Inclusion of POFMA Correction Direction on Main Page of Asia Sentinel Website and Page Hosting Article with False Statement of Fact

Sir, under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA), a Minister is empowered to issue a Correction Direction to a recipient who has communicated a false statement of fact. The Correction Direction will specify the form and manner in which the Correction Notice is to be published. The intent is to try to have the Correction Notice reach at least as large a readership as the original falsehood, though often this may be difficult to achieve.

In the case of Asia Sentinel, the Minister for Home Affairs had instructed the POFMA Office to issue a Correction Direction to Asia Sentinel in respect of one of its articles and specified that the recipient publish a Correction Notice at: one, the top of the page which hosts the article that contained false statements of fact; and two, the top of the main page of its website. The inclusion of the POFMA Correction Notice on more than one location on Asia Sentinel’s website is to try and achieve the objective that I stated above. The Act also allows other orders to be made to get the Correction Notice brought to the attention of the readers who may have read the original falsehoods.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I filed this question because it was a point I raised last month in the course of a speech I made on a Bill and the Minister for Communications and Information invited me to file a Parliamentary Question (PQ) on it.

Can I ask the Senior Minister of State, at what point is a threshold crossed by which the Government then decides that the Correction Direction not only must be included at the article where the false statement of fact was transmitted, but also the main webpage? Can there not be a question of overreach when you expect the Correction Direction to be on the main webpage as well? Having it on the article itself would be sufficient because then the reader would know that this particular article is the one that has been flagged out, not every article on the Asia Sentinel website.

The second question I have is how many Correction Directions have been issued to online sites, which include this particular rendition of the Correction Direction – not just for the article, but for the entire website as well?

Sir, as far as the first question is concerned, the idea that we have to put the Correction Notice only next to the original article, Mr Singh has asked if this may be overreach. I think you would characterise this as overreach only if you felt that the inclusion of the Correction Notice, in other words, the correction of the falsity, was, in itself, not necessary or was itself false, or that it was inappropriate to have this viewed by as many people as possible. Mr Singh, who was part of the Select Committee that produced the White Paper that led towards the legislation that turned out to be POFMA, would agree that it is easier for the false statement of fact – a lie travels faster than the truth – and so, you do need to make sure that you have as much coverage as possible when you want to correct the falsity.

The behaviour of people reading online material is not all homogeneous; people access material in different ways. And it is not often that someone will necessarily go back to the original article after having read it. And so, you do need to put the correction in place so that as many readers of the original falsehood as possible will have that corrected. And so, we need a variety of tools and, depending on how the site is laid out and how the publisher manages its material, propagates its material, there needs to be some assessment of that done to make sure then that the correction is visible. And even with the tools, such as placing the correction on the main webpage, I am sure the Member would agree, it is unlikely that all the readers of the original falsehood would have that Correction Notice brought to their attention. We do try and so, we do need this type of tool.

I do not have the details about the specific Correction Directions and which used this tool versus the other types of Correction Notices. I can get the information to Mr Singh. The reality is that each Correction Notice needs to take into account the design of the feed and the website. But I will get the information to him separately, Sir.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Just a follow-up for the Senior Minister of State. Can I confirm whether a Correction Notice had been given to Asia Sentinel for other articles in the past and their conduct had been egregious in that they ignored it and, hence, a more heightened approach was taken with them for the subsequent article which contained false statements of fact?

Because I think the question here is the threshold. Does the Government treat each site differently or will it treat each site the same? And in this particular case, I think we need to delve deeper into why that particular Correction Direction required not just the clarification from the POFMA Office to be placed on the article itself, but on the main webpage. Can we expect to see the Government pursuing this approach, given his preamble about how important it is to make sure that lies do not get multiplied much more quickly?

Is the Government changing its approach to be stricter vis-à-vis Correction Directions? Because the consequence of that Correction Direction is Singaporeans are denied the opportunity to read other articles on Asia Sentinel which contain no false statements of fact. And I think this is a fine line that the POFMA Office needs to consider because I think you have a case when there are false statements of fact, to put out what ought to be the right facts and expect the site to carry them. But it does sound like overreach when you potentially are almost forcing the site to shut down because you force them to actually put the clarification on the first page, which has nothing to do with the article at hand.

Sir, I think the point here is what is the effect of that Correction Direction. I have no objection with the Correction Direction being on the article itself. But when you have it on the main webpage, which does not contain the article, but may contain a link to the article, I would grant the Senior Minister of State that. Has there been a situation where Asia Sentinel in the past did not adhere to Correction Directions which led the Government to turn the screw and say, "Look, I think you are pursuing a certain course of conduct which requires us to do this"? That is why my earlier question was about thresholds.

The second question I asked was about the approach of the Government: is this the way it is going to move forward – for Correction Directions for any site, you can expect, not just a Correction Direction on the offending article, but on the main webpage as well?

Sir, Mr Singh did not quite address my clarification. So, I am going to assume that he agrees with me that the publication of the Correction Notice on the main webpage does not, in any way, impede a reader from accessing all the other articles on Asia Sentinel's website. And what that Correction Notice does is add further information and transparency for people to make up their own mind about the facts at hand. So, I hope that is my understanding of his position. And I hope he will agree that then, there is no overreach or damage done to Asia Sentinel by requiring them to add a notice which essentially carries a correction, in other words, the correct understanding of the facts.

If I take the analogy from what happens in the print publication, I am sure if Mr Singh was concerned about a piece of article in a magazine or a newspaper which he disagreed with, which he required a correction, he would not be satisfied if the only thing that was done was the newspaper went out and published a Correction Notice next to the original article because nobody is going to read the same newspaper again from three or four days ago. And he would require a notice carried in the same publication in a prominent place that people could read and, especially to do so in a way that as many of the readers of the original false statement will then be better informed.

The analogy breaks down a little, clearly; this is an online digital publication and not something in print. But the intent is the same – to make sure as many of the original readers of that false statement see the Correction Notice, understand the correct facts – and I hope Mr Singh agrees that there is no harm caused by that.

So, as I said, I did not quite get an understanding from him that he agreed that we did not, in any way, intend to deny the readers of Asia Sentinel access to the other articles by the publication of the Correction Notice on its main website. It was a tool to make sure the facts are well-read and well-understood.

I think on the first point about whether I agree, I do not agree. I do not agree with that approach.

On the analogy, of course, the analogy break downs, like the Senior Minister of State shared, because you do not expect a print publication to publish an apology on its first page. So, that is the nub of the issue here. I can accept actually an argument which goes along the line of repeated egregious conduct. Then, we have to take this approach. I think that is fair. But how many times has Asia Sentinel or any other publication – I do not have a particular interest in Asia Sentinel, it is more the approach of the Government. And that is my concern.

So, perhaps, I will look forward to some information from the Senior Minister of State about how many other Correction Notices have included this requirement, not just the article but the main website as well. Then, we can analyse and see what the Government's approach is. But I hope I have clarified every question that the Senior Minister of State asked in his reply to me.

Sir, I thank Mr Singh for that explanation. The use of this type of tool, a Correction Notice on the main website, I think, should not be predicated on a certain number of strikes. This is not a fixed threshold. It needs to take into account, for example, the design of the website, the way in which links are made to other feeds because, otherwise, the process can be gamed. There is a significant amount of leeway and freedom in how online sites are designed and published.

So, we take into account the design of the website, the feed, the way in which user behaviour is guided by that, but also the kind of content and the kind of notice that is required.

I would point out that if Mr Singh is concerned about past track records, Asia Sentinel did not comply with the Correction Direction on 26 May, so, then an access blocking order was issued. And so, we do give an opportunity for the sites to comply, to provide information to the readers. We take into account the fact that the design of the site and the design of the particular article are important and we give an opportunity for people to put things right.

A last follow-up. I am not sure whether that was an accurate characterisation by the Senior Minister of State. My understanding was that they followed the Correction Direction, but they only partially followed the Correction Direction. There was a clarification on the article itself as required by the POFMA Office but not on the main website. And I think this is my understanding and the Senior Minister of State can correct me if it is wrong. I just want to confirm that.

Sir, the compliance with the Correction Direction is not for the site to decide which parts of the Correction Direction they comply with or they do not comply with. They are required to comply with the entirety of the Correction Direction and Asia Sentinel did not comply with the entire Correction Direction in the time required. So, they complied late.

They also did not comply with the requirement to have the Correction Notice at the top of the main webpage and they had changed the design by including another article. And so, you have partial compliance, which means they have not complied with the Correction Direction.