The New York Times Company settled a claim brought by leaders in the Singapore government apologizing and paying over $100,000 to the leaders. Singapore leaders have a history of bringing defamation claims for statements that would be considered protected under the First Amendment in the United States. -db
The New York Times
March 24, 2010
By Richard Pérez-Peña
Last month, The Herald Tribune, wholly owned by the Times Company, published a column by Philip Bowring that referred to “dynastic politics” and listed the leaders of many countries, including Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister, and his father, Lee Kuan Yew, a former prime minister. That column has been removed from the paper’s Web site.
The case stems from a similar one in 1994, when Mr. Bowring, a former editor of The Far Eastern Economic Review and a freelance contributor to The Herald Tribune, wrote a column in The Herald Tribune that also referred to “dynastic politics” in East Asian countries, including Singapore.
In that case, three of the country’s leaders threatened legal action: the elder Mr. Lee, who was prime minister from 1959-90 and remained a power in government; his son, who was a deputy prime minister at the time; and Goh Chok Tong, the prime minister at the time.
The Herald Tribune, then co-owned by the Times Company and The Washington Post Company, published an apology saying that it had implied that the younger Mr. Lee owed his job to nepotism, and the paper and Mr. Bowring promised not to do so again. According to some news reports, the paper also paid a financial settlement.
Singaporean leaders have a history of taking the offensive against news organizations for language that would be legally protected — or even considered relatively innocuous — in the United States, threatening legal action or restricting the sales of publications. They have won apologies and monetary payments in several of those cases.
On Wednesday, The Herald Tribune published an apology to the same three leaders that referred to the 1994 agreement and said that Mr. Bowring’s recent column “may have been understood by readers to infer that the younger Mr. Lee did not achieve his position through merit.” It added that “this inference was not intended.”
A lawyer for the three men, Davinder Singh, said that The Herald Tribune and Mr. Bowring had agreed to pay them 160,000 Singapore dollars, equivalent to about $114,000 in United States dollars, in addition to legal costs.
Refusing to make any statement beyond the apology, the Times Company would not confirm or deny the monetary settlement.
“Nobody in most of the world would bat an eye about” such a piece, said Stuart D. Karle, a former general counsel of The Wall Street Journal, who has handled disputes with Singapore’s leadership but was not involved in this case. But in that country, he said, there is often “the presumption that there’s a hidden message” about nepotism or corruption in news coverage, and if that turns into a libel case, a news organization faces “a near-certainty of losing.”
One Comment
This marks a long tradition of mistakes made by NY Times on foreign affairs. I always believed the NY Times should focus more on Internal domestic news rather than world wide news channeling. Thanks for posting this.
Comments are closed.