TOC Editor Claims Straits Times Removes ‘Defamatory’ Forum Letter After He Sent A Letter Of Demand But It’s Still There Leh

Just in case you hear TOC or Terry Xu and think it’s related to another case, it’s not entirely.

This is something separate, although it’s around the same person.

But even so, you know what that means…

Bring out the popcorn.

Facebook Post And Demand To Remove Defamatory Letter

According to the Facebook post, Straits Times forum had published a letter on 29 Sep 2019 by Chng Hui Ling, which accuses Terry Xu of three things:

1. That TOC deceives readers into believing articles written by foreigners are written by Singaporeans
2. That Terry Xu allowed foreigners to write negative articles about S’pore
3. That TOC lied about the background of their writers

Terry Xu, of course, objected to this.

Because according to him, none of these accusations was true, and was highly defamatory.

So he wrote a letter of demand to SPH and demand them to take the defamatory letter down and not repeat it again.

He did not ask for an apology or for damage, because he just wants the right thing to be done.

But siaolang writer, I bring popcorn already, where’s the real spicy stuff? Where’s the counter from Terry Xu that will make my extra calorie intake worth it?

So the finishing blow is to fault ST for allowing the letter up in the first place:

“I do not fault the writer for having the views that she had but ST should have known better than to publish a letter that contained falsehoods especially when it refers to itself as the best antibiotics to ‘fake news’.”

That antibiotic comment refers to this, which has a newspaper vending machine with the caption “THE BEST ANTIBIOTIC AGAINST FAKE NEWS”.

Oooooh shit, that’s fire.

The full comment, if you need to dig up more spicy stuff:

Last Sunday, Straits Times published a letter that contained highly defamatory allegations in its ST forum.

In response to the letter, I wrote a letter of demand to the editors of Singapore Press Holdings yesterday, to demand that they take down the letter and to undertake not to repeat the same act.

While I have not been told of the undertaking by SPH that they will not repeat the allegations, ST has since removed the letter.

The Defamatory Letter Was Taken Down… Or Not…?

It would appear that when Mothership checked (1 Oct 2019, 5 pm), the article was taken down. Though when I’m writing (2 Oct 2019, ~2 pm), the letter is still up and running on Straits Times.

What this means I can’t tell you (cause I’m also just watching and eating popcorn from the sidelines), but there’s a little bit more heat to reveal.

Shanmugan Also Questioned TOC Before

On 25 Sep 2019, in a Conference on Foreign Interference Tactics and Countermeasures, Home Affairs and Law Minister K. Shanmugam pointed out that the TOC writer for the article defaming PM Lee was a Malaysian.

“I am not commenting on the legal merits of the article since it is the subject of a lawsuit, only that a foreigner, staying in Malaysia, writes these things for a Singapore site to target a Singapore audience.”

“Who controls her? Who pays her? What is her purpose? All these are legitimate questions. Most readers would just assume this was by a genuine Singaporean contributor.”

The above refers to the currently ongoing PM Lee V Terry Xu drama.

While I don’t think the letter written by Chng Hui Ling will affect Terry Xu much in the end, from the looks of it things are going to remain complicated.