sometimes the difference between crime reporting in the zaobao and the straits times makes you wonder what is the proper balance is between the interests of justice and not compromising investigations and overly-conservative reporting. two national dailies, on the same morning: zaobao ran the headline “autistic boy suspected of being pushed to death from 9th floor by woman” (a headline like that, and one’s mind immediately races to speculate, building a narrative to accommodate these ‘facts’: a long-time carer, a grandmother or aunt, finally blowing up at a difficult child? a mentally-unwell mother under prolonged stress ridding herself of perceived stigma of a damaged child?) it goes as far as to quote an eyewitness who claims to have actually seen the woman in the act of pushing the struggling boy out of the window. elsewhere in the article small vivid details: the maid at the flat below describing the sound of the falling body hitting the bamboo clothes poles, the bamboo poles and its load falling to the ground below, the maid saying to the reporter: i’m afraid to go and retrieve my employer’s clothing. is that too much human colour for a breaking newsreport? and then the ST headline: ‘boy found dead at bottom of tampines block’ (no ‘pushing’, not even ‘falling’, simply “found dead” — the careful avoidance of suggesting any cause or agency) this is the same cagily non-committal style throughout: even his age was “believed to be 8” — come now, that sort of fact can be easily verified and perfectly printable without incurring liability no?) and concluded that the ST understood that “foul play may be suspected.” may be suspected? it is suspected, however weak the suspicion, or else it is not suspected at all. do you need both ‘may’ and ‘suspected’? is this conservatism more responsible journalism (and not interfering with ongoing investigations) or is that too tame, too law-suit conscious, too passive? (even the people they interviewed did not want to be identified; the people zaobao found apparently didn’t have qualms. perhaps their reporter was better at getting people to gossip.)