The older I get, the less I find that I'm able to read the Straits Times without being turned off at its flagrantly nationalistic agenda. I really wonder sometimes if we should be told what to think so much, when it is quite obvious that we have our own minds.
Let me cite an example. A few days ago, we had a ministerial forum in NTU. A 23-year-old final year aerospace student, Lim Zi Rui, came up and asked SM Goh a question.
He said “When I was younger, I was very proud of being a Singaporean, but that was about five, ten years ago. Five years later, with all the changes in policies and the influx of foreign talent, I really don’t know what I’m defending any more.” “I feel that there is a dilution of the Singapore spirit in youth… We don’t really feel comfortable in our country any more,” he said. This exchange between him and SM Goh then made it to the Straits Times.
Unsurprisingly, a few days later, the results of a poll were released on the front page of ST.
Young S’poreans proud of their country: poll
I mean, who are they trying to kid. The poll wasn't even objectively conducted, or made to appear like it was. This came from the article - The Straits Times reports that the polls, conducted once in 2008 and again this year, revealed that most students from primary school to junior college believe Singapore would be able to overcome any difficulties to survive as a country.
The ability to overcome adversity does not represent one's pride in a country. It simply means that most people think that the government is so ruthlessly efficient it will get the job done somehow, which is more or less true.
It is amazing the kind of rubbish and fallacious logic ST can admit into their articles to try and promote what they hope we will buy because they assume we don't care. It's true, most of us don't, but the ones that do, I think we kind of die a little inside to know that such crap is being splashed across the front pages of our national broadsheet.
It was even funnier in a sad way that they admitted results from NSFs to try and justify their findings. I think it is pretty well known but unspoken that in NS, you have to give the "right" answers, because if you don't, it is all too easy to trace who did not, and they have their own unique methods to make you fall in line.
Check out this choice quote from Minister Ng Eng Hen.
"Our students openly declare their love for Singapore and are proud of Singapore’s achievements. They believe in a society that is self-reliant, intolerant of corruption and meritocratic," he said.
Really? Who are these students who openly declare their love for Singapore? The only ones I know are constantly complaining about everything and anything.
Singaporeans need to realise one thing. Just because a politician from the PAP says something does not mean it is true. There is an inherent conflict of interest there, because politicians will always want to look like they are doing the correct thing, so think about what they say more closely so you can tell if they are selling you horsecrap.
We are not stupid, neither are we THAT ignorant, so please stop feeding us this drivel, because you are misleading those who are too lazy or ignorant to care about what's important to them.
Yesterday, when I was talking to some of my course mates from tennis, who are from a range of faculties including literature, sports science and engineering, I was shocked to realise that they had no grasp of news at all.
One of them even quipped, "I think the younger generation just doesn't care, we're all
apathetic."
I mean, I can understand that not everyone reads the newspaper, but if all you know about what is happening in the world around you is gleaned from Facebook, then that is really being a little too ignorant, because on Facebook, you will only click on things that interest you, and most of the time, the things that really concern you are not the same things that are interesting, until they come back to bite you in the backside. Then everyone goes why didn't we see that coming, but actually, it had been there all along, just that no one cared.
It just kind of makes the government look more and more like they are trumpeting their own achievements in an alternate universe borne out of being isolated too long from the disaffection on the ground, on a medium that less people take seriously, and even less read.
I don't think I can ever work for the Straits Times. But where does that leave me.