MMS

Well, it's been a whirlwind week, with too much info on either side that my puny brain can handle.

The liberalization of the internet and social media for campaigning meant that information is in explosive volumes, and that believe it or not, one can filter out stuff that you don't want to see or hear more easily.

For one, I would like to speak up on the criticisms on main stream media that has been made by almost every opposition party, saying that it's the mouth piece of government and gives unfair coverage to the opposition cause.

As a participant/contributor of the mainstream media, I tend to cringe whenever I hear this. We did do our very best to cover both sides equally. But the idea of fairness is actually subjective. What is fair coverage to you, would not be fair to the other party right? So what is fair? 50-50 coverage of the ruling and opposition parties? OR should we go down to the details to proportioning everyday's coverage based on the number of candidates each party is sending to contest like in the case of the party political broadcast?

When 1 party shoots down another, we got to report on it, as a fact, that A criticizes B for this. But at the same time, we will give B the right of reply. I think that is fair. Seeing both sides of the story. But due to deadline/space or any other constraints, it might not be possible to carry it in the same article or at the same time. That people need to understand.

In journalism, there are other factors of consideration when it comes to who gets more coverage. If you spout nonsense and say boring stuff, u prob might not be carried. In this election for example, an Aljunied GRC related election news, will take precedence say over Sembawang GRC, as we know ppl want to know more abt Aljunied than Sembawang. Is that fair?

Our yardstick of fairness might not be the same as yours. And as with politics, we can't make everyone happy all the time.