The Curious Case Of Mr Dorsey

He was no run-of-the-mill keyboard warrior blogger. Mr James Dorsey was a veteran journalist and freelance writer before appointed senior fellow at National Technological University (NTU)'s School of International Studies.

His blog post in July 2012 made mention of a rights agreement between Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and an associate of World Sports Group (WSG) which the Singapore based WSG has alleged to be defamatory. WSG's lawyers claim the information referred to was confidential and demanded for disclosure of the source.

Dorsey's position is that he is entitled to protect his sources as matter of principle as a journalist and produced a copy of the Singapore National Union of Journalists' Code of Professional Conduct to support his argument.

But judge Judith Prakash ruled that Dorsey was not a journalist at the time of posting but an employee of NTU. "In any event," she said, "there is no newspaper rule in Singapore that operates to protect a journalist's sources from being disclosed. Instead, the court adopts a balancing-of-interests approach." We saw how this "balancing-of-interests" approach was acted out when the challenge to the constitutionality of Section 377A was dismissed recently. In his 92-page judgment, Justice Quentin Loh had said that in Singapore's legal system, whether a social norm that has "yet to gain currency" should be discarded or retained is decided by Parliament. In other words, Parliament 1, Courts 0.

Watergate's follow-the-money team, Woodward and Bernstein, would have been easily stonewalled in  Singapore. No wonder Bromptongate had to be cracked by netizens, not our poor hamstrung mainstream journalists. Don't expect them to come through with similar journalistic revelations for AIMgate.