~Editorial~

“It is not right to pin the blame on workers and, what is worse, Malay and Indian workers for the purported lack of English proficiency”.

“Inappropriate and Unfair”.

These aren’t the words of a “sensational” news article. This was a rebuke from the Minister of State for MCYS, Mdm Halimah Yacob, in an unprecedented public scolding of her fellow People’s Action Party (PAP) MP Mr Seng Han Thong’s comments on the lack of English proficiency of Malay and Indian transport staff.

Mr Seng’s comments are widely perceived to be of a racist nature, and Mdm Halimah, recognizing the gravity of the situation, went public.

This stands in stark contrast to the tone adopted by media academic Dr Cherian George. In an article entitled “There’s enough racism in Singapore, TOC needn’t cry wolf”, Dr George ripped into TOC’s report that broke the news of Mr Seng’s comments.

What irked Dr George was TOC’s failure to highlight that Mr Seng was purporting to quote SMRT. TOC, he felt, had “misrepresented” the facts to make it seem that Mr Seng’s comments stemmed from racism. Dr George instead attributed the comments to “political naivety”.

We agree with the premise of Dr George’s article that providing context in news is important, but disagree with the conclusions he’s reached.

TOC’s editors were of the view that Mr Seng was adopting the purported SMRT comments as an expression of his opinion, as opposed to disagreeing with them (which Mr Seng now claims he is doing). Mr Seng’s comments were made in response to a question by the presenter about whether poor communication was exacerbating public transport woes. Hundreds of TOC’s readers, having had the opportunity to independently view and analyze the video of the exchange, arrived at the same conclusion.

Dr George’s article goes on to imply that the outrage generated online was a direct result of TOC’s misleading presentation of the facts:

“In the 13-odd hours since the article went up, more than 200 readers have posted comments, practically all of them outraged by the MP’s remarks as reported by TOC.”

This is incorrect and unfair, and TOC takes strong exception to any such implication.

TOC’s initial article included the full video with a time reference to the exact point at which Mr Seng’s comments appeared for readers to make up their own minds. We then put up Mr Seng’s initial statement that said his comments had been misinterpreted, together with his transcript of the exchange.

Racism? You decide

In any case, the question of how TOC should have most accurately reported the comments is now an academic one.

It turns out that no one in SMRT singled out the Malay and Indian communities for speaking broken English. This makes Mr Seng’s comments entirely his own, and more egregious in that he incorrectly attributed them to someone else.

One explanation for Mr Seng’s comments is that he subconsciously attributed the Malay and Indian comments to SMRT staff and in all good faith genuinely believed that someone in SMRT had made such a statement.

To which TOC can only say that if Dr George doesn’t think that a reflexive stereotyping of racial minorities by a public figure can be interpreted as genuine racism, we don’t know what can.

–
Dr George’s article, which was written before SMRT clarified that it had made no statement singling out Malay and Indian transport workers, was prominently quoted in a Straits Times article by Rachel Chang of 23 December 2011. Ms Chang’s article appeared after SMRT clarified that it had made no such statement.

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