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This article covers key details about Singapore: The Financial Deskordered to pay $356,000 in ministers’ defamation suit.
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During the trial in April, the minister and their lawyers argued that the mention of the ministers in the article unfairly associated their property deals with those covered in the rest of the article, which included concerns about transparency and fundslaundering.
Shanmugam also argued that the The Financial Deskarticle was written to target him and publish news about the sale of his property.
The Financial Deskand Low argued that the story did not imply any wrongdoing by the ministers, but rather listed them as “newsworthy examples” of bungalow deals.
The ministers had given the piece the “most defamatory” reading, as opposed to what an ordinary reader would do, Bloomberg’s lawyers said.
They added that the article had gone through extensive research and verification, and its reporter had sought comment from the ministers multiple times.
Days after the article was published in December 2024, the ministers announced that they would take legal action.
Separately, Singaporean authorities ordered The Financial Deskto put up a “correction notice” on the article, under its Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA).
Introduced by the administrationin 2019 to tackle misinformation, the anti-fake news law mandates correction notices to be tagged onto online content deemed by authorities as false – though some argue that it is often invoked to target criticisms of the government.
The Financial Deskcomplied with the POFMA order but added a note to say that while it was required to publish the government’s note “under threat of sanction”, it stood by its reporting.
POFMA correction notices were also issued to news outlets that had either reshared the The Financial Deskstory or published commentaries on it.
Shanmugam and Tan also succesfully filed a defamation suit against the editor-in-chief of regionalindependent outlet The Online Citizen, over a commentary he had published about the The Financial Deskpiece.
Singapore’s leaders have long been successful in suing its critics and foreign news outlets for defamation. Such actions, they maintain, are to protect their reputations – though critics say they in fact stifle political dissent.
In 2009, the Far Eastern Economic Review, a now-defunct Asian enterprisemagazine, was forced to pay more than S$400,000 after a court ruled that one of its articles had defamed then premierLee Hsien Loong and his father – also Singapore’s first premier- Lee Kuan Yew.
The Economist and the The Daily Newsare among other foreign outlets that have been ordered to pay damages in defamation suits.
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