Malaysia's Newspaper Brings Embarrassment

Recently, Japan was traumatized by the event where they watched tsunami and the earthquake destroyed Tōhoku. The death toll was devastating and while the nation were reaching out to assist Japan in recovering, one of the Malaysia’s newspaper’s cartoonist, Mohd Zohri Sukimi from Berita Harian decided to be a joker and published a cartoon of an Ultraman running away from the jaw of Tsunami. What an embarrassment! Many criticized the cartoon. Some Facebook users created a Facebook page petition to show their disappointment on the issue.

Figure 1.1: Cartoon found in Berita Harian shows Ultra-man running away from the jaws of Tsunami.

Source of image: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/8471258-earthquake-and-tsunami-cartoons-malaysia-abusing-japan-tsunami

The article above brings out the ethical issues in publishing. According to a definition of ethical issue in writing and publishing by King (n.d.); there are a few ethical issues that are marked as important issues, for example, fraudulent publication, the ever-famous plagiarism, cloning of publication, authorship, protocol or manners and also potential of creating conflicts and so on. This proved that Berita Harian had violated the ethnics of publishing as stated above, which is the potential of creating conflicts and also protocol or manners.

Such image by Berita Harian will create dispute and tension among the nations and Malaysia is really lucky that nobody did anything worst than criticising Berita Harian and their idiocy. The matter could have been worst.

I am surprised that the editor of Berita Harian allowed such incident to happen and even more surprised that no action were taken other than Berita Harian issued an apology and the image being taken off Berita Harian. In my own point of view, I relate this issue to the ownership of media. Imagine if the private non-government owned Newspaper Company who is responsible of the Berita Harian incident, the license would have been stripped off that instant!

What is wrong with the world and power!

Reference:

1. King, C.R., n.d., Ethical Issues in Writing and Publishing, Available: http://www.ons.org/Publications/CJON/AuthorInfo/WritingSupp/Ethics/. Last accessed: 5^th June 2011.
2. Wong, P.M., 2011, Berita Harian Issues Public Apology Over Tsunami Cartoon, The Star Online Newspaper, Available: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/3/14/nation/8262608&sec=nation. Last accessed: 4^th June 2011.