By A former MediaCorp editor has been appointed as the press secretary for Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat. Farah Abdul Rahim previously worked as a senior broadcast journalist at MediaCorp for 7 years starting in 1999 before a two year stint as Account Director at Hill & Knowlton.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Ms Rahim then entered public service between 2009 to 2018 serving as the Director of Corporate Communications and Press Secretary to the Minister of Manpower between 2009 to 2013.
She then was appointed as Coordinating Director at the Public Service Division from 2013 to 2015 while also being Senior Director of the Media and Research Division at the Ministry of Communications and Information from 2014 to 2018.
Around the same time, Ms Rahim was also serving at Press Secretary to the Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for Economic & Social Policies under the Prime Minister’s Office from 2015 to 2018.
After that, Ms Rahim went back to MediaCorp, this time as the Deputy Chief Editor of Current Affairs and Head of the PSD Office for about one year until 2019 before stepping in as the press secretary for DPM Heng in May 2019.
Given that the DPM’s new press secretary has worked for a significant number of years with MediaCorp – as senior broadcast journalist and later as Deputy Chief Editor of Current Affairs – and moved back and forth the private and public sector throughout her career, it is difficult to draw a line between supposedly non-partisan media and government propagandist, isn’t it?