Here's an article on the dark side of journalism in Singapore posted in Sammyboy Forum. Given the nature of this article, it would be almost impossible to verify it so please bear that in mind. Here's some interesting bits and pieces from that article.
On Oct 31, Today had a senior editors' meeting which Shaun Seow presided. Mano lost his editorial independence not during the recent Mr Brown affair, but some years earlier, during the Val Chua affair. For those of you not familiar with the matter, just do a Google search on Val Chua, Mano Sabnani and you will find a lot of material on the Net. Since the Val Chua affair, Mano had to report to Shaun within the Mediacorp stable. All reports involving cabinet ministers must be vetted by Shaun and his team at Mediacorp HQ, not at Today.Yeah, we all knew about the brown affair where satire is too much for our godfatherly government, who interestingly vowed to take humour seriously years back. (So serious that we can laugh man). But Val Chua who? Val Chua was the reporter who wrote the article some time ago when MM Lee's better half suffered a stroke in England. He, just like all other British, had to queue and wait at the hospital and MM Lee was critical of such a non-discriminating system. At the end, SIA made special arrangements for MM Lee, a plane with medical equipment fitted together with doctors and nurses to fly Mrs Lee back and MM Lee was grateful for this treatment.
There are no real editors at Today, they are all a bunch of word processors. They send good reporters like Derrick Paulo and Ansley Ng to cover political happenings, then censor and rewrite everything to suit their political masters.
It was a factual report that had started all these problems within. It could be worst if it wasn't factual as Mano and Val could be behind bars or made to pay millions in damages for slandering.
Another interesting bit, this time on President Scholars,
Shaun is a former president scholar and his entire career is scripted to perfection. As long as he serves his political masters, his career will be smooth. Even the conviction of Zahara Latif for maid abuse within the Seow household did little more than embarrass him. Goh Chok Tong wrote a letter to support Zahara during her mitigation hearing.President's scholars are pretty rare and I don't think that all of them are like this Shaun Seow. This article may be written to project a negative image of those in power but heck, what is the maid abuse scandal? I tried googling and failed to dig out any more evidence, but if the maid abuse incident is true, what else can I say?
During the Oct 31 meeting, Mano was not able to speak because his ex-gratia payment was held back unless he played ball. Shaun humiliated Mano by paying lip service to his contribution and saying how the newspaper will move ahead without him. Most of the editors were too afraid for their jobs and kept generally quiet as they watched Mano run to the ground and abused. This coming from Shaun, was no surprise, for like Zahara, he is an abuser. Shaun is many years younger than Mano and behaved like an arrogant brat wielding too much power for his own good.
I may not know of any President scholars but I did get myself acquianted with a few Overseas Merit Scholars. One of my friends who know a couple of these scholars better than me hold pretty negative remarks of them. Yet I have a couple of Local-Overseas Merit Scholars who are great individuals so scholars are in reality a mixed bag. One that I knew of is a decent badminton player, ran a full marathon, able to do Physics faster than a speeding bullet, is a workaholic, drives a Camry but yet looks nerdy and is very very humble and friendly. Of course, for every one such scholar I could find another boring/dull/arrogant/insensitive/so full of himself counterpart.
I digressed.
But heck, looking for any career? Government scholars are dominating a lot of places such as the civil service, public service and GLCs like our local medias. You may find yourself working for one in the future or become one of them too. But journalism gets hit hard in our highly restricted press so unless you truly and wholeheartedly agree with what the Lee family had to say about Singapore and sincerely believe that all the policies churned out by the government is good for us, and that opposite parties are synonymous to evil, then journalism may not be good for your mental health.
P.S. Scholars referred here refers to those who hold overseas scholarships as you may have know it that local scholarship holders are not on the same meritocratic track as them. And the author believes in the following definition of a scholar but uses it in this article to refer to scholarship holders as described.
singapore scholars journalism essay
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