Poll on plunging newspaper sales reveals shock results . A poll investigating the reasons behind the plummeting readership of local newspapers revealed that nearly four out of five Malaysians did not believe the local media. The poll was conducted by the government, following a study done by market research firm, AC Nielsen, last month. Nielsen revealed that the readership of mainstream local newspapers such as the New Straits Times, Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian had dropped by up to 30% over the past two years.

To the question "What do you think of the local media?", the government poll found that 71% of newspaper readers responded with "It’s full of shit." A further 5% of respondents said they could "hardly believe this shit"; and another 4% said they might "just barely believe this shit". About 18% of respondents said they "don’t give a shit" about the news and only read the TV and sports pages.

The remaining 2% of respondents said they were "quite capable of believing this shit". Revealingly, the same 2% of respondents also indicated they believed local media reports in 1998 that the wounds inflicted upon Anwar Ibrahim while in police custody were self-inflicted – and this was after Rahim Noor was convicted. The same 2% of people also believed that no corruption exists in Malaysia and Santa Claus lives in the North Pole.

"The poll results are indeed a shock," said a local newspaper editor who refused to be named. "All this time, we thought the declining readerships were due to falling literacy rates or large numbers of Malaysians going on overseas holidays for the past two years."

The Nielsen study also showed that broadsheets suffered more drastic declines than tabloid newspapers. A local media analyst who refused to be named said that the main reason for this was due to health and hygiene factors. "The large bulk of local newspaper buyers are cat lovers and they only buy the paper to clean up cat shit," the analyst said. "Tabloids are for more handy for this purpose."

Among the tens of thousands of anti- Mahathir demonstrators onthe Kesas highway who are likely to be dispersed overseas

The Malaysian government is drawing up contingency logistical plans for the mass expulsion of nearly 10 million Malaysians. This follows a recent call by the Prime Minister that Opposition critics leave the country, "get out, go elsewhere if they want to become foreign citizens to enjoy freedom." A government spokesman who refused to be named said that, as more than 45% of the electorate actually voted against the government in the last General Elections, this would have to involve exiling nearly 10 million men, women and children. 'It would also be a slight setback for the Prime Minister's plans to have Malaysia’s population increase to 70 million,' the spokesman added woefully. The spokesman said that initial plans for the political cleansing would probably begin in the Opposition states of Kelantan and Terengganu. 'The vacated states could be re-developed into massive luxury beach resorts for fat German tourists and elderly Japanese pensioners', he added.

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