THE TEMASEK REVIEW

From our Correspondent

[Read our latest rebuttal to Mr Geoffrey Pereira's second article on 13 November 2009 here]

It was revealed by Straits Times journalist Mr Geoffrey Pereira that 25 SPH employees were “caught” surfing Temasek Review using its computers during a period of three days. (read report here)

Mr Geoffrey had earlier wrote an article on his blog in reply to our article published on 2 November 2009 about our system administator detecting a IP address from SPH “grabbing” content from our site from 10 pm (31 Oct) to 1pm (1 Nov).

Unfortunately, Mr Geoffrey had misunderstood the gist of our article and misinterpreted it as an accusation that SPH had “attacked” our site. We have since clarified the matter here and here

In his rather misleading article, Mr Geoffrey wrote that a total of 25 SPH employees had visited Temasek Review during a 3 day period:

“Data made available to me covered a 3-day period starting before and ending after the alleged attack. It showed that about 25 SPH employees – including yours truly, a regular reader – visited TR; but we did not create the kind of flurry of Net activity that would slow a server down, much less precipitate a DOS.”

It was not known if these employees are journalists or administrative staff of SPH. Neither did Mr Geoffrey say if they are surfing Temasek Review as part of their official duties or will they be “punished” for visiting our site during office hours.

It did not come as a surprise that Temasek Review was being visited by SPH and TODAY journalists on a daily basis to fish for news to write with most of them lacking the basic courtesy to even acknowledge their source of information.

For example, when ex-ISD Director Mr Yoong Siew Wah published on his blog on 28 September 2009 about the wrong entry in the SPH propagandist book about the PAP “Men in White”, it hardly caused a ruckus.

On 13 October, we broke the story on Mr Yoong Siew Wah demanding that MM Lee undo the “damage” done to his reputation (read article here)

A day after we published the article, SPH journalist and Men-in-White writer Richard Lim contacted Mr Yoong Siew Wah and offered to retract the potentially defamatory sentence that he was sacked as CPIB director due to some “improprieties” in a case involving former Solicitor-General Francis Seow.

On 16 October, we met up with Mr Yoong Siew Wah for a face-to-face interview over breakfast. (read the interview here)

A few hours after our article was published on the same day, TODAY journalist Neo Chai Chin called Mr Yoong and requested to interview him in the evening after his medical appointment at NUH.

SPH journalists who are keen on certain news can just feel free to contact us directly. At the same time, we are more willing to help them publish their articles which are not approved by publication by their senior editors.

Despite our sometimes fierce rhetoric against SPH journalists, we have really nothing against them personally.

In fact, we are very sympathetic of the situation they are in: they are paid pittance and made to work long hours.

SPH pays fresh graduates only about $1700 – $1800 a month. An editor with a few years experience will command at most slightly more than $3,000.

Singapore journalists are really lowly paid compared to their counterparts in other developed countries.

Even in Malaysia, Malaysiakini pays its new journalists who just graduated from university between RM $2,000 – $2,500 a month.

SPH can only afford to pay its journalists “peanuts” because it is the ONLY media company in Singapore. Our young, budding journalists have few options but to work for them.

When our media company is finally incorporated next year, we will give our full-time journalists a better deal. SPH journalists are more than welcomed to join us.

You can be assured we will treat you with respect, kindness and love and most importantly, you will be free to write whatever you wish to develop your passion for journalism to the fullest without worrying if you will lose your rice bowl the next day because you write some unflattering comments about some PAP leaders in your articles.

Related articles:

>> A freudian slip by Mr Geoffrey that SPH staff did visit TR during the period when the alleged “grabbing” took place?

>> Debunking Mr Geoffrey’s claims in his misleading article: “Attack on Temasek Review: not SPH

>> Attack on Temasek Review: not SPH

>> SPH IP caught grabbing “content” from Temasek Review

>> Debunking Mr Geoffrey’s claims on “IP spoofing”

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