Government-linked Singapore Press Holdings has apologised to government-linked SMRT Corporation for an instance for libellous fabrication. There goes SPH’s vainglorious claim to “fair, objective” journalism.
The government has tried for over a decade (over a decade!) to paint bloggers et al of being beneath the standards they have set for themselves and their coterie of fawning media. Time and again, they have resorted to innuendo and outright accusations both, saying that blogs, online forums and social media are full of distortions and half-truths. Now, who has been shown to be engaging in total untruth?
What I failed to notice in that story was the newspaper’s mention of Samantha Francis as a “content producer”. Actually, even if I had noticed it, I probably wouldn’t have attached much significance to it. Like many others, I thought Stomp operated on the basis of ordinary people out there sending pictures and newsy bits to the Stomp office, where a small staff might sift through them and choose which to upload onto the site. Certainly, that was the impression that I had of it, and I think SPH wanted people to see it that way. Why else would they call Stomp their citizen journalism portal?
Now, it turns out that Samantha Francis/wasabi was no ordinary outsider submitting stuff gratis to Stomp. She was on their paid staff!
So another falsehood is exposed. Apparently not everything on Stomp had been submitted voluntarily; they had staffers whose job was to take other people’s twitter images etc and put them up under anonymous names as if those other people had submitted them! Not only were the “news” being faked, the whole process was being faked and the public misled.
Full story
Related:
STOMP kena STOMPed - mrbrown.com
TOC Editorial: STOMP in the dumps - The Online Citizen
