Careful With Information Sourced From Blogs, Says Ahmad Zahid

Malaysians abroad, including students, have been advised to be careful and not to be easily influenced by what is being written in blogs about the political development back home.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said many of the blog contents were mere allegations.

He said reading blogs just for the sake of obtaining information not reported by the mainstream media, could poison the mind as the many of the contents were not based on facts.

"They should also balance things out by reading websites of the mainstream media like Bernama and Utusan Malaysia which are reporting issues based on ethical writing," he said at a meeting with staff of the Malaysian embassy here on Friday.

Zahid said the Barisan Nasional (BN) government had accepted the fact that it only managed to secure 140 seats in parliament in the 12th general election and acknowledged the achievement by opposition parties in controlling the other 82 seats.

On the same note, he said, the opposition should also recognise the BN government and acknowledge that even though the coalition only manage a simple majority, it was still a government elected by the people.

"But the opposition has been playing with politics since day one after the election. They want Malaysia to become a country with daily politicking so much so that the government's efforts to develop the country and to care for the people's well-being appear to have been affected," he said.

He also said the opposition was only interested in finding faults with the government.

A certain individual, whose ambition was to become the prime minister at all costs, including seeking support from United States, had been masterminding the attempts to run down the government, he said. (Bernama)

***** Does Zahid truly believe that such a simplistic appeal to the students along with his dismissal of blog posts as 'mere allegations' will do the trick? So the audience out of politeness might have nodded their head and applauded. But after the minister leaves do you really think that they'd go to Bernama for really up-to-date and accurate information?

Blogs for quite some time now have achieved credibility and started to fill the space which government inspired fiction and half-lies have long ignored; the harsh truth. Now good old Zahid comes along and says careful brudder these fellows will poison your mind! The litmus test is how much that gets published in the blogs is finally proven true and in the same vein how much the mainstream media is forced to omit or prefers to leave out in the name of self-censorship. Ultimately it is you who decides, not Zahid.