It was discovered that The Straits Times and Lianhe Zaobao's daily circulation figures were inflated by 85,000 to 95,000 copies, including cases when copies were printed, counted for circulation, and subsequently destroyed.
The Straits Times claimed on Monday that there was apparently "double-counting" of memberships across many instances and that a project account was "injected with additional funds over time to buy bogus circulation" (Jan 9).
Additionally, it said that some circulation figures were "arbitrarily generated".
Circulation data is a crucial benchmark for determining advertising rates in the media sector.
After an internal review discovered issues with the reporting of its circulation numbers, a number of senior SPH Media personnel quit the news organization or were "brought to task."
According to The Straits Times, SPH Media Trust started an assessment of internal procedures in March 2022. This happened shortly after it separated from Singapore Press Holdings, a mainboard-listed business, and became a company limited by guarantee (CLG) in December 2021.
Data on circulation were also reported as part of the study.
The Straits Times states that the evaluation period ran from September 2020 until March 2022.
This comprised the entire fiscal year, which ran from September 2020 to August 2021, as well as the two quarters from September 2021 to November 2021 and December 2021 to March 2022, respectively, when SPH Media was still a public company and still owned the media business.
On March 1, 2022, Ms. Teo Lay Lim, a former chairperson of Accenture Singapore, was appointed as the new chief executive officer of SPH Media Trust.
A Government of Communications and Information (MCI) official responded to TODAY's inquiries by stating that the ministry has requested SPH Media to publish its full findings and has recently received SPH Media's internal report on the subject.
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