Should Warren Fernandez resign to save journalism in Singapore?

 

Personally I cannot see how he can stay on as the chief editor. I have been blogging for an awfully long time on the social political scene in Singapore. And never before in this whole period of ten years have I seen the Straits Times hemorrhage so much credibility, good will and even respectability within such a short period of time.

 

I am not suggesting for one moment under Han Fook Kwang ST came across as fairer and squarer then what it is today – but at least, it seemed to me and others I have spoken too in the last week to be less full frontal in tearing the opposition to shreds.

 
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What’s different today is the ST seems to consistently paving the road to the dodo hall of fame as each successive day passes by. First it was the ST’s brazen below the belt manner in which they tried unsuccessfully to smear the opposition and even undermine their credibility obliquely. Then it was their mind numbing charity drive that involved giving out free newspapers to the poor!!!!!!! And the list really goes on like the preachy attitude ST has been adopting about creating a more caring and inclusive society. That to me and I suspect 99.9% of netizens comes across as rich and hypocritical.
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I mean taking a look at this photo and the caption below – what after all is a reasonable man supposed to conclude?

To exacerbate matters Fernandez seems to have as much PR and damage control skills as a garden gnome – when allegations surfaced that the press coverage was less than fair and truthful after the elections in Hougang. Warren responded in exactly the way a garden gnome would respond by reading from a prepared cue card that was probably taken out circa 1970 – his response was such a massive disconnection from what the public perceived from the press coverage, that it simply didn’t gel or even make sense and that I believe really spiked the anger counter in the internet in the ST.

 

I don’t know any journalist who work in the ST. But I never thought that I would ever feel sorry for them. It’s hard to be motivated and to even believe in what you do, when so much shit seems to stick on all the right places in such a short period of time – but try to keep your chin up.

 

As I don’t think Warren Fernandez is the right man – I much prefer Han Fook Kwang. He may not be angel, but at least, when he was around, the anger meter against the ST was manageable. But these days when you look around the internet, coffee shop and even the offices – the tagline seems to be, “Warren tak boleh pakai lah.” (I will try to compile a vid and post it on YouTube when I next go back to Singapore for a fertilizer convention – I will also be speaking there, so I will bring up the subject as well informally to interview some people abt what they think about the recent Hougang press coverage.)

 

Like I said, if you are journalist keep your spirits up and hang tight. I have a feeling it will get much worse before it levels out.

 

Fuck you lah!

 

Darkness 2012

 

 

 

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“Everyone needs to feel good about what they are doing to do a good job. If I am manufacturing cluster bombs or plastic anti personnel mines that maim eleven year old Abdul and Fatimah in Afghanistan, I don’t think, I will be very happy even if I happen to making tons of money. There was this time, when I worked in this tobacco company. HR even splayed out a fast track program for me to be in senior management within three years in Virginia. They said the part fitted me like a glove. I was working on some machine to expand the size of leaves – I have always been interested in agriculture and food, so I found the whole idea of working with leaves and getting to know how they were grown etc really fascinating. On top of all that I was working on this super duper high tech machine that used liquid nitrogen to freeze dry the tobacco leaves before they were feed into the production line. Then one day my next door neighbor was hospitalized for lung cancer. I felt really crummy as the brand of cigarettes he smoked probably came from my factory. So after a while, that ate into me like slow acting poison and gradually I just lost interest. One day I just decided to go home after lunch. The following day I never even reported to work. Till today, I still have one months salary waiting for me haven’t even picked it up. My point is jobs like that should carry the surgeon’s general warning – it’s hazardous to your well being. I guess it can’t be so different as a young journalist in Singapore. What’s sad is many of them probably signed up not because they want to make more money or get by cheating the system like I did – journalism is an awfully tough profession no matter how you splice it, it’s all about working to a tight schedule, that’s one of the hardest ways I know to turn the wheel of life – and most of them put in a 70 hour week. So why would anyone in their right mind even want to do that? Maybe they have this idea that they can somehow make the world a better and fairer place. That idea may seem naive, but when you are young that’s how your mind works. Then as they start working. They begin to discover everything is not what it seems. There’s always a dissonance between what they have in their brain and reality. Things don’t square off nicely with their aspirations. There are suddenly plenty of lacunae, chiaroscuro, darkened interiors that are so big they even swallow up light and worst of all they aren’t really doing what they always dreamt of doing – as to be a young journalist in Singapore whatever they write doesn’t make to print without first have to go through the censors. Because when you work for a press that is an appendage of the party political oligarchy whatever you produce will invariably have to go through a form of sovietization. As the goal is to keep the political hegemony in power at every cost and opportunity. And this process is justified through a process known as nation building. Sooner or later all of them learn to express themselves in the approved corseted manner – again that is bound to affect a person’s mental well being no matter how optimistic or motivated they may be. As when someone thoughts are filtered and sieved for correctness – that’s really a form of appropriation of one’s individuality – and I know how this feels like, By this time, they all know how the system works. Most of them probably tell themselves, this is only temporarily. I am sure a teaching job will come along. I’ll jump ship then. By then another year goes by. And soon the things they own will begin dictating harsh terms to them – you can’t leave this job now! Hey, you have bills to pay. Besides your skill sets aren’t transferrable unless you want to downgrade to a copywriter for an ad agency. So to keep their sanity, these young journalist have to mentally cut off a chunk of their consciousness the way a bereaved lover stores away all the letters and photos of her dead lover in shoe box and slides it underneath the bed. She says to herself while wiping off the tears. I am not strong enough to deal with this now. But I’ll take it out one day – only one day never really comes and another year goes by – suddenly they aren’t so young anymore – by then they know how the game is really played along with the intrigues. They know it only too well by then to realize it doesn’t pay to rock the boat. But what did you ladies expect? The individual has given way to the generic. So to get by, they cut off another chunk of their being. This time perhaps they try to believe in the idea that there is actually this fairytale called nation building. It’s like a Da Vinci code moment to some of them. They begin to make out invisible lines of power intersect with matters of state and so on and so forth. And some do end up believing. Because this is how it is in life Ladies. If everyone in this thread believes in green Martians. Then it makes perfect sense to debate how many Martians can fit on a pin head. Similarly if enough journalist believe that what they are doing is nourishing statecraft and preserving our way of life – then they will be righteous and even justified to do whatever it takes to perpetuate the status quo ante. As time goes by this notion morphs into a fait accompli. The truth has nothing whatsoever to do with how a person might effect such a perceptive shift. Faith is all that is required.

For the dearly unfortunate who cannot make this leap of faith. They have to cut again. Maybe even a part of their heart and soul along with probably their dreams of what it means to be a journalist. So these people are really just getting by, by cannibalizing themselves to remain whole as best they can while deep inside they die tiny slices of death. Some may find resolution in the idea that all bloggers are feral and nasty, so it’s best to just shut them out from the mind. Others may take a more practical approach and say, this puts food on the table. And as I mentioned earlier on – there are those who have already made that perceptive shift that allows them to be so righteous – they even seen themselves as vanguards of the truth. The psychology isn’t so different from those failed writers who can’t sell their books as no one finds them interesting. But this doesn’t prevent them from fabricating the necessary lie that serves the purpose of removing and sanitizing every trace of their failure. Instead they take comfort in the conceit that society isn’t ready for their enlightened message. Humanity it seems needs another 1,000 of evolution to even begin understanding the prologue.

I think the greatest tragedy has to befall the truest of the true of journalist – as at some point in a man’s life when he is forced to seek a compromise with his core values and beliefs to do the unspeakable – one has no choice but to betray oneself. To make up for unimaginable loss, they too start developing their version of the necessary lie – you know in the way defense scientist often convince themselves they are actually saving mankind by developing a skeleton key to herald a new era of peace – as the weapons they conceive will end all wars – tabula rasa. But let us call a spade a spade. The necessary lie is a prosthetic that just allows one to get by – a very crumbly way to get by. Don’t you ladies think so? As surely it lacks the requisite quality of endurance and sustainability – so as time goes by, something will have to die again. And maybe this time, it’s something that they probably spent their youths feeling really proud about – the worst part is when that thing dies so does a part of them. I don’t think anyone deserves that at all. Do you? As you only have one life and if one cannot even find happiness and purpose in a job to edify you and others from time to time – then what is the bloody point of even waking up every morning and going to work. What is the point of it all? The saddest part is by then there are no more questions or even answers any longer – all that remains is the terror of the unending litany that stretches before these young journalist you are probably not so young then, like a long road that just goes on and on. A road that is even seems to have the finality that it shall never end at all. Never. You see one reason why if you look at most of my social political essays stretching all the way back to ten year ago – I’ve always looked upon them with sort of sweet and sour sadness that simply says, ‘you deserve better.’ So if you happen to be a Malaysian and you’re thinking about making a life as a hack in Singapore. You really need to know what you are really getting yourself into. It is not my place to tell people how they should live their lifes – all I can really do is recommend and no more, but I think in this case I have every right as a fellow human being to say to some of you who have come to me for advise ‘you deserve better.’

This has been extracted from a thread very recently from Ekunaba – intercepted and rebounded by the Tiberian Class Deep Space Battlecruiser KDD Altapo II – The Brotherhood Press 2012.