By Choo Zheng Xi
With additional reporting by Terence Lee
Ms Agnes Lin was featured in last week’s Sunday Times in an article entitled “Mom and Dad will provide”. The article was part of a set on how Singaporeans are coping with the recession.
Twenty- year-old Ms Agnes Lin must be Singapore’s most loathed undergraduate, and all thanks to a Sunday Times article that portrayed her as a spoilt brat leeching off her parents to feed her expensive shopping tastes.
But Ms Lin was shocked when she first read the article by Nur Dianah Suhaimi on 26 October. She was made out to be a person intent on indulging in grossly irresponsible shopping habits at her parent’s expense despite the recession, she said to The Online Citizen (TOC).
Giving her side of the story, Ms Lin highlighted important facts that the journalist omitted, and instances where assertions made were only partially true. The portrayal, she said, was so inaccurate that it seems almost to have constructed an alternate persona for her.
“When the piece came out, my friends were calling me and asking me whether I had really said all that. They were shocked because I’m not like that!”
Ms Raudah Begum, her best friend from since Ms Lin’s days in Millenia Institute, could not believe her eyes when she read the Sunday Times.
“Everyone who knows her is shocked. It’s as if they were talking about a totally different person in the article”.
The real Agnes Lin
The piece describes how Miss Lin ‘only uses Shisheido cosmetics and skin care products’, and ‘goes on overseas vacations with her friends where she would bust $1,000 on shopping alone’. The alleged source of her income? According to the article, ‘Mum, a private tutor, and Dad, a businessman selling polythene bags, pay for her expenses’.
Netizens who read the Sunday Times piece were outraged. One blogger fumed: “How she feels about the world is incredibly shallow, I really really need to slap her”. Another wondered: “Does she not understand the notion of being self-sufficient, or that not everyone is as blessed financially as she is?”
But the truth could not be further from the impression created by the ST piece, says Ms Lin.
In fact, contrary to the money-leeching image portrayed in the ST article, she says she actually makes an effort to pay her own way.
While the article claims that she has been receiving a $500 allowance since she was 16, she has in reality stopped taking money from her parents upon beginning her current educational bond programme, which provides her with a monthly salary.
And contrary to the assertion in the article, she pays for her own expenses and bills with this money. While Ms Lin says she took pains to highlight this during her interview with the ST reporter, this fact was omitted in the article.
Is she a lavish jet-setter at her parent’s expense, as the ST piece seemed to suggest?
Agnes has only been on two overseas trips with her friends: once in January this year to Taiwan, and then to Bangkok in July. While her parents helped her defray the cost of her Taiwan trip, she paid for all her expenses to Bangkok herself out of her own savings from a previous relief teaching job and tuition assignments.
Not only does Ms Lin not take money from her parents, she actually makes an effort to earn her own. Before beginning university, Ms Lin gave tuition four times a week to two different children at Punggol and Novena.
According her friends, Ms Lin values frugality. Ms Raudah said, “Agnes is not someone to take money lightly. Sometimes when I see an item I want to buy but is slightly pricey, she will tell me not to waste money on it”.
A twist in the tale?
So is Ms Lin a privileged shopaholic?
The piece claims that ‘twice monthly, she shops at her favourite stores – Topshop, Zara and Forever21’.
Ms Lin says she highlighted to the reporter that she shops less these days as she lives in Nanyang Technological University (NTU) hostel. At one point in our interview, she burst out: “This is hardly the lifestyle of some rich girl lor!”
So what about the claim that Ms Lin ‘carries around the latest mobile phone’?
She is in fact currently using a free Samsung clamshell phone. Her previous phone, a HTC, is spoilt. Since her mom had said ‘no’ to her buying a new phone, she plans to use her Samsung until her 2-year plan is up.
What Agnes felt was most unfair was the ST article’s assertion that ‘She thinks a friend of hers, who is left with $20 to last until the end of the month, is silly to consider taking up a part-time job to earn some extra cash’.
“Anyone reading this would think I’m a spoilt and insensitive brat. I have done part time work myself too! Why in the world would I imply she is silly?”
Based on an extract from her personal blog, the article seemed to put words in her mouth:
“What the reporter asked me was “ Do you have any friends you know facing financial difficulties or are in need to money?”
I said, ” yes, I’ve got a friend who has only 20 dollars left for the month. I told her to ask her parents but she said no because she want to be independent because she is already 20” and should not be asking for her parents for money so often already…so she asked me what’s the fastest way to earn money.”
There was never any mention of the word silly.
The ST’s claim that she planned to get a $4,000 Chanel bag was also wildly distorted, says Ms Lin.
“The reporter asked me what my dream bag was and whether I planned to get it with my first paycheck. I told her that it was a Chanel bag but that I certainly wouldn’t be able to afford it with my first paycheck. Isn’t it common sense that nobody gets paid so much in her first job?”
Ms Lin feels that her words were twisted to fit the story the journalist was trying to write. Looking back, she feels that even the photo she was asked to take was contrived to exaggerte an image of indulgence.
“She initially asked me if her photographer could take a picture of me clubbing. Of course I refused! During the photoshoot, the photographer kept asking me to pose with my branded bag, the only branded item that I have, but I refused”.
The view from the ST
TOC managed to interview ST reporter Nur Dianah and asked why she omitted certain facts in her story.
Explaining why she omitted to mention that Agnes actually pays her own bills, Ms Dianah said that before the interview, Agnes did not want to be identified as being under a tuition bond. She was afraid of infringing her employer’s guidelines on speaking to the press.
Ms Dianah elaborated that if she had written that Ms Lin paid for her own bills, she would then have to explain in the article where Ms Lin got her money from.
“This put me in a quandary. I couldn’t say she was paying her bills through part time work, as her tuition grant guidelines prevent her from moonlighting. I also couldn’t reveal that she was being given an allowance under the tuition bond as she had explicitly asked me not to, so I chose to leave it out”.
Wasn’t it then inaccurate to say that ‘Mum, a private tutor, and Dad, a businessman selling polythene bags, pay for her expenses’?
But, Ms Dianah qualifies that line was not meant to refer to all her expenses.
“In Agnes’ interview, she did mention that when she shops with her mother, her mother usually helps foot the bill.”
Asked if overall she thought the interview was fairly done, Ms Dianah said:
“Definitely. I might have left positive material (about Agnes) out due to space constraints, but there was a lot more information on her that wasn’t flattering which I left out too”.
Does Ms Dianah regret writing the article?
“I certainly regret the distress this has caused her, we never expected this to happen, and we understand this has caused her some trauma. Still, she shouldn’t be worried about what people online are saying about her because a lot of netizens aren’t held accountable and can be quite nasty.”
Damage done
To Ms Lin, the explanations provide cold comfort. Individual facts aside, Ms Lin feels that the article badly misrepresented her, and intentionally so.
“The fact is, the whole article was out to portray me in a bad light, leaving out many important points that would have given a more balanced picture,” she said.
While not wanting to comment on the specifics of this case, media academic Dr Cherian George highlighted the importance of media accountability:
“Increasingly, a more engaged public will judge the professionalism of news media by the level of public accountability that they open themselves to, especially when they make mistakes that hurt relatively powerless individuals and groups. Professional news media should want to progress along these lines, since they say it’s their ethics that distinguish them from mere bloggers.”
Her friend Ms Raudah was more blunt: “I feel that the journalist was intentionally trying to portray her as spoilt. In reality she isn’t like that. She never shows off, she’s a very humble girl.”
Ms Lin was initially depressed at the ST story. So depressed, in fact, she said that “every night I cried to sleep because I didn’t know how to face my parents. I am not someone spoilt and ungrateful, someone who only knows how to ask her parents for money”.
For now, all Ms Lin wants is for her name to be cleared in the court of public opinion, and to put the whole episode behind her.
Special thanks to Mr Clarence Chua for editing assistance.
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@JBA but wouldnt you agree with me in saying that the ST actually made her look in this way based on the way she was in the past?
e past? u mean u noe herz?
lol sean, im not jealous =.= lol i never wanna be an elite man, they make us normal people poorer. and i need to say that the ST are wrong! read wat i wrote! im suggesting that she sues them! if im working in the ST i wouldnt be suggesting to her that she sues us rite??!!! my english is clear! tts y i agreed with wendy! and as for shuying, i dun noe her, and i dont wanna noe her, wait i get pulled into the string of crap.
All im saying is tt the ST confirm got ulterior motive, i dun think they so dumb to make such a bad move, and so poorly making up stories. its all part of a bigger plan!
think!!!
Suing ST.. mmm.. dun think the girl will hav so dip a pocket but a personal defamation suit against e reporter would b interesting….
Newsprint journalists are paid to ensure that that their employers get to sell as many newspaper as possible … sensationalization, creating major public hu..ha.. or making the articles sound as juicy as possible is part of the deal…
given the amount of attention that Nur Dianah generated, the episode could well put her in a position to receiving a big bonus for 2008 and ….. she could then herself get that S$4000 Chanel bag.
never volunteer to be interviewed by any journalists …. least you want to be portrayed differently or be totally misunderstood. It happened to me before.
I’ve had an article run in BizTimes 5 years ago while i was in my final year of school (already completed thesis and waitind to grad), and was working on a advertising startup with technology from NY then.
Being new, we wanted to have the angle in BT to help open doors to the big management of Shopping malls and cinemas we’re talking to, to get our product in the door.
The article was a disaster, using words like “Eager Beavers” in the headlines and taking quotes out of context. Ongoing deals were KIV-ed, lost, kaput. Learnt a bloody hard lesson, and keep that article laminated.
I’ve since been working hard on another startup, we’ve closed a VC round, and setup office in SV, and looking likely to do a round there as well, and have never accepted or gotten any significant local PR coverage and have been mostly under the radar past 3-4years. My CEO got bad coverage from TNP and TODAY, which only further reinforces our belief of sensationalism.
Think “Against the advice of his lecturers..” as a start line to the story.
Having said that, my contacts in BT did help with a good article after our financing round, on the back prime page as well. :) It did help somewhat, but we’ve customers all over the world and not really in SG, so not overly concerned. Many good foreign websites do pick up our releases..
Bottom line is, journalists write what will move their papers, PR agencies pitch the angles their clients want, and the ordinary folk direct to journalist will always be eaten for lunch by the “old media” press.
Truly opposing points of view on the topic, courtesy to the vast majority in Agnes’ camp and the few in Dianah’s. Yet, going by the story in the ST and this TOC exclusive, the burning question is – what exactly counts for responsible journalism?
The Straits Times, as a national newspaper which readers have to pay for, owes a service to the general public to report accurate facts in its entirety, did a great injustice to Agnes Lin for its overgeneralisation in the story.
However, the quagmire is the stance of The Online Citizen – should it, as a citizen journalist website, offer a slanted view as well in its pursuit of responsible journalism? Or should TOC, in this exclusive, have taken efforts to try to seek a balance in its story?
Yes, we are thankful for TOC to offer comments deviant from what is thrown up within the mainstream media. But really, perhaps more could be done to get the government and the mainstream media to treat the TOC with respect. Yet blazing down the path which the ST took within this article failed to leave netizens (who, the mainstream media believes, are irresponsible purveyors of untruths) in good light.
On a sidenote, I believe that Terence, in his above comment, meant that we ought to cut reporters, as a profession, some slack, rather than specifically Dianah. A simple “no comment” to local journalists would in fact, stymie the growth of the journalism industry in Singapore. It does remain the ownership for journalists to be accountable to their interviewees. But the public could help by re-affirming with the journalists themselves that their quotes are taken into proper context prior to the story going on print and causing collateral damage to reputation.
And the extrapolation that WKWSCI “breeds inaccuracy, misleading readers, deceit, biasness, and fiction writing” is an insult to the integrity of the school. As a student there, I can honestly pledge that the school is doing all it can within its means, to champion responsible reporting and promote critical analysis and thinking.
Good education for Singaporeans.
Another lesson not to take everything we read in the national press, or what we hear on national TV/Radio as the truth.
We have to be discriminating and be sceptical about all ‘media’.
Too many of them have their own agenda.
Pple jump in to condemn ST & just believe whatever the little NIE girl says.
We were not in the interview. We do not what transpire. Most of us are not her friends, we do not know how much truth are there in her words…and of course how much truth are there in our latest tabloid, sunday times.
I agree with alanto72.
This report, like the one featured in ST, is based only on the “victim” ‘s own rebuttal. Note that the reporter did not admit that she had distorted Agnes’s comments..
I feel that to be fair, if Agnes feels that she is really misquoted, she should write to ST forum to reveal the actual content of their interview, and then demand apology from the reporter/ST for all the anguish inflicted–if what she had claimed in this (TOC) article is true. It is only fair that we also hear ST side of the story before we make our judgement YET AGAIN!
Else I feel this article by TOC is unfair to the reporter–as ST’s is to Agnes.
I stopped reading the ST a long time ago for similar reasons. We only collect ST from our neighbours for my dog to pee & poo on. Some how, my dog prefers to pee on a limited circulation newpaper. Even dog know the different.
#111) alanto72 & #112) passerby
This TOC article is not as one-sided as you’ve made it out to be.
From the many comments; especially from those who have worked in ST’s newsroom, their accounts of how things are conducted there tells us more than what is written here.
It’s up to us to make the choice to believe who might be lying and who might be telling the truth. And, I think most of us here have the ability to discern for ourselves.
There is no need for Agnes to defend herself when we already know the response from Nur Dianah. She had admitted to leaving some ‘facts’ out because of space and time constraints.
To
111) alanto72 on November 6th, 2008 11.36 am and
112) passerby on November 7th, 2008 2.57 pm
Hmm, if u read the interview on the reporter by TOC, you will notice that the report has admitted to omitting facts due to space. Wat else is there to prove?
I mean to be a reporter, surely her command of ang mo is not light. Surely it’s confirm much heavier than me. Just look at the way i write man…
Thus by leaving out those facts, surely she knew wat kind of reaction the public would ve.
To 112) passerby
As for writing to ST to rebutt the article, haven’t u already realise tat often ST do not post letters tat is not to their advantage? If TOC did not take up this issue, i believe the gal would still be kanna flame till now since it would be her article on her blog vs the ST. Though i doubt many of us here care about ST. =X
ddfb, you are just 15, you probably don’t have very much of a reputation yet.
If you do, then you might know how damaging it is to be painted in such a bad light.
Now imagine Ms Lin is going for a scholarship interview, a few days after that article came to light. Can you say for sure that the interviewer’s impression of her will not be tainted?
She is fortunate that she appears to have some sort of scholarship or study award already. They won’t revoke it because of that one article (even if that article painted an accurate picture) but one can only just begin to imagine the damage to her reputation.
Not to mention the fact that far more people read Sh!t Times than TOC. I’m assuming again here, so correct me, if for some reason TOC has higher readership figures. Of course, quality counts, but quantity is what I’d consider when assessing damage to one’s reputation.
FYI, I’m from WKW SCI. I can vouch for the fact that we learn ethics and etc etc in class but it’s entirely up to the individual to apply them in everyday life.
I’m so glad that I won’t be working at SPH after I graduate. Phew…
116) Shawn
FYI, I’m from WKW SCI. I can vouch for the fact that we learn ethics and etc etc in class but it’s entirely up to the individual to apply them in everyday life.
I’m so glad that I won’t be working at SPH after I graduate. Phew…
We have yet another student from WKWSCI vouching for its integrity. The more we hear from these students, past and present, the more we come to grips with the damage inflicted by the ST writer and her own lack of credibility and integrity.
Shawn, working for SPH is not all that bad. It is working there without a spine of your own that contributes to the ‘BAD’ factor.
As a human being, we owe it to ourselves, if not for others, to be fair to all. It is self-betrayal if one is to advance one’s own cause at the expense of others.
How can such a person sleep peacefully at night is beyond my comprehension.
I’ve got an alternative point of view – there’s no smoke without fire. Why is this girl being portrayed like this if at least some of the stuff is not vaguely true? Why not pick on someone else? Anyway, PR 101 – if you are going to be quoted, always ask them to let you approve the draft!!!!
Anyway, all the Gen Y people – look here. I’m also an employer and I would like to think enlightened – we were cited before for stating in our ads “age is no barrier” – we have offered jobs and internships to young people (yes, those under 25). And some of these have been disappointing. Interns who don’t turn up on starting day (despite signing the letter) without informing us and only contacting us a few days later after we asked. Sleeping on the job, going for 3 hour lunch breaks while everyone else is pulling 14 hour days and the worst of worst – asking for an extension of deadline to do a task and later handing up work while admitting that nothing was done.
I’m not saying everyone is like that, but there are people out there who seem to think (actually I can’t tell what they are thinking cos it is incredulous to me), so not everyone is an angel. I’m not implying that Agnes isn’t, just blowing steam and hope the rest of you are more responsible than some of these chaps I have encountered.
Lovely! Yet again some cock shit journalism by the straits times. One time on the receiving end of so called journalism should be enough for anyone with a half a brain NOT to give any interviews to the one and only newspaper in Singapore…wake up everyone..don’t believe everything you read and of course..don’t give interviews either!
Yeah way to go ST~
When i read this, i admit, i was shocked, okay, by this apparent spoilt rich girl.
But then i wondered to myself, “Acherly hor, wahrao eh, why gor this zhabor got so much balls put this in SG most read newspaper?”
Then i remembered that SG’s “Number 1″ newspaper that suprisingly NEVER puts anything that offends the gahmen, politically incorrect and all that shizz.
Anyway, Ms.Misquoted-by-government-propaganda-paper, what i suggest you do, is go ask the New Paper for interview.
Sure accept one :D
Hey , is this spoiled brad now standing in Geylang selling herself to support her family, since Singapore economy is now in deep crap.