Related: STRAITS TIMES BLAMES READERS AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA FOR 'MISINTERPRETING' THEM
Andrew Loh wrote: ‘Barely a month after its mistake in reporting that a Bangladeshi had been killed in the Little India riot on 8 December 2013, the Straits Times seems to have once again got its facts wrong, or helped propagate a false story.
On 24 December, the Straits Times reported the publication of a report in Hong Kong about the execution of the uncle of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The Straits Times report, by its senior writer Ching Cheong, was titled, “Jang’s execution bodes ill for China”.
It described how Jang was executed – by being “eaten up” by “120 hounds” which had been “starved for three days”.’….
A piece of news published by the official national newspaper, The Straits Times, obviously carried a lot of weight and many readers can be forgiven for believing that this is a true story, verified, checked and double confirmed by professional newspaper men before putting it in print. And for those who would love such stories about Dear Leader and their programmed hatred for anything North Korean, they would simply gulp it down happily with a big jug of beer.
Why not when this news was happily picked up, quoted and reprinted by many of the supposedly reputable western media with an agenda to run down North Korea? In Andrew’s post the media who have quoted ST for this piece of juicy and serious news are: The Independent, The Daily Mail, USA Today, New York Daily News, The Nation, Fox News, The Telegraph and the Washington Post. A few of these are real biggies and what they posted would be taken as gospel truth. And I am damn sure these papers love such news, the more gore the better, to confirm their fabrication of what North Korea is all about.
According to Andrew this ‘eaten up by 120 hungry dogs’ is a piece of shit or lie that is not truth. I am not sure if Ching Cheong, the author and China expert, and the ST, have come up to dispute or confirm the authenticity and reliability of the report. As far as Andrew is concerned, this is an outright lie. But this may not be so. I have no means to check its authenticity, but the ST has. Even if the journalist was fed shit and believed in the shit, he still had to cross the barrier of the editor and chief editor who were obviously highly trained and experienced newsmen. They would not have passed this piece of news if they didn’t believe it was true and had not checked it themselves. If the news was false, a lie, it could now be turned into a truth when readers read it in The Washington Post, The Daily Mail, The Telegraph or one of the supposedly reputable and reliable media. People would then quote these big boys to claim that it must be the truth.
My suspicion is that this is another piece of crap originated from the West with their vicious agenda to paint North Korea as an uncivilized country with an equally evil dictator in Kim Jung Un. And in many places, or if Andrew did not raise this fact, many would simply read it, store it in their memory and after sometimes, becomes another convenient truth manufactured by the West and planted in their subconscious by the great media as The Truth.
Ok, I am not saying that the news was a piece of lie. Let’s hope a reputable paper like the ST would come out and rebut what Andrew had said or make a correction. Asking for an apology would be too much. And they could come out and confirm it was the truth and demand an apology from Andrew too.
What is the truth?
Chua Chin Leng aka redbean
* The writer blogs at http://mysingaporenews.blogspot.com
Related: STRAITS TIMES BLAMES READERS AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA FOR 'MISINTERPRETING' THEM