Updated: Not all willing to openly agree with Kay Tat's Way, The Mole quizzes seasoned journos if they'd do the same if they were in Kay Tat's shoes ...
Otais: Zam, AKJ, SyedN
No political agenda? In my posting below, I deliberately left out the politics from Kay Tat's "we couldn't walk away" statement. Do read YB Rahman Dahlan's "Excuse me, I wasn't born yesterday" for that.
Original posting:
As a journalist, I salute Ho Kay Tat for upholding our right to publish what he deems to be true and in the interest of the public. I have known editors who'd rather be damned for NOT publishing instead of pushing the limits of press freedom: they'd cower at the slightest prospect of a lawsuit, or the displeasure of their CEO, or the wrath of politicians.
Kay Tat, based on the statement he issued yesterday, is a publish-and-be-damend kind of editor. My kind of guy.
If you ask me, I'd probably do what Kay Tat did: publish those stories about dubious and shady deals once I've established for certain that those "thousands and thousands of" documents were authentic and, more importantly, that the source(s) were genuine and had no ulterior motives.
But I would have done it only up to the point of Xavier Justo's arrest in Thailand late last month and the Thai police revelation that documents had been stolen/tampered with/used for blackmail and other criminal intent.
At that point, the right thing to do would have been for the Edge to stop using those documents immediately (for fear that they may be the same documents the Thai police said may have been tampered with) and give the authorities and the accused the benefit of the doubt. The act of doing the "last kopek" article on Monday is, therefore, on the side of reckless and can be construed as self-glorification.
p.s
Did you know that ...
"Publish and be damned" were words first uttered in response to a blackmail attempt over an extra-marital affair.
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| Ho Kay Tat: I did not pay for the documents |
As a journalist, I salute Ho Kay Tat for upholding our right to publish what he deems to be true and in the interest of the public. I have known editors who'd rather be damned for NOT publishing instead of pushing the limits of press freedom: they'd cower at the slightest prospect of a lawsuit, or the displeasure of their CEO, or the wrath of politicians.
Kay Tat, based on the statement he issued yesterday, is a publish-and-be-damend kind of editor. My kind of guy.
"The easiest thing we could have done after coming across what we found, was to walk away. Why look for trouble? But we could not do that. We chose to take the difficult path, one that we knew will be fraught with risks to ourselves personally and to our organisation, which now faces the possibility of action by the Home Ministry."- Ho Kay Tat inWe could not walk away on finding out about the scheme to cheat Malaysia of billions of ringgit The Malaysian Insider 20/7/2015
If you ask me, I'd probably do what Kay Tat did: publish those stories about dubious and shady deals once I've established for certain that those "thousands and thousands of" documents were authentic and, more importantly, that the source(s) were genuine and had no ulterior motives.
But I would have done it only up to the point of Xavier Justo's arrest in Thailand late last month and the Thai police revelation that documents had been stolen/tampered with/used for blackmail and other criminal intent.
At that point, the right thing to do would have been for the Edge to stop using those documents immediately (for fear that they may be the same documents the Thai police said may have been tampered with) and give the authorities and the accused the benefit of the doubt. The act of doing the "last kopek" article on Monday is, therefore, on the side of reckless and can be construed as self-glorification.
p.s
Did you know that ...
"Publish and be damned" were words first uttered in response to a blackmail attempt over an extra-marital affair.