ST Staff's Suicide Attempt Revealed Newsroom Affair Involving 2 Senior Editors

Instead of reporting the news, Straits Times is now on the news.

A junior staff from The Straits Times (ST) was hospitalised last week after a suicide attempt, sparking off an internal inquiry in Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) which later revealed that two editors had improper relations with the said staff.

Though their identities were kept under wraps, one of the editors has been a ST editor for at least eight years while the other had a regular column in The Sunday Times.

Consequences and disciplinary action

After looking into the allegations, the SPH panel confirmed that there are sufficient grounds to conclude that the two editors involved had breached SPH's code of conduct however, they will not be dismissed as "both had done good work in the ST newsroom".

According to SPH, one of the editors will be removed from his post, demoted and redeployed elsewhere while the other editor have been given a written warning, have his salary docked and redeployed elsewhere as well.

Though it's unclear, we understand that one of the involved editors is the junior staff's direct supervisor.

In a statement, SPH wrote:  "SPH takes a serious view of any transgressions of its code of conduct for its staff and will not hesitate to take appropriate measures following a full and transparent inquiry process."

SPH's 45-minute town hall meeting

After both men had been informed of SPH's decision on Wednesday, 3 Oct, Warren Fernandez, ST Editor-in-Chief for SPH's English/Malay/Tamil Media Group held a 45-minute town hall meeting for the ST newsroom and explained the company's decision and emphasised that their main concern was the well-being of the junior staff member.

He also added that the police are not involved in this matter and that the independent panel found no evidence of harassment by the two editors.

The main issue was that "the two editors had not reported their separate relationships with the junior staff member to HR or their editors".

“We want to make clear that this sort of behaviour is not acceptable in the ST newsroom. This is not who we are, or who we want to be,” Mr Fernandez added.

Text by: Girlstyle SG