Have you heard of the news about the 14-year-old girl who was intoxicated and raped/sexually assaulted when she went karaoke with her friends?  5 suspects had been caught.  

I believe the news first appeared in Sin Chew approximately two or three days ago. There were no names reported so as to protect the identity of the victim, and the tone of the article was obviously siding the victim. It was written in a way as if the reporter was writing a story, not reporting a news. No pictures. It didn’t appear on the first page but the follow up on 12/12/2009 did (complete with pictures and all, albeit censored). There was a line saying something like “thanks to our previous publication this matter had received massive attention from all parties, hence the immediate apprehension of the 5 suspects.”

  Out of curiosity, I flipped through The Star. I couldn’t find any articles in The Star reporting about this matter.

  Taking into account the fact that the headmaster of the school refuse to shoulder responsibility for what had happened on the basis that it did not happen within the school compound and how the victim’s case had been postponed prior to the publication, I guess I can safely conclude that if the publication was really to be credited for the apprehension, then the media really ought to have more freedom of expression.

  This leads us to a discussion of qualified privilege.

  Per Lord Atkinson in Adam v Ward, the traditional qualified privilege applies where the person who makes a communication has an interest or a duty to communicate the information to the person to whom it is made, and the person to whom it is so made has a corresponding interest or duty to receive it. This privilege had been extended to apply in other situations. In later cases, qualified privilege was allowed in respect of politica speech, subject to a requirement of reasonable care and finallly, in Jameel v Wall Street Journal Europe Sprl, it appears to apply to publications in the media generally, as long as the issue is in public interest, and it is not published with malice, and the reporter reporting it exercised responsible journalism. This is a departure from the conventional qualified privilege, where reciprocity is the essence of the privilege.  

  The question is: what kind of issues are in public interest? Issues that interest the public are not necessarily issues of public interest. The public loves to know which star is hooking up with which star, and who’s breaking up with who, Who has fake boobs and who had more plastic surgeries and stuff like that, but that does not seem like issues of public interest (on the contrary it seems like invasion of privacy to me).

  Political issues are matters of public interest as we need to know who’s leading and ruling us tomorrow; it affects our lives (like, whether this leader will make us pay more taxes), and reportings of criminal offences must be matters of public interest too, as we all want the bad guys locked up so we can sleep with no fear.

  However, in reporting matters like political and criminal issues, it is of utmost importance to exercise responsible journalism because there’s a line between reporting and defaming, and the line between these two is a real thin one. Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead in Reynolds v Times Newspapers Ltd gave ten guidelines for responsible journalism:

1. The seriousness of the allegation.

2. The nature of the information, and the extent to which the subject-matter is a matter of public concern.

3. The source of the information.

4. The steps taken to verify the information.

5. The status of the information.

6. The urgency of the matter.

7. Whether comment was sought from the plaintiff.

6. Whether the article contained the gist of the plaintiff’s side of story.

9. The tone of the article.

10. The circumstances of the publication.  

  All that said and done, with all the applaud and cheers for Sin Chew’s success at prompting investigations which perhaps protect pontential victims, at the end of the day I wonder if anything done had actually made the victim felt better? Perhaps it made her felt better knowing that justice still exists, but the harm to her was done and it could not be undone.

  If I was put in her shoes, I believe I would have gone mad within days. I would have thought that I do not deserve to be loved anymore. I salute her for her ability to stand strong and for not losing respect in herself, and I wish that she will continue to stay strong, and my sincerest prayers for her to find the light at the end of the tunnel, to have a whole new and better life, and to find her true love someday in future.