The mass media and the role it has in promoting domestic and international tourism

Abstract

At a recent seminar for journalists on tourism reporting someone asked me what I think about journalists who write bad things about Malaysia. Journalists are invited, feted and given the best of everything. Then they focus on one little nasty thing and all one's effort to give a clear picture of Malaysia goes down the drain, the complaint said. Worse still they might get their facts wrong. No less the distinguished editor of British Airway's inflight magazine, High Life, and the former editor of Punch, William Davis was invited for the first time to Malaysia. In all those years as a journalist, he had said, I never received any brochures or invitations from Malaysia. Mr Davis liked our country.