Bloomberg defamation trial: Tan See Leng says expert’s quote in article was ‘suggested by’ reporter

SOURCE CONFIDENTIALITY?

Mr Singh also took issue at how Bloomberg “withheld” internal emails that were requested by the ministers for the trial. The emails were later produced following a court order.

Responding, Ms Lim testified that she felt the emails were “not material” to the case.

She explained how Bloomberg’s newsroom works – with various people chipping in with story ideas and tips.

“Ultimately, we did not write a story about Mr Shanmugam’s home purchase, we wrote a trend story about GCBs,” she said.

She also cited the issue of source confidentiality as a reason why Bloomberg did not voluntarily submit these emails as evidence.

To this, Mr Singh said the emails could have been redacted.

One of the withheld emails relates to a comment made to a journalist that Mr Shanmugam had sold his bungalow to the wife of a Chinese businessman. This businessman was referred to in court as “Mr X”.

Mr Shanmugam had earlier testified that he did not know who the ultimate beneficial owner of his Queen Astrid Park GCB was. He had sold the bungalow for S$88 million to a trust called Jasmine Villa Settlement, managed by UBS Trustees.

But government agencies knew who the buyer was as the transaction had to be declared to the agencies, the minister previously said.

NAMING AND SHAMING?

In another line of questioning, Mr Singh asked if there was any intention by Bloomberg to shame the people named in its article, later citing an email by another Bloomberg news employee who had expressed concern over “naming and shaming” people who were mentioned in Mr Low’s article.

“No. We write about wealthy people, that is what we do,” said Ms Lim in response. “We wanted to be fair and accurate. Shaming is not what we do.”

The email by Bloomberg editor Stephanie Phang had asked if the team was “OK with the tone”.

“Are we looking like we have a bias against rich Chinese, for example,” the email read. “Wonder if we should run by lawyers to check if we are OK naming and shaming the people in the story if their purchases were not previously known.”

Mr Singh then asked Ms Lim if her evidence was that this email was not material to the defamation case, to which Ms Lim said she did not know why Ms Phang had framed it that way.

“Well, I can’t judge whether it’s material or not, but what I can say is … this is part of the story process, rigorous, enforcing our editorial standards, for senior managers to look at the story and give feedback,” said Ms Lim.

To this, Mr Singh pointed out that Ms Lim had previously been certain that the earlier emails relating to source confidentiality were immaterial to the case.

“But now when I ask you about materiality, you say you can’t judge whether this is material,” said Mr Singh.

The trial resumes on Monday with Mr Sreenivasan re-examining Ms Lim. Following that, Mr Low is expected to take the stand.