onthesannyside: More highlights (Part 2)...

I'll start with a reporting/editing lapse, a failure to fact-check, by the "gold standard" New York Times, and TODAY's own carelessness in not spotting it, in a story covering the Shangri-La Dialogue (June 3) here in Singapore:

Will the real keynote speaker please stand up?

Salah (wrong)! Mr Hagel was not the keynote speaker. Japanese PM Shinzo "Rising Sun rag to a red bull" Abe was -- and both international and local media had prominently advertised that fact, in the knowledge that China would bristle. The NYT then compounded its error:

His excellency the keynote speaker, was reduced to just an ordinary speaker! And TODAY's editorial checkers -- who had people at the venue during the confab -- were asleep on their watch.

The China Syndrome

Incidentally, the last bit of that NYT report caught my eye for one reason:

Aiyoh, this senior diplomat very shy, man, despite his country being allied to the mighty USA. So it becomes a self-fulfilling fear; if a US ally is so afraid of China, what does it portend for other regional countries? Start learning Mandarin, man.
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'Cloak and dagger' jargon!

TODAY seemed to have also gone to sleep on a local story (June 3) made difficult to follow because of the liberal inclusion of jargon, especially in direct quotes that were not explained:

"...we endeavour to harness intelligence from the myriad of data collected..." Huh? There's a secret agent hiding under every train seat??

In contrast, I found ST's version so much easier to follow; an effort was made to avoid using as direct quotes the newsmakers' jargon-filled remarks, and when jargon was used, the effort was made to explain those terms:

Bugged by the Acronym Bunglers!

As I said in a recent blogpost, Singaporeans are acronym-crazy. Unfortunately, the bureaucrats do a very bad job of it...

Okay, FASTER sounds appropriate -- but only if the initials make sense. Fusion AnalyticS?? That's cheating (apart from that phrase being a terrible piece of jargon)... if FAPTER sounds ridiculous, junk the contrived acronym. Take a leaf from SMRT, the Singapore Mass Rapid Transit Corporation. Easy off the lips, with no attempt to render "Mass" as "MAss"! (That would not have been a smart move, and it would have been soooooo ridiculous!!)
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