This is specially for Tony as it will bring back many "happy" memories of "childhood". Bunga is that you sitting on the horse?

Now this is a typical scene in the tunnelbanna. It's important for visitors to Stockholm to get used to the system as it is an "inexpensive" way to get around and many areas are serviced by the system.

EVALUATION OF WEBSITES

GOOD SITES

Malaysian Government's Official Portal

I'm actually quite surprised to say this but this is actually a good site for a start to know more about the Malaysian government and other relevant things about their services. This is so because many of our government-based websites are lousy because they just either do not have the information, are not user-friendly, badly laid-out or just not updated frequently.
The only grouse I have is that it does not have a date when it was last updated so visitors will not be too sure how current the information given is.

World Wildlife Fund for Nature - Malaysia

Now this is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that is a charity that is quite famous and hardly needs an introduction but they deal with conservation and environment issues.
It's a pretty good site but maybe the layout could have been slightly better and the use of more pictures on the homepage as it is all about nature and this is (pun not intended) a natural draw for visitors who will be taken up with the beauty and wonder of the subject.
But it's contents are good and easy to navigate and they have broken it down by issues and projects. For the media it is also made easier as many of their press statements are out in the main page so you don't have to go down deeper into the site to get at them.
Even though they don't have an update date from the postings you can see that they are very recent.

BAD SITES

Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Asia-Pacific

Now this is a site run by an NGO that does a lot of work on controlling or banning the use of certain pesticides. A cursory look seems to indicate they have lots of useful information. But what is sad is the layout does not grab you and this might discourage a lot of journalists or readers from otherwise looking more deeply into the site.
Also they have worked with the media a lot and they should have a section devoted to links to stories (or even the reports themselves) that have appeared in the media. This will give some confidence and give them credibility with journalists unfamiliar with their work.
Again it is disappointing to see that there is no mention of when the last update was done.

The Orang Asli Affairs Department (Malaysia)

Seems impressive at the start. This is the government department that handles the affairs of the Orang Asli (the term used as a collective for the indigenous tribes in Peninsular Malaysia. While there are other indigenous tribes in Sabah and Sarawak, our Bornean states, they have enough numbers to have a political presence in their respective states so don't need a department to handle their affairs).
So this is the department that is supposed to help this poor, troubled and downtrodden people. They seeminlgy have lots of wonderful sub-contents to click on and it gives their aims and objectives but never actually gives you information of what they have actually done. Of course since this is a government department what is not known is that many of the conflicts this community has had has been with the government who have acquired their traditional and customary land.

PRESENTATION FOR OREBRO
(For countries in South East Asia and China)

CHALLENGES AND POSSIBILITIES

While to many people (including journalists themselves) on the other side of the world, Asians are generally lumped as something that's homogenous. That's so far removed from the truth considering it's diverse cultures, religions, races and tribes, and political and economic situations.
There is no such thing as one Asian culture or this or that.
So the same can be said of the Asian media and the situation of the media there. I am supposed to give an overview of the challenges facing the media in South East Asia (Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam), and this also includes China for this presentation (which is so huge it can be taken as a single geographical area by itself).

We will first look at what are the common challenges and problems these countries in the region face and in the process also highlight the differences.
I will also point out some peculiar and special situations facing each of these countries and during the question and answer session my colleagues from these respective countries can then elaborate if required.

Commonalities and differences

Challenges

Now I have lumped three different issues together because as you will see in many of these countries they are very much interlinked.

Laws and regulations/ownership/legal threats

Thailand and Philippines - Probably the freest press in Asia. They have many privately owned media groups though some of them are so big they maybe monopolise the market. They both have some sort of censorship laws but they are not so strict so while facing pressure from the usual sources, political and corporate they have basically the space to put out what the public needs to have access to. In Thailand though recently there has been pressure by the government through legal suits to muzzle the media. There has also been an attempt to take control of two newspapers by a business mogul closely linked to Premier Thaksin but this was stopped due to public pressure.
One must also remember that it was the media and people power that brought down two previous Filipino governments.
Malaysia - There are many laws restricting the practice of free media. For the print media its athe annual licensing law that keeps a stranglehold on how much they say. While there is also broadcasting laws for TV and radio. There are also repressive laws that can be used to hold journalists without having a need for a trial. Much of what is government documents come is stamped secret and there is no freedom of information act currently.
Also our only recognised Internet-based media Malaysiakini has ben harassed by the authorities even though there is supposed to be a government policy of no censorship of the Net.
There is also the possibility of a statutory Media Council to deal with complaints against the media.
Many newspapers, radio and television (besides the state-run TV/radio/news agency) are directly owned by political parties or corporate figures linked to politicians.
Previously there have been defamation suits by corporate figures with results in their favour. Indirectly these has resulted in muzzling of the media and encourages editors and journalists to practice self-censorship.
Indonesia - In theory since Suharto's downfall in 1999 the enactment of a press law that gives independence in reporting should be good news for this country. The abolishment of the restrictive licensing law for media too should mean this would make the media quite free. Unfortunately in practice this has not been the case and access to public documents is still restricted though there is an attempt to have a law to try and redress that situation. Courts are still using the criminal code to resolve press-related disputes instead of the "sleeping" Press Council. As a result several journalists have been put behind bars.
Vietnam - Through open-door policy has seen more than 500 newspapers, 64 radio stations and TV and of those 7 TV channels nation-wide. All are state-owned while of these there are 5 to 6 national newspapers, four national TV stations and one national radio station. The rest are regional based. It has completed policy to establish media corporations, now.
Cambodia - Journalists are governed by a law (enacted in 1995) that limits what they can say. They also face difficulties in accessing public documents (if they want they need to submit a letter and after less than 30 days a reply might be received).
Journalists have also been sued by government officials and punished for their reports.
Laos - Again all the newspapers, radio and TV are under the state and with a small population of 6.5mil they have limited readership. They have 3 daily newspapers in Laotian language with two in English and one in French. There are six magazines and four are privately owned but deal with lifestyle or business. There are 2 TV stations and one radio station. But the provinces have their own stations. There being not many companies in Laos revenue from advertising is small and the finance basically comes from the government. Draw your conclusions from that.
China - All media is state-owned with maybe some corporations allowed a minimal investment in some of these. Permits are needed to publish, broadcast or transmit even though they are state-owned.
Burma - All of these don't even really figure in the Burmese situation as all media is state-controlled under the military regime. Everything goes through the Censorship Board and anything that doesn't, is considered illegal and anyone doing so can be and have been charged under the Publishing Act. So numerous people in the media have been arrested and died during their imprisonment.
The use of the Internet is very restricted and any sites that are against the regime can not be accessed in Burma.

Lack of infrastructure, resources, training
Thailand, Malaysia and Philippines - No such problems here though in Malaysia many of the journalists while having degrees are not journalism degrees.
Also in Malaysia many editors and senior journalists compromise on ethics but this is not seen by the media fraternity as a problem and sets a poor example for newbies in the profession.
Indonesia - The general quality of journalists vary a lot and as a result you have journalists and editors who go for sensational and provocative news where journalistic standards are not followed. They cater and pander to the lowest denominator and have lost their educational value.
Vietnam - Lack of infrastructure, and modern equipment to meet the demands of development. In short there is a need for a national information infrastructure and training centres.
Laos - As they have no journalism courses many of their journalists only receive formal training overseas. Of course even more so than Vietnam or Cambodia they do not have the economic resources to improve technology wise.
Cambodia - Journalists are not registered and as a result many of them are not professional in the way they conduct themselves. So there is a problem of ethics in the profession as they have no knowledge of journalism.
China - There is no real lack in these areas but maybe for the smaller provincial areas.

Income
To a certain extent journalists in Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand are decently paid. Unfortunately for Malaysia this contributes to a lack of fighting spirit for within and outside the profession to improve standards and work environment. Though a case could be made that because of the less then favourable freedom of the media this has discouraged them from doing so.
For most of the other countries in the region this is still a major problem and some have to work for more than one paper or have other jobs to supplement their income.

Special cases

Philippines - Since 1986 after the fall of Marcos there have been 90 journalists who have been killed (and not through natural causes). This makes this country one of the most dangerous to be a journalist in the world.
There might be other countries in the region where this might have also occurred but the numbers if any are small.

Malaysia - Primarily in the print media but also in the other media there has been a trend to dumb down the contents. This is because readership has reached a plateau and there is fierce competition to get readers especially the younger market who have been seen as turning to the Internet as their source of the news. This has resulted in a lack of analytical content and in-depth investigative reporting. Increasingly media companies see themselves as businesses first and the role of providing unbiased content last.
This trend can be probably be seen or would occur in other countries too.

China - The challenge of transforming China from a communist-based one to a more free market economy has brought about many changes. China's peoples are quite diversified economically now and the challenge is for the media to feed these different needs. They also have part of nation-building or in this case transformation so have to build that into their own set-ups.

POSSIBILITIES
While for many of the countries in the region it is more of getting rid of repressive laws that restrict the freedom of the media for others it is the use of new technology to be harnessed to better do the role of the media and of course to increase the audience.
One of the first ways is to use the Internet and many countries media already have online versions of their publications or stations. Even tiny Laos have their newspapers and radio online.
There is also the role of Multimedia - webcasts, radio feeds etc online and some of the bigger countries have already started on this.
The world of blogging has opened up new possibilities and some newspapers have even have their own blogs or link to those who do.
The use of SMS and news downloads to mobile phones is already being practiced in some countries. While there are some who might be looking at podcasting, which is still a relatively new phenomenon in the region.
There is also the possibility of web-based TV.
Then there is the phenomenon of citizen reporting but as in blogging this brings about a whole issue of what is a journalist then.
It certainly will be interesting times and we have to keep up or lose the race.
Thank you and tack.

Another view inside the Swedish Parliament. This is the first chamber normally used by the ruling Social Democrats. Wed, Oct5, 2005.

Me at the Swedish Parliament on Wed, Oct 5, 2005.
The only deliberation going on now is in my mind.

FIRST WEEK AND FIRST STEPS (as my title page strap has disappeared - there's a bug in my blog and it's bugging me)

IT started out with an introduction of our "home" for the next four weeks. Journalists from 11 countries (24 in total) we given a tour of the JMK building in Karlavagen, Stockholm. We were here to attend the SIDA 2005 course on Internet Research and Publishing.
So the day (Mon Oct 3, 2005) consisted mainly of getting to know our two main lecturers Mark Comerford and Roland Standbridge, and the facilities available to us during our course. The JMK staff kindly hosted us at a reception in the evening where me met some other lecturers and some students of JMK which is a department of the Stockholm University.

On Tuesday we got down to real work as Mark gave us an overview of the Internet and the resources on it like search engines, portals, especially the ones relevant to us as journalists and journalism lecturers. We looked at how to organise e-mail. There was also an introduction (at least to many of us) to blogs, RSS and podcasting. A lot to absorb in a day.
Our assignment for the day was to interview a fellow participant and put up his or her profile on the google group created for us by Mark, sida05. My "target" was Mohmmad Sahid Ullah from Bangladesh.

Wednesday was site visit day. The first stop was the Swedish Foreign Ministry's press office for foreign correspondents where a spokesperson gave us an insight on how the system worked there for the foreign press. Interesting indeed especially the range of services offered.
The second stop was the Swedish Parliament also situated in Gamlastan. The overview of how the Parliament works was very revealing especially the fact that much of the work was actually done at committee level and the parliament when in session just votes on the bill or act (which has basically much been decided at the committee level already as the composition reflects that of the parliament itself). We also spoke to a journalist who has specialised in coverin the parliament but it was a bit dissapointing as we never learnt how that was done and did not actually answer some of the other more probing questions. While we learnt that information in Sweden is available to any member of the public (except those that involve defence and foreign policy) there were some sort of lobbyists and connections between government and the corporate sector that exerts some subtle influence.
We ended the day with a visit to the sponsors of the course, SIDA, who have a library of resources available to the public and of course the journalists.

On Thursday morning our lecturer was Håkan Lindhoff who gave us an overview of the history of the Swedish media and how the situation is like now. It was interesting to note that much of the media is in the hands of a few powerful families/companies who have subtle links to the political parties because of their own stand on political and other issues.
In the afternoon Mark made his presence felt again. We looked even more deeply into blogging and how it could be an alternative source of information for journalists. We then looked at something quite new to us - podcasting - which generally processes information sent out from your cellular phone to the Internet. Interesting future possibilities especially for journalists stuck in remote areas with no communication facilities.

On Friday it was Roland's turn to make an appearance. He gave everyone an overview of the Internet and how it started. What was useful was how to do searches for information. That being done it was told to us (which some journalists sometimes forget) is to evaluate the information that is now revealed to us through our searches.
Oh yeah, there was also the assignment for Orebro next Friday where two of us (representing South East Asia and South Asia respectively) will give an overview of the challenges and possibilities for the media in the region. Guess who the "lucky" person was who has to present for South East Asia - why yours truly. Now that's a challenge.

One of the first views of Stockholm after getting out at Gamla Stan.

October 2, 2005 (Sunday)
How exciting! I'm in Stockholm and Sweden for the first time. We were warned that temperatures might reach -5 C but what awaited us at the airport was sunshine. Sure the sun was shining but was the temperature bearable? Yes, yes, yes it was.
Later we were told this was one of the best start of the Autumn season for a long time. I told Åsa the coordinator of the SIDA2005 course (the reason 24 journalists from Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, China, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh were here) that we must have brought the warm weather back from home.
We reached our hotel (Acapulco - you know where they go loco - just me and my peculiar? habit of refering to songs and their lyrics), which looked pretty inviting.

Later Claudia (my colleague from Malaysia), Tony and Bunga (from Indonesia) decided to head down to the famous tourist spot of Gamla Stan. We were given a ticket (that can be used for a month) to use to take the tunnelbanna (the subway). The ticket can also be used for buses, trams, the commuter train and even some boats.

Our tunnelbanna stop was Skanstull. We had to take the green line and get off at Gamla Stan. The first bit was okay but it was quite funny when we had to exit (there being many exits we just picked one) and expected to slot in the ticket to get out at the "turnstile" as was done in Malaysia and probably Indonesia too. But there wasn't one and we were stumped at first and Bunga decided to just charge through the turnstile and that was all it took.

So guess what the first sound was when go out off the station? Why click of course or click, click, click. There was just so much to photograph. The architecture was amazing and so European (perfect) and in Stockholm they seem to like bronzed green roofs a lot and many of the buildings had sort of minarets and domes at the top.

The setting by the water is what I really liked about the city. To be continued.........