Like many others, Mr Shahril Mohamad was taken aback when he thought Member of Parliament (MP) Seng Han Thong had made a racist remark on national television. The 35-year-old technician said he learnt of the incident last Tuesday, while surfing his Facebook page.
"I didn't catch the actual interview, but a friend had forwarded me a news article from The Online Citizen (TOC)," he said. Added Mr Shahril: "I find TOC a dependable source of news, which is why I found the report disturbing."
He didn't watch the clip and didn't catch Mr Seng's interview on Blog TV on Dec 19. Mr Shahril found out later that the TOC article wasn't accurate. On Saturday evening, Law and Foreign Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam took the socio-political blog to task for its incomplete report of the sequence of events.
"A significant part of what has been attributed to Mr Seng is false, to be quite blunt about it," he told reporters. "The article did not say that he was quoting an MRT officer. They could have pointed out that it was an inaccurate quote. They didn't say he was quoting an MRT officer and neither does it say that he disagreed with that view."Political commentators told The New Paper that this latest development affirms the need for the online media to be more accurate and balanced in their news reporting. There is no doubt Mr Seng's remarks were "insensitive", Singapore Management University's assistant law professor Eugene Tan said.
'TOC report more accessible'
However, he said it is also "fair to assume" that many netizens learned of the incident online because "people would find the TOC report more accessible than the BlogTV extract, which is also available in cyberspace."
"All this does not take away from what Mr Seng had actually said...but anyone reading that headline would be inflamed so I don't think we need to add fuel to fire, especially on something that relates to race."
On Saturday, Mr Shanmugam called for the matter to be dealt with "on the basis of facts and not on the basis of a false statement which has been quite wrongly attributed to Mr Seng."
The minister said Mr Seng's mistake was that he misquoted the MRT officer and said that the officer had referred to Indian and Malay drivers. In fact, the officer had referred to drivers of all races.
Mr Seng, an Ang Mo Kio GRC MP, had gone on Channel NewsAsia's programme Blog TV last week to discuss issues related to the recent spate of train disruptions.
During the interview, Mr Seng, quoting an SMRT public relations officer, had said that "some of the staff, because they are Malay, they are Indian, they can't converse in English...well enough". Mr Seng's comments went viral on Tuesday after the TOC article, drawing a barrage of negative comments on his Facebook page, on forums online and also on the Facebook pages of other MPs.
On Thursday, Mr Seng responded to the comments by providing a transcript of the interview. He said: "Unfortunately, some of my comments were misinterpreted." At around noon on the same day, Mr Seng followed up with a statement of apology on Facebook.
Nanyang Technological University professor Cherian George had said that Mr Seng was not the only one at fault here. On Dec 22, the academic wrote in a blog post that TOC was false in its reporting of Mr Seng's remarks. "Omitting to mention that the speaker you're quoting is quoting someone else can be a little misleading," he wrote.
"Surely, Mr Seng should know better. But so should the editors of what, by default, is Singapore's leading citizen journalism website. There is enough genuine racism in the country; TOC doesn't help by crying wolf."
When contacted, TOC editors declined to comment on Mr Shanmugam's views. In an SMS sent to this reporter yesterday evening, the website's interim chief editor Ravi Philemon wrote: "We do not have anything to say at this time". But on Dec 23, the website ran an editorial stating it disagreed with Dr George's view.
"We agree with the premise of Dr George's article that providing context in news is important, but disagree with the conclusions he's reached," said the editorial. But have the sentiments against Mr Seng changed following Mr Shanmugam's clarification?
Said SMU's Mr Tan: "The fact that TOC is not going to respond will quiet things down...but one hopes this issue has not subjected the social fabric here to strain".