News Reports are NOT Gospel

Who decide what to report and how to report?

It makes no difference if it is the US which is well-known for press freedom or Singapore where press business is owned by the government, biased media seem to exist in one form or the other as shown in cases examined in this paper.

Biased media may come in a hidden form which is market driven and ratings-led in some places or controlled by the government through ownership.

Journalism is not purely about reporting stories based on facts and evidence in a fair and just view. Who owns a particular news agency or publication? Whose interests are involved in a particular story? Who have the ultimate control over the editorial stand? These are all the forces,which are invisible to members of the public, working behind stories produced by news agencies.

News consumers do not realize what they see on television, read in newspaper or listen from the radio is not just a piece of information or news. It is a piece of news that has been angled and packaged before presenting to them with people working behind the curtains pulling strings attached to hands of journalists.

New Media acting as a check point

With the new media coming into play, monopoly of the mainstream media deciding what to report and how to report no longer exists. Individuals, be it journalist or ordinary net surfer, anyone can post comments, messages, facts, evidence concerning anything that is happening around the globe in the cyber world where there is no physical boundaries, time frame and regulation, providing fresh angle and sometimes information that proves what has been reported in the mainstream media to be misleading or even untrue.

The timeless nature of cyberspace allows surfers to gain easy access to information, both new and old, presented in various forms whether in vedio, picture or simply texts, to look at news stories reported by the mainstream media with a fresher and perhaps more comprehensive view.

An article titled Was Michael Jackson Framed? by Mary A. Fischer, a front page story of the GQ magazine dated October 1994 which presented strong arguments defending Jackson's innocence when he was first accused of being a child molestor back in 1993 was ignored by the mainstream media when it was first published.

The article is still being ignored by the mainstream media, but has been widely circulated in the internet after Jackson's death allowing news consumers, young and old who are intersted in the subject to learn more about the late pop star. Without the internet, access to the article would not have been as easy as net surfers' finger tips and the circulation of the piece of writing would be confined to who actually make to effort to look for the 16-year-old magazine that might be buried somewhere in a public library in the USA.

Truth be Damned

“The coverage was… using Jackson’s title a lot of Thriller a lot of Bad and even some Smooth Criminal activity thrown in.” – Professor Daniel Reimold

Taking news coverage on the death of Michael Jackson, Professor Daniel Reimold of the National Technological University believes reportage on the piece of news highlights the problem with new media which is there is “a lot to be said, a lot of space to be filled, a lots of readers pressure and at time there is short of news and they don’t stop reporting and what you get is a lot of thriller and a lot of crap.”

Professor Reimold defined the media circus around Jackson’s death as “absolutely rumor and innuendo and gossip.”

“Michael Jackson died and that was it that was the story one piece of news a little bit of intrigue about what happened certainly. But often news reports were basically one source blog post one after another telling us all sort of sights that was untrue pretty sensational and nothing to do with quality journalism,” he added.

“With the online medium 10 minutes after they posted he died the post is old and they need to give readers something new.”

He believes the tight deadline and pressure to be the first tramped any sense of journalism. “They were giving us random celebrity reaction... they were telling us that a truck was driving up to the [Jackson’s] house they were telling us that certain people were missing many other didn’t mean anything at all.”

The new media is also influencing other media on how they are reporting stories, Professor Reimold said, television news knows they need to do something to get viewers’ attention and pull them away from websites like TMZ - a celebrity gossip site which first reported Jackson being rushed to hospital with an heart attack.

He also points out the web has mentality of be first and be bold to the point and the truth is secondary to simply what is out there.
"Newspaper and television doing basically feeding into the web mentality report anything they are hearing often second hand a site like TMZ.

The joke is that nowadays with the web…You almost need to be reporting a story before it’s happened. By the time you heard it in breaking news…Shoot! We are already behind. It’s the Truth Be Damned philosophy…We got to get the stories out..Let readers sort it aside,” Professor Reimold said.

Despite concern over the accuracy of news that is circulated in the cyberworld, the information highway does channel out news stories, especially breaking news quick and far.

A remark about how people learnt about the death of Michael Jackson in an article by Charles Arthur in the Technology Blog of the Guardian shows how prominent the new media has taken over the traditional press when it comes to access to breaking news in the 21st century.

In the article entitled: How Michael Jackson Jackson's death captured the Twitter's Trend dated 26 June 2009, he wrote: "

"Where were you when you heard about Kennedy being shot?" (Media: Radio, TV)

"Where were you when you heard about Princess Di?" (Media: radio, TV, text message, mobile phone call)

"Which message service did you hear about Michael Jackson's death on? (Facebook, Twitter, Twittscoop)

Hands up all those who found via a piece of paper...

Internet- a mean to spread the truth and the lies

In an open letter by Nobel Prize Winner Professor Charles K. Kao, dated on October 13 2009 expressing his gratitude to his friends, staff, students and alumni at Chinese University of Hong Kong, members of the media, and the people of Hong Kong, the message read: “Now you know who is responsible for the fiber optical cables that enable all the excessive information, both true and false, good and bad, that circulate on the internet.

The remark nicely summarizes the situation in the cyber world in which internet surfers are bombarded with information that might be “true or false, good and bad”.

The impact can be quite disappointing - when assessing the effect of new media on news reporting - if false information finds it way back to the real world through traditional media.

Case 3 - David Case - continues

Seeking the truth from facts

Piliang made his first trip to Singapore in early April 2009 to learn more about the death case.

“I found it quite risky to do so, as it seems that there is a conspiracy behind David’s dead, especially about his final year project. But I have to verify things myself in searching for the truth,” he said.

He went to the campus many times to learn the crime scene and also made contact with Indonesian students at NTU trying to find more witnesses or anyone who had information about the case.


Fund raising for David’s family

Though David’s case was assigned to Coroner Court, the family tried to have the case handled in the criminal court for they believed the case should not be classified suicide considering doubts and questions that had been raised over the incident.

Lawyer Sashi Nathan, who represented the family, managed to obtain pictures of David’s body in the crime scene. But the effort was in vain and the case was handled by a coroner court. The family had difficulties in settling the legal fees which was about S$60,000.

A fund raising campaign for the family started on Facebook initiated by Wiloto. Wiloto also made a clip about the David’s case in hope of spreading out the message about injustice in the case through the social media platform.

A laptop which is believed to contain David’s suicide note has never been returned to the family

One of the reasons pointed out by the Singaporean authority to support classifying the incident as a suicide case was because a suicide note was found in David’s laptop.

Police investigators promised the family that they would give a copy of data in David’s laptop a week before hearing of the case began at the coroner court started on May 20 2009. But the data has never been given to the family. The laptop, David’s personally belonging, has never been returned to the family.

Another important piece of evidence was an eight-second video in a cell phone that showed a person who was presumed to be David sitting on a bridge.

During the hearing, a digital forensic expert of the Police Force testified that David had been found visiting websites about suicide. The judge asked for dates and time regarding David’s visits to these websites. But the expert said they could not have the information at hand. The expert also stated that a file ‘The Last Words’ written on January 25, 2009 at 12.54 pm which was believed to be written by David was found.

The expert said, according to the word file, David wanted to commit suicide and how much he hated his parents and would not shed a tear if they died.

But doubts had been raised, as the day on which David should be writing the note was in fact the day on which he had lunch with his family to celebrate Chinese New Year.

Several witnesses testified that they saw David jump off. One of them even said that she spoke to David for 10 minutes and he said that he was going to die.

According to pictures provided by police, David was already covered with blood when he was out Professor Chan’s office.

Having all these doubts and questions in mind, David’s mother Tjhay Lie Khiun noted testimonials given by the witnesses that seem to be inconsistent and suspicious.

Veteran journalist Piliang follows the clues in David’s notes and conducts his own investigation in hope of spreading the message to the public and arousing their attention to the David’s case.

Piliang’s effort pays off and the case captures Professor OC Kaligis’s attention, who eventually wrote a book about the case.

The other one is Ruby Z. Alamsyah, an Indonesian expert who has an international license on digital forensic. According to Alamsyah, the family has the right to ask the police for the data cloning from the laptop. He also volunteered himself to do the digital forensic but then the police have never given the data cloning to the family.

On July 28, the Coroner Court ruled that the incident was a suicide case.

But Piliang and the lawyer who represented the family, Nathan, were not convinced.

Veteran journalist in search for the truth

Piliang stayed 79 days in Singapore to conduct an investigation on the case and that cost him S$9500 –more than half comes from his own and his wife’s saving and his wife’s saving.

His wife Fifi, has been very supportive to her husband’s pursuit in the case for she, as a mother, understands how painful it was to lose a son like that

In Singapore, Iwan had to live at backpacker dormitory in order to cut down the cost, as the Indonesian embassy does not offer help.

“I borrowed money from friends and relatives. Now I’m still trying to pay it up.”

Despite doubts over the case and concern whether justice has been done, the mainstream media are too occupied with other issues in Indonesia and the case was quickly forgotten.

While the family tried to stage a peaceful demonstration against the ruling of the case, bombing happened at Marriot and Ritz Carlton. All attention was diverted to the attack.

Who is Iwan Piliang? Why is he doing this?

Piliang started his career as a journalist in 1985. As a young ideal journalist, he was disappointed to see journalists receiving money from sources which is a common practice in journalism in Indonesia.

In 1989, he decided to quit journalism and started his own business in advertising.

“There’s no point of being a journalist with that kind of practice, better to become businessman,” he said. But the business was not successful and he went bankrupt in 1996.

In 1998, Piliang joined Pantau magazine, which was operation on The New Yorker model. But the publication was folded after 1.5 years due to lack of funding. After that, Piliang decided that he wants to work as free-lance journalist and brand himself as a ‘literary citizen reporter’. He writes 1,000 words each day about issues that he cares about and posts his stories in his blog.

“Even though it’s for free I always do the writing whole heartedly,” he said.

He pays little attention to messages from his blog’s followers and he does not mind his writing being copied by others without giving credits to him. “As long as the message can spread around, it’s not a problem for me.”

Blogging has become a hit in the past few years in Indonesia. There is an annual event ‘Pesta Blogger (Blogger’s Party)’ where the bloggers from all around Indonesia gathered together.

"There’s assumption that being a blogger is different, more funky and fun. But what is actually a blog? It is only one of the medium of communication among so many other medium. So it’s basically the same. The most important thing is how many among the bloggers that actually producing truthful content. I don’t see many,” Iwan said.

Bill Kovach, the writer of Nine Elements of Journalism revised his book in 2007 and established a blog related to his book. Kovach considers bloggers have the potential to be an independent voice which can gain public trust, because the mainstream media can be stirred by money and power. Piliang considers the Nine Elements of Journalism as his bible when doing his job.


Piliang’s blog had 1,000 followers in one year after it was first launched and now the number shot up to 5,000 in three years.

He’s been invited to be a public speaker for many events all over Indonesia to comment on several cases that he covered. Regarding the David’s Case, he was invited to talk in “Kick Andy” the famous TV talk show in Indonesia.

Recently Piliang is working on a tax corruption case. He said that he faced threats when working on the story. “Somebody involved in the case threatens to kill me on the phone. I just gave him my address, but he never showed up,” he said.

The Online Citizen on David’s Case

On March 8, 2009 the same day that Pilliang wrote his first report about David, The Online Citizen (TOC) an alternative media in Singapore published a report on how mainstream media had been misreported on the case.

All the media mentioned that David slashed his wrist, some of them even put it as they were there and witnessed what happened. While in fact confirmed by the police that there are no wound at his wrist. Darren Boon a reporter from TOC made report to critize what the mainstream media like Straight Times, Channel News Asia, and Today report on the story.


Terence Lee also made critical analysis on the case.According to his observation
the mainstream media has been biasedly portrayed – intentionally or not — David as a reclusive loner hell-bent on murder while all the process of investigation was still on going.

Case 3 - David Case by Feby Indirani

The Case of David Hartanto Widjaja

A tragic story of an Indonesian student in Singapore

Anyone who knows David Hartanto Widjaja, 21, an Electrical Electronic Engineering student of Nanyang Technological University, expected the young man to graduate with excellent academic achievement.

Nobody has ever thought the Indonesian young man awarded with scholarship to study in the Lion City would leave his beloved ones forever with a tragic ending.

David was found dead lying on a ground at the university campus on March 2 2009 at 10am.

According to a statement issued by the university, the student was believed to have stabbed his advisor associate professor Chan Kap Luk, 45, and subsequently fell off the linkway between two blocks.

David had always been the bright student with excellent academic performance. He achieved honorable mention in Asian Pacific Mathematics Olympiad 2005 and participated as a contestant in International Mathematical Olympiad in the same year.

The top student was finishing his final year project and had a discussion with Professor Chan when the tragic incident happened.

The local media reported that David stabbed Professor Chan before slitting his wrist and jumping into his death. But the slitting wrist was later proved to be wrong by an autopsy.

One of the news media which took the line about wrist slitting was Channel News Asia.

The news travelled back Indonesia quickly and some of the news agencies simply report on the case by quoting Singaporean media reports.


Don’t believe everything you read in newspaper and what you see TV screen

But Iwan Piliang, 45, a veteran journalist who has now works as a citizen reporter in Jakarta had doubts about those news reports. He established his own news blog in and makes use of the space in the cyber world to spread out stories what he believes to have been wrongly reported by the mainstream media.

The story that Piliang has devoted most of his effort to work on is the David’s case. His involvement in the case started with an email from a friend in Singapore.

The email contained pictures of the crime scene which included Professor Chan’s room where there was a white board full of hand writing and pictures of cleaners wiping out blood all over a staircase, a book blanketed with blood, a door handle again painted with blood, a glass bridge splattered with blood.

New reports in Singapore stated that David stabbed his professor with a 10cm knife and a bottle and a towel were found in the student’s bag.

Piliang’s friend who sent out the email questioned news reports claiming David’s intention to kill the professor. “Do you think a person who intent to kill and commit suicide will bring those kinds of stuff? It should have been easier to bring big knife if he got intention to kill.”

Out of curiosity, Piliang started conducting research on the case which had already become a hot topic in online chat room and forums.

Indonesian businessman Cristovita Wiloto, who runs a public relation company also closely follows the case and shares the news in his Facebook account.

Rumours and suspicion has arisen over what actually happened that led to the tragic death of David, as many questions are still unanswered.

Injustice over the case

Indonesian lawyer Dr O. C. Kaligis in his book Puzzle of David’s Case in the preface of the book said: “I am writing this book because of my concern towards miscarriages, of justices, that often occurs in the judiciary system.”

“As a litigator with over more than 40 years of experience, never have I seen such a blatant violation of human rights as could be found in David’s case.”

Examples cited by Dr Kaligis:

1, David’s family was not allowed to see David’s body directly

2, David’s family were only allowed to see his body through a glass

3, David’s face was tightly wrapped

4, David’s family were only permitted to such sight for three minutes

5, The police detained David’s laptop, which is a personal longing, and did not return it to the family even after a court decision was made

6,The judge did not examine the DNA and blood pattern that should be considered as evidence

7, The judge rejected the witnesses and expert witnesses requested to be presented in the court without clear legal basis.

8, A witness at the crime scene during the day of the incident was hidden behind the scene by the investigator.

Other queries raised by Piliang include:

1, Why the crime scene was cleaned just few hours after the incident?

2, There were also some calculation that the incident related to David’s final project, since his data research had been blocked by campus soon afterwards.

David’s final project is :Multiview aquisitions from Multi-camera configuration for person adaptive 3D display. Project number: A3026-81. Summary: Multi cameras will be used to obtain multiviews of scene. The requirement to take the subject: Strong Mathematical Skills and C/C++ programing. For the research, David was refer to the EEE3, Information System Research Lab (Loc: S2-B3a-06).

What made the incident more dramatic was that Zhou Zang, assistant of Professor Chan was found dead himself in his room four days after David’s death.

As debate on the case started to heat up in the cyber world, Piliang began investigation of the case and published his first article online on March 8 about the suspicious things surrounding the case that he learned from the media so far.

The veteran journalist met David’s family in a press conference on March 17 and starting from that day Piliang received all first-hand information about the case which he believes the case has not been fairly handled by the Singaporean authorities.

Hartono was accompanied by Soh Che Ing, Senior Investigation Officer, Ivory Polisce Division, HQ, Singapure. He happened to observe three plasters at David’s neck. Hartono asked to agent Soh Che Ing in Mandarin.“Wo ere ce (David) cing sang wei sem mo yu hen tuo Tie pu?” (Why my son’s neck was plastered like this?)

And the police can not give him any clear answer.

Hartono also said that one of the students talked to one lady staff at the campus that she acclaimed to see that David ran and shout out “they want to kill me.”

It is surely hard to prove something like that, but Pilliang got more fire to continue his story.


The mother: David never liked using knife

athed to attack another person and slit his own wrist. On March 21, Piliang visited the family’s house at Tubagus Angke in West Jakarta. He met David’s mother Tjhay Lie Khiun and the brother William Hartono Widjaja.

In his report, Iwan recalled he was given water and sliced apple.

“This is the first time I hold the knife again after David has gone.” David’s mother Tjhay told Iwan. She said David never liked holding a knife all his life ever since he was a little boy and he never peeled fruits.

“If he wanted to have fruit, he just made juice,” the mother said.

It is ironic that her son was being accused of using a tool that he loathed to attack another person and slit his own wrist.

Is it just a suicide case? Is it just another crime case?

According to David’s brother William Hartanto, Open Computer Vision (CV) was one of the applications that David used for his research. It is a software launched by Intel Corporation in 1998 and it is used freely for research purposes at universities.

Piliang, who used to run graphic designe and visual animation business, contacted an expert friends in the field to look into the matter. Back then Iwan had a business

One of the experts is Ary Setijadi, 36, head of (ITB): ITB Digital Media & Game Technology, malting the boundary of art science and engineering Department at Bandung Institute of Technology.

Setijadi stated there were two major research areas that would use the software Open CV which were entertainment and military.

Professor Chan Kap Luk is a senior member of Defense Science and Technology (DSTA), a research center under Ministry of Defense Singapore. The professor got five patent innovations.

On April 3, NTU released more information about David saying that his academic performance was failing and his scholarship had been terminated.

But David’s family said they learnt about the granting of scholarship three weeks before David’s death. They added that David had no reason to be worried because the parents were able to support him even without the scholarship. The late student was already in his final year of studies and it only took a month or two more to finish the final year project as many David’s friend confirmed that his project was around 90 per cent completed.

An autopsy on David’s body was carried out by the Centre for Forensic Medicine, Health Science Authority, and the report revealed that there were 36 points of injuries. Of those 14 caused by sharp things, the rest were internal injuries.

Case 2 - Migrant workers scam

Another burning issue The Online Citizen has recently reported about migrant workers is how employment agencies both in Singapore and their home countries cheat these workers.Though the Ministry of Manpower is aware of the problem, it is offering little help.

An investigation by the news blog found migrant workers from Bangladesh are being charged by S$10,000 as recruitment fees and 50 per cent will go to employment agencies in their own countries, while the rest will be pocketed by those in Singapore with compromise of finding work in the Lion City.

Recruitment agencies sweet-talk these workers promising them two-year of employment in Singapore with S$2,000 a month which will be more than enough to cover the employment charges.

Given such hope, workers then sell their lands, jewelries and borrow money from loan sharks to pay off the recruiment fees.

But once these workers arrive at Changi Airport expecting to be greeted by their future employers, they end up picked up by police officers and eventually deported them back home, The Online Citizen has found.

Those who meet up with recruitment agencies in Singapore end up living in secluded places with no job for a month or two, while their families are waiting anxiously for money back home.

Some workers file complaints to the Ministry of Manpower which mediates between the workers and the employers. But the talk was conducted in English.

Workers only receive S$500 at the end – paid in two installments and only receive the second half when they are about to board their planes heading back home.

Full story
http://theonlinecitizen.com/2010/04/problem-solving-mom-style/

Case 2 - Exploitation of migrant workers in Singapore

The first story on exploitation of migrant workers in Singapore by The Online Citizen was back in December 2008 by written by Loh.

The exclusive story reported that a Bangladeshi worker, died in a dormitory which housed about 700 other workers at Tagore Industrial Avenue.

Mohamad Kamaluddin, 28,contracted with chicken pox and was not given proper medical care by his employer Gates Offshore, a ship repair and dormitory services company, while the rest of the workers were not quarantined even the disease was contagious.

The news report also revealed that though the worker died in December 2008, but the Ministry of Manpower was only informed about the incident in June 2009.

The story was later picked up by other papers such as Today and Straight Times.

Full story on the death case
http://theonlinecitizen.com/2009/07/toc-exclusive-death-of-bangladeshi-worker-in-2008/

Picture credit: The Online Citizen