Sin Chew Daily - caught in a nationwide maelstrom - has come out strongly in defence of its reporter who stands accused of misreporting comments made by Umno chieftain Ahmad Ismail as racial slurs against the Chinese community.

The Chinese-language daily has been accused by the Bukit Bendera Umno chief of misconstruing portions of his campaign speech during the Permatang Pauh by-election and reporting these out of context.

Ahmad has also accused the paper of inciting racial hatred and conflict, and for callousness for labelling his speech as “idiotic”.

Refuting this in a statement, editor-in-chief Pook Ah Lek cited five main elements to counter Ahmad’s allegations.

Firstly, the controversial lines were part of a sidebar to the main article which was about the Permatang Pauh by-election campaign and therefore not the focus of the story. This counters Ahmad’s claims that Sin Chew had targeted him.

The story was a page-eight piece, consisting of only three paragraphs and taking up only 1.89 percent of the overall page layout.

Secondly, the report was purely factual with no play of words to drum up the issue.

“She (the reporter) did not use a single-adjective in her (144 word) report,” the statement said.

ahmad ismail umno bukit bendera Thirdly, the paper pointed out that Ahmad (left) himself did not deny the report - he has only said it was the context of the report that was wrongly reported.

Fourthly, allegations that the reporter did not fully comprehend the speech made in Malay are also baseless because the reporter, Tan Hoon Cheng, graduated from Universiti Sains Malaysia with a degree in mass communications. She therefore had “at least university-level command of the national language”.

Lastly, Sin Chew stressed that Tan in her nine years of as a reporter has covered various political conferences and speeches and “no mistakes were ever made” in her writing.

No hidden agenda

Tan’s article, published on Aug 25, quoted Ahmad as saying that the Chinese are “squatters”. The story sparked a nationwide outcry, with Chinese and political groups condemning Ahmad and calling on Umno to sack him .

najib tun razak 01 Ahmad has refused to apologise, saying he did not do anything wrong and that he would pursue legal action against the newspaper. However, Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak (left) issued a qualified apology on his behalf.

Sin Chew also voiced unhappiness about the barrage of accusations hurled at it from websites, bloggers and other newspapers. While the paper said it is used to having its reports challenged, the current scale of attention is unprecedented.

The daily stressed that it “adheres to high ethical standards and seeks to publish news on a timely, accurate and unbiased basis.

“There are no hidden agendas. We stand by our story,” the statement added.