Gullibility

What is found these days in the local newspapers, online portals like Asiaone and STOMP, is nothing less than a tabloid reporting trashy, hardly critical articles. A book launch covers more pages than important issues on the ground. My Spiderman/Superman cartoon days often made me wish I did better in my languages and studied journalism instead. Not in hope of peeling of my outer clothing, but to report the truth. And with journalism in Singapore being the way it is today, I am glad I suck in languages and did better in engineering topics.

Perhaps RADM Lui should watch a couple of 2009 movies recommended by an engineer. "State of Play" starring Russel Crowe, that is how journalists or a newspaper should be. If not at least strive to have his team of journalists be like Robert Downey Jr. in "The Soloist" doing some good for those who have fallen through the cracks of society.

Would like to share this interesting article written by our local famed blogger - Yawning Bread: Mainstream media here continues to hold ground, said minister

I shall extract excerpts which I find would make him a better journalist, and by the way in no means of RADM Lui's poor standards.

One can go on and on adding layers to facts, each layer altering one's perception to some degree. Generally, it would never be possible to exhaust all layers of facts. Since that is the case, then one may ask: How many layers have to be unearthed for the Truth to be understood? If perception is so contingent upon the adding of layers of information, how will we ever know when we have grasped the Truth?

Lui said in his speech, Singapore's mainstream media "remains the dominant source of information", a claim he supported by reference to the 2008 Nielsen Media Index survey, saying "75 per cent of those surveyed selected newspapers as their preferred source of news", that's news. Can it be otherwise? How can non-mainstream media contest at being the "preferred source of news" when it is not actually a source of news?

By foolishly remaining complacent about people trusting mainstream media for "news", the government is blindsided to another set of dynamics: It is commentary that more likely shapes political opinion and it is doubtful if the mainstream media play a hegemonic role anymore in the formation of political opinion. Moreover, as elections in Malaysia and other countries have shown, political opinion formed by the net-savvy minority can spread by word of mouth and other means to non-net-savvy sections of the population.

I shall end with his last sentence in that blog entry which left indelible parting questions to my mind as well. "Is our mainstream media considered credible simply because, after 44 years, our people have been made apathetic and credulous?"