Saturday, May 12, 2012

The Star - Malaysia's Best Newspaper?

I am appalled to see the kind of investigative reporting that the reporters at the Star are doing. In this article today, the Star reports that 100,000 people showed their unwavering support for UMNO:

If the reporters at the Star had an ounce of initiative, they would have obtained this picture, which was shown in the Malaysian Insider:


The stadium does not even look like it is half full. And any donkey with the ability to use Google or Wikipedia will be able to find out that the Bukit Jalil stadium has a capacity of 100,000. According to Wikipedia, the seating room is about 87,000. So, with my advanced mathematics skills, I calculated half of 100,000 to be only 50,000. How did the Star come up with the 100,000 number? Who knows... Maybe it saw fit to exaggerate the amount of support for its "masters".

The Malaysian Insider portrays a more accurate picture:
KUALA LUMPUR, May 11 — Datuk Seri Najib Razak rallied Umno tonight to defend the country from being destroyed by the opposition, which he called uncivilised, undemocratic and lacking credibility.

The Umno president told at least 50,000 in the arena and thousands more loitering outside “not to let our children and grandchildren become destitute (terbangsat).”
Why is anyone still reading the Star?