05 – Let’s have an omelette for gaiety

Today, I woke up to news confirming that the powers-that-be had made a decision.

I thought to myself, “Okay. Cool. They responded.”

As I was brushing my teeth, another thought came to my head.

“Did they just do it out of pressure?”

I went back to the national rag, peered at the headline and the article with a smirk on my unwashed face.

On page two, they incorporated the new-old-new-old-until-I-no-longer-know-who-is-old AWARE comments.

“Wah… so fast,” I thought. Then I was reminded of that night when speed was the essence in an office stuck in the middle of… er… vice-land. When it was handed to the hacks on a platter, they decided they didn’t want to incorporate it. (If you are curious, it’s Dr. Thio’s reply to the MOE statement.)

I must have rolled my eyes again.

There is a reason for my disdain of the hacks here. It’s well and good if the issue is of huge interest. It deserves to be made in the “Prime” pages of the rag.

The headlines dominate for one week? Fine, it is unusual after all. It’s a wee speck of an island.

Second week? Okay. New revelations, but I thought they should plonk such things in The New Paper.

Third week? Stretching it. People elsewhere on this ball of soil are panicking over swine flu. Yet, you are still talking about it.

We all know that the social media is riddled with conversations. No prizes for guessing which camp’s voice is louder. However, it now appears that the mainstream media – aka our hacks – are playing catch up.

Then, there is the coverage. If someone who has emerged after living under a stone for the past weeks were to be presented with all photos published in the press, can we confidently say that he / she will have a complete picture of what went on? Can that person tell us what really the fight is about?

Yes, it’s only the pictures. I’m not even talking about the thousands of words written by the hacks in the “Prime” section, let alone “Review”.

The truth is I don’t have that high a regard for local hacks.

There, I’ve said it.

I spent two years reading broadcast media (albeit it’s only radio) in Australia. (Digression – At 17, I stupidly decided that I wanted to be a radio deejay when I grew up.) I had a culture shock when I realised that radio producers there are not part-timing as deejays spinning tunes. In fact, even their community radio stations ran current affairs programmes – on familial, community (duh!), societal and political issues. We were prodded by our lecturers and tutors that when we put a programme together, the issue must be balanced – meaning one voice must be balanced with a voice countering it.

For example, if the community in a suburb is up in arms and upset over an unusual smell emanating from a factory, you manage it by interviewing a spokesperson from the community and then make sure you feature comments / response from a spokesperson from the factory. The bonus will be to speak to an expert on environmental health and ask him / her if the smell is potentially harmful to health.

As a journalist, the challenge is to tackle the issue on many fronts and present views that give readers / listeners / viewers a better idea. In no way, the journalist should put his or her two cents’ worth into the content of the programme or article.

For close to $100,000, this is one of the biggest lessons I took from my sojourn to Australia. Only to realise that the mediascape here on returning to Singapore is vastly different.

I remember during one of my journalism class when the lecturer (a kindly, soft-spoken bespectacled man who was formerly a Reuters journalist) pulled up the Australian Journalism Association’s Code of Ethics on the overhead projector (it was the pre-Microsoft Powerpoint era). In my head, I went “Oh goodness, I didn’t know these things existed”.

I shan’t bore you with the entire code. However, I will reproduce here the very first point:

“1. Report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts. Do not suppress relevant available facts, or give distorting emphasis. Do your utmost to give a fair opportunity for reply.”

Okay. Maybe some of you may not like Australia (for whatever reasons). I’ll hop over to the American Society of Professional Journalists. This is what they have to say on their Code of Ethics section:

“Seek Truth and Report It
Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.

Minimize Harm
Ethical journalists treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect.

Act Independently
Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know.

Be Accountable
Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.“

The Australian Journalists Association has a service that deals with complaints about journalists flouting the code of practice. The Society of Professional Journalists acts as a watchdog that speaks out against practices that deviate from its code of ethics. Both organisations have thousands of journalists as their members. In short, they respect their profession immensely and compared to our hacks here, it is almost to a fault.

To conclude (sorry if I have rambled on too much), I visited a livejournal site last night. There was a bit of a discussion on the leaked Su Lin letter and a hack (I assume she is local) wrote this:

“And finally, a quick primer on how the media works: It reflects opinion. So say if there are 99 scientists who believe that human-generated climate change is real, and one scientist who refuses to believe – it reflects that proportion, no matter how loud the one scientist is.”

I would have no issue with her comment if she had said “… a quick primer on how the local media works…”.

So there, I hope you have a better idea of the difference between the hacks here and their more professional counterparts elsewhere. My issue with the local media goes beyond this, of course.

It’s only the tip of the iceberg and it basically contributes to the lack of civility when Singaporeans of two differing camps descend down to discuss their differences (this is another story for another day).

Finally, to those who fought the good fight, thank you once again. Truth be told, I didn’t really agree with how the entire thing was managed. But since the Big Guy is an economical Being, I’m glad things turned out the way it did. At the very least, the virtual high-fivers have eggs on their faces now.