PUTRAJAYA, March 19 — After the Media Council Bill was passed in the Dewan Negara today, Communications Minister Datuk Fahmi Fadzil said the next step is to obtain royal consent from the Yang di-Pertuan Agong.

He added that the founding board of the Malaysian Media Council can be established before the National Journalists’ Day celebration in June.

“I would like to announce that the Malaysian Media Council Bill has been passed today. This is undoubtedly a historic moment, as we have successfully passed it in both the Dewan Rakyat and Dewan Negara. The next step is to obtain royal assent, after which it will be enforced.

“We expect and hope that by the time we celebrate national journalists’ day, the founding board of the Malaysian Media Council can be established, and the formation process of the council can be expedited,” he said in his weekly post-Cabinet press conference here.

The idea of a media council was first proposed in 1974 by Malaysia’s second prime minister, the late Tun Abdul Razak Hussein.

For decades, press organisations and journalists have campaigned for an independent, self-regulating media council to replace the Printing Presses and Publications Act (PPPA) 1984. In 2019, the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government provisionally agreed to establish the MMC, and in January 2020, a 17-member pro-tem committee was formed to discuss and refine the draft bill to formalise the body.

The Cabinet approved the bill last year, and Deputy Communications Minister Teo Nie Ching tabled it in Parliament on December 12.