SINGAPORE - The High Court on Wednesday dismissed an appeal by the publisher of digital magazine Jom against two correction directions issued to it over an article on the Ridout Road saga.
In a written judgment on Wednesday, Justice Valerie Thean said that Jom had made three false statements of fact in the article published by The Inquiry – the company which runs Jom – on its webpage on July 7.
The article had asserted that Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean did not respond to questions concerning the issue of actual or apparent conflicts of interest and possible breach of the code of conduct for ministers beyond replying that it is more important to observe the spirit rather than just the letter of the code.
The judge said the author of the article did not just express an opinion.
“It was an assertion of fact made by the author in order to support his opinion that because of the issue of conflicts of interest, many questions remained unanswered after the review that SM Teo (ought not to have) helmed,” said Justice Thean.
Mr Teo had spoken in Parliament on July 3 following the release of the Ridout Road report, detailing the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau’s (CPIB) investigation into Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam’s and Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan’s rental of the bungalows from the Singapore Land Authority (SLA).
Following the publication of the article, a correction direction under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma) was issued on July 16 on the instruction of Second Minister for Law Edwin Tong.
A second correction order under the law against fake news was issued the same day on the instruction of Minister for Communications and Information Josephine Teo.
In a joint statement then, the Ministry of Law (MinLaw) and the Ministry of Communications and Information said that the article by Jom omitted important information from what Mr Teo said in Parliament on July 3, in which he “expressly clarified that he meant it was important to observe the spirit as well as the letter of the code”.
“Mr Teo also said that Mr Shanmugam had recused himself, and this meant that he no longer had any duty in the matter. There could thus be no potential or actual conflict of interest,” said the statement.
Mr Teo had also highlighted that the CPIB had established, as part of its independent investigation, that no matter was raised by the SLA to MinLaw and to any of the ministers during the entire rental process, said the statement.
The second false statement by Jom was in reference to the assertion that SLA had spent more than $1 million on the renovation for 26 Ridout Road and 31 Ridout Road because the ministers were to be the tenants of the black-and-white bungalows.
The statement by the ministries clarified that the identity of the tenants had no bearing on the amount spent by SLA on the works it carried out on both properties.
The Inquiry contended in the appeal that it did not say that the money was spent because the ministers were to be tenants. It referred to a part of its article which said: “The bare facts are shocking, including over S$1m of taxpayer money spent on renovation works”.
It said that the phrase “the bare facts are shocking” referred to three statements in the article which it said were factual – that $1 million was spent on the renovation of the two houses; the properties were about 100,000 sq ft and 250,000 sq ft in size; and the square foot rent worked out to just over 10 cents per sq ft for 26 Ridout Road.
Justice Thean said the subject material could have multiple meanings, one of which, as The Inquiry submits, “is to take ‘at face value’ the three bare facts that would shock the reader”. “Presumably, this reaction would be linked to the author’s opinion that the ministers lived very privileged lives,” said Justice Thean. However, the judge said in her view, an objective and reasonable segment of the audience would read the article as a whole and not merely the three “facts”.
“The flow of the text within the article and its conclusion is an assertion that conflicts of interest caused SLA to spend more than $1m in taxpayer money to renovate the large properties despite the low rental return,” she added.
The article also asserted, in a section titled “Society: Did Instagram accede to a censorship request by the Rajah?”, that the Government had caused Instagram to geo-block a post by opposition figure and fugitive lawyer Charles Yeo.
In the joint statement, the ministries said the Government did not issue any directions or requests on this matter to Meta, Instagram’s parent company, that caused Instagram to geo-block the post in question.
The Inquiry had submitted in its appeal that the title was an open question. But the Attorney-General said the query was a rhetorical question that the article then answers in the affirmative.
Agreeing with the Attorney-General, Justice Thean said: “In my view, what the article does, by a series of speculative associations, is set out a case that the Government caused Instagram to geo-block Charles Yeo’s post.
“Again, while this is not spelt out literally, the whole import of the article leads to an assertion that the Singapore Government asked Instagram to geo-block the Charles Yeo post in Singapore.”
