Janil Puthucheary on POFMA correction for Asia Sentinel

Under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA), a minister is empowered to issue a correction direction to a recipient who has communicated a false statement of fact. It specifies the form and manner in which the correction notice is to be published. The intent is to try to have the correction notice reach as large a readership as the original falsehood. Often this may be difficult to achieve, said Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information Janil Puthucheary. Replying to an MP’s question in Parliament on Thursday (Aug 3), he said in the case of online news site Asia Sentinel, the Home Affairs Minister had instructed the POFMA Office to issue a correction direction for one of its articles and specify that the recipient publishes a correction notice at the top of the page which hosts the article that contains the false statements of fact, as well as at the top of the main page of its website. Dr Janil said the inclusion of the official correction notice on more than one location on Asia Sentinel is to try to achieve the objective that he had stated. He said the act allows other orders to be made to bring the correction notice to the attention of those who may have read the original falsehoods.