Last Sunday I have an opportunity to watch a film entitled “at the Eleventh hour”, by invitation from UMW Toyota and various oil & Gas Companies. It was screened at TGV One Utama and I went there with my special friend .Ok, he’s the one who got the invitation (he works with an oil and gas company) and he brought me along, to be true. He knows my passion towards environment as I always scold him for smoking cigs, an activity that produced the Co2, along with other greenhouse gases like carbon monoxide.
To my surprise, at the end of the film, it came to my knowledge that the producer of the film is Leonardo Dicaprio, the narrator of the documentary itself. Then I started to wonder, what are the contributions made by local artists to save the environment, if any? Names like Zainal Abidin and Maya Karin came across my mind, and so far Zainal is the only artist I know who fight enormously for environment through his songs and activities. And he is not well known to all Malaysian despite of years have been in the lime light of local music industry. But try to ask “tadika” students, who Mawi is, and they will generously answer with numerous information about this idol. Nonsense! As far as I know, the only contribution made by Mawi to Malaysian, (especially to Malay), is that he has victoriously proved to us that even a “Pangkat tiga” SPM holder can have their own convocation day, completed with graduation robe, plus the huge media coverage and the next day, will be on the front page of every leading newspapers! Awesome!!
Now my question is, do we really want our future generation to have second class minded, thinking that being an artist or an entertainer is their utmost priority? I am sick of any parent who wants their children to be famous by being artists. It was only three weeks ago that we celebrated World Environment Day with the rest of the world and it seems like all the efforts in creating awareness and urgency towards protecting environment had barely made an impact on public apathy. We still see destruction everywhere, some people still throwing rubbish out of their windows while driving, and perhaps do not know where to begin to save the environment. Recently I encountered with a shocking experience, a lady who I hardly know, has thrown a plastic bag full of rubbish to a big drain next to her house. Later, when I questioned about her disrespectful act, she merely said she just hates the environment! I told her to wait until the drain is clogged with rubbish and the filthy water invades her entire house. Then only she knows how she has been very stupid for all these while.
So there it goes the never ending stories about Malaysians’ attitude problem. Everyone knows about it, but we just sweep it under the carpet because most of us have the “don’t care” attitude.
Another disgusted experience I have had recently, during a visit to a friend house, a friend to a friend of mine teased me with question what the PR of Selangor can do, since the fuel price is still continuously hiking up, and never go down. I smile at him, knowing that he has not got the fact right. I told him that our country is a democracy country that even though the state of Selangor mostly won by PR, basically they are quite helpless in the sense of making decision at federal level, as the cabinet ministers are from the ruling government. This fact, that I explained really surprised him, for he thought that since PR won many seats, we already have a joint government, or a cabinet with opposition and backbencher sitting together to make decision for the benefits of Malaysian.
My little heart screamed in agony, and secretly I prayed for most of Malaysian to be more conscious-minded. He then, made a lame excuse to cover up his chauvinism by saying I hate politician regardless of their background. As he said that, I felt pity to him and anyone who shares the same thought, for actually they hate politics just because they do not really know and aware of real situations happen around them. By this fact, I think half of the Malaysian population can’t tell the difference between a parliament and a cabinet, and how our democracy system is different with democracy in United States. (As for me, I’m thankful to Mr. Munisparan for teaching me political science during my days in law matriculation, and to Professor Shad Farouki, in his constitutional law class)
It’s true that some say we have the first world facilities but Third world mentality. I have a different opinion. Some poorer countries have better awareness of environment and political issues than us.
And who can blame most of Malaysian for being ignorant of their environment and current important issues? (What I mean by important issues are issues that happen around the world, and could have effectted to human population, like natural disaster, war against terrorism, new type of diseases, global warming, political issues and many more, but certainly not issues like Faizal Tahir stripped bare during a show for sure) The media? Part of it, I guess. Study of media relation and society comes out with a theory called Agenda setting. Whereby, under this theory, the audience would decide for themselves what they consider what information was important to them. And this information is provided by the media. As in our Malaysian case, the media varied from government – owned RTM, and private stations like ASTRO and TV3.
The premise of the approach of this theory was summarized by Cohen (1963): “that the media are not successful in telling us what to think, but it is stunningly in telling us what to think about”. This means that the media brings information, the audience would select the information and they would talk among themselves about that information (Dearing & Rogers, 1996)
The Agenda Setting perspective continued to contribute significantly to the growth of political communication as many scholars initially used this perspective in their analysis of politics and media. Agenda Setting has continued to be used in the present understanding of political and media, with scholars adding the notion of the second level of analysis. To the empirical approach, an interpretative approach by using framing has been added to Agenda Setting.
And guess what type of information the media has feed us all these while? We have been portrayed by the media that artist idolism is cool, and whatever deeds the opposition done is concealed neatly to ensure the vitality of current government. This act is praqctically against the democracy principal.
And where are the stories about environmental issues? Don’t we realize the mother of earth has spoken angrily? We may think all the natural disaster, floods, the draughts, tsunamis and typhoons is just acts of nature. We are completely wrong. It happens for reasons, as a result from our own activities. even The Quran has one verse mentioned about natural disasters, should have happened only by the greedy hands of human being. look alone in the case of Highland Tower. the landslide would never be happend if at first, the contractor agreed to the first architect firm which strongly adviced not to proceed with the building of condos. instead, they took another firm and continued the construction. Global warming, here and there, but yet, we still take advantages of what nature has catered us ever since. Just a simple case; trees give us oxygen, and even absorb our own unused CO2, (another cause of green house effect) still we cut down all the trees in the name of development.
Logging, illegal or not, happen every day at the speed of light in every corner of the world. And what is left for our future generation? We do not own the earth; but we borrow it from the next generation. The good news and the bad news is that our children will live in the future we choose. Surely we don’t want to be blamed by our generation one day.
So why do we wait? Every Malaysian should start conserving the nature by now. Safeguarding the environment for future generations can simply begin by reducing the waste each and every one of us generates today. It will never be too late to act now, even the smallest effort counts. Reduce, reuse and recycle everything we use daily. Reduce pollution by buying less, choosing only durable items over disposable ones, repairing rather than discarding and passing on items that are no longer needed to someone who can make use of them. It’s so simple and easy. If every Malaysian chooses to live their life this way, I am sure quite sure that 10years from now we are at par with other first class countries like Korea and Japan in efforts to save the environment.
To the Malaysian media, enough is enough. If we want our generation to have a first class minded, media should play a major role, by only providing real news rather than non-news and less important news, particularly nonsensical utterance made by artists and some stupid politician.
Aisya Zaharin
