Airing of talk with couple subject to MCMC’s approval

Sunday October 21, 2012
Airing of talk with couple subject to MCMC’s approval
By REGINA LEE
regina@thestar.com.my

Heart-to-heart chat: Ooi (right) interviewing Lee last Friday. Heart-to-heart chat: Ooi (right) interviewing Lee last Friday.

KUALA LUMPUR: The widely-anticipated radio interviews with sex bloggers Alvin Tan and Vivian Lee have been canned pending approval from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).

After an 11th hour decision, radio stations under The Star media group Red FM and Capital FM were unable to air the pre-recorded interviews as planned on the 2pm slot yesterday.

The stations, however, said in a statement that listeners could still catch excerpts of the interviews on their Facebook pages.

The Star executive director and group chief editor Datuk Seri Wong Chun Wai said the MCMC should have allowed the interviews to be aired because the announcers of Capital FM, Red FM and 988 FM had posed tough questions to the duo.

“They were asked tough questions such as the shame they had brought to their families in their quest for fame. We also asked why they took sex so casually and whether they would approve if it involved their own children,” he said.

Wong said he hoped the MCMC, as regulators, would allow the interviews to be aired, adding that The Star media group wanted the regulatory body to listen to the interviews as “we have no intention of glorifying them but to pose questions and listen to their views.”

The fact that the interviews were recorded on Friday and not broadcast live showed the caution taken by the radio stations, he said.

Wong, who is a director of Capital FM, said the couple had generated much interest among Malaysians and Singaporeans, and had already been interviewed by a Singapore radio station and the Singapore-based Channel News Asia.

Their stories were also on the front pages of Singapore newspapers.

“Instead of closing our eyes and ears, we must find out why they were acting so outrageously. What on earth were they thinking?

“Where is the sense of decorum and responsibility? These questions were put to the couple. These are answers we need to hear from the Facebook generation,” he said.

He said some sections of the public and authorities might frown on such news but the young would simply turn to the Internet and social media platform, adding that such social problems would not just go away.

Capital FM also tweeted on its account @iAMCapitalFM links to the excerpts when deejays Xandria Ooi, Joanne Kam and Red FM's Jeremy Teo grilled the two over their actions and decisions.

Among the selected excerpts are what they intend to do with their new-found fame and whether Lee was willing to leave her family for Tan.




- wong chee tat :)