Is Straits Times inviting guest journalism?
If you read the Straits Times on Tuesday, January 6, 2009, you might have seen this article on the Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris. Someone wrote about his novel family holiday, which was a cooking course at the renowned academy. So far so good, right?
Apparently, not so when that “someone” is a top civil servant – permanent secretary, in fact. The readers of The Online Citizen criticised the writer of the article for, at best, being out of touch with the grassroots, and at worst, flaunting his wealth at a time of financial crisis.
I won’t comment on these opinions – I have one of my own. And instead of questioning the appropriateness of the civil servant’s actions, I want to ask the Straits Times people instead: Is this article supposed to be an example of guest journalism or something?
You see, to the best of my knowledge, the civil servant is not a journalist on the payroll of the Straits Times. He’s not a syndicated columnist. So pray tell, why does he get his own byline on an article that’s prominently featured in a leading newspaper? The only answer I can think of is that he was invited to share his experiences with the common people, the hoi polloi, whose closest experience to Le Cordon Bleu will be eating the chicken dish.
I find this disturbing, because the media should be separate from the state, and this not only blurs the line, it’s practically suggesting that the newspaper and the government are working hand-in-hand. Is the Straits Times a government mouthpiece? It can’t be true, perhaps I’m just being paranoid.
To give both the newspaper and the writer the benefit of the doubt, maybe it just so happened that the editors wanted an interesting lifestyle story, and this was it. But you can’t ever assume that the readers will interpret it the same way. The negative comments from members of the public already show that the readers can’t separate the writer’s job from the article. You cannot expect us to take the writer at face value as just “someone who had an interesting experience”. Indeed, I can’t either.
To clarify, I’d have been fine with the inclusion of the article if it had been written by one of the Straits Times journalists. At least then, one could always say it was an assignment to humanize the people in government. But for it to be written by the civil servant himself, when he isn’t a journalist – it smacks of being a vanity piece.
Updated January 12th:
Thanks mr.udders! Finally I have achieved my dream ;_;
January 8th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Interesting angle.
January 9th, 2009 at 11:37 am
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January 10th, 2009 at 11:51 am
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January 11th, 2009 at 6:52 am
For whatever reason, probably to prevent corruption, civil servants in Singapore get paid high salaries. People that get paid high salaries go on these types of vacations. If you made that much, you would too.
I don’t believe that the Straits Times is at fault here. Newspapers should serve as a public forum that allow for all points of view. If you do something interesting or have a noteworthy opinion, and write a compelling article, they should offer to print your writing. They may pay you or they may not.
The real complaint that could occur is if you and several others write a letter to the editor criticizing the article, the civil servant, and the paper; and not a single one of those letters gets published. Then you would know that the government is trying to censor viewpoints and control the press.
January 11th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Slow news day + lazy editorial team + self-obsessed civil servant with enough influence and/or connections with the lazy editorial team = a pointless article that is inappropriate and irrelevant under the circumstances (nationally and globally)…
January 11th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Hmm to say that he was given the chance to write this article simply because he’s a PS is a bit hard to justify. ST do have other articles that are supposedly written by some celebs within Life section, though I agree that this one was pretty prominent.
Tan Yong Soon is actually an author of a published book “Living the Singapore Dream” in 2007. So I think that and the fact that he’s PS made it easier for ST to justify asking him to pen this article.
How bout this for another angle.. The subtle msg is that, for him to spend so much on a trip, he must earn alot.. therefore he’s encouraging young ppl to work hard to become a scholar n high flyer like him =pp
January 19th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
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