Choo Zheng Xi –
22-year old Yong Vui Kong might soon be hanged. His neck and spine will be snapped, an effect calculated with precision by the hangman who places the noose around his neck.
[Picture left: Vui Kong, third from left, with his sister, Vui Fung, and brothers Ah Lun, Yun Leong, and their mother.]
The broad ranging debate over the death penalty and its unjust application in Singapore is markedly different online and in the print press. Nowhere do the ‘twain least meet than in the way these two media address the issue of the death penalty.
In contrast to the dogged coverage of Vui Kong’s case on the internet, the Straits Times carried a generous half page report, by its reporter Zakir Hussain, on Law Minister K Shanmugam’s remarks justifying why Vui Kong should hang. Despite seeming keen to do an article on Yong’s lawyer’s comments, Zakir Husain’s piece on Mr M Ravi’s reply never saw the light of day.
The pathology of responsibility avoidance is difficult to unpack, but if you’re a journalist in the mainstream media, the following thoughts might have crossed your mind:
“My pay is contingent on my silence, my performance bonus, maybe even my next job rotation.”
“It’s really not my fault. My editors are the ones telling me there’s no space for my piece, that this isn’t the right time to run it. I’m only a journalist.”
“It’s really not my fault. I’m an editor but I’m still answerable to the board of directors of SPH. And God forbid I get a call from The Press Secretary.”
We’ve heard these arguments before: they echo the justifications proffered by low level functionaries in reprehensible regimes.
One unifying theme prevails: responsibility can be divested, blame can be shifted. In the calculus of the psyche, taking a firm position of courage becomes much less rewarding than seeing and hearing no evil.
To our friends in the mainstream media: TOC has held off on saying this for some time, because we’ve given you the benefit of the doubt when you’ve told us that you’re trying your best.
But there comes a point where a dereliction of professional responsibility shades into complicity. Here’s some encouragement, some food for thought.
The next time you spike a piece on Yong Vui Kong’s impending execution, the next time you hold off on doing your basic job and reporting Ravi’s replies, the next time you cover up the outcry that’s breaking out just across the causeway, please know that you are complicit.
To our readers in the online community, you can do something about this: write to these journalists, write to their editors, appeal to them as human beings, as trained professionals. Tell them we’re not expecting them to campaign on our behalf, the way the Chinese press in Malaysia has taken up Vui Kong’s cause: we just want them to tell Vui Kong’s side of the story.
Tell them also about the consequence of their silence and the disgust you feel when a 200kg fish makes the front page but a fundamentally important debate about life and death is nowhere to be seen.
Tell the journalists this: by your silence and your neglect of your professional responsibility, you will be complicit in a boy’s hanging.
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Visit this blog for Vui Kong’s story: http://savevuikong.blogspot.com/
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“…write to these journalists, write to their editors, appeal to them as human beings, as trained professionals. ”
Ya right. Which part of no press freedom you don’t understand? It’s like complaining about bad food to the waiter instead of the owner. Even the cooks can’t do much if the owner dun care.
There, we have the reason why Lee Kuan Yew can brand Singaporeans as “ignorant” – a complicit press. Seems more like the entire civil service (from the public institutions of law to the NEA to the PA).
In my view, the near silence of MSM correctly reflects the view of society — no interest in the issue.
In the UK, if there is a referendum on hanging, the noose would be back. MPs there are more liberal than the people they represent, hence the return of hanging is off the agenda.
At the time a boy is held by the noose gasping for his last breath. I wonder, what will Shanmugam be doing then? golfing, eating sushi or laughing over some pappy silly jokes during pappy gathering function. Never in my entire live has I seen human life became so cheap and not worth the effort in saving. I truly salute msm for deliberately choosing having a part in this crime more serious than what Yong Vui Kong has committed unintentionally.
At the WW2 War Crime hearing, the excuses given by NAZI junior officers that they were merely FOLLOWING ORDERS in the mass extermination of the Jewish people were rejected by the judges.
We have ignoramus running the SPH to toe the lines of powers that ignore the laws, and act as a law to themselves, while keeping everyone ignorant of all their dark deeds.
The hullabalooo big bash partying will continue to keep everyone deluded as we approach NDP and YOG 2010 – all leading up to the big day in the approaching school holidays when the Election 2010 will be held.
TOC should continue exposing these ignorant acts of the Pro Alien Government that ignore Singaporeans.
Hang Shanmugam and his PAP masters for crimes against humanity.
As long as they don’t see the deed, and the blood doesn’t stain their hands, would they ever care. They seem to believe that the reason for taking young lives, is to protect the lives of it’s people. As a result the very people lives you try protecting end up having no conscience and no regard to the value of life itself. It’s a sad situation where a society discards life like a used battery. What is worse, is the leaders who advocate such attitude. Indeed we live in a so called first world but governed by draconian laws and even more sadistic rulers who are no worse than tyrants in suits.
We expect much from the local press. We all know they are the mouth piece of their master.
Until there is more fair play in the cabinet and political arena in S’pore, we just have to look towards alternate media reporting like The Online Citizen for a balance view of events.
Completely wrong again! Just because no one in the mainstream press shares your view on Yong does not mean they have neglected their professional responsibility.
Indeed, if they cared about it, they didn’t have to wait for Yong’s case. The death penalty has been around at least 30 years.
Why is there a need to wait 30 years to rally to a cause? Why is there a need to link the cause to a name or a face, if the cause is powerful enough?
Just because someone else doesn’t do like you do for a cause doesn’t mean their professionally negligent.
Wake up!
MM Lee should be back in power. The new generation of MPs are incompetent and unresourceful. MM Lee will surely have more compassion and understand that the law has two sides.
Kudos to Choo Zheng Xi for voicing up for me!
You are a man of integrity. Salute!
@ A Tan 19 July 2010
In my view, the near silence of MSM correctly reflects the view of society — no interest in the issue.
I beg to disagree. It is as Ms Lee Wei Ling mentioned, “the media knows how to play the psychological game and make us turn our attention to whatever it wishes”.(Sunday Times 18 July)
There you have it from the horse’s mouth.
She goes on to exhort the readers “to think and judge for ourselves, not follow blindly in whatever direction the media shepherds us”.
So do we expect the MSM here to do anything different? Unfortunately they know too well that their readers and listeners are “daft” enough to be ‘conn-vinced’ by the reports.
The MSM in shittypore is anything but professional.
They are anything but journalists….wait sorry.they are propagandaists.
so whats new?
singaporeans are jus not concern with the injustices done to them.they simply don’t give a damn.
if u let me put food on the table,i vote for you.nvm if my children will suffer in the near future.important thing is i have food for them now.its works for me.
if my children cannot find food in the future,thats their god given problem……
thats the mentality of the folks of yesteryear,passed on to their children.little wonder why we haven’t evolved to a higher state of civic graciouness and civility…correction..the mass majority of the shittyporean..not me.
MSM is the shithole of the pap.and people literally take it as the truth.and thats democracy,thats responsible reporting for you.
sucks when the democracy they branded is full of shit and against you.
It’s really laughable for Choo Zheng Xi to appeal to the “professional responsibility” of what he calls reporters/journalists in the MSM. Is it not time that we realised that those working in PAP’s propaganda outlets are not reporters/journalists?
To quote the first chief minister of Singapore Mr David Marshall, they are just a bunch of “running dogs and poor prostitutes of the PAP”. Period.
Many journalists just want to have their articles published in a National paper so that they can build a portfolio. Just like those in MediaCorp, they want to get themselves exposed and hopefully be picked up by other stations like CNBC, ESPN etc.
Just like doctors have to serve in a local hospital before they can move on. I do not blame these young writers but their bosses.
The real intelligent professionals would not even bother to work for such a lame media and those with convictions and journalistic principles left aeons ago. What is left are dregs, bootlickers and sychophantic intellects lah. Ranked 173 (???) what can be expected and it is shameful that we or rather the incumbents brag (or lying) about local media being responsible. When a govt influences or is seen to be controlling the agenda of media – it is a hopeless case of and for democracy.
Beware the intellect that pretends wisdom!
This case is clearly very clear to your heart, Zheng Xi, so much so that it may have clouded your objectivity. I personally am anti-death penalty but I don’t know if this is a view shared by society.
I certainly saw no uproar when took leng how was hanged for the murder of huang na. And the bulk of the uproar over the australian vietnamese drug mule came from australia, not singapore.
I am not sure how storng the movement is to save vui kong. I certainly don’t see the Malaysian top brass coming out in support of him. In fact the two PMs met while all this was going on and it seems rather talk about najib’s new cat than the hanging of a drug mule.
Would it be fair to say that if Vui Kong had been caught in Malaysia, the Malaysians would have done no different than the Singapore govt?
So it might be fair to say ST under-reported it, it would also be fair to say TOC over-reported it. I agree with baby boomer on this, Singaporeans don’t really care that much about the death penalty.
One way or another, I think we both know it would not have made a difference. Unless there was some way to prove he did not do it. Otherwise, it means enacting all new legislation for him, and you could hardly have expected that to have happened. It did not happen when all of Australia jumping up and down, it’s not going to happen just because ST runs some comments from M. Ravi. It would make no difference even if M. Ravi made it to the cover.
Sounds like you just needed someone to blame.
The one who gives the support, approval and order to hang a person- isn’t he no difference from a Murderer?
Everyone has only one life and this life belongs to the person; to take another’s life is murder.
Yes, V Kong has commited a crime,to impose punishment is right.It is justifiable to put him in jail for along time, or even a life’s term, or labour camp, whatever, But we cannot take away someone’s life , To take away his life is Murder.