utusan Malaysia

An overview on

Utusan Malaysia

An introduction

Utusan Malaysia is a Malaysian newspaper daily with its headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was founded on May 29, 1939. Utusan Malaysia translates to English as “Malaysian Courier”. This newspaper comes in both Malay and English Language and serves as an unofficial spokesman for the United Malays National Organization which is the ruling party and the owner. Initially in 1939 the newspaper was published as the Utusan Malayu. Abdul Rahim Kajai, one of the fathers of this newspaper daily was dubbed “Father of Malay Journalism”. The publication was temporarily withheld when Japan occupied Malaya and Singapore. The headquarters which presently reside in Kuala Lumpur was initially located in Cecil Street.

 

In the year of 1961 the workers mounted a strike against the fact that the ruling party United Malays National Organization (UMNO) took over the organization and expressed concern over Utusan’s independence. Ever since then utusan malaysia terkini has been the unofficial party representative for UMNO in spite of all the protests and strikes. The official publicized newspaper came out on 1^st of September, 1967 as a Romanized version. Also as a daily edition of Mingguan Malaysia, this was published two years before, on the 30th of August, 1964.

 

Format of the newspaper

Consisting of over 32 pages, utusan terkini supplies its readers with ample news and current affairs. Additionally it includes supplements concentrating on diverse topics like fashion, health, music, technology, politics and entertainment. Sports news, regional articles, business and education news are also covered. This is Malaysia’s one and only national language broadsheet newspaper as Berita Harian, another Malay daily changed its format to tabloid in 2008. The logo this newspaper daily is a blue masthead.

 

Circulation

The sales of this newspaper peaked in the 1990’s selling 350,000 copies per day and went on to become the largest selling newspaper dailies in Malaysia. In 2010 though the circulation has slightly declined where about 170,000 copies were sold, only. However by 2012, sales picked up 178,000 copies daily.

 

How the reader’s received it

Utusan Malaysia has come under the criticism a lot many times for its double standards in reporting articles. This was done with regard to political news and often the statements given by Chief Ministers in the opposition party were manipulated, taken out of context or fabricated. Also reported of provoking racist sentiments amongst the masses, Utusan Malaysia was accused of publishing a highly racist news against the Chinese. It was in the year 2013 just the day after the general elections. The headline was titled – “Apa lagu Cina mahu?” meaning what else do the Chinese want?

 

The newspaper daily went on to accuse the Chinese Malaysians by labeling them ungrateful and reportedly trying to dethrone the Malaysian government. A boycott was also staged by the former opposition – Perak state government. The newspaper has been badly criticized for not publishing adequate articles on foreign news. It has also been held for publishing irresponsible news and been characterized as a propaganda newspaper only publishing news for the ruling party. Utusan Malaysia also had to face a number of lawsuits mostly because of its badly distorted and defamatory coverage of news.