Ahmad Azam and The Edge editor-in-chief Kathy Fong at the Petaling Jaya Magistrate’s Court – Bernama
IT’S an irony. Two years ago, The Edge carried an expose of how a group of individuals, supposedly acting in concert, had amassed shares in more than 20 public-listed companies, where they were most actively traded.
They often had huge fluctuating sharp prices and according to the financial publication, the companies were all linked to one person.
Nine of the 21 companies mentioned had their offices in an office block in Petaling Jaya.
The report revealed the names of the companies and individuals allegedly involved and purportedly showed discrepancies.
The Edge said the authorities had raided the offices for involvement in manipulation of penny stocks on Bursa Malaysia.
It said the group controlled as many as 60 companies on Bursa Malaysia, claiming that the control came from Hong Kong.
But fast forward to 2022, no one named by The Edge has been arrested nor charged by the Malaysian authorities.
Instead, the former editor-in-chief of The Edge Ahmad Azam Mohd Aris was charged at the Magistrate’s Courts with criminal defamation over the reports published in 2020 and 2021 during his tenure.
The Edge’s contributing editor M. Shanmugam has also been named as an accused in one of the cases.
The charges are most unusual and baffling.
If the aggrieved party, in this case, a businessman, then he should file a civil suit against The Edge for a massive sum of money as his image has been allegedly tarnished.
It is a civil dispute and most media organisations have accepted this as part of their occupational hazards.
But the media fraternity, not just The Edge, has every right to ask why the police and the Deputy Public Prosecutor’s (DPP) office in Kuala Lumpur are taking the responsibility on the issue?
In fact, we want to know whether the allegations reported by The Edge have any basis and what has been the outcome of the investigations, if any, as the public has every right to know.
If the allegations are baseless, then so be it, the police or any of the authorities should tell us so, that the well-researched articles are nothing more than the reporters’ figment of imagination.
Certainly, the public, especially the small-time investors, who have lost their money, would want to know too.
The Edge has also refused to name the reporters involved in the reports, despite being asked by the police, saying “it is because we want to ensure the safety of our journalists that the two articles were published without any names.’’
The two articles carried the byline – The Edge Malaysia –instead of individual names.
The Edge Media Group chief executive officer Datuk Ho Kay Tat has rightly said that the businessman should sue the pants out of The Edge, and certainly the police and DPP should convey the same message.
Of course, freedom of speech does not mean an open licence to slander and defame anyone but in this dispute over the contents of the two articles, let the lawyers from both sides fight it out.
Surely, the police and DPP have more pressing and urgent matters to handle, particularly in hunting down the real crooks.
The mood of the media over the charging of Ahmad Azam and Shanmugam has caused much uneasiness and anger, in most newsrooms.
After all, if it can happen to Ahmad Azam and Shanmugam, it can also happen to any of us in the other media outlets.
Worse, Ahmad Azam was only told about the charges against him at 6.30pm on the eve of the charges on Tuesday.
But for sure, members of the media are standing in support of the two gentlemen and The Edge.
