nothing comes from nothing
Friday, June 5, 2009
Time for some biased reviewing of Straits Times articles.
The whole AWARE saga was "breathlessly" covered by ST, I would agree, and recently the editor had to write in to defend their coverage and apparent slant. One thing that I could not tolerate at all from the piece went
something along the lines of this;
We tried very hard to contact the new guard to get their side of the story, but everytime we did, we got stonewalled and just couldn't get answers. No one wanted to answer our queries, while the old guard was keenly available to provide their side of the situation. Without the information from the new guard, we went along with the publishing, until some time later when they finally decided to open up. And when they did, we made sure to reflect their side in the papers.
What I find incredulous is the fact that the editor had the cojones to justify their reporting in the first few weeks that they did not get information from the new guard. Reporting relevant news (as in,
new news) is one thing, reporting reliably can be a whole other game. In this case, I believe the editor clearly missed the point of why some people found their coverage skewed.
Sure, news always gets out before the information is ever complete. No one expects a complete report from the full enquiry into the WTC attacks before the reporters can go on air. ST did as they had to, otherwise they wouldn't be very relevant. Yet the calls are for them to 'own up' to their seemingly biased reporting, and that has not been answered. If news gets out before one has the full story, then the party jolly well be prepared for the consequences that follow if the facts turn out to be something other than what was reported, and not push the gathering crap into someone else's front yard.
Anyway, moving on, this is the second time I'm reading an article about the behaviour of some Singaporean youth party revellers, and yet again I'm kind of disgusted to hear the things they subject themselves to. I was thinking to myself, my god, there are these girls who dress up so much and put on their best, then they go ahead and get stone-drunk until they puke all over the toilet bowl and sidewalk. How pretty.
And what about that article on the teen mom and dad who went and got their baby killed? When I read the article the guy seemed to be the level-headed one while the girl seemed to be the crazy party spouse, which was an interesting turn of the stereotypes. Then I looked at the picture of the guy and I realised they're both pretty f-ed up, husband and wife. The wife said something along the lines of, "He didn't take care of our baby and it died, so we broke up." That sounds awfully scary, if you ask me. Like they just missed out on the whole plot.
I have, for quite some time now, ever since we moved in, kept this box full of interesting newspaper articles. Some are on Singapore, some on politics, some on warfare and others on the plain bizarre. Just so that I know how normal the world was a few years from now, I guess.
posted by joseph at 9:19 PM