Reading the headlines of Utusan Malaysia today, t is clear where the newspaper's sympathies lie. "Lapangan terbang dikuasai semula -- Tentera Pengawal Republik halau askar-askar AS setelah ditawan tidak sampai 24 jam" screams the frontpage (Airport Reoccupied - Republican Guards drove US soldiers away after less than 24 hours of occupation).

Utusan Malaysia has consistently taken the side of the Iraqi regime, often reporting their unsubstantiated claims as facts. This kind of biased reporting is a dangerous game, especially for a paper that is popular among the Malay kampong folks. One can imagine the kind of coffee shop talk that such headlines can fuel. Again and again, the paper reinforces the view that the US are the aggressors and the Iraqis are resisting valiantly, even gaining grounds on the coalition forces. It can be argued that Utusan is merely correcting the US slant in many of the mainstream Western media. But this cannot be done at the cost of compromising basic journalistic integrity: unsubstantiated facts should not be reporteds facts, and certain not in bold headlines without any qualifiers.

But then again, no paper is truly neutral and unbiased. The media is a powerful too for swaying public opinion. The question to be asked is : should the media be given so much power? Perhaps Mahathir has a point when he said that unlike politicians, journalists are not elected by the public. Who gave the right to journalists to supposedly champion the rights of the people and claim to speak on behalf of them?