Singapore Democrats
In the Today newspaper, it was published that political parties are using the online media to fuiel their campaigns for the coming GE. As usual the PAP gets top billing with the headline PAP ramps up online presence for GE. Ms Cheow Xin Yi describes at length about the PAP MPs’ Facebook pages.
In subsidiary piece, she talks about the opposition parties and how they are also using Facebook as an election tool. The SDP is not mentioned anywhere in the report despite the party having the most number of friends on Facebook among all the opposition parties.
This black out by MediaCorp comes on the heel of its televisiion programme Talking Point which also invited the various opposition parties to discuss the general elections, conspicuously excluding the Singapore Democrats.
In that episode, the SDP wrote to the producer of the programme asking why the SDP was left out. Channel News Asia Vice-President Ms Han Chuan Quee wrote a long, rambling reply but evaded our question.
In today’s Today, Ms Cheow repeated the act and completely left out mentioning the SDP despite the fact that the party’s online presence is unidsputed. We have more than one Facebook page administered by the Party itself and another by our youth wing, the Young Democrats. Even Danny the Democracy Bear has his own Facebook. As indicated we have the highest number of followers among the opposition parties.
We also have a highly subscribed Twitter account which currently has more than 3,000 followers. Our Facebook and Twitter accounts are all geared towards spreading our message during the general elections.
All this, however, doesn’t seem to matter to Ms Cheow who completely ignores the SDP. The blackout is not even subtle.
As Dr Chee Soon Juan pointed out to Ms Han in his letter, MediaCorp seems to be following the PAP’s agenda to minimise reportage on the Singapore Democrats. But Ms Cheow’s report is yet another piece of evidence that the PAP and its media is intent on keeping SDP’s news away from the public eye.