bloggers' fury

I've been following the Mr Brown incident with interest since Monday. While the local media (notably TODAY) and the government are intent on keeping silent on the matter, Singaporean bloggers are outraged and are now working towards drawing the attention of the foreign media.

If you're unaware of what's happened, here's a summary:

It started with this article Mr Brown wrote last Friday. As you might already know, Mr Brown has a regular satire column every Friday on TODAY.

Then on Monday, the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA) replied with a strongly worded letter.

That threw everyone into a rage, with many people arguing the following issues:

• We do not need to have alternatives or solutions when we have something unhappy to complain about. That's what we paid the goverment to do.
• Being a critic of the government doesn't make one a partisan player.
• The role of journalists and newspapers is to champion issues and campaign for or against the goverment. After all, the local media has always been campaigning for our government.
• Mr Brown's article was published in the Voices section. Everyone has a right to an opinion and the right to express it.
  

Following that, Mr Brown was suspended from his column, and TODAY has decided to take the easy route by doing a media blackout of this issue. In addition, MICA has decided not to discuss the issue further as well.

See the list of trackbacks and comments at Tomorrow.sg for what everybody has to say about this. The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders has also commented on it.