Tan Cheng Bock also claims media get around what he called ‘biased’ reporting, Dr Tan turns to online media. Dr Tan Cheng Bock has spoken out against what he calls “biased” coverage by the media during the Hougang by-election last week.He is the latest political figure to join the debate.The former Ayer Rajah Member of Parliament wrote on his Facebook page that he empathised with Workers’ Party chief Low Thia Khiang, who recently criticised the way the mainstream media had covered the by-election.“I can understand Low Thia Khiang’s outburst on the main press media for not being fair to the opposition because my team too felt the coverage of my Presidential election was also biased towards the government choice candidate,” Dr Tan wrote.The general practitioner added that he had to turn to the online media to reach an otherwise unreachable audience because news coverage of the presidential polls was “biased towards the government choice candidate”.Dr Tan said he managed to garner hits in the range of 46,797 direct views and 3,271,294 third-party views on his Facebook between 22 and 28 May.His latest post before today (31 May), was on 26 May and it has already been read by 15,348 netizens.However, Dr Tan pointed out that he wasn’t able to reach the older voters because they are not web-savvy. “My generation is not in touch with the new media because we are not used to telling the world what we do,” he said.“If I had no new media to work with after my post-election, my connect with the ground will be limited. Today, apart from the usual conventional ways, this new media will be my main communication tool for the future,” Dr Tan wrote.
