15 July 2006
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Abstracts of essays; news; announcements; short takes.
About Me
- Yawning Bread Sampler
- This blog carries summary abstracts of Yawning Bread essays, with space for comments.
Here too are other tidbits that are too short for the main Yawning Bread site.
To email me, go to the main site.
Blog Archive
-
▼
2006
(136)
-
▼
July
(14)
- Racial Harmony Day
- Israel attacks Hezbollah in Lebanon
- Sauce for the goose
- Honour and the control of others
- Struggles rather than Troubles?
- Gay marriage defeated in New York court
- When the puppet speaks to the master
- Singapore buys Malaysia, Malaysia bombs Singapore
- Let Mr Brown speak
- Flags and monuments
- Much ado about citizen journalism
- The inutility of speaking truth unto power
- Income inequality widens markedly
- The troubles of Joo Chiat
-
▼
July
(14)
Posts
11 comments:
Excellent analysis.
I wanted to blog about the lack of satirical political cartoons a while back when the Mr Brown saga started and has been collecting cartoons from the ST for the past 2 weeks.
Looks like ST beat me to it! Ironical, isn't it, that ST chose to expose its own failings.
But the real scoop is your article. Either your analysis is spot on, or the ST is so out of touch with reality that it does not even realise that it is criticising itself.
no doubt the individual journalists in SPH/Mediacorp find the recent events embarrassing; however, the strength of the system lies in being able to mobilize diverse people in a common direction, with just an occasional rap on the knuckle, like the mr brown case, to keep them in line; it takes a great skill to achieve this
/// So the Straits Times must know it was tapping on OB markers. ///
If there is one phrase that is most misused and abused, it is "OB markers" in the context of Singapore politics.
The whole idea of having OB markers on the golf course is just so that golfers know where not to hit their balls. These OB markers are colour coded just so that golfers know precisely how many strokes they will be penalised if they hit their balls out of bound.
In the local political context, the OB markers are invisible. Worse still, they are moveable. One only knows whether the OB markers are when one touches on something which is deemed unfavourable to the authority or paint the govenment in bad light.
the invisibility and the movability part of the power of the establishment; they decide the content of the political discourse as need to, what is permitted and what is not, as they see fit
I believe they have total control over the local media, do not be fool into thinking that things are opening up because of such self criticizing articles. It is published because it is allowed to be published.
I am still waiting for the good minister to explain what he meant by "national strategy".
what the government decides yesterday, today, tomorrow, is national strategy
In mainland China, any reference to the Taiwanese government or president always includes quotation marks, to pound the point that Taiwan is part of China, regardless of how twisted it looks. The Taiwan "lawmakers" and the Taiwan "president" are, in other words, illegitimate.
I suggest we start using the same strategy when referring to writers for the local newspapers. Let's call them "journalists" and "reporters" with quotation marks, lest anyone think they are really journalists and not propagandists.
Any "journalist" writing an article that forces us to hone our skills in reading between the lines is a coward. Without these "journalists" in Singapore, there would be no "news"paper to brainwash the population.
I am a coward too, for being anonymous. But then again, I don't claim to be a "journalist".
When one played by the rules, was in the fairway is being penalised OB, what can one say of the rule of the game? Confusing. I refer to Today's and Mr. Brown's dilemma. Today's editors allowed MB's article to be publised showed that they have had no issues with the truth and non-partisanship of MB. In fact the bak chok mee turkwa episode was more damaging to PAP. Yet, many ministers said they even laughed over it. Evidently, it was not considered OB. The question remains "who decides OBs"?
they did not like the video, and many thought at the time mr brown would get scolded, but they decided to let it go and put on a brave face of enjoying it, because everyone already thought there was too much sledgehamming of that little nut; the hammer was kept for the next nut that came along where the content was more clearly political and not humour
politics is not mathematics; "right" and "wrong" are decide by the person in power, not by fixed formula
give the writer of the article some credit for the way he has been presented it..and so to, to ST too for publishing this article in the light of the "brown saga".
some of you are thinking too highly of yourself if you even seriously imagined that the editors allowed criticism of itself to rear its head..
hahhaa..
Post a Comment