To be honest I was flabbergasted. I was searching for the most search word for Malaysia on the net and the answer was Utusan Malaysia. It even topped the most searched word for March.
Anyhow, Utusan Malaysia (its a Malay-language paper) seems to be the only one interested to write about the military, even in its most inane way, that the rest of the Malaysian newspaper industry seemed to forgets.
The rest only reports when something bad (airplane crash, allegations of bullying and such). New Straits Times did not even bother to attend the Army Media Day.
During my days at The Malay Mail, I also do not cover the bit news of the military but I always had the time to attend any function which offers me the chance to interact with the officers.
Utusan is also probably the only paper that travelled to Lebanon with the Armed Forces chief to visit the Malaysian UNIFIL contingent.
Yes, ordinary news coming out from MINDEF is boring. But from my experience last time it is the ordinary that usually helps when it comes to the extra-ordinary. But I guess front-page news is more important at Jalan Riong these days.
If you like this post, buy me an espresso. Paypal Payment