The awareness of press freedom in Malaysia amongst journalists and society / Adriana Azman Shah ... [et al.].

Freedom of speech also known as press freedom is the principle that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic media, especially published materials, should be considered a right to be exercised freely. Malaysia is among the first few countries to introduce a law against it which Malaysia already has an arsenal of laws, including a colonial-era Sedition Act, that have been used to clamp down on unfavorable news and social media posts. Awareness is concern about and well-informed interest in a particular situation or development and journalist is a person who works in journalism to report the news. They may work on their own call as freelance or for a newspaper, a radio or television programme. Journalist sometimes expose themselves to danger, especially when reporting in areas of armed conflict or in places that do not respect the freedom of the press. They also done researches, writes, and reports information. Journalist should be aware enough and understand the press freedom in order to writes and share information without violate the law and legislation that have been set by the government. For the research, the researchers used qualitative method to gather all the information from five informants, male and female and aged 18 to 30 consists of students, citizen and journalists. Based on the findings, media practitioners are aware with press freedom in this country but Malaysia are not yet ready for this because people here can't say whatever they want without having to face the consequences. Malaysia needs press freedom so that society can say and criticize what they feel wrong. However, having too much freedom of speech might have an impact towards the democracy and development of this country. The result of this study is that Malaysia are not 100% ready for Press Freedom in this country even there is a development of this issue in this country but not everyone truly understands and accept press freedom. Journalists or other media practitioners do aware and understands enough regarding press freedom in Malaysia but the country is not ready yet.