LEEWATCH described this Wall Street Journal Asia editorial as “tiptoeing around defamation”, so the Attorney-General has decided to prosecute the WSJ for contempt of court instead.  This is similar to the Gopalan Nair case, where a blogger was arrested for “insulting a public servant”, not defamation.

The Asia Sentinel has one of the few articles commenting on this that does more than quote the official media brief above:

Given this unbroken record of legal victories, the Singapore government looks set to attempt to improve on it, filing contempt of court charges against the Wall Street Journal Asia for three articles published in June and July that “impugn the impartiality, integrity and independence of the Singapore judiciary,” according to the complaint. “These allegations and insinuations are unwarranted.”

Christine Glancey, the managing editor of the newspaper, now owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., said she would have no comment and referred all questions to Robert Christie, Dow Jones corporate spokesman in New York. The contempt charges, and another case hanging fire in Singapore against the Far Eastern Economic Review, another Dow Jones publication, are rapidly becoming a test of News Corp’s nerve. It is the first time News Corp, which in the past has shown little stomach for taking on governments, has come up against the immovable object that is the Singapore regime, as other publishers have, usually to their sorrow.