Straits Times Journalists Win Four Singapore Press Club Awards

When a bank customer urgently applied for a "kill switch" to freeze all his funds but still lost $3,000 in unauthorized transfers, Straits Times tech editor Irene Tham wanted to know what had gone wrong.

- Daniel Lai

She started digging into how the bank customer's funds later got transferred to an unknown overseas account, and found there was a key issue: There is no uniform definition of a kill switch in Singapore.

She wrote a commentary on Dec 16, 2024, that shone a light on the little-known issue, and argued for a review of Giro top-ups for e-wallets.

On July 16, Ms Tham, 51, was one of four winners from the national broadsheet to receive a Singapore Press Club award.

She bagged the inaugural IBM-Singapore Press Club Tech Journalism award for her work.

Ms Tham, who has been a journalist for more than 20 years, said: "A common misconception people have about tech reporters is that we play with cool gadgets."

"Tech journalism exists at the intersection of multiple disciplines, requiring the promises and perils of new developments to be contextualized and explained for everyone."

Another winner from The Straits Times newsroom was senior correspondent Stephanie Yeo, 55, who took home the inaugural Abbott-Singapore Press Club Health Journalism award for her reports, such as Is Singapore Ready For The Menopause Wave From A Super Ageing Society? published on Jan 13, 2024.