Malaysiakini gained a global reputation by remaining independent while publishing in a restrictive media atmosphere. After 22 years at the helm, co-founder Premesh Chandran speaks about creating a quadrilingual website that receives millions of unique pageviews a day, and about helping to change the media conversation in Malaysia.
Slavery is not a vestige of the past, and according to UN data there are an estimated 40 million victims of modern slavery today. An all-star team of journalists, editors, and consultants who have investigated and exposed extraordinary cases of modern slavery and forced labor shared their stories and tips for reporters at GIJC21.
The pandemic has posed an additional threat to news media around the world, underscoring the need for legacy media to go digital. In a recent series of GIJN workshops on media transformation, experts spoke about their journey and the need for a shift in mindset across every area of the business.
When Clare Rewcastle Brown founded the Sarawak Report in 2010, it was designed to highlight issues affecting indigenous communities in Malaysia, but it soon became instrumental in breaking what the US attorney-general has described as the worst form of kleptocracy in history — the 1MDB scandal involving the plundering of state funds allegedly by Malaysia’s then prime minister and his associates.
With the opposition in power for the first time since independence in Malaysia, one of the oldest and most influential digital news sites in Asia, Malaysiakini, which was set up in 1999 to show people what the state-controlled media wouldn’t, is looking to the future.
