At the Riuh Pi HAWANA concert in Butterworth last month, members of legendary Malaysian band Exists paused to reflect on a rapidly vanishing aspect of the entertainment industry: the guardianship that professional journalists once provided to performers navigating public scrutiny. Their observations offer a poignant commentary on how the relationship between media and artistes has fundamentally transformed, with consequences that extend across the entire Southeast Asian entertainment landscape.

During the print media era, which dominated Malaysian popular culture for decades, mainstream publications functioned as more than mere chroniclers of celebrity news. According to Exists lead guitarist Along, editors and journalists maintained rigorous fact-checking protocols and editorial standards that acted as a crucial buffer between artistes and potentially career-damaging exposure. When fans submitted complaints or submitted stories about public figures, newsrooms would subject these submissions to thorough vetting processes rather than rushing them to publication. This gatekeeping function, though sometimes critiqued as paternalistic, ultimately served to protect entertainers from the consequences of unverified allegations and rumours that could spread unchecked through the public consciousness.

The deliberative approach extended beyond mere rejection of dubious stories. Journalists would actively seek clarification directly from the artistes involved, allowing them an opportunity to respond to allegations before any story reached print. This commitment to journalistic ethics and due diligence created a system of checks and balances that prevented misunderstandings from metastasizing into permanent public narratives. For performers, the knowledge that someone in the editorial chain would question the veracity and fairness of stories provided psychological reassurance and a degree of privacy protection that contemporary artistes can scarcely imagine.

Along emphasized that this protective mechanism proved particularly valuable in preventing the corrosive effects of unfounded gossip on entertainers' personal lives. The filtering process meant that salacious rumours, however compelling to tabloid sensibilities, faced scrutiny before distribution. Without this institutional safeguard, the private moments and routine activities of public figures risked constant misinterpretation and sensationalization. The contrast with today's environment, where anyone with a smartphone possesses publishing capability, could hardly be starker. Modern entertainers operate in a context where discretionary judgment has largely evaporated from the distribution process.

The contemporary media ecosystem that has replaced this structured approach operates on fundamentally different principles. Along characterized the current landscape as one defined by speed and minimal gatekeeping, where individuals capture photographs or video footage and upload them to social media platforms with minimal consideration for the potential consequences affecting the subjects of their content. The instantaneous nature of digital publication means that context collapses, nuance disappears, and interpretation becomes crowdsourced among commenters whose anonymity often correlates with hostility. The cascading commentary in social media comment sections frequently deteriorates into waves of criticism, much of it unmoored from facts or fairness.

For artistes navigating this transformed environment, the psychological toll can prove substantial. Along suggested that contemporary performers must develop thicker emotional resilience and exercise constant vigilance about their behaviour and public movements, essentially internalizing the protective function that institutional media once provided externally. The burden of self-censorship and image management has shifted entirely to the individual performer, with no editorial ally to advocate for accuracy or proportionality when allegations or criticism emerge. This psychological pressure represents one of the less visible costs of the digital media revolution, particularly for performers in markets like Malaysia where celebrity culture remains culturally significant.

Vocalist Mamat offered a different angle on the journalist-artiste relationship, emphasizing the instrumental role that consistent, supportive media coverage played in sustaining Exists' relevance across more than three decades in the Malaysian music industry. He described himself as perhaps the most frequently interviewed entertainer in Malaysia, yet suggested that journalists' willingness to remain supportive even as the band navigated inevitable ups and downs proved crucial to their survival as a cultural entity. The relationship transcended mere documentation of events; journalists became invested stakeholders in the band's longevity, occasionally offering encouragement and advice within their published coverage.

This investment in artiste success reflected a different conception of journalism's social role, one that acknowledged entertainment journalism's function within the broader music ecosystem. Rather than adopting a purely detached observer stance, journalists recognized their capacity to influence whether performers could sustain careers. The symbiotic nature of the relationship—artistes needed coverage to maintain visibility, while journalists needed compelling stories and access—created incentives for journalists to preserve the reputations they helped construct. Mamat's observation that supportive journalism provided emotional sustenance during difficult periods suggests that the relationship served psychological and professional functions beyond the transactional exchange of information.

Bassist Musa added texture to this portrait of media-artiste relations through an anecdote that encapsulates the qualitative difference between professional journalism and casual digital commentary. He recalled that around 1997, an entertainment journalist became so invested in documenting Exists that the journalist rented a recording studio specifically to experience jamming with band members, spending approximately two hours playing music alongside them. This incident illustrates how the highest commitment journalism could extend beyond professional boundaries into genuine shared interest and mutual respect. The journalist's willingness to participate actively in the musicians' creative process reflected an unusually deep investment in understanding their subjects.

For Musa, such incidents represented the apotheosis of professional entertainment journalism: a relationship characterized by substantive engagement, genuine curiosity, and respect between two parties with different roles but complementary interests. This model contrasts starkly with contemporary dynamics, where interaction frequently occurs through curated social media posts or transactional interview arrangements rather than informal participation in creative processes. The erosion of such relationships reflects broader structural changes in journalism—declining resources, shortened attention spans, and the disaggregation of media audiences—rather than any transformation in artistes' willingness to engage with serious journalists.

Musa articulated a nuanced position regarding journalism's continued necessity in the entertainment industry, arguing that professional journalists remain indispensable precisely because they possess specialized training in accurate information delivery and ethical communication. Professional journalists understand sensitivities, demonstrate linguistic care, and maintain institutional standards about what should and should not be published. Their presence in the media ecosystem, Musa suggested, establishes normative standards that can influence other content creators toward more responsible practices. In this framing, professional journalism functions as a model for ethical communication within a larger media environment increasingly populated by untrained amateurs and incentive-misaligned platforms.

For Malaysian and Southeast Asian entertainment industries, the reflections from Exists members illuminate the costs of media professionalization's decline. As outlets consolidate, resources contract, and advertising-dependent models force publications toward sensationalism, the protective and supportive functions that journalists once provided have largely disappeared. Younger artistes entering the industry today operate without the institutional safeguards that earlier generations enjoyed, exposed instead to unmediated public commentary and fabricated narratives that can calcify into permanent reputational damage. Musa's final observation—that proper journalists remain equipped to model responsible content practices—may represent the last realistic hope for re-establishing baseline standards in an increasingly chaotic digital information environment.

The preparations for Musa's upcoming Memento Mori Concert, scheduled for August 1 at the Unifi Arena, provide an appropriate punctuation to these reflections. Even as the entertainment industry has transformed around them, Exists continues performing, touring, and creating—testifying to the resilience required of contemporary artistes navigating a media landscape substantially less sympathetic than the one their earlier careers enjoyed. Their nostalgic appreciation for professional journalism's protective function serves less as a call for restoration of past arrangements and more as an implicit acknowledgment that something valuable has been lost in the transition to digital immediacy.