Never too late to say sorry

That Effing Show’s Fahmi Fadzil has made international headlines with his unusual apology.

KUALA LUMPUR: That Effing Show’s Fahmi Fadzil has achieved international fame, thanks to his 100 apology tweets, the subject of stories carried by Associated Press, Wired UK, The Huffington Post, the London Metro and Al Jazeera.

As of three hours ago, he had made it into 314 international news reports.

His followers were confused yesterday morning when he started tweeting apologies to Blu Inc Media for allegedly defaming it.

He explained that it was due to a tweet made on Jan 25, in which he claimed that a pregnant friend had been badly treated by Blu Inc and Female magazine.

He did retract the statement on the same day, saying, “I would like to formally & unequivocally apologise to Blu Inc and Female mag for my tweets earlier today. All inconveniences are regretted.”

However, this was not enough for Blu Inc Media, the publisher of such titles as Female, Eh!, Brides, Her World, Going Places, Seventeen, Men’s Health, and Marie Clare.

It sent Fahmi a letter demanding financial compensation and an apology in newspapers.

Fahmi’s lawyer, Syahredzan Johan, said Fahmi settled the case by agreeing to apologise 100 times over three days on Twitter.

The Malaysian twitting community is not amused and has accused Blu Inc of bullying.

Several Twitter users have even cancelled their subscriptions with Blue Inc magazines.

As this report was uploaded, Fahmi’s follow count has exceeded 5,000, and #defahmi is a trending topic in Malaysia.

Heartwarming

“People are telling me they heard the story on radio in Brazil or read it in France, Russia, Rotterdam, Bangkok.

“It’s crazy. I gained about 800 followers overnight, and I feel like saying, ‘Err, hi, I’m Malaysian, after this I’ll be tweeting solely about Malaysia. I hope you know what you’re doing.’”

Fahmi said he found the episode interesting because it was “unprecedented”.

“People are already beginning to discuss where exactly private space ends and public domain begins. Like with Twitter, what does it do, what can it do? What is the economy on Twitter? If you have this many followers, what does it mean? How do we calculate these things. It’s extremely fascinating.”

Seema Viswananathan, editor of Female magazine, said the 100-tweet apology was not about free publicity or extracting “a pound of flesh”.

“His negative comments about Blu Inc’s hiring and firing policies were untrue and tarnished our image. We decided on the number 100 because that was what was needed to effectively respond to the furore his original tweet caused.”

“His negative comments about Blu Inc’s hiring and firing policies were untrue and tarnished our image. We decided on the number 100 because that was what was needed to effectively respond to the furore his original tweet caused.”

Unprofessional but insignificant

She explained that Fahmi’s original tweets had received responses from his many followers despite being untrue.

“After his tweets came out, the pregnant woman came to us to say that no one had mistreated her. She continues to work with us.”

Seema said that a magazine hiring mostly women had to set the record straight and could not stand idly by over these “hurtful unsubstantiated claims”.

When asked why Fahmi’s original apology had not been sufficient, Seema said that he had apologised for inconvenience caused.

“There had been ‘no clarification, explanation or retraction. He didn’t say ‘this is not true’, which is why we want a proper apology.”

“We are quite satisfied with the point we’ve made.

“I understand that the Twitter community is up in arms because they feel their speech is being restricted and say that we’re bullying him.

“We have been wronged, but it has been turned into a David and Goliath issue. We’re journalists too. We don’t want to restrict media, but one must speak responsibly. Twitter and Facebook have such far-reaching effects.”

Peter Pek, branding expert and host of talk show Brand Malaysia with Peter Pek, said Blu Inc had made a bad move.

“Fahmi’s first tweet carried minimal damage – just a guy with a bad hair day ranting. Unprofessional, but small and insignificant. No one thought anything about it until this. Now Blu Inc has drawn attention to this matter.”