Wanbao Responds to the ‘Fake Interview’; Claims That Part of Story Isn’t Fabricated

If you’re confused over what this “fake interview” is all about, you might want to read this article first.

If not, here’s a summary: a Wanbao reporter contacted an NTU student who’s contracted COVID-19. Apparently, they’re friends (or to be more specific, acquaintances) and the reporter wanted to interview the student about his experience after seeing his Instagram Stories.

The NTU student rejected, Wanbao reporter acknowledged that and they lived happily ever after.

Not.

A story was then published in Zaobao.sg thought it was syndicated from Wanbao, and in the article, it’s mentioned that the NTU student had granted an interview with the reporter.

The article also claimed that the NTU student had contracted COVID-19 even when he stayed home throughout, which led to people wondering if the coronavirus had grown legs and moved across households.

Throughout the “interview”, though, the reporter did not name the student, but his friends and relatives connected the dots and was able to establish his identity.

So, the NTU student wrote a long post in Facebook, calling the reporter out for falsifying a story and that got over 2.2k shares. Heck, someone even helped to translate it to Chinese after that.

The article was removed from the Zaobao website, and the reporter tried to contact the student to deal with the “misunderstanding” but the student decided take the next best step: contact SPH and took it to social media.

And the Chinese media has responded. Openly.

Open Letter to Readers by Editor, NewsHub from SPH Chinese Media Group

Before you go, “Eh, why someone who edits articles responded instead one leh?”, hold your horses.

In the publishing industry, an editor is like a “General Manager”—he or she doesn’t go through articles to look for the difference between “you’re” and “your”, but manages the publication altogether.

It’s the second-highest position, with the highest being the Publisher.

The editor posted a response in both Chinese and English, and suffice to say, this could be the first time we’re seeing English words in the Zaobao website.

Apparently, the reporter had used the “wrong method” to report the story by “by framing the article as an interview when it was actually written based on Mr Quah’s IG posts and his personal understanding of Mr Quah.”

Mr Quah is the NTU student.

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The reporter had not informed his immediate superior about this…erm, “framing”.

After the media company received an email from the student, they took down the article after an internal investigation revealed that the reporter had indeed not interviewed the student.

The reporter had actually written the story based on the student’s social media posts instead.

Story Not Fabricated

The interview might have been fabricated, but according to the editor, the part about the student claiming that he got infected even when he stayed home was actually based on the student’s words.

They even had a screenshot of the Instagram story to prove their point:

Wait, does that mean the coronavirus have indeed grown legs and are moving around estates without a mask?

Independent Disciplinary Committee Set Up to Review the Case

The editor then added that the reporter had just joined them two months ago, and had expressed remorse for “misleading readers and impacting the newspaper’s reputation.”

As the company has a disciplinary system in place, they’ve “set up an independent disciplinary committee to review the case, and will decide on the penalties to be imposed.”

They then apologised to the student for attributing “the story we ran to an interview with him when he expressly declined the interview request.”

A check on the student’s Facebook account shows that someone has alerted him to this open letter, and he would “address it”.

In the meantime, all we want to know is…

Does the coronavirus really have legs now?

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