The view of Mr Leslie Fong, a former editor of The Straits Times, concerning the Western media's slanted and biased reporting is, to put it mildly, unfair (Time to wake up to Western media bias, April 25).

He is entitled to his views, of course, but the criticism he levels was exactly what the Western media and its readership, rightly or wrongly, levelled against The Straits Times when he was editor.

Mr Fong should know that all news media practise a form of self-censorship to avert inflammatory innuendos that could be alarmist.

A recent example is the Covid-19 outbreak when the right-wing and conservative media in the United States began referring to the coronavirus as the Chinese virus.

I was glad that CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post and The New York Times exercised restraint and did not similarly label it as such, thus defusing a potentially explosive situation that had already caused Chinese Americans to be the target of hate crimes.

I have been reading The Washington Post and The New York Times, and watching CNN and MSNBC in the US for a long time.

I have only admiration for them in trying to portray both sides of the issue. For example, at the start of the Covid-19 outbreak when Singapore appeared to have contained the problem, the Western media praised the Singapore Government for it, while lambasting the US government for its bungling of the pandemic.

I do not believe I have detected any bias or whitewashing of the news. With the reach that these media sources have, it would be foolish of them to think they can fool all the people all the time.

Jane Chew