{"id":1030,"date":"2009-10-19T15:58:20","date_gmt":"2009-10-19T07:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joanneteo.com\/wordpress\/?p=1030"},"modified":"2009-10-19T15:58:20","modified_gmt":"2009-10-19T07:58:20","slug":"food-blogging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joanneteo.com\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/19\/food-blogging\/","title":{"rendered":"Food Blogging"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Straits Times today, 19th October 2009, the article “Food bloggers face legal heat over reviews<\/a>“, caught my eye.<\/p>\n

The article quotes June Lee, a chef-owner of Obolo in Joo Chiat, who sent a note to the blogger to remove the review on Obolo’s desserts to<\/p>\n

avoid further problems<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have neither read the review or had the pleasure of eating at Obolo, or should I say displeasure of eating at Obolo, since I can infer that the review wasn’t a good one.<\/p>\n

The article goes on to say<\/p>\n

Lawyers say a criticism in an entry is allowed by law if it is based on fact and made without malice.<\/p>\n

It is debatable if food and service reviews are matters of public interest, as there are no reported decisions on such cases.<\/p>\n

Cafes and restaurants, however, may have a case if the criticism is based on untrue statements – especially if the blogger has never been to the cafe, said defamation expert Doris Chia of David Lim and Partners.<\/p>\n

Mr Bryan Tan of Keystone Law said: “As long as bloggers are careful not to embellish or exaggerate, they are fine… For example, as long as they don’t say things like. ‘This is the smallest cake in the world’. or ‘This is the worst thing I have ever eaten in my life<\/em>‘.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Okay, so here we have it.<\/p>\n

If you must review it, you have to have eaten it, that is clear.<\/p>\n

And you can’t intend malice.<\/p>\n

Malice, as defined at dictionary.com is the<\/p>\n

desire to inflict injury, harm, or suffering on another, either because of a hostile impulse or out of deep-seated meanness<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But while a reviewer may not intend malice, the effect to a business could well be malicious.<\/p>\n

And really, when it comes to food, it’s all about the passion isn’t it. Food is full of emotion.<\/p>\n

It’s not like you’re reviewing an mp3 player and how easy it is to use.<\/p>\n

It’s about taste, presentation, service, and the reactions to all of the above are so relative. To put it simply, some people’s taste buds are a lot more sophisticated than others. Some have experienced such good service elsewhere that they’ve come to expect more. Some simply don’t care.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, sometimes food reviewers factor in service and presentation much more than another reviewer who’s focus is on just the food.<\/p>\n

But this article doesn’t address an important question: Are food bloggers food reviewers? Yes. Are they qualified food reviewers? Maybe. Maybe not.<\/p>\n

Are food and service reviews matters of public interest? Hell yes. Why else do we read food reviews? (Well, actually, personally, I hardly read food reviews. I’m just moved to give them when the food moves me enough to write about it.) Plus, since we are increasingly an over-fed nation, we need some guidance so we don’t waste our precious daily calorie count on lousy food.<\/p>\n

And also, I don’t think that “This is the worst thing I have ever eaten in my life” is libelous. It doesn’t say much about reviewer’s eating experience, but it could well be the absolute truth of his\/her eating experience.<\/p>\n

But if I say, ‘Most food courts serve terrible fishball noodles’, or ‘Most Beef Noodle stalls are not worth eating at in Singapore’, I think those would be potentially more libelous, don’t you think?<\/p>\n

Still, I’d be willing to stand by my two statements and defend them vigorously, because I know what I’m looking out for.<\/p>\n

And for every place that I hate eating at, there will be one person, maybe even a thousand people, who’ll say it’s delicious.<\/p>\n

There’s always someone out there who has lousier taste buds than I do, and some of them are probably food reviewers or food bloggers.<\/p>\n

A restaurant just has to work hard enough to make sure there are the disagreeing thousands over that one reviewer’s opinion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Straits Times today, 19th October 2009, the article “Food bloggers face legal heat over reviews“, caught my eye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7,6],"tags":[23],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joanneteo.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joanneteo.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joanneteo.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joanneteo.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joanneteo.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1030"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/joanneteo.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1034,"href":"https:\/\/joanneteo.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030\/revisions\/1034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joanneteo.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joanneteo.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joanneteo.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}