Mr Alex Au, in his blog, has highlighted what he termed “an ill-judged and irresponsible scoop”.
Mr Au was referring to the letter written by Ms Stephanie Chok on the Chinese worker who was sentenced to jail for attempting suicide at the Ministry of Manpower’s building and who was jailed for 10 weeks.
When TOC’s Managing Editor, Andrew Loh, received the email containing the letter, he mistakenly thought that it was meant for publication on TOC’s website and did not seek Ms Chok’s permission before doing so.
For this, Andrew has apologised to Ms Chok in private and Ms Chok has graciously accepted the apology.
We offer our public apology to Ms Chok here.
As for Mr Au’s other assertions – for example, about TOC’s “social conscience” – we shall leave it to our readers to judge.
The plight of the migrant workers has been a focus on TOC for the last seven months or so. TOC provided intensive coverage in its Migrant Workers Focus Week in January this year. Indeed, TOC has continued to highlight the problems faced by migrant workers. We have also been and continue to be in constant and regular contact with the workers and those who are helping them. TOC has recently assigned a reporter specially dedicated to migrant workers issues as well.
TOC will continue to highlight such issues – whether they concern Singaporean workers or foreign workers.
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Dear TOC,
These sort of things do happen in media and its great that you have offered Steph both a public as well as a private apology. Its very big of you.
I do know of blogs that have been irresponsible and have even behaved in a manner that jeopardised different members of civil society both professionally and socially. Details I will leave out.
Point is, you guys made a mistake unknowingly and you had no malicious intent.
Benedict
Hey, you receive an email, it’s news worthy, go publish it! And who’s to say the Straits Times will or will not do the same? The fact that ST did not publish the letter is no burden you guys unintentionally torpedoed Stephanies Chok’s plan of things. And why did she email you guys in the first place? Was there a disclaimer – do not treat as news? But it’s good you apologize first, and worry about the details later.
Why did she sent a letter to TOC if there are no intentions of publishing it? Even readers who post their comments here get their views published.
Dear TOC,
This is slightly embarrassing but I appreciate the sentiment.
Alex Au’s article was strongly-worded but motivated by a keen sense of fairness. I see that evident in most of his posts and his courage in speaking out on controversial issues has contributed significantly to online (and offline) debates.
I do believe, however, as Benedict has pointed out, that this was a genuine mistake. It was easy to accept Andrew’s personal apology because it was sincere and came with an assurance, “Will not happen again”.
As a former freelance writer, I have been subject to unethical practices by publishing houses. Often, there was a lack of recognition that mistakes were made and a dismissing of any objections as ‘being difficult’.
The Online Citizen, and my working relationship with Andrew, is of a qualitatively different nature. There is open communication and mutual support and I believe that the integrity of this site and its reporters should not be judged on one mistake alone.
This experience presents an opportunity for us to grow as active online citizens.
Both Yawning Bread and The Online Citizen play critical roles as leading social media outlets, particularly important in our local context.
I remain committed to working with them both.
Stephanie Chok
This is good learning opportunity.
TOC can have a form for readers to fill up when submitting online where contributors or letter writers indicate if they want it published. Else, I suppose the receiver has the discretion being a publisher, online type.
In response to Kenny and Loop, an explanation: I sent it to Andrew, along with a few others involved in migrant worker advocacy. I wanted to alert them, firstly, to the news report, which was also part of my email. I also wanted them to know I’ve written a letter and find out if others were intending to do the same or had additional information. Plus, as I am based overseas, I was hoping they could alert me in the off chance it was actually published. I do apologize for my role in this misunderstanding, by sending out a letter that wasn’t meant for publication before an official response was received. I’ve learnt too!
I see no wrong committed by the TOC here. No wrong at all.
The Straits Times is remiss in its duties for not publishing it; regardless of whether who publishes it first — if the letter warrants national attention then the ST as the prime MS newspaper here SHOULD publish it, no ifs not buts.
Then of course, there’s the government who never ceases to make me laugh…
Time and time again they trumpet to the world how wired, IT advanced and IT savvy the country is, and then proceed to ignore whole swaths of online content. Nice!
Mr Au needn’t have worked himself into a lather over this.
ST forum has a policy of not publishing anything published elsewhere or where they do not get first dibs.
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if you send something to them and there is a CC party visible, they will not publish it as well.
This, is what i believe alex was concerned about.
Dear Andrew and TOC,
Good work and my hats off to you guys. This is the right way to open communications. and accountability. By your private and public apology to Stephanie even though the mistakes was accidental, you have shown the way how to conduct best practice in a public forum platform.
Sincerely,
Observer (SG-HK)
TOC and Steph, I salute to you both.
This is the way to go.
Taking responsoiblty for one’s own actions.
Well done !!
Dear Stephanie, there was a serious error in your letter, he was not convicted for attempted suicide. In fact it appears that he did not have the intention to commit suicide.
Dear TOC,
Thank you for your openness and willingness to take responsibility for mistakes, even if unintended. Way to go!
Hi TOC,
I think some people are making mountains out of molehills.
I have much experience in getting letters published by ST forum and I gladly share my experience and my thoughts:
1.ST Forum exercises its near-monopoly power by forcing writers to accept its terms that only if letters are sent to them exclusively and not published anywhere else ( ? including blogs) will they consider it for publishing. I have been on the wrong end of the stick before as by the time I get a rejection letter from ST Forum editor ( which could come as late as 2 weeks later), the topic has already become stale and not worth sending to another paper or even posting onto a blog. So sending to them is like a gamble.
2.To say that letters published on the ST forum will likely elicit a response from govt agencies is not always true. Many of my letters go unanswered even if questions were asked point-blank.
So to say that TOC has damaged the cause of the migrant workers by publishing the letter is rather far-fetched.
Anyway, it was nice for TOC to apologise for its oversight ( esply not getting Stephanie’s consent).
The whole world has not ended and all of us live to fight another day.
Hi everyone,
Stephanie, sorry for this late reply. Was out most of the day. Hey, sorry for the embarassment. Ha… but it was necessary to do this.. ;) I look forward to working with you more… :) Been a pleasure to have you as a friend and to work with you.. :)
Doc Huang, yes, we all live to fight another day.. No worries about Alex too. We know he meant well.. we take his criticism positively.. ;)
To everyone,
Thanks for your words of support and commendations. We (and I) will learn from our mistakes.. ;)
Regards,
Andrew Loh
should this error occur during election time, wonder if sincere apologies would suffice.
Wow.. 1960 views for this post…
RojakRabbit
there are lots of things the government SHOULD do, the ST SHOULD do. But we know they don’t. So that is very infuriating!
It is easy to gloss this incident over. The plight of migrant workers are at stake, and an almost corrupt system allowing maltreatment of humans are continually being perpetrated.
It is natural to be angry at TOC for publishing the letter. Alex has this issue very close at heart. He has done his utmost in helping the migrant workers. It is so easy for you to pay lip service.
But we learned and moved on. I seriously hope something good stil come out of this and that TOC has promised getting reporter to highlight this issue.
And to Dr Huang .
Every small bit will help.. It is not far-fetched what happened can/wil/may hurt the migrant workers cause. It is a molehill from your perspective as you are not the migrant workers.