Monday, June 19, 2006
The stupid media and the stupid YOUIn our daily lives, where do we get our information?
To most people, it's through television, radio, newspaper, magazines and the word of mouth.
And to a lesser extent, more and more people chose to get a more holistic feel of matters through the internet, where it is thought to be the place where information is without boundaries and nationalities, where information is delivered directly to the front of our eyes and ears, where information is raw and uncensored.
It is hailed as the 'new media'.
But the majority of the public still get information through the 'old media', which the few forms I've mentioned above, and it is readily available for you without you having to search high and low for it.
Want some news? Flip the newspapers and you'll find them.
Want some entertainment? Switch on the television and you'll get it.
(No gurantees when it comes to local television though =P)
Most people still depend on the 'old media' to get information, and what they see, hear, or even feel about matters of the world is through this old avenue.
Meaning, unless you made the effort to look for alternative sources of information, what you know is most possibly what the mass media tells you.
Let's face it. People are lazy. We're curious to know what's happening around us, but yet we can't be too bothered to search for information. Hence, we turn to the mass media, in a view to get the information we desire.
And due to this innate laziness in us, we tend to readily accept whatever is presented to us by the mass media to us. Unless one breaks that innate laziness and starts the critical thinking process, our knowledge, our values and even our opinions, could be easily manipulated by the mass media, as the '
angles' which news are reported are to the discretion to the journalists, producers, and even editors.
The first stage of critical thinking should set in as we question the motive of the above-mentioned personnels in producing that piece of news article.
What would be the MOTIVE of the people involved in reporting that news article?
To report the truth? To uncover the side which people has never seen or pondered about before? To boost sales? For commercial purposes (i.e to please their sponsors)?
Second, when a news article is being presented to us, more often than not, it does not contain the WHOLE TRUTH.
The 'angles' which I mentioned a few sentences back could let the reader focus on certain parts of the news involved and neglect the others.
Example 1:
Straits Times June 8, 2006
Young doctor jailed eight months for possessing IceDownward spiral began when he experimented with gay sex and drugsBy Elena Chong
TAXI driver's son Adrian Yeo See Seng had a bright future as a doctor but the 27-year-old threw it all away when he experimented with sex and drugs.
A district court heard yesterday that he spiralled downwards after he started engaging in homosexual sex with strangers he met over the Internet, and taking drugs.
He was caught when a man he chatted with online invited him for a sex session with a third man at a Bencoolen Street hotel.
But the two strangers turned out to be undercover anti-narcotics officers who found drugs on Yeo when he arrived, and arrested him .....
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This article focuses on Adrian throwing his bright future away through the engagement of illegal activities, thus serving a warning to other bright young souls to think twice when they want to commit criminal acts.
Example 2:
From the Straits Times, June 6 2006
By Stephanie YapPASSING time in an Internet chatroom one night, Adrian Yeo met a man called Joe.
Over the following few days, Joe was quite persistent, sending him SMS messages asking if he had drugs, and if he wanted to meet up 'to have fun'.
According to Yeo's mitigation plea submitted in court, he refused the first few times.
Eventually, the 26-year-old trainee doctor gave in and met Joe, and another man, Jacob, at a Hotel 81, on April Fools Day this year.
When he arrived at the hotel, he got a nasty surprise. Both men turned out to be undercover Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) officers, who found 0.16g of methamphetamine on him.
Arrested for drug possession, Yeo was sentenced to eight months in jail on Wednesday.
The time in prison requires him to break a $400,000 five-year bond with the Government, and casts a shadow on his medical career.
CNB has often been known to employ the same methods it used to catch Yeo.
Said CNB spokesman Amelia Oh: 'CNB is aware that drug offenders use various means to conduct their illegal activities and have come across instances of some of them using the Internet to do so.
'Based on intelligence gathered and feedback received, CNB will monitor channels of information, including chatrooms, to detect and apprehend drug offenders.'
Unlike countries such as the United States and Canada, where evidence gathered through 'excessive' entrapment can be thrown out of court, evidence obtained through any method of entrapment is lawful in Singapore.
Entrapment is often used when the authorities know an individual is committing an offence, but cannot catch him in the act, said retired police detective Lionel de Souza.
'It can be difficult to catch a person red-handed even if you already have information that he is breaking the law. 'In the case of drug possession, you can invite him to meet you and hope he arrives with drugs,' he said.
However, Yeo's lawyer, Mr Kertar Singh, argued that CNB officers overstepped a boundary. 'Yes, the whole exercise is not illegal, but in all fairness what was done by CNB was not appropriate. 'They went into the chatline and lured people in by saying certain things.
An innocent, naive person might find himself in this kind of situation, then get caught,' he said.
According to Yeo's mitigation presented in court, he initially refused the undercover officer's requests to meet him. While he admitted to the officer he had drugs, he said they were for his own consumption only.
Yeo finally accepted an invitation to meet Joe and Joe's boyfriend for sex at the Bencoolen Street Hotel 81 on April 1. Joe told Yeo he had some Ecstasy,and asked if Yeo had drugs. Yeo said he would bring some.
While lawyers agree some entrapment is necessary for law enforcement, they say officers should not tempt an otherwise unwilling person to commit a crime.
'I don't think officers should be encouraging people to commit offences. I'm very uncomfortable with that,' said Mr Peter Low, chairman of the Law Society'scriminal practice committee.
Mr Subhas Anandan, president of the Association of Criminal Lawyers of Singapore, agreed. 'Of course, a certain degree of entrapment should be allowed, otherwise you can't catch crooks. But they mustn't cross the line.'
CNB did cross the line, in Mr Anandan's opinion, in a 2003 case in which insurance agent Teo Ya Lin was pressed by an undercover CNB officer to obtain an Ecstasy pill for him, promising to buy a big policy from her in return. Teo got him a pill, for which she was sentenced to six years and three months in jail.
'This girl had no intention of selling drugs until she was repeatedly persuaded by the officer. She would not under normal circumstances be a trafficker. The temptation is put forward,' said Mr Anandan.
The veteran defence lawyer, who has personally seen three cases of excessive entrapment in the past year, believes it is a growing problem. 'It has come to a stage where people are talking about it. I can't give figures offhand, but the number is enough to be a little bit scary,' he said.
The Association of Criminal Lawyers plans to put the entrapment issue to the Government in a paper it is preparing, which Mr Anandan estimates will be ready in a month or two.
Mr Low said the Law Society is not currently looking into the issue as it is working on capital punishment reform. 'However, entrapment law reform would be timely,' he said.
Both lawyers point out that entrapment laws were revised in 2001 in Britain, on which Singapore models its legal system.
In an October 2001 landmark case, the House of Lords ruled that it was 'simply not acceptable that the state, through its agents, should lure its citizens into committing acts forbidden by the law and then seek to prosecute them for doing so'.
The case involved Spencer Grant Looseley, who was approached several times by an undercover police officer who tried to get him to sell drugs.
Reform in Singapore may take a while yet, but Mr Anandan suggested in the meantime, judges can indicate in their verdict their dissatisfaction with the current entrapment laws, in the hope of inspiring legislative change.
'Parliament must do something. For the judiciary, their hands are tied as the law is very clear.'
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Well, although on the same matter, the author of this article chose to focus on the legal issues regarding the use of entrapment to entice people to commit crimes, then catch them.
One story, but two different angles.
So, it is very important for us to be able to look beyond the surface of information presented to us, and not just accept them readily without and thinking in the process.
What inspired me to write about this serious and dull matter?
Two things irked me.
First, well, I've heard people commenting about Stephanie Sun's performance in the Taiwanese Golden Melody Awards as 'horrible'.
Eager to know whether the comment are justified,
I went to see and hear her performance on youtube.From what I heard, it was not as bad as it was reported in the media.
She had just forgotten the last few words of the song 一路上有你, and went a bit shakey for a few parts of some songs.
What would the ever-reliable Taiwanese entertainment media report?
孙燕姿金曲奖演唱走音加忘词 砸了歌后招牌(图)It mainly focuses on the FEW WORDS she missed, and the FEW NOTES she sang a bit off.
What is the motive of this article? You should be clever enough to think about it.
Readers without a discerning minds will nod their head like fools, and totally agree with what was being reported.
So when they re-watch how she performed, the pre-conceived mindset of 她唱得很烂, will be deeply embeded in their obedient minds and their views would be skewed, according to how the mass media shapes it.
Through day by day, week by week, months by months and years by years of constant bombardment of the mass media's reporting, values are slowly formed and characters influenced subconsiously.
Second, I laughed when I saw
this article on the channelnewsasia website.
This is the most blatant pro-government news article I've seen, without being too obvious to the non-discerning public.
It focuses on how the higher mid-year bonus will help the poor families to cope with the rising costs, and how it would benefit them.
Noble indeed.
What about the people who are earning sky-high wages in the public sector?
This article coveniently ignores that fact.
Due to that, our ministers, MPs, SAF/Police Force/Civil Defence regulars etc, who are already damn well-paid, would once again get more incentives, in addition to their already-fat pay cheque.
Where do the money come from? What are the grounds on justifying the higher bonuses when the employer's CPF contribution rate is not yet restored? So is the economy doing good or bad?
Using the help it renders to the poor families to cover up for the greed of the people higher-ups is 'good' reporting indeed.
So, before we take in any information, we should be discerning and think of the issues beyond the surface.
It's a stupid media game out there, but does it turn you into a stupid you?
lowtide blogged @
4:31 pm
