How much do you trust what you read, see, and hear in mainstream media? There’s been such a lot of damning evidence against mainstream media of late that anyone trusting it completely is, at best, being regrettably naïve.
Unfortunately it’s also the case that anyone trying to learn about some specific situation will primarily get their information from news media, which of course introduces a profound risk of bias. There is a good reason why many universities reject or downgrade media stories used as citation sources except in certain circumstances.
Normally when it is acceptable to cite news media as a source is when you are disparaging it. That’s how much esteem our institutions of higher learning have for mainstream news media sources.
Recently I was commissioned to write a series of articles about high profile UK entrepreneur Reuben Singh. Like any researcher would do, I Googled his name to see what would come back. I was astounded to find a heavily biased negative article on Wikipedia that totally did not match any of the information that I had compiled independently.
Even so, integrity in journalism is an important attribute. I certainly wasn’t going to be guilty of dishonest reporting if it turned out that there was any real substance to the claims being made against Singh. So I investigated further. What I discovered is that it looks like a concentrated and deliberate character-assassination attempt.
Interestingly it is also a failed one, because Singh has defied his critics and risen to even greater heights than before the media decided to pillory him. But that’s rather beside the point. What really happened? That’s the question I really needed answers to before I could commit to writing a single word.
Singh attributes his original fall from grace to following bad advice. I think that’s a fairly accurate way to sum up the situation, and there’s a huge jump from making some bad business decisions to the accusations of outright dishonesty that were being thrown around at the time.
What made that so unfair is that Singh hadn’t misrepresented himself to anyone. He did have close ties to Tony Blair and the government at the time, he did own a fancy car, and he did have his own menu at the Lowry Hotel. I’m going to say that is a bit extravagant, but it’s by no means dishonest or wrong.
But when your opponent is a bank, it becomes very much a case of a squirrel fighting an alligator. Banks can and do wield extraordinary power. Taking them on is a very difficult game, and not likely to end pleasantly. Nine times out of ten the alligator will at least give the squirrel a good chewing.
My conclusion is that Singh did nothing more wrong than making a few mistakes based on the advice he had taken, and perhaps compounded the problem by not getting a lawyer to assist him in court. The allegations that were made were just too over-the-top and did not present a single shred of evidence to prove the claims being made.
All that is irrelevant now anyway, since Singh has built his business interests in Isher Capital and alldayPA to a record high. In fact alldayPA is now expanding with Singh still firmly at the helm, and will double its workforce. So if nothing else proves what utter nonsense those media reports were, Singh’s very success does so more than adequately. And that’s good enough for me.
