Singapore Journalism: How our mainstream media blinds us.

This is actually a followup to the previous entry on cluster bombs. CNA faithfully re-reported the Reuters article "Some 100 countries ban cluster bombs as signing begins in Oslo" (Channel New Asia - Posted: 03 December 2008 2311 hrs).

Of course, Reuters isn't going to issue nation-specific news and all our mainstream media conveniently ignores the obvious question on what should be a historic world event: Did Singapore sign it?

The answer? No!

Was this issue every brought up in the public? Yes! As in my previous entry earthtimes has an article quoting our government's reasons for not signing up. So, why was this not even given a mention? Are these journalists of ours worth their salt?

Edit: I found it. This was reported (AFP article) in the Straits Times Nov 26 "No to cluster bomb pact".

I am still disappointed no journalist attempted to question our own government on the details behind such an important decision. How many bombs did we produce? Who did we use to sell them to? Can and do we still produce and stockpile them? (The previous article's link indicated Singapore as a producer of such weapons, so I did not include "Did we produce them?").

Perhaps I'm too worked up about it ... thinking about it, the Singapore military is too small a client for an industry that produces cluster bombs, so the moratorium on export should effectively kill it. With it's dearth, we would have to consider buying them from other producers which have not signed on to replace aging stocks and eventually this should kill the stockpile we have as well.

I don't know, I'm still royally pissed off we did not sign up.