TL;DR – Tell me it ain’t so.
Market research company Blackbox Research conducted a poll of 1,000 Singaporeans aged 15 and older and found that 42% of respondents thought that All Singapore Stuff, were guilty of publishing fake or misleading news.
Compared to that, 44% of respondents thought that Mothership.sg and The Middle Ground were guilty of doing so.
That’s right.
We wonder whether those 44% of respondents who thought that Mothership.sg and The Middle Ground are guilty of publishing fake or misleading news have actually read those two sites.
In contrast, for the 58% of respondents who didn’t think that All Singapore Stuff is guilty of publishing fake or misleading news, we again seriously wonder whether they’ve actually read that site.
Here are three examples:
1. Fake news about the Collapse of the Roof at Punggol Waterway Terraces
In November last year, All Singapore Stuff had posted this photo:
Together with the photo was this short article:
This just happened. The top floors of Punggol Waterway Terraces collapsed!
Previous, the owners of the Built-to-Order (BTO) flats had taken to the internet to voice their unhappiness over the poor workmanship of their flats.
Bhagonwali
A.S.S Contributor
Because of this article, the police and civil defence force were dispatched to the area to investigate and wasted their time. HDB came out to say that it was a hoax and made a police report.
2. Misleading news about new citizen wanting to give up Singaporean citizenship
Not long after that fake news about Punggol Waterway Terrace, All Singapore Stuff was up to their rubbish ways again. They posted a “story” about how a new citizen is disappointed with Singapore and wants his old citizenship back.
Along with the “story”, they had this photo:
Turns out that Prakash is indeed a new citizen. But he has no intentions of giving up his Singaporean citizenship. All Singapore Stuff used that image without his permission. Prakash informed the authorities and asked them to investigate. Here’s Prakash’s Facebook post clarifying the fake news.
3. Fake news that police dissuaded young victim from making report
Not enough? Here’s one more instance of fake news from All Singapore Stuff. And this takes the cake. This happened earlier this year. The article claimed that a 16 year-old girl was “duped” into having sex at the age of 14. The person who “duped” her eventually became her schoolmate and started to taunt her.
The rubbish article went on to claim that the girl went to make a police report. Worse, the article went on to claim that the police did not take action and even advised the girl to drop the case.
In response to the rubbish article, the police released this statement:
As a result of the police statement, All Singapore Stuff subsequently apologised and also released a statement of their own. It tried to absolve itself of all responsibility by claiming that the article was contributed anonymously. And we are supposed to believe that the people behind All Singapore Stuff didn’t make that piece of rubbish up on their own? And they didn’t come up with that poor excuse of a “statement” just to save themselves? Right…
Time to wise up, Singapore. Do we want another The Real Singapore?