Everything About PM Lee’s Letter to TOC, Which is Not Under #FakeNews But Defamation

Yesterday evening, as you’re having your dinner and wondering why Monday Blues could be so real, something happened.

No, aliens haven’t landed in Yishun. At least not yet.

Instead, PM Lee’s press secretary sent a letter to Terry Xu from The Online Citizen, and it’s not to commend him for being able to raise money for his site.

The letter comprises strong words like “remove” and “lawyers to sue to enforce his full rights in law”.

Oh yeah, if you’ve our app and come in daily, you’d know the gist of it, but here’s a more detailed explanation of what went down, and the difference between fake news and defamation.

The Online Citizen, An Old New Media Site That’s Anti-Establishment

If you’re not familiar with The Online Citizen, here’s a paragraph to sum it up: it’s a website that supposedly reports on topics not covered by the mainstream media, and its direction is often anti-establishment. Unlike the defunct The Real Singapore or All Singapore Stuff, the website is professionally done, and its quality writings are all original. The site is one of the oldest new media platforms in Singapore, with it being manned by several people in the past. At this moment, it’s run by a sole editor, Terry Xu.

So, yesterday evening, the Prime Minister’s Office issued a letter to Terry Xu, asking him to remove an article and a Facebook post of the article that contained “false allegations” and requested him to publish an apology.

The article in question is titled “PM Lee’s wife, Ho Ching weirdly shares article on cutting ties with family members”, and was shared on Facebook on 15 August 2019.

According to the letter, the article allegedly claimed that “PM Lee misled his father, the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew, into thinking that the 38 Oxley Road property had been gazetted by the Singapore Government, and that it was futile for Mr Lee Kuan Yew to keep his direction to demolish it,” and that PM Lee had allegedly “caused Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who had originally wanted to demolish the house, to consider other alternatives to demolition, and to change his will to bequeath the house to PM Lee. “

Those allegations are allegedly “completely without foundation” and PM Lee had already given a full explanation in Parliament.

In addition, the letter also accuses the article of other false allegations, which you can read them all here.

Terry Xu is therefore requested to do these:

• Remove the article from his website
• Remove the Facebook post
• Publish an apology
• Not to anyhowly publish these kinds of allegations

He’d have to do so by 4 September 2019 (Wednesday), if not PM Lee “will have no choice but to hand the matter over to his lawyers to sue to enforce his full rights in law.”

As of now, the article has been removed from the website, but the Facebook post is still up. However, to access the Facebook post, you’d have to scroll down quite a bit to see it. I spent almost fifteen minutes finding it.

Now, here’s when it gets a tad confusing for laymen like BuffLord95 who knows more about bubble teas than the laws in Singapore: is this under the new fake news law?

Here’s your answer: a big no.

Case of Defamation and Not Under POFMA

Because people are anyhowly saying “fake news”, here’s what you need to know.

The fake news laws, known as the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA), are different from defamation.

For POFMA to “catch you”, it needs to fulfil a few conditions:

• It must be statements that aren’t true and are deliberately spread
• It must have consequences on public health or finances, or public safety or tranquillity, or something that has consequences on the outcome of an election or referendum, or that it could incite enmity, hatred or ill-will between different groups or undermine the confidence in public institutions.

The statements in the article might be false, but it doesn’t have consequences that affect society altogether.

Instead, in this case, the fake statements affect an individual’s reputation (i.e. PM Lee’s).

When that happens, it’ll be a civil case between the two parties.

Which is why PM Lee is suing Terry Xu instead of Terry Xu being caught in POFMA.

So, what is defamation?

Anyhowly Say Things Deliberately

Basically, if you purposely anyhowly state a fake statement about someone else with a malicious intention, you can be sued for damages.

For example, Apple is an influencer and you own a website with millions of readers. You hated Apple so one day, you wrote an article that claimed that Apple has killed ten cats. That’s untrue, and you’ve deliberately written that to “attack” Apple.

Apple lost tens of followers soon after. In this case, Apple can sue you if the claim is fake; if she wins, you’d have to pay her damages as well.

Now you know.