Response by Eric P. Louw and Damine Kingsbury to Mazlan Nordin\u27s article, Don\u27t preach to ASEAN without heeding your own advice published in APME, July to December, 1997

Datuk Mazlan Nordin, Editorial Consultant of New Straits Times Press, Malaysia wrote a critique of two articles which appeared in AsiaPacific MediaEducator (Issue No.2, January-June 1997). In his critique, Don\u27t Preach to ASEAN Without Heeding Own Advice published in the New Straits Times on 5 September, 1997 and reproduced in APME (Issue No.3, July-Dec 1997,p.162-165), Datuk Mazlan said in part: Often advised on how to do their job by non-professionals are newspaper journalists. The discourse would come from ministers, politicians including those in the opposition, government functionaries and academics, among others. An example of the critical academic discourse is of articles in the Asia Pacific Media Educator. Of relevance to ASEAN is a piece on how Australian journalists should report their country\u27s Asian neighbours, namely Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. It begins with the finding that since the 1970\u27s, their reportage has been regarded as a source of friction between the governments of the three countries and Australia