Truth be told

The government's decision to gazette The Online Citizen (TOC) was a surprise, and a warning to myself. TOC started out aggregating blog posts by Singaporeans, such as mine. In fact, a search of TOC shows that I still have one blog post on their blog site. I thought this was swell - I get publicity and some bit of recognition for my writing. And I have never had any problems with them at all although I haven't been that active in the blogosphere for the past half year due to other pressing commitments.

I suppose that TOC has, over time, become more vocal about the Singapore political scene. It is now more like a newspaper, reporting and commenting on social and political issues of the day.  The suspicion is whether they have been 'taken over' by external parties (read: foreigners) who may be driving their agenda. Truth be told, I am totally ignorant about this, but I do notice that it isn't as 'innocent' as it once used to be.

Personally, I am not too comfortable with blog sites reporting about the issues of the day as if they knew best. If it is opinion, then I can accept it. My discomfort arise from the fact that you really don't know who are doing the reporting, and what their agenda might be. I have been around long enough to know that you take online content that purports to report on the 'truth' (expose is what they call it) with a pinch of salt, unless you know who are doing the reporting and what their credentials are. But things are evolving this way, and serious people who lack a license to publish often now do it online. This just can't be stopped, and shouldn't be stopped. But I can see how certain controls do make sense, if only to ensure that what is reported is done responsibly.

Of course, you can take all of the above with a pinch of salt.