NHG employee's wayangparty caught with pants down

Letter to Shin Min Daily demanding a public apology for defamatory article maligning wayangparty.com

[EDITORS' NOTE: We have already consulted a lawyer on this matter and has emailed Shin Min Daily the letter below demanding an open apology for the error in their report on 26 May 2009.]

To the Editors of Shin Min Daily:

On 26 May 2009, Shin Min Daily published an article in page 6 alleging that a local blog had made use of the Liu Guodong fiasco to boost its readership:

Though no name was mentioned explicitly, it is obvious that the article is referring to our blog ”Wayang Party” because:

1. We are the only blog which claimed that it is keeping in touch with Liu Guodong and had published a teleconversation with him on 23 May 2009. (http://wayangparty.com/?p=9702)

2. We have received extensive publicity from the mainstream media on our coverage of the Liu Guodong saga. The Straits Times, Channel News Asia and Lianhe Wanbao have quoted our blog in their reports.

3. Given the size of our readership, our readers reading the article will recognize the identity of the blog immediately.

The article suggested that we did not contact Liu Guodong at all by quoting from Liu who said he did not receive any phone call from us.

We did not receive any emails from your journalists enquiring us on the discrepancy between our article and Liu Guodong’s answer which we will be more than happy to provide a detailed explanation.

Our reporter did not tell Liu Guodong that he is from “Wayang Party”. He introduced himself as a freelance reporter from an online daily. Therefore, Liu Guodong is not aware of the fact that we have been defending him on our site. Neither does he know that we have started a petition drive at Hong Lim Park next Saturday in support of him.

Your irresponsible, unethical and unprofessional reporting contain unsubstantiated allegations maligning us with the insinuation that we have been manufacturing lies to mislead and deceive our readers in order to gain cheap publicity.

An unsuspecting reader reading your article would be led to believe that we are dishonest, untrustworthy, , unprincipled, corrupt and unethical bloggers.

We have five documentary evidence to prove that we have contacted Liu Guodong and the conversation we had with him is real which we are more than happy to reveal in court to clear our name:

1. A photograph of Liu and our reporter taken at the lobby of Meritus Mandarin Hotel on the night of 22 May 2009 before his departure from Singapore.

2. Two photographs of the draft document which STTA asked him to sign.

3. Liu Guodong’s handphone number in Singapore.

4. Liu Guodong’s handphone number in China.

5. The 15 minute conversation our reporter had with Liu Guodong on 23 May 2009 which can be easily retrieved from the telco records.

6. If need be, we will call upon Liu Guodong as a witness to testify in court that he has met our reporter on 22 May 2009 and spoken to him over the phone on 23 May 2009.

Wayang Party is one of the top two socio-political blogs in Singapore with a daily readership of more than 10,000.

Your article has has seriously impugned on our honesty, credibility and integrity by suggesting that we have been manufacturing lies and concocting non-existent tales to deceive, mislead and hoodwink our readers.

As such, we are writing to you to demand that you rectify and apologize for the error in your report immediately without further delay.

You are also required to furnish us with the following information:

1. The name(s) of the journalist(s) who wrote the article. (there were three names on the article)

2. The particulars, contact number and address of the journalist(s) for us to serve legal notice on them.

We will give you a grace period of two weeks beginning from 28 May 2009 to publish a public apology in Shin Min Daily acknowledging the factual inaccuracy in the report, publishing the facts as stated and accepting responsibility for your negligience failing which we will seriously consider commencing legal proceedings against your journalists and paper.

http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=28839.59