I read with great interest that Minister of Home Affairs and Law, K Shanmugam has been appointed as one of the committee members to review the situation of fake news being disseminated in Singapore.
The Minister has in recent times, voiced his displeasure on alternative news sites, particularly, The Online Citizen (TOC) in Parliament, pointing that the publication engages in falsehoods, particularly against the police. So it is pretty likely that the Minister will include the past allegations against TOC in the report by the committee.
So as part of TOC's submission to the deliberation process, here is a look at some of the allegations made by the Minister in recent times.
During his Parliament statement made on the 14-yr-old Benjamin Lim's suicide case in March 2016, the Minister claimed that TOC had gone on an orchestrated campaign of falsehoods against the police.
He said,
A number of these falsehoods have been put out by The Online Citizen (TOC). It has gone on a planned, orchestrated campaign, using falsehoods and has published about 20 articles or so, as part of its campaign. One example of the falsehoods, as I had said earlier, Police have said on 1 February that they went down in plain clothes. Yet TOC published an article on 5 February saying that police wore attire stating the word "Police". The suggestion is that the police were lying to Singaporeans.
They supposedly relied on a posting by a lady, Mary Anne Pereira. She had stated that her son saw Police officers with Polo T-shirts in the word "Police". Police checked with Ms Pereira. She says she had gotten it wrong. She got her dates mixed up. She is wrong because the Police went to the school, in plain clothes on 26 January. She has taken down her post.
People make many statements online. They can be mistaken. That is why there is a Court process to establish the truth. The overall narrative and impression conveyed by the various TOC articles are: (i) Police were lying; (2) Police intimidated the boy; and (3) Police put pressure on him to confess to a crime that he did not commit. Allegations, implications which are false, practically leading people to conclude that Benjamin committed suicide as a result.
He then presents a table to list some of the articles and the alleged falsehoods, unfounded implications which the articles are said to convey.
More at
“Fake news”?: Allegations made by Shanmugam against TOC
The Minister has in recent times, voiced his displeasure on alternative news sites, particularly, The Online Citizen (TOC) in Parliament, pointing that the publication engages in falsehoods, particularly against the police. So it is pretty likely that the Minister will include the past allegations against TOC in the report by the committee.
So as part of TOC's submission to the deliberation process, here is a look at some of the allegations made by the Minister in recent times.
During his Parliament statement made on the 14-yr-old Benjamin Lim's suicide case in March 2016, the Minister claimed that TOC had gone on an orchestrated campaign of falsehoods against the police.
He said,
A number of these falsehoods have been put out by The Online Citizen (TOC). It has gone on a planned, orchestrated campaign, using falsehoods and has published about 20 articles or so, as part of its campaign. One example of the falsehoods, as I had said earlier, Police have said on 1 February that they went down in plain clothes. Yet TOC published an article on 5 February saying that police wore attire stating the word "Police". The suggestion is that the police were lying to Singaporeans.
They supposedly relied on a posting by a lady, Mary Anne Pereira. She had stated that her son saw Police officers with Polo T-shirts in the word "Police". Police checked with Ms Pereira. She says she had gotten it wrong. She got her dates mixed up. She is wrong because the Police went to the school, in plain clothes on 26 January. She has taken down her post.
People make many statements online. They can be mistaken. That is why there is a Court process to establish the truth. The overall narrative and impression conveyed by the various TOC articles are: (i) Police were lying; (2) Police intimidated the boy; and (3) Police put pressure on him to confess to a crime that he did not commit. Allegations, implications which are false, practically leading people to conclude that Benjamin committed suicide as a result.
He then presents a table to list some of the articles and the alleged falsehoods, unfounded implications which the articles are said to convey.
More at
“Fake news”?: Allegations made by Shanmugam against TOC
