New Straits Times, Berita Minggu,
The Malay Mail, Utusan Melayu, and Utusan Malaysia.
(Means, 1991;137)
The control of press by UMNO did not stop here but it goes on until today. The situation
existed clearly indicated the direct involvement of the party in the running of the media of this
country (Mustafa, 2005). For the parties which represented Chinese and Indian, they were also no
exception, in that they controlled their vernacular press. Means once again exposed this;
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