AWARE and the Press (edited entry)

In case you haven't heard, the results of the AWARE EGM are that a vote of no confidence was passed & the new guards stepped down.

That's not the issue I'm here to bring up - I'm here to talk about the press, which you will hear a lot about the AWARE EGM from come tomorrow morning.

Earlier tonight, I'd heard about the AWARE EGM from friends who were actually present. They told me that when Josie Lau spoke, the crowd repeatedly interrupted her and jeered, preventing her from continuing, and "it was quite bad, she's the president and they didn't even let her speak!" But then I read channelnewsasia's report, and I didn't know what to believe because the two reports seemed so different!

CNA's report says:

"Emotions ran high and at times, Ms Lau called on security guards to escort members of the Old Guard out, though the order was not eventually carried out."

No mention of what my friends told me at all! On the contrary, Ms Lau's portrayed as a villain rather than a victim. "Could my friends have been exaggerating?" I wondered.
But reading up more brought me to The Straits Times' report, which puts the incident into context:

"Boos and jeers greeted Ms Lau when she stood up to make her opening remarks.

Ms Lau, who brought in a new executive committee on March 28, was repeatedly interrupted in her address by the audience, differentiated by the old guard members in white tee-shirts and new guard in red shirts.

She had to ask the security guards to order them out of the meeting hall."

Don't her actions make a bit more sense now that you see the larger picture? You don't have to condone it, but now you see that it wasn't rationale-less displays of anger or power. What impression would you have gotten if you'd just read CNA's report?

(EDIT: I just realised that the stuff in this report was essentially what the 'television version' of CNA's report consisted of - no additional details, only additional emotion by the reporter which to me seemed to support the old guard. Many people would have watched it and received this impression of the exco from CNA. Hopefully people read papers & not just watch news on TV!)


Yet another area where selective reporting results in a biased view is the new exco's expenditure. I'm using the CNA report (linked above) as an example, but I anticipate there will be others who report selectively. From the CNA report:

"Meanwhile, there may also be a financial dispute at issue.

Under the constitution, the Exco is not allowed to spend more than S$20,000 and if they do, they must consult members.

The new exco spent S$90,000 in the last month, and this outraged members of AWARE who said the money could be put to better use.

They said such "cheque book" mentality is unacceptable in a non-governmental organisation, where every cent counts."

I read this and was shocked at the "unacceptable spending" of AWARE's new exco. How can they justify spending so much money?, I asked.
But a report from The Online Citizen gave me the answer:

Maureen Ong, new exco, says the “rough estimate” for the total cost of holding today’s event is $90,000, which include the cost for engaging security personnel, sound system, etc.

and also

"Josie Lau says “circumstances” had forced the move to a new venue and that the exco had “discretion” to decide on this. She said it would have taken too long to seek members’ permission.

—–

“You are ultra-vires to constitution by spending more than $20,000″, old guard member who pioneered the Aware legal clinic.

—-

Maureen Ng, new exco, explains that the Expo, which was the original venue for the meeting, rejected their application because the Aware membership was more than 2,000. She reveals that the booking of the “only location” suitable was at Suntec City and that it costs $18,000 to rent the hall. In total, it costs $85,000 to hold today’s event. “We have to find a venue to accomodate all members,” she says."

Now, if only CNA had taken a paragraph to report why the new exco had spent the $90,000 - on the EGM! - don't you think readers would feel markedly less hostile towards the new guards? In my opinion, CNA (being a main source of news for Singapore) has the responsibility to report more fully on this because they influence lots of people! The little information they gave has great potential to be misleading and unfair to the new exco - People might think they spent the money on themselves a la NKF.

(EDIT, 3 May: Today's newspaper report gives more details on where the $90,000 was spent and why people were so outraged - people say that perhaps free auditing/legal service could have been sought instead of hiring auditors & lawyers for the EGM, and a venue could have been got for free. Fair enough, but I still don't think the possibility of "free services/resources" is enough to condemn them so badly for spending money on the EGM - they spent out of necessity & not out of luxury, after all. Read the report here.

My favourite part of the report is the last bit, which is very funny yet true:

"But the exco found some support from the floor in accountant Lim Wee Lim, 55.

Identifying himself as a member of the Church of Our Saviour - which several exco members attend - he said to some applause: ‘If you take away $90,000 from $120,000 that you got, you still have $30,000 more than before.’

He was referring to the windfall in membership fees Aware collected - at $40 a person - from all those who swelled its membership in recent weeks."

Haha true, the whole saga probably brought in more money into AWARE than was spent! So AWARE members worried about AWARE's funds being drained by the 90k can be assured that all the new members' fees might just cover it all.)

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This is just a glimpse into what kind of reports will be out tomorrow and on Monday, and an example of the biases they can carry & important contexts reports may omit.

So I implore anyone who's going to read them: Please get as many perspectives as possible. Reports will always carry some degree of biasedness, especially reports about controversial issues like this one. We've got to accept that. What we can and should do is to get as balanced a view as possible by reading up, and reading from multiple viewpoints.

The press will definitely report the "outrageous" things people do. In fact, they often take them out of context and blow them up way more than these minor incidents deserve to be expounded on. (cases in point here: Ms Josie Lau asking for security to help, Ms Sally Ang's outburst to someone to 'shut up and sit down', AWARE's expenditure - people will probably react to these incidents!) But before we get angry at these people or decry their actions, remember that most seemingly 'outrageous' actions take place in larger contexts, usually with understandable (but underreported) rationales. We have to dig deeper to look at these before making our judgement.

While I won't put it so strongly and say that the media's 'out' to influence our opinions, I believe that through the natural process of choosing what to report & what not to, readers are made to look through the press' lenses and see a picture the media WANTS us to see. In this case, I feel the press unfairly paints an uglier picture of the new exco than they deserve.

The point of this entry is not about who's right or wrong - that's your decision.

Just don't be a mindless reader!

(& if you're interested, there's another perspective about AWARE + the press from irocker's LJ, 2 May entry.)