Despite being blocked in Malaysia, Medium stands by Sarawak Report

So Medium confirms it’s now blocked in Malaysia after the embattled Sarawak Report took its whistleblowing against the nation’s leader to the blogging platform. But Medium’s not yielding to pressure.

A little background for those who aren’t familiar with the issue: Sarawak Report’s site, founded by British journalist Clare Rewcastle Brown, has reported extensively on corruption allegations against Prime Minister Najib Razak, including how Najib supposedly pocketed money from debt-ridden state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

The site published its stories on the 1MBD scandal July last year and has since been blocked by Malaysian internet service providers (ISPs). Sarawak Report however continued to reach the Malaysian public through Medium.

In a blog post today titled “The post stays up”, Medium says it was blocked by some Malaysian ISPs, including stated-owned Telekom Malaysia, after it refused to give in to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission’s (MCMC) request to remove an article by Sarawak Report. MCMC claimed that the article was “false, unsubstantiated, and misleading,” and in violation of Malaysian law.

In refusing, Medium asked the MCMC to provide proof that the article was untrue, but “received no response.” Then the blocking happened.

Despite this, Medium remains unfazed. It says:

Medium’s in no position to evaluate the truth of the Sarawak Report’s Medium post. We’ve received no evidence that the post violates any of our Rules, or any law. We stand by investigative journalists who publish on Medium. Until we receive an order from a court of competent jurisdiction, the post stays up.

We don’t know what percentage of Medium’s user base are Malaysians, and whether or not the blocking would have an impact on its metrics, but kudos to the company for taking a bold stance anyway.

Prior to Medium’s blog post, Tech in Asia asked at least four sources in Kuala Lumpur to help us check whether or not Medium was still accessible. One source tried to access the site through Facebook on mobile, and got this message:

Two tried to access the blog via normal browsers and it wouldn’t load at all. There was no message about it being blocked, however.