(This article is from my new book Behind The Scenes of The Property Market: Finding The Truths and Exposing The Lies of A Not-So-Transparent Industry. Pre-order of the book ends on November 6, Friday.)
Do you believe in the infallibility of the mass media? Or do you think the press can be wrong?
According to the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report, Singapore remains the fifth most trusted nation out of 26 countries. However, Singapore’s “informed public” (the college-educated and among the top 25 percent of household income) are less trusting than the general population. In Singapore, the overall levels of trust in the government and the media are 67 percent and 56 percent, respectively. It seems the local media has far more work to do to win the trust of the public.
Why don’t 44 percent of Singaporeans think that they can trust the media? There are three possible queries in our minds.
1. How neutral are the spokespersons?
Our media tends to interview industry stakeholders and quote their comments in catchy headlines. It is awkward to ask real estate executives what they think about the property market when their answers are likely biased.
One thing that strikes me as particularly comical is the way the media constantly asks the experts (typically realtors) if the time is right for buyers to step into the market and scoop up the supposed bargains. In the first place, has anyone ever met a realtor who told them now is not the time to buy?
– Peter Schiff, The Little Book of Bull Moves
Warren Buffett said we should never ask a barber if we need a haircut. Similarly, we cannot ask an insurance agent if we need to buy more insurance or ask a fishmonger whether the fish is fresh today. If they cannot say no, what is the point of asking them?
In this digital world, trust is more valued than ever. Unfortunately, trust is increasingly rare in the mass media. It is common to see company spokespersons interpret market data in their favour and craft a misleading picture to showcase their products in a good light.
Every year before the announcement of Singapore’s new fiscal budget, property agencies speculate that the government will tweak the property cooling measures. When developers are about to share their financial results, stock analysts will tell investors that now is a good time to buy property stocks to ride on a market rebound. Where there are new projects queuing to be launched, there will be market noises that the new sales volume shows signs of market recovery.
In properties, market sentiment determines the boom or doom of the industry. To property marketers, consumer confidence from buyers can make or break their livelihood. That is why they are all using the same tactic. They make use of published data from different sources to illustrate why individual market segments are promising just to sell their projects or property-related services. As soon as one media picks up the news, other media immediately replicates the same story without questioning the validity. Their coherent acts help amplify the intended message.
… in the absence of skin in the game, journalists will imitate, to be safe, the opinion of other journalists, thus creating monoculture and mirages.
– Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin In The Game
True or not? Nobody cares. Believe it or not? It’s up to you. Can it make money or not? It depends on luck. Anyway, no one has to take responsibility if any homebuyer or property investor believes in these “news”, makes a bad purchase decision and gets burnt.
The company spokespersons are paid to say what they say. They don’t stand behind their words, and we cannot hold them responsible for anything.
They only care about their business, their sales, their job, their pay and their commission. They don’t care if we lose our shirts.
If the industry stakeholders don’t care about our well-being, why do we care about what they say?
2. How neutral are the editors?
Some people believe every piece of news they read in the local and international media. They never question whether the independent and neutral position of the editorial team can be inevitably compromised due to conflict of interest with revenue from the advertisers. These days it is increasingly rare to see journalists reporting news objectively. It is even rarer to have editors approving news headlines based on objective facts.
Sometimes news headlines show conclusions inconsistent with the content of the articles. The reporter may be writing an article based on official data or facts in the market. But the editor can polish it by changing a few words to alter the tone. Then it gets a headline that does not necessarily correlate with the content of the article.
We are always on the move, reading news online from our mobile phones. We don’t have time to read the full article. We browse through the headline or at most the first paragraph to get a general understanding of what is going on. We assume that reading the headline is a useful shortcut to give us a precise summary of the whole story.
It is not uncommon to see one media simply re-publish a company’s press release in its latest article. Other media conveniently recycle this article’s headline and content like parrots repeating words they just pick up. They copy each other without checking and verifying the details because they know that, just like them, 99.9 percent of the readers won’t bother to google for the original source to look for more or verify the details.
3. How neutral is our media?
In January 2020, with print advertising revenue continuing to slide, SPH saw its 1st quarter net profit plunge 17.2 percent. Three months earlier, in October 2019, the pre-tax profit of the media company fell 44.6 percent, with a 14.9 percent drop in print advertising revenue. SPH laid off 5 percent of its workforce in the core media group.
In June 2020, after SPH share prices fell over 37 percent since the start of the year, the company was dropped from the Straits Times Index. During Covid-19 in mid-August, SPH shares were trading near their lowest price in almost three decades. The company had to retrench 140 or 5 percent of staff in its media business.
Over the years, SPH diversified into non-media businesses, with revenue and profit coming mainly from the property segment. As a DailyFX strategist commented in August 2020, “from a revenue point of view, SPH is more of a property company than a media one,” and “the media business will continue to remain soft” (Bloomberg, August 19, 2020). With its property business now contributing close to 70 percent of SPH’s profit, can the media company remain neutral in reporting property news and analyses?
What about the rest of the print and online media?
We see the same old tactic being used in almost every major new condominium launch. After the first launch weekend, there was a unanimous celebratory mood and upbeat tone in all the property news across similarly written articles. They came up with indistinguishable content using positive words shared in consensus by all, including strong sales, encouraging results, market confidence and new benchmark – as if they couldn’t wait to show the developers that the advertising dollars spent on their media platform over the past few weeks were well spent. What a peculiar media scene in this Little Red Dot!
How to read property news from the media
In many foreign countries, for the same piece of news, the local media often present totally different views. They believe that it is the right of the public to know all the facts, hear contrasting views, exercise their individual judgement and draw their own conclusions. The truth is: The ability to tell real facts from fake news requires the target audience to have independent thinking, familiarity with the topic and past experience in related matters.
Chikirin, a Japanese blogger and writer who has 70 million followers, shared how we can avoid being misled by the media in his book Chikirin’s 11 Principles of Thinking:
“Think about the issue first, before reading the comments from the so-called experts in the media or listening to other peoples’ opinions.”
Say you come across another article in print or online media talking about the sales results of a new condominium launched over the weekend. Before you read the headline or the content, ask yourself the following questions:
1) What do I expect the performance of this new project over the first weekend?
2) What are the logical consequences of the new sales market in this economy?
3) Why does the headline of the property news article say the opposite? Can I trust it?
4) What comments do I expect from the “experts” quoted in the article? Do I agree with them? In what ways are they vested in this matter?
If you think before you read an article, you can train yourself to think independently and develop your individual judgement. Above all, you can avoid being influenced by biased comments, misleading reports or deceiving conclusions, and repeating them like parrots to other people later.
If you need advice on property matters or residential properties in Singapore, you can check out my personal consultation service.
My new book Behind The Scenes of The Property Market is now available for preview and order online. You can also check out my online courses.
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