In a Facebook post, Minister for Communications and Information, Yaacob Ibrahim has defended his parliamentary speech where he highlighted blogger Ravi Philemon and some other online websites for spreading rumours about the haze.
His speech in parliament on Monday had highlighted the fact that many netizens were spreading misinformation and he gave specific examples of netizens doing the "wrong" thing. Following his speech, many prominent bloggers criticized him.
In a response to the heavy criticism about his speech, he said "I decided to cite specific individuals and specific sites where they could be identified. This is because otherwise, the majority in the online community may be inadvertently associated with spreading rumours. That would be unfair..."
He also added that "there were many examples of Singaporeans pulling together and using the Internet to help do good as well as clarify doubts."
The reason Ravi Philemon was targeted specifically by the Minister was due to a post that the former had made on his personal facebook page on June 22. He was sharing a status that had suggested that the 9 million N95 masks brought into Singapore were not for the public.
Dr Yaacob had clarified that the government was in fact distributing 1 million of those masks and had made public their intention to do so the day before Ravi's posting.
The Minister was making a point in his parliamentary speech on Monday about the government's efforts to ensure the distribution of timely and accurate information during crisis situations.
He stands by his speech and in his facebook posting today he even re-highlighted Ravi's faults: "what is his basis for suggesting so? The truth is, he had no basis for his assertion. I am happy to learn that he distributed some masks to people in the community. But let’s be clear – doing good offline does not mean one is excused from acting responsibly online."