Singapore newspaper doesn’t regret the error; volunteer group files police report

A volunteer group member has filed a police report against a Singapore Chinese newspaper, Lianhe Zaobao, after the papers refused to apologise fora caption that linked the group to a local political party.

The police report also highlighted how high ended local media can be in not admitting errors it made, regardless of the consequences that might affect the portrayed party in the article.

It is also upsetting, but not surprising, to read that the journalist was willing to take the words of somebody from the local Grassroot member, usually managed by the ruling government party, People’s Action Party, as the scripture truth as opposed to getting the right information from the source.

Wrote the happyangelclub,

“On 20-5-2012, our volunteers started to call and informed me that Lianhe Zaobao had wrote an article on the headlines about Mr. Lee and Mr Choo’s visit to the event. However, when they read about the caption written under the photograph of Mr. lee and Mr.Choo’s, it stated in one of the sentence that my volunteering group is from a Volunteers Welfare Organisation (VWO) and we co-cooperate with the Workers’ Party.

However, we are not.

As such, I called Singapore Press Holding (SPH) to clarify about this and later the reporter namely Chua Eng Wee ,who reported about this, called me and I was told by him that someone had given this information and he was instructed to write this by that person. I asked him about why he did not clarify first before publishing and he told me that it was too late to verify as the information came in too late and he was sorry about this.

I tried to ask him more about who gave this information and he refused to tell me about it initially until I prompted him further and he told me that someone within the Grassroot had instructed him to write about this so that they can show to the public that both the People’s Action Party and Workers Party are able to work with each other in harmony and state my event as a Workers Party join organized event. I then tried to clarify this with him and he was willing to give a disclaimer regarding this issue. He later asked me about how the disclaimer was going to be publishing on the newspaper. It stated that SPH is sorry about the wrongly published issue regarding my volunteering group is from VWO and Co-operate with the Workers’ Party.

After reading the SMS he sent to me about the disclaimer hew was going to publish on the following day. I agreed and allowed him to publish on what he had told me about.

On the 21-5-2012, I read the disclaimer column of Lianhe Zaobao. However, it did not state that they wrongly published about the photograph caption and they were sorry about it which earlier I had agreed with reporter Chua Eng Wee. I contacted Chua Eng Wee about this and I was told that his chief editor had removed this. I asked him about who is his chief editor? However, her refused to tell me and I had no choice but to hang up the call. Later that night, I posted this issue on Mr. Lee’s facebook wall and Zaobao Forum and sent an email to both REACH and Lianhe Zaobao.”

As in the words of Malcom X,

“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”