Investigative journalism is never easy: James Sarda
Published on: Sunday, June 26, 2022
By: Kan Yaw Chong
Text Size:
Daily Express Chief Editor James Sarda receiving the Malaysian Press Institute’s national investigative journalism award on the Double Six series, in KL last Friday night.
The good news is just two nights ago, the Daily Express won the Malaysian Press Institute’s national investigative journalism award on the Double Six series. So it has really paid off.
“Doing an investigative report is never easy,” said Daily Express Editor-in-chief James Sarda at the documentary premiere.
“This is why,” he said.
“If you look around you, the world’s biggest scandal is 1MDB and yet it embarrassed me as a journalist that this IMDB scandal was not exposed by any Malaysian media although the Edge did a lot of work to make the public aware of what was going on,” Sarda noted.
“Instead this scandal was exposed by a whistle blower through the UK-based Sarawak Report,” he said.
Daily Express Chief Editor James Sarda with Tan Sri Simon Sipaun.
Farida Stephens – daughter of the late Tun Fuad Stephens – speaking at the ‘Double Six’ documentary premiere.
“That should be our job, we should be the one exposing this because after all, they consider journalism is the fourth estate, after the established powers like parliament, executive and the judiciary.
But the problem is when you have legislation in place, which makes it difficult for journalists to operate, this becomes a problem.
“Doing an investigative report in Malaysia is very challenging because firstly, you need to establish what is it that you want to investigate, whether the relevant people can open up and are willing to do so and why you think doing an investigative piece is actually necessary,” he said.
“You also have to think about whether you are going to offend sensitivities. And then the bigger problem: Will it result in legal suits from those believe that they have been erroneously portrayed.
Thank goodness that as the Chief Editor of Daily Express, I have been sued many, many times and I have never lost any suit.”
OSA tightened after Hong Kong murder
“When you have cleared all these then you have to worry about whether you run into legislative problems, especially the Official Secrets Act because the moment anything is classified as 'secret', the press cannot report anything.
“Especially after the Official Secrets Act was amended, and that was following the BMF scandal in the 1980s.
“If you know about the BMF scandal it was the first time a Malaysian banking institution lost two billion dollars – it was Bank Bumiputra which was supposed to fund bumiputras but what happened was the bank through its subsidiary lent two billion dollars to a Hong Kong Carrian group.
BMF being the financial arm of Bank Bumiputra, the auditor (Jalil Ibrhim) went to Hong Kong to investigate how the bank actually loaned out two billion dollars, but ended up being murdered and after that incident the OSA was tightened,” Sarda noted.
“We have always been asking the Government to at least classify official secrets as pertaining to national security but not simply stamp Official Secrets (Sulit) on any minutes of meetings, for example even meetings of local authorities.”
Close shave for DE
“Daily Express was actually supposed to be the first paper to be charged under the OSA. I remember and I stand to be corrected, this was in 1984 because we ran a story about the then Manager of SEB what is now SESB and in that particular incident the Manager approved allocations to buy himself a Mercedes car as well as renovation of his house.
“When my previous editor Joe Fernandez ran the story, we got charged under the OSA because the minutes of the meeting was stamped as ‘Sulit’ but the information came from within from people who were not happy with what was going on.
“But thank goodness whatever we published was the truth and the case was dropped,” Sarda cited.
“These are the kinds of challenges we face in trying to do our job as journalists.
“Now when the subject matter like the Double Six was being explored, many other facts also come into play.
The main thing is why now after nearly 50 years? But of course the most important thing is what new information can you hope to gather?
“The other is to get as many people as possible who have intimate knowledge of the incident or record while they are still around.
In this we managed to track down and interview 97pc of the people that we were supposed to have interview,” Sarda said.
Sarda is no stranger to investigative journalism. He was one-half of the team with Crime Reporter Clifford Santa Maria who blew the whistle that rogue derivatives trader Nick Leeson was hiding in Sabah, Borneo, after causing Barings Bank a billion pounds losses, in 1995.
Their report led to Leeson’s arrest in Frankfurt during transit as Leeson and his female companion fled Sabah on a Royal Brunei Airlines flight.
It was hailed by both the Times of London and the Independent as a World Scoop.
Sarda who is a Chevening scholar and has a Masters in Journalism from Cardiff University, is also the winner of several national journalism awards, including for Best Reporting and Best Environmental Journalist.
He was also the recipient of the Alfred Friendly Fellowship award which enabled him to serve six months as a reporter for the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina in 1993.
Sarda, who previously served in the National Echo and The Star, was the nation's Best Environmental Journalist (ICI-CCM Award) in 1996.
He also won the national-level award for Feature Writing in 1999.
Why dig up Double Six 50 years later
“Why choose to embark on this project? The answer simple: because it remains Sabah’s biggest public interest issue and continue to be so for reasons that had been explained.
“When it happened on June 6, the then Prime Minister Datuk Hussein Onn described it as Malaysia’s biggest tragedy.
Yet, for some reason no Malaysian newspapers ever did a comprehensive report on the incident as we did,” Sarda pointed out.
“Of course, definitely this is the most challenging project that we have undertaken as we were actually revisiting an incident that happened 50 years ago and you may wonder what are the interesting details connected to the crash that haven’t been known that we have uncovered.”
“But yes, we have uncovered a lot of information about that but it may disappoint if you are thinking of the findings of the investigation. We did not want to touch on it because that is not our job.
That is the job of the Inquiry Committee.
“What we did was to find out what other information related to the incident was still available and bring these together.
And some of it are human interest that even surprised us.
For instance, when Datin Nancy Mojuntin said one week before the incident she dreamt that her husband would die in a crash.
“She never said it to anyone before but she told us that she told Datuk Peter Mojuntin about it but he brushed it aside saying:
‘It’s just a dream. Don’t believe it.’ So an anecdote like this tends to humanise the whole tragedy,” Sarda noted.
Part of the audience at the ‘Double Six – the Untold Stories’ documentary premiere screening on June 6, 2022.
Sarda: Daily Express is the only paper that had won the ‘Prime Minister’s Hibiscus Award’. (Inset) A close-up of the plaque bearing the recipient’s name – Sabah Publishing House’s Kan Yaw Chong for this investigative series on the Sukau Bridge, Kinabatangan.
DE – the only paper winning Prime Minister’s Hibiscus Award
“In pursuing this and other investigative reports, the paper was also living up to the ideals of founder Tan Sri Yeh Pao Tze who wanted the newspaper to serve the people of Sabah and Labuan in the best job way possible.
“That the Daily Express which is the only Malaysian newspaper which has won so far the Prime Minister’s excellence award – the Prime Minister’s Hibiscus Award, speaks much about the kind of journalism we do,” Sarda said.
Two pillars featured before they passed away
“But sadly, two of those who were featured in our series have since passed on, namely Toh Puan Rahimah Stephens and Datuk Stephen Foo, a former State Attorney General.
Stephen Foo was actually looking forward to this occasion (premiere) because it was supposed to be held last year actually but it had to be postponed because of the MCO and Covid.
“One day Foo SMSed me saying he was not confident about his health and he sent me a long message and I still have it in my handphone about his thoughts on the tragedy based on his experience and Deputy Public Prosecutor at the State Attorney’s Chamber.
Not long afterwards, he passed away and his input formed an important part of this project.”
Sadly speaking
“Another person who was supposed to be interviewed but did not make it was Datuk Guande Kohoi, a former Federal Deputy Tourism Minister.
He kept postponing the interview also because of his health.
And finally when he set the date, the same week he passed away.
“Kohoi had a connection with Sabah Publishing House actually as a reporter for Daily Express around the time when the plane crash happened.
I meant to ask him a lot of things about media coverage of the tragedy, among others, but fate did not allow it?”
Valuable insight & ongoing search for answers
Notwithstanding the passing of Guande who was a reporter then and would have been able to explain the shortcomings in the reporting then, two crucial witnesses declined to come forward – Nomad co-pilot Kevin Sario and Air Traffic controller Albert Oh.
Kevin was approached through a family member to shed light on why he gave up his co-pilot seat to Johari Stephens.
It was said that Johari had taken flying lessons at the Sabah Flying Club but there was no certainty that he was qualified.
Nevertheless, he had no business being in the co-pilot seat because it was a VVIP flight. He would have no business even being a passenger on that flight because he was no VVIP but the son of one.
With permission he would, of course, have been allowed to occupy one of the seats inside as three passengers – Tengku Razaleigh, Sarawak CM Tun Rahman and the Tengku Bendahara Pahang – had at the last minute exited to board the second Nomad for the flight to Kudat.
My questions to Kevin would have been how he ended up giving his seat to Johari.
Was it voluntarily upon being requested by Johari or was he persuaded to do so by pilot Captain Gandhi Nathan, a family friend of the Stephens who were known to be fond of his curries.
In the event he was told by Gandhi to give up his seat, it would have been a lapse of professionalism on the part of Gandhi since it was a VVIP flight.
Up until that point, all the deceased must have been under the impression that the plane was in safe hands.
Although the Nomad could fly without a co-pilot, it was a VVIP flight and whoever was the co-pilot had to be one that was rated and fit to fly it.
As for Albert, it was whether it was true that he asked Captain Gandhi to circle the airport several times. If so, why and whether it was because there was a MASB737 that was coming in to land.
And if so, was it not the case that he should have given the Nomad priority since it was carrying the Chief Minister and his entourage.
Albert would also have been able to confirm whether it was true another light aircraft, a Piper piloted by one Mosiun was also in the vicinity and that the Control Tower momentarily lost contact with Mosiun.
And that since the Tower was unable to establish Mosiun’s position, it had no choice but to ask the Nomad to delay its descend until finally when given the green light it had no choice but to make a sharp descend and crashed.
I was also eager to know also what were the exchanges between Captain Gandhi and him (Albert) during those final moments.
However, both and Albert refused.
Kevin did not wish to relive the incident which apparently made him a committed church-goer, while Albert said many years had passed and he could not remember the details.
“It also provided valuable insight because we interviewed former Chief Minister Harris, then Finance Minister Tan Sri Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah and Datuk Ansari Abdullah who headed the Coroner’s inquiry.
All these actually make this project worthwhile, not to mention current leaders in the GRS Government, notably Datuk Jeffrey Kitingan, Datuk Yong Teck Lee, both of whom until today have not given up trying to find the answers.
“Two crucial points have been mentioned in parliament regarding the crash, that is – overloading, pilot error. But it was not enough to satisfy the families as well as Sabahans to whom these leaders were their hopes,” Sarda pointed out.
“Let us hope the day may not be long when the findings become accessible to all.”
The dominant and the forgotten
“It needs to be said here whenever the Double Six tragedy is mentioned that what most dominates the minds of people are the state leaders involved, namely Fuad Stephens, Datuk Peter Mojuntin, Datuk Salleh Sulong, Datuk Chong Thein Vun, Datuk Darius Binion.
Many forget there were six other victims, Datuk Wahid Peter Andau, Dr Syed Husein, Isak Atan, Corporal Said Mohamad, Johari Stephens and pilot Capt Ghandi Nathan who are largely forgotten from the public narrative,” Sarda said.
Special mention
Towards the end of the event, Sarda made special mention of the presence of late Capt Ghandi's son – Capt Nizam who was a teenager when Double Six happened and who went on to become a pilot himself, with MAS on A380.
“It was only after I came to Sabah and became a Sabahan and visited the site that I began to understand what happened,” Sarda said.
Sarda concluded with a request to DBKK to clear a portion of the vegetation from the main road which blocks sight of the Double Six Memorial to enable people who come in and go out of KK to see it and remember what happened on 6.6 1976.
Scene of the Double Six commemoration ceremony on June 6, 2022.
Wreaths and mourners at the Double Six commemoration ceremony on June 6, 2022.
ADVERTISEMENT
