Crossing the line

The editors of Haymarket's FinanceAsia.com have obviously discovered that there are still lines which cannot be crossed when it comes to reporting on Singapore. It's daily e-newsletter leads today with two formal apologies for what it apparently reported last month about Temasek Holdings, the Singapore government's immensely powerful holding company of which the CEO is the Prime Minister's wife. One of the apologies was to current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, his predecessor Goh Chok Tong and Lee's father and Singapore's founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. The other is to the Board of Temasek.

It used to be considered something of a badge of honour for correspondents in Asia to have been banned from Singapore for offending the government. And it wasn't one of the harder badges to earn. Things appear calmer these days but FinanceAsia's editors clearly stepped across the line of what will bring out Singapore's big guns.