Asia Sentinel correction note required on website to ensure wide reach to correct falsity: Janil

SINGAPORE – Online publication Asia Sentinel was ordered to display a correction note on an article containing false statements and on its main webpage to ensure that the notice reached as many readers as the original falsehood, said Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information Janil Puthucheary in Parliament on Thursday.

The site was blocked from access here under directions from the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI)

after Asia Sentinel did not display the authorities’ correction notices at the top of its article and the top of its main page.

Dr Janil was responding to questions from Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh, who raised the possibility of “overreach” when the authorities required the correction note under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma) to be displayed on the main webpage in addition to the correction note appearing on the original article.

“A lie travels faster than the truth. So you do need to make sure that you have as much coverage as possible when you want to correct the falsity,” said Dr Janil.

The fake news law was invoked to refute

a series of published statements on Asia Sentinel in May,

including that Mr Lee Hsien Yang and his wife, Mrs Lee Suet Fern, were forced to leave Singapore because government action was threatened against them for warring with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

Asia Sentinel also stated in a separate piece that the authorities in Singapore threatened to end publication Nikkei Asia’s operations here.

Its site administrators have since displayed a Pofma correction note on its May 24 article titled Killing The Chicken To Scare The Monkeys, with an editor’s note above that states: “Although we have posted the Government’s demand, we stand by our story.”

The site posted a link to the correction note in the right column of its main webpage. The correction note did not appear at the top of the page as required, said Dr Janil. Thus, access to the California-based site has been blocked for local Internet users since June. 

Mr Singh on Thursday asked whether there is a defined threshold to determine when an offending site should display a correction direction on its main page, in addition to the page containing the false statements. He also asked whether this was a case of Asia Sentinel having multiple run-ins with the authorities.

Mr Singh said: “Can there not be a question of overreach when you expect the correction direction to be on the main webpage as well? Because having it on the article itself would be sufficient because then the reader would know that this particular article is one that has been flagged out, not every article on the Asia Sentinel website.”

In reply, Dr Janil said Asia Sentinel was ordered to display a correction notice at the top of the article and its main page so as to reach “at least as large a readership as the original falsehood”.

“I think you would characterise this as overreach only if you felt that the inclusion of the correction notice – in other words, the correction of the falsity – was in itself not necessary,” said Dr Janil. He pointed out that Mr Singh was part of the committee that produced the White Paper that led to the fake news law.

Dr Janil added: “It is not often that someone will necessarily go back to the original article having read it and so you do need to put the correction in place so that as many readers of the original falsehood as possible will (know) it has been corrected.”

He likened the notice displayed on the main page to a flagged article in a magazine or newspaper, which would typically carry a notice in a prominent place so people could read it and be informed of the false statements.

Mr Singh said he did not agree with the approach as a newspaper would not be expected to publish a correction on its first page.

He asked if Asia Sentinel had committed such offences on multiple occasions and added that he would understand the course of action taken if this was the case.

Dr Janil said Asia Sentinel did not comply fully with the correction direction issued in May, resulting in the site being blocked here.