Late last week, the Nanyang Chronicle broke a story on how the campus bookshop was infringing copyright by selling photocopied versions of textbooks.
The campus paper posted the story on its website Friday, labelled it ‘Breaking News’, and publicised the story through its Twitter and Facebook site.
The last time the Chronicle broke news in this manner in the past four years was covering the deaths of NTU student David Widjaja and Infocomm project officer Zhou Zheng.
The story was headlined “NTU bookshop infringes copyright” and was accompanied by a large photograph of the bookshop owner holding on to what was an original and photocopied version of a textbook beside two staff of the Chronicle team.
The caption that accompanied the photograph read: “ILLEGAL TRADE: Mr Ng Sui Nam, owner of Yun Nan Book Store, offers The Nanyang Chronicle the original text : The Pleasure of the Text by Roland Barthes at $32.80 as well as a photocopied version at $3″.
Curiously, the photograph was taken outside the bookshop and the owner didn’t seem aware that he was being photographed for this purpose.
Two things caught my attention at once.
First, what was so pressing about this piece of news that the Chronicle broke out of its every three weekly cycle and broke the news in this manner?
Second, how was the owner of the bookshop photographed selling the Chronicle team a pirated book when he declined to comment for the story, and was it necessary to run the story with the photograph?
The mistaken watchdog?
In an ideal society, the press should protect public interest by acting as a watchdog on the activities of the powers that be.
This notion rests on the idea that people in authority may not always act in the interest of the public, and it is the role of the press to inform the public of the actions and inactions of the authorities and to expose any wrongdoings.
The eagerness in which the Chronicle broke the story—and the manner in which the story is written and framed—certainly suggests that the editorial team thinks it is serving public interest by exposing the illicit activity of selling pirated copies of textbooks.
Yes, piracy is illegal and should not be condoned. But just whose interest is the Chronicle serving when it runs the story this way?
There is no doubt that the bookshop owner, Mr Ng, is not just an average elderly man; he is a businessman who owns several bookstores and a minimart.
But this is ultimately a legal dispute and wrongdoing between the business of publishing and retailing.
If the story is accurate, then students are most definitely suffering due to the shortage of textbooks.
But the Chronicle has chosen instead to take the bookshop owner to task not for its failure to stock the prescribed texts, but as an exposé about copyright infringement.
The problem that students—who make up most of the readers of the Chronicle—are unable to get hold of their texts have become but a footnote in the story.
Where have ethics gone to?
What journalists choose to write and what a paper chooses to publish can sometimes make a dramatic impact on another person’s life.
This is probably why journalists voluntarily subscribe to code of ethics to minimise harm to their sources.
But have journalistic ethics taken a backseat in perhaps what could have been the editorial team’s excitement to do an exposé?
After all, it’s not every day that these reporters get a chance to run breaking news, much less an exposé of a malpractice.
The Chronicle wrote that the bookshop owner, Mr Ng, has declined to comment for the story, and a shop assistant was said to have told the Chronicle that they’re not selling the photocopied versions anymore.
Yet, the Chronicle managed to get hold of a photo of the bookshop owner standing outside his store, holding on to two books with two staff of the Chronicle team.
The accompanying caption claims that Mr Ng was engaging in an illegal trade and was trying to offer the Chronicle both an original and pirated copy of a textbook.
Why Mr Ng would stand outside the his own shop and try to sell an original and pirated text to two reporters who were doing an exposé on him is anyone’s guess.
Unless, of course, the reporters had not identified themselves as reporters.
Or that they had not been absolutely clear with Mr Ng about the purpose of their visit.
Or that Mr Ng did not know that he was being photographed.
Or that the caption was inaccurate.
Now, what is legally permissible does not mean that it is ethical. The media publish photographs and broadcast footages of suspects and convicted criminals who desperately try to hide their faces as they leave the courtroom every day.
The lack of privacy laws here in Singapore probably means that there is no legal issue in publishing a photograph of Mr Ng without his explicit permission.
If, however, the Chronicle got hold of the photograph through surreptitious reporting or lack of informed consent, then ethics seemed to have become a casualty in the journalists’ pursuit of breaking news.
The photograph has since been picked up and republished in the The New Paper, and indirectly in the Shin Min Daily News.
Even if the Chronicle decides that it is justified to run the story in this manner, there was really little value to its readers to run this photograph beyond pandering to lurid curiousity, but a whole lot of harm done to shame Mr Ng.
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