All year long, we have been bombarded with sex scandals every other
month.
And news readers are getting sex scandal fatigue.
But not that it would deter anyone who is waiting for the trial of
ex-Singapore Civil Defence Force Chief, Peter Lim, to start in
2013.
However, did you know that it was the Chinese tabloid Lianhe Wanbao
that first broke this news at the beginning of 2012 of the
high-profile arrests of this very senior officer under the
Prevention of Corruption Act?
If you didn't, don't fret.
Here is a list of other news you might have missed in 2012 when you
were distracted by sex, sex and more sex.
Trolling Facebook pages
One of the most noteworthy trends in the past 12 months has been
the starting of anonymous and politically incorrect Facebook pages,
one of which has been gaining a lot of traction online recently for
busting racial taboos.
Called SMRT Ltd (Feedback), it
claimed local MediaCorp actor Tay Ping Hui as one of its earliest
victims who got trolled big time.
SMRT Ltd's administrators provoked a
reaction out of Tay via Twitter by calling him a
"cheapskate", and after which, things started to go downhill for
the veteran actor.
SMRT Ltd (Feedback), emerged out of nowhere during the late 2011 in
response to the spate of train breakdowns, and capitalised on
commuters' transport woes as many sort an online outlet to
complain.
And since then, a lot of innocent people have mistaken them for a
real feedback channel.
Censorship still rules
In April, the Media Development Authority’s Board of Film Censors
gave acclaimed British film, "Shame", a R21 rating
and wanted to cut a
group sex scene.
However, the movie’s director refused. He didn’t want any
alterations to be made to his work just so it can please the
sensibilities of a bunch of red-tape bureaucrats.
So, distribution plans for the movie were cancelled despite an
appeal. MDA simply wouldn't let the movie pass without
censorship.
And in October, local satirical comedy “Sex.Violence.FamilyValues"
was banned on the week of its scheduled opening.
But has anyone considered why the film censors, having watched many
undesirable movies in their lifetime, not become depraved? Why can
they watch all the good stuff but not the larger society?
Lee Kuan Yew's laundry habits
But leave that thought aside because one of the strangest news to
ever make it into print happened in August.
Ex-prime minister Lee Kuan Yew's daughter, Lee Wei Ling, wrote a
column in the mainstream pressconfessing that her
father washes his own underwear, on top of other strange musings
that were equally baffling.
This led to a lot of readers not knowing how to react to this news
since something so important was never mentioned in Lee Kuan Yew's
own memoirs.
Selective reporting
But what's more interesting is the news that the mainstream media
did not publish.
Did you know that at the Red Bull Flugtag held at Siloso Beach at
the end of October, a 30,000-strong
crowd cheered loudly as replicas of ERP gantries were
thrown into the sea?
The widespread cheer that greeted the destruction of the
highly-despised ERP gantries was not mentioned in the mainstream
media.
Oh yes, for the uninitiated: the Red Bull Flugtag is an event known
around the world for showcasing the effects of gravity on
non-flying objects.
But the whole idea is to see things get trashed.
Citizen journalism
So what is it that we should continue to look out for in 2013?
Well, the role that normal, everyday citizens can play in
uncovering and disseminating information will grow bigger.
Barely two months ago, a hawk-eyed man of the street discovered
that CISCO had issued a blank illegal parking ticket to a CISCO
vehicle. And the person who made the discovery wrote a post about
it on his blog.
CISCO's method of "issuing" a fine was quickly labelled as a
"wayang", meaning "farcical", by everyone else online.
You can only imagine how bad that made CISCO look.
Social media rules
If there is one thing 2012 taught us, it is how increasingly social
media is making the lives of mainstream media reporters a lot
easier.
Social media practitioners are giving the mainstream media
reporters news leads and setting them in the right direction.
Otherwise, a lot of them will be grovelling aimlessly.
And that would have resulted in even more missed news that never
would have been reported.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=o4lP5tcsIME
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/the-flipside/did-miss-stories-2012-025131353.html
