OCT 17 — You know it’s a slow news day when the newspapers are jumping on a man for posting about sex. Not because he did anything explicitly illegal. Just because he posted photographs and videos on his blog. I expected this from The New Paper, maybe even Lianhewanbao. But Yahoo! and The Straits Times jumped on the bandwagon too. This isn’t news. It’s a slime job.
The newspapers call it news — but for something to be newsworthy, it needs to be news worthy. It needs to have news values. Alvin Tan is an ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) scholar — making him an elite person. He and Vivian Lee posted sexually explicit content on Facebook and their blog, and faced pressure to take them down — unambiguous conflict. Both of them are Malaysians, and Alvin studied in Singapore — therefore, proximity. It is out of the ordinary — making it a surprising event. Full story
