More conflict of interest at play

AsiaOne published a piece written by Tu Yong and Yu Shi Ming, from the Department of Real Estate, National University of Singapore, declaring that housing in Singapore is still affordable.

HOUSING is a perennial hot topic of discussion, especially in Singapore where it touches almost every segment of society - from the low to middle income in public housing to the middle and higher income aspiring to upgrade to private property.

What was not immediately apparent was that Associate Professor Yu Shi Ming, one of the writers, also sits on the HDB board, and is a member of the West Coast Town Council Executive Committee. Portraying that article as written by academics without full disclosure of the authors background is a damning failure of the press, which is not unique to this island.

What is unique is having an academic who serves on a partisan statutory board and a partisan grassroots organisation writing an article that is only taken at face value, while disregarding conflict of interest in the positions that the author holds.

(h/t: Gwee Li Sui, Mr Brown)