To a writer, there are few things more irritating than fake news. Thus, a ‘headline’ I saw floating across several

internet forums

excited my suspicions:

“Singapore’s National Broadsheet publishes 2 op-eds, one praising China’s Uyghur concentration camps and another condemning Hong Kong pro-democracy protests.”

The ‘National Broadsheet’ that they are referring to is, in fact, The Straits Times. Of course, I was a little hesitant to rely on said forums for much nuance or insight. Singaporeans and foreigners alike were leaping over themselves to refute the allegations or condemn the nation.

ST’s apparent take on the Uyghur camps differ greatly from that of other news outlets that universally condemn them, such as The Independent, VICE News and CNN.

Could ST be *gasp* Fake News?

The implied accusation was startling enough to warrant my attention, and this Matryoshka doll of a headline—a story about a story—made it a case most intriguing.

But before we go on, I must get something out of the way:

The phrase ‘fake news’ is problematic, overused, and useless as an objective term. The prima facie meaning of ‘fake news’ has been completely corrupted by Donald Trump’s frequent use of the term to denigrate any news outlet that factually reports on the multiple failures of his presidency. However, the term will be used occasionally in this article because, for whatever reason, our government, media, and public officials insist on using that label. My apologies.

Safe to say, the Singapore government hates deliberate misinformation.

To combat it, our public officials have repeatedly emphasised the need to educate citizens in ‘media literacy’: the ability to access, analyse and evaluate the truth of online information.

And we plan to start ‘em young.

In March, the Media Literacy Council (MLC) announced two new fact-checking resources targeted at children, the boring ‘News and Media Literacy toolkit’ for teenagers, and a fun little series for the kiddos called ‘Get Smart with Sherlock’ that is “based on the fictional character”. In case you thought Sherlock was real. Falsehood, busted!