Media
Under fire
Latest of online allegations that Singapore's national newspaper is banal, puerile and hide embarrasing facts. If Straits Times or anyone else has a reply, we'd be happy to publish it here. Littlespeck.
Mar 22, 2009

A Paper Fit For Peasants
The Lady Melissa
I have been busy and so distracted by my real life that I have not been able to come here to participate in inane conversations with morons.

A very close friend of mine was a very close friend of Dr. Allan Ooi, the SAF scholar doctor who committed suicide, and comforting her day and night has left me emotionally drained as well.

Needless to say, readers of my blog must have seen his suicide note all over the internet. First of all, I must confirm that the SAF bond is, for all intents and purposes, is unbreakable.

Do not ask me for details - if any of you have SAF scholar friends, you can ask them. That was also probably the main reason for Allan's suicide.

But that is not the point of this post. The point of this post is to express my utter disgust at the idiots who run especially The Straits Times, and all the SPH papers.

A few days after the suicide, the Straits Times, OUR NATIONAL BROADSHEET, printed a full page article on PAGE THREE, speculating that Allan had committed suicide because he played too many computer games.

Notwithstanding the fact that by then, a copy of the letter had already been emailed to them, that article was so utterly banal, puerile and noxiously unbelievable I doubt it would have even made it to The News of the World. Yet, it appeared on PAGE THREE of our NATIONAL BROADSHEET, who regularly awards prizes to itself for 'superb journalism'.

Other papers like Sin Min, The New Paper etc also ran equally moronic articles, but at least they do not labour under the responsibility of being our nation's only broadsheet.

As such, I do not hold them to equally high standards of journalistic ability, even if they do exhibit the same level of intellectual disability.

Every day, I am forced to read The Straits Time because it is my only source of local village news, except that sometimes, this local village news, which should really be buried somewhere in the Home section, somehow appears in Prime News.

Like when Fandi Ahmad's wife fell down. Really now - prime news? In a national broadsheet?

If David Beckham's wife Victoria fell down, even though they are true celebrities,it would hardly deserve a mention in The Guardian. But we do live in a village populated by peasants, and our national broadsheet surely is an authentic reflection of this.

Yet, many bright minds have gone overseas to the best global universities, and could have come back to join what is one of the most respected professions in the world, journalism. But that is precisely the problem.

Journalists in Singapore, having for years having to bear the stigma of writing for a village witless newspaper, have become one of the most denigrated, laughed-at and even despised profession.

As such, no self-respecting intellectual will ever aspire to join SPH. Thus, only third-rate minds join SPH, and continue to churn out third-rate dribble.

Even SPH scholars are third-rate, often having been rejected by other scholarship boards, and the good ones break their (breakable) bonds way before they are up. And so, the vicious cycle continues.

The newspapers in Singapore are not worth the paper they are written on. Like any generalisation, it remains that.

There are a few journalists I admire, like Janadas Devan (the son of our Singapore's third President Devan Nair), especially when he tore apart the parliamentary speech of that repulsive bigoted homophobe and religious fundamentalist, MP Thio Li-An.

By and large however, this incident has re-affirmed what I have known all along. The Straits Times is truly a paper fit for peasants.
Posted by The Lady Melissa

Comments:

Anonymous said...
Well, I have friends who are SPH scholars because they love writing, and internship experiences weren't that bad. However, when they graduated and joined SPH for good, it may not be the same story.
One of my good friends (an SPH scholar) had to alter her writing style. I believe that is true because I saw that she was passed on from section to section till her current conformed style of reporting. She too admitted to feeling like an article churning robot, which she hates.
Hence, maybe even with first (or second) class scholars, the system may have forced them to write in that manner, especially if they don't have the money to get out of it.

The Lady Melissa said...
Ok. Point taken.

Anonymous said...
Ah...finally something juicy.
Total agreement regarding the Straits Times. The quality of English is pretty crappy too.
I would add that the half hour of "News" on TV is no better.

Anonymous said...
I suppose most of us know by now never to believe 100% of what is printed in the newspapers.
Either the journalists had training from Lian He Wan Bao (the evening gossipy chinese newspaper) or it could be the fact that our national newspaper is owned by the government.
I suppose most media that belong to the people who govern the country would do their utmost best to cover up stories especially when it is pointed to anything that is part of the government.
They should probably employ people based on the fact that they are able to twist stories around to make then seem like something else, especially when they put misleading headlines like "Arrest warrant issued for Lindsay Lohan" and it was actually about some misunderstanding coz she spent merely 80mins there.
I see more & more sh-t news in the papers nowadays & I begin to wonder if it was for stress relief or what?
I've given up & I've decided to read "Middle East Online" for some real news.
Zeitgeist

ErniesUrn said...
I think the active word we are looking for is ...editor. News editor.

Anonymous said...
hi lady melissa, re: the guardian
Check this out: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/mar/11/ok-magazine-victoria-beckham-cheryl-cole
let's not spare ourselves the criticism we deserve (so i take your point) but let's do so without glorifying the west unthinkingly.

Anonymous said...
go for the financial times instead. One columnist rebuked Harvard Business Review (HBR) in the most brilliant way.
Re: SPH
All articles have to be approved by the editors... journalists have no say at all.... Its just like Singapore, do you see citizens marching up/down the street to protest something? Rather than saying the paper is only fit for peasants, i'd say the paper is made by the real peasants, the perceived elites.

Anonymous said...
The Guardian has many sections and that article on Victoria Beckham is where it belongs, in the media section.
But LM's point is that Fandi's wife's news was in Prime News, when it should at a stretch be in Home, but most suitable in the back pages of Life section.

http://theladymelissa.blogspot.com/2009/03/paper-fit-for-peasants.html