By Terence Lee and Mervin Lee
TWO TPJC students sat on the back of the bus. They groped, petted, and touched one another. The girl, sexually excited, moaned and screamed.
Little did they know that their actions would be posted on STOMP, for the whole world to see.
The school found out of course, and as a result they were sacked from their positions as school councillors. A simple open-and-shut case? Not quite.
The problem, you see, is that there is more to it than meets the eye.
Take a look at the photo. Does it portray anything like two teenagers with raging hormones petting one another? Hardly. If anything, the photo looks rather innocent, and cannot be used as evidence for any indecent act. It merely shows the girl leaning on the male student, nothing more.
There is also a very good chance that this photo has been deliberately used to stir up controversy. It does not take a lot of effort for an anonymous person like “STOMPer EnG” to put something like that on the website. One wonders if the editor of STOMP even bothered to verify the accuracy of the report, if one could even call it that.Furthermore, the “couple” shown in the photo have both categorically denied commiting any offense. The girl was asked by her school to write a ”statement of repentance,” but she refused, protesting her innocence. It was also explained that the female student was crying on the bus over some incident, and that the only form of intimacy was a “consolation hug”.
Surely it is too harsh to relieve the male student of his position in the student council for merely sneaking out to buy the Shinmin Daily which carried the news report about the incident?
At least on the surface, the school does not seem to have any grounds to sack the two students from their positions. One wonders if the vice-principal of the school had made too hasty a decision. While he states in the article that they were sacked because they did not maintain good conduct, the definition of “good conduct” was not elaborated upon.
An anonymous TPJC alumnus wrote to TOC questioning the “iron fist” approach taken by the school in punishing the students. He felt that sacking the students was “unwarranted” and “counter-productive” because “there are better ways to solve problems.”
Additionally, the alumnus felt that the school should extend their hand and provide psychological help to the students who are now facing unwanted media attention. Such additional stress will definitely affect their studies, he wrote.
The biggest loser: STOMP
There can be no winners coming out from this incident. In fact, the most tragic thing to come out of this saga is not the possibility that the two students have been wrongly accused, but the fact that such intrusive “news” reports are even allowed to be published online in the first place.
It seems that STOMP, the new media website of The Straits Times, have sunk to a new, despicable low. While there is no such thing as privacy in public spaces like the bus or the MRT, good taste must still prevail. However, STOMP has proven itself to be nothing more than a public policing tool for trigger-happy busybodies who take sadistic pleasure out of shaming others.
Taking such photos will not solve any of society’s ills. Worse, such actions may in fact perpetrate the stereotype of youths as sexually loose individuals, which unfortunately is what seems to be filling the headlines these days. Honestly, how many youths would dare to behave in such a manner on the bus?
But it seems that STOMP is pretty content with misrepresenting teenagers in such a manner. As if to offer some sort of comfort to the two beleaguered students, the photo was altered to protect their identities. But it still cannot stop friends and associates from recognising the faces in the photo. What consolation indeed.
And if this is the sort of citizen journalism that STOMP promotes, then I want nothing to do with it.
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Ah the attempts by the mainstream media at relevance.. The issue here is not ‘citizen journalism’ but simply a case of our media blowing what would otherwise have been a salicious but useless bit of ‘news’ into a story that no one apart from the protagonists, their parents and their peers cared about in what seems to be a desperate attempt to be ‘cool’. Face it Straits Times, you will never be cool, no matter how much you pretend to be. STOMP is merely another failed attempt.
I hate stomp, there are many fake reports (esp. involving MRT seats) and many just take pics with a fake story and post it up on Stomp as a form of cheap vengeance.
An example would be this:
Fake accusation: http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/singaporeseen/viewContent.jsp?id=53863
Rebuttal from innocent party: http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/singaporeseen/viewContent.jsp?id=54703
btw regarding the issue of photos taken of MRT passengers ‘not giving up their seats’, the angle of the photos suggest that those pple taking the pictures were all standing-up without a seat.
I am willing to bet most of those Stomp reported cases of “ungracious commuters” are just a form of revenge from those who couldn’t get a seat.
Afterall I’m 100% certain that those who are already sitting down wouldn’t bother to take such photos anyway!
ac3knight.. the story of the pregnant is sad.. sad because if you read the comments, there are many fools who do not understand basic social responsibility nor have any common sense. they post what they feel from simply reading what others wrote.
In Japan, you’re not even suppose to sit on the seat even if the train is available as long as you’re neither handicap nor pregnant. Singapore should practice this basic social responsibility.
I don’t know who’s right or wrong but one thing for sure. On thing for sure though, this woman should not be sitting there when it is meant for people with needs.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks that STOMP is helping to make our society worse. In fact, somehow I feel that Singaporeans are losing more and more of their grace, and I believe STOMP is to take at least some blame for this. By passing off such yellow journalism (read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism for an explanation of the term) as “news” is an insult to our intelligence, highly unprofessional, a serious breach of everyone’s privacy, and overall degrades society into a festering mess of moronic snobs who seem content with entertaining themselves with such garbage (“Fahrenheit 451″, anyone?).
Personally, I visit STOMP just to go there to point, and try my best to laugh at the “content” there before the massive facepalm sets in and drives me to somewhere else. Yes, there’s the rare gem (such as someone’s report of a sighting of a rather rare Peregrine Falcon in Sengkang), but these gems are always buried under tons after tons of raw sewage that is the “news” on STOMP.
A Singaporean I met over the IRC network once lamented at how STOMP is taking the privacy of Singaporeans away, and I must fully agree; nowadays, I don’t feel comfortable even in my own home, let alone when I’m outdoors, for I fear every single thing I do, be it playing music in my own home, (apparently) refusing to give up seats or taking the pirority seats on trains (which I avoid primarily because I know they are pirority seats, but also because this has become a favourite subject of many STOMPers). I’m lucky not to have tasted the power of STOMP yet; some of the things that I have done in public were almost more than sure to earn me a place on that site.
It’s extremely, extremely, extremely outrageous that a pair of students lost so much thanks to the simple actions of one barbaric Singaporean, who jumped to simplistic conclusions without even bothering to poke the surface of the situation, and a harmful web site that passes yellow journalism as real journalism, and that a junior colleage – supposedly THE kind of place for, among other things, integrity and intelligence, and the inparting of such on our future generation – could fall for such yellow journalism and respond with such simplistic, iron-fist tactics. I think this speaks a lot about the overall infantilsm, immaturity, moronism, childishness, idiocy, gracelessness, and stupidity of our society.
It does appear that Singapore is fast becoming like a twisted version of the society in George Orwell’s novel, “1984″ – instead of a all-knowing “Big Brother” government, however, it’s the people themselves, with the help of a web site, that is doing the dirty work.
The kind of content on STOMP is meant to be shared privately with family and friends, and not with the public; and even in the former case it’s not really morally right to gossip about complete strangers, even if it’s without our knowledge; it’s simply an excercise in degrading our morals.
STOMP is beginning to look like Singapore’s own thread of whining
well said!
stomp articles are like the gossip pages.
NON-CONSTRUCTIVE CRAP.
it is used to distract the citizens from looking into news that really matters! now tell us how much did we lose from the investments man!
This is not even a citizen journalism to start with at the first place!
It’s citizen paparazzo they are creating.