Media Coverage: The Other side of the story

With reference to 16/11/2010 Today article "Cover both sides of the story", I would like to strongly agree with Mrs. Lim on her concerns that newspaper should portray both sides of the story.

Mrs Lim, in her comment, has indeed reflected an important point, that the government has failed to mention, or deliberately ignored. Of course, we don't the extreme scene of sensational news and entertainment reporting, but at least at least, we want the government to give journalist a bit more freedom such that it doesn't reach the level of sensational news, but instead reaches the level of a "balanced news" that presents both sides of the story.

Mr Shanmugum pointed out that it is vital Singaporeans "make decisions based a common source of information and news". However, is this "common" source of information equivalent to only propaganda and stories that put the government in good light, yet deprives citizens of the rights to make decisions after knowing both sides of the story.

One very good example would be the recent gang fights. These are fights that involve death and very serious injuries, and have these gangs have proven to disrupt the peace of neighborhoods and reputation of our country. Such serious social problems, however, gets pinned down by the government one day later with statements saying that these gangs are only "street-corner gangs" that consists of teenagers that are "afraid" themselves, and finally saying that there is no need to take any drastic measures to crack down on these gangs, telling readers not to worry.

Isn't this clearly a sign of the government protecting itself from constructive comments from netizens such as "police should be more alert", "government should have found out earlier", the "government is doing too little to ensure our security"?

The government uses these statements of saying that "there is no need to panic" to protect the fact that it has not done enough to crack down on gangs, yet two days later, the government started to come out "crack down" measures to ues force and investigation to quickly solve the problem.

As such, from these one-side news, should we be wary when in face of these gangsters, or not? Should we really take measures to protect against these gangsters, or should we follow the government's protection statement of relaxing?

Lastly, one-sided news that only favour government policies, usually suppress complaints from the minorty that are urgent and apt, but are not published just because they portray the government in the bad light. As such, these actions made these resident unheard in our society, which claims to be "democratic".

With this, I rest my case here, and hope my post would not be deleted by the government.