WHEN press conferences are held, reporters will field all kinds of questions, ranging from the pertinent to the off-topic, and from questions to opinions.
There are even the odd, if not bizarre, questions.
If we recall, one reporter at the White House asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as to why he was not adequately dressed in a suit.
It looked like a planted question to embarrass him, but most of us wondered if it was even necessary and appropriate, as he wasn't shabbily dressed.
A Free Malaysia Today (FMT) reporter has raised a storm when he likened the plight of the Palestinians to the experience of the Chinese community here.
It was misguided and certainly a false equivalence.
To put it simply, it was a bad analogy reflecting ignorance and unfair comparison, but worse, it does a disservice to the Chinese community.
It is not grounded in comparable facts, to begin with.
But the personal view of a relatively junior reporter has prompted angry comments on Malay social media against the Chinese.
Obviously, he did not think carefully when he framed his question and analogy to UK politician George Galloway.
The reality is that the scale and nature of oppression by the Zionist Israeli regime has taken a totally cruel dimension, intending to wipe out the Palestinians. Genocide is at full blatant display.
Palestinians are facing a land grab by new Israeli settlers.
They live under prolonged military occupation, restrictions on their movements, daily harassments, displacements and killings.
I am not writing this based on news reports, but on personal observations in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.
The United Nations and other global human rights bodies have well-documented the conditions of the Palestinians.
Yes, without doubt, the Chinese community feels they deserve a more equitable position under the Malaysian sun.
Their grievances on many issues are understandable and legitimate, but they are citizens here who enjoy rights.
Indeed, they face no land grab, harassment, persecution or systematic genocide.
They have constitutional protections, voting rights, representation in state and federal governments, economic opportunity and access to legal remedies.
By contrast, in areas with predominantly Chinese people, such as Penang, they are not occupied, unlike the West Bank, or worse, Gaza, which has been flattened.
No foreign power, such as Israel, is controlling any Chinese majority areas.
The community is not denied their rights as citizens, although one may argue that the bumiputeras enjoy special privileges.
Yes, there are, and will always be, disagreements over affirmative action, language policy or social inclusion, but data- and evidence-based discussions and even court recourse have taken place.
It is fundamentally wrong to equate disputes in a plural Malaysia with foreign power occupation, as in Palestine.
To put it simply, the argument by the reporter in question does not fit.
The misleading comparison has, unfortunately and predictably, led to unnecessary communal inflammation.
It may be old-school journalism to younger reporters in the age of social media news reporting, but I have been trained that public discourse should not lead to racial conflict.
We do not even mention the races of the perpetrators or victims in crime reports, especially in rape cases, until the person is charged in court.
As one report aptly states, "public discourse should not pit communities against each other through misleading parallels" in the Malaysian context.
As journalists in multi-racial and multi-religious Malaysia, we carry this responsibility.
The line of questioning has put his employer in a fix as it had to issue an apology, but it's a lesson learned by all of us living - and reporting- about our beloved country.
National Journalism Laureate Datuk Seri Wong Chun Wai is the chairman of Bernama. The views expressed here are solely the writer’s own.
