PAP? No, ST Bugs Me More.

I am XenoBoy. I am the Political Savant.

Today's XenoBoy op-ed dedicated to the Straits Times' Carl Skadian. ST Journalists' Blogging Handbook 102.

For killing bloggers like :
Molly Meek (www.livejournal.com/users/mollymeek/),

For tarring bloggers like :
Mr Wang (commentarysingapore.blogspot.com),
Mr Loy (singaporeangle.blogspot.com),
Mr Diodati (http://diodati.omniscientx.com),
Mr Lim (theory.isthereason.com), and of course,
Mr Agagooga (gssq.blogspot.com)
and all the rest, good, bad and ugly.

For you, Skadian, I tar all of you too.

Updated : Thanks to Mr Jeff Yen (jeffyen.blogspot.com)

Fully updated, thanks to Mr Steven McDermott (singabloodypore.blogspot.com)
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PAP? No, ST Bugs Me More.

With morally righteous and pro-establishment articles on the ST, how do we keep kids from believing everything they read?

By XenoBoy

The past few weeks have thrown up another worry about children and the newspapers, as if bloggers don't have enough on their hands.

I'm talking about the Straits Times.

As a Sg blogger, I'm naturally wary of ST already, mainly because ST journalists are wont to throw objectivity out of the window.

That's because regime criticism seems to be the last thing on ST journalists' minds, unlike, say blogs which, for the most part, do their darnedest to make sure that they question the validity of State policies.

For ST journalists, saying what the regime wants them to say seems to be de rigueur, consequences be damned. Now, the ST have never generated much controversy, but what happened here about two weeks ago takes the cake.

Just in case you missed it: Three people were charged with making racist comments in their blogs. They allegedly made seditious and inflammatory remarks about Malays and Muslims. And we suddenly have an onslaught of ST articles teaching bloggers how to be responsible, followed by another barrage of articles with a fetish for blogging doom.

In one particularly galling incident, one of the journalists, actually maligned the entire community of bloggers. That just about did it for me and ST articles. I'm sad the authorities did not haul the journalist to court. If they had done so, it will send a message to like-minded ST journalists that they'd better start putting the brain before the pen.

As far as I'm concerned, ST articles are possibly the worst things about Singapore media. Sure, the PAP and governance stuff rightly furrows the brows of parents, but the things some ST journalists say go far beyond the pale.

I have read some of these ST articles, chiefly because some sane bloggers occasionally publish such views in their blogs, to raise a red flag about what goes on in there.

Frankly, most of the ST articles just beggar belief. The amount of regime flattery will leave you speechless. And all the talk about ST's independence of viewpoints is just so much bull to me. You read about cases of journalists who have acted with a commitment to their profession despite a stream of political pressure from those who don't agree with what they say.

But the ST journalists will encourage this political pressure and pour petrol on the fire of their fellow professionals' pyre.

But then there're the sporting and comics pages. Sporting and comics are innocent enough. The rest of the paper may be terrible and floundering in relative obscurity but sports and comics help boost readership of the ST.

In the case of the three charged under the Sedition Act, there was worse to come.

After news of the charges broke, some ST journalists made comments that seemed far from the realm of common sense to me. Here were three people charged with making inflammatory statements -- in a society where being tolerant is constantly drummed into us, no less -- and ST journalists were unworried about the chilling effect of the use of the Sedition Act in the general media landscape.

They were applauding this use of State power and proclaiming that the State is right again in policing the Big, Bad and Dangerous Internet.

They had got to be joking. I wonder where can we find journalists who are unworried about the Sedition Act being used, even if it is in the Internet medium.

Sure, the three accused were indeed racist and warranted punishment, but to use the Sedition Act and for journalists to applaud this with a standing ovation smacks of professional irresponsibility and strategic short-sighteness. Many of the ST journalists I have come across have both in abundance.

As I said, ST articles, to me, is the biggest danger out there. It's also given me more work to do when it comes to my children.

Now, I have to find a way to keep my kids from believing what they read when they come across such ST articles.

My children and relatives come from a diverse spectrum of races and religious beliefs. Already, they're asking some hard questions about the state of the world today, especially when it comes to acts of terrorism committed since 9/11.

Sometimes, without thinking, they mouth certain things after reading or watching a news item that I then have to catch.

With all these influences around them these days, irresponsible ST journalists are not going to help.

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Quotes of the Day --

"For land that's dry and unfruitful will give you good crops, if you put on enough manure...I mean, your grace's words have been like manure spread on the barren ground of my dry and uncultivated mind ... I am in my right mind, now, clear-headed and free of the murky darkness of ignorance, brought upon me by my continual, bitter reading of those abominable books of chivalry." -- Cervantes, Don Quixote

"If you condition them to believe everything in their National Education classes, in the ST, in Channel NewsAsia, etc, then they will inevitably tend to believe everything an inflammatory, venomous, seditious, subversive blogger has to say since you have effaced their critical abilities" -- Molly Meek, Anouncement (http://www.livejournal.com/users/mollymeek/)