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Last week, Molly predicted that “someone” will probably “clarify” (in Singapore’s case, this is often synonymous with “reiterate”) Ms. K. Bhavani’s letter.
A prediction comes true? CNA Clip.
In the words of the CNA anchor, Dr. Balakrishnan thinks that “Singapore’s mainstream media has a crucial role in ensuring the quality and standard of discourse and national debate. As long as everyone understands and respects their roles, Singaporeans have a useful dialogue going forward.”
Key words: quality; standard; useful (another word for “constructive”); role*
*Who decides what role a person plays? The government? And who decides how one is to play one's role? The government again?
It doesn’t quite matter if the mainstream media in Singapore doesn’t meet the international standards of press freedom. As usual, we are special and our mainstream media has the sacred role of ensuring the quality and standard of discourse. This sounds reasonable enough. We all know that the non-mainstream-media bloggers have no standard or quality whereas the mainstream media has.
And quality/standard is often defined by the degree of to which an article or a discourse is
Of course the other Sacred Tenet is that we need to generate solutions. As Dr. Balakrishnan says:
“Don’t in the name of humor, distort or aggravate on an emotional level. That sort of discourse does not generate solutions.”
Yeah, opposition offer no solutions, bloggers offer no solutions, Western democracy offers no solutions. Only the gahmen does. So where are the solutions?
Looks like humor isn’t very good these days. So, can you people stop saying that Molly is funny or not? Molly is the serious type of blogger who wants to generate solutions, not the kind who just want to make you laugh and be happy despite your inability to afford your son's school fees!!
Just don’t offer an alternative or suggest a solution that says, “To solve Problem X, we need to let stop censoring people and uphold the freedom of expression.” Such a solution definitely is not constructive.
In short, you must share the same pulse as the government. Chee Soon Juan can go hoarse saying that we need to abolish the streaming of primary school kids. He’s unconstructive. But Jack Neo, who clearly believes in giving the government solutions and not in changing the government, can joke about the streaming of primary school kids can get accolades from the government. When Neo joked, the government which knew (and still knows) best was ready to change. Chee is constructive and Neo isn’t. See the difference?
In fact, we must be afraid of humor. Very afraid. (That’s why it’s good that people say Jack Neo's jokes are simply not funny.) The next thing you want to suspend is probably the Chew-on-it comic strip because it likes to make fun of the behavior of Singaporeans. (Molly assumes it hasn’t already been suspended since she doesn’t read the papers these days.) Or maybe that sort of humor is allowed. It tends to make fun of the peasants and the peasants take it in good humor. It doesn’t make fun political situations who cannot take it in good humor and who believes that it will ultimately threaten their power.
So perhaps the general rule is that you cannot just suggest that the government is unable to solve some problems. What you must do is to offer solutions. This is reasonable. If devils like mr brown keep on criticizing the government and the government has to spend all its time thinking of ways to fix these idiots, then they wouldn’t have time to think of how to keep your costs of living down!
OK, then you might say that without people criticizing at all, the government won’t even be bothered to do anything since there is no pressure. But you are wrong. Our ministers don’t earn their million-dollar salaries to do nothing. Look at all the useful things they have done in the past: GST, GST hike, ERP, ERP hike (to solve the problem of jams), COE, Progress Package, ERS, NSS, NS, some Suzhou thingie that the ST hardly mentions (probably due to
Just look at how unconstructive people waste tax-payers’ money. Cops looking into gathering in support of mr brown
No lah, Molly is not saying that the police are wasting resources! It’s the 30 people who decided to gather in City Hall MRT station, protesting the legitimate axing of mrbrown’s column. Because of them, the police have to investigate the incident.
Well, actually Molly personally suggests (so don’t say Molly is not offering alternatives!) that if a squad of riot police was required to deal with 4 silent protesters last year, then about 8 squads of riot police would be needed for these 30 dangerous illegal gatherers. We can’t scrimp when it comes to dealing with disorderly, riotous people! Otherwise more and more people will start gathering!
Or was there a lesson learned from last year's riot-police incident from the incident of schoolgirls wearing white elephant T-shirts, the police didn’t do anything to this crowd of illegal gatherers? Confusing...
Molly doesn’t know how the police will “look into” the incident other than by approaching telecommunications companies for the particulars of people who sent the sms telling people to gather in the MRT station, companies who might willingly provide the particulars of their customers.
Maybe a few weeks later, the ST will report (or not) about someone (hopefully not a grassroots leader this time) being “interviewed” by the police for initiating the gathering. Perhaps the person won’t be locked up in Changi, but will be given a stern warning and, hopefully, people won’t ever dare to initiate any sort of gatherings anymore.
But thanks to these 30 horrible people, perhaps our MIW are thinking of soft-authoritarian ways to fix dissenters (people pay tax to have other people come up with ways to deal with them?) instead of spending their time thinking about how to help Singaporeans who cannot afford to see a doctor. Look at how damaging these rioters are!!! Why must they make such a big hoo-ha about the issue? mr brown is just suspended. They can take him back any time. Don't forget Fann Wong was once suspended by MediaCorp (or was it TCS then?) too. But now you make so much trouble, the stakes are increased. They cannot be seen as relenting to mass pressure or they will lose face.
That said, Molly thinks that at the heart of the mr brown issue is the issue of partisan/non-partisan journalism. Allow Molly to think of a solution. Yes, Molly is a bimbo but even bimbos can be patriotic! Her solution may not be good, but do correct her and work together with her to come up with better solutions instead of just criticizing!
OK, someone once complained that more than 85% of Internet postings are anti-PAP and so there is a need to have some “balance” by managing the Internet. Now, allow Molly to suggest that since probably more than 90% of mainstream media articles are pro-PAP BUT the PAP wants the mainstream media to be non-partisan, we might have to do our parts as citizens to remind the mainstream media to be non-partisan.
So, every time we spot a partisan article (pro-PAP or pro-opposition) in the ST or in Today or any other local paper, we might want to politely write to them and tell them to be non-partisan. We need to work together with the government to ensure that the mainstream media is non-partisan.
Template for Letter:
Dear _______,
I refer to the article “_________________,” in the paper ____________________. This article is dangerously partisan and I hope you will make amendments to the article and perhaps suspend the journalist who wrote the article.
As Ms. K Bhavani once wrote to the press, “[i]t is not the role of journalists or newspapers in Singapore to champion issues, or campaign for or against the Government.”
Kindly issue a public apology for publishing partisan articles.
Thank you very much.
Yours truly,
_____________
Have a nice day,
Molly Meek de la Bimbo
