Japanese-born Australian citizen, Ai Takagi, 23, on Tuesday afternoon pleaded guilty to four counts of sedition for publishing the inflammatory articles on now-defunct website The Real Singapore.

Owner and Chief Editor

According to the agreed statement of facts submitted in court on Tuesday, Takagi is named as the owner and chief editor of TRS. She wrote content for TRS as a "writer", and also searched the Internet for interesting content to publish on the site.

In addition, Takagi would curate submissions from "contributors" to publish on TRS – either with or without editing the contributions.

Court documents also showed that Takagi additionally admitted she "was not always able to check the accuracy of the material contributed to TRS before publishing it."

Editorial direction of TRS

During investigations, Takagi claimed that TRS was a free avenue for people to voice their grievances. It was for Singaporeans to express their views without fear.

The statement of facts, however, noted that in one "Editor's Note", Takagi stated that TRS' editorial stance, on the issue of foreigners working in Singapore, was "to "instill fear" in those who hired foreigners over Singaporeans."

In a separate conversation between Takagi and a contributor of an article to TRS, Takagi stated that the style of writing on TRS was one of portraying the mainstream media in Singapore as being biased.

"Farhan"

Takagi had originally used her real name when publishing content on TRS during the website's early days in 2012 when she was 19.

Somewhere in 2013, she switched to using the name "Farhan". Several "Editor's Notes" found within TRS articles during that time were signed off as "Farhan".

According to the statement of facts, "a query was posed to TRS in July 2013 about whether Takagi was one of the editors of TRS, the response from "Farhan" (who was in fact Takagi herself) was that Takagi was never an editor of TRS.

She admitted during investigations that she used the name in order to remain anonymous.

Revenue of TRS

Takagi also worked with freelance programmers to ensure that TRS' web traffic was not adversely affected.

Court documents revealed Skype messages between Takagi and a freelance programmer in 2012 where she asked the programmer about progress regarding integrating a Facebook widget onto the TRS website.

The slow progress, presumably on the programmer's part, had adversely affected revenues for TRS, where revenue dropped from "$20,000 USD /mth to like $3-4k a month."

Sentencing

Takagi now faces up to three years' jail and/ or a fine of S$5,000 for each of her four sedition convictions. Sentencing has been adjourned to March 23 by District Judge Salina Ishak.

Related article:

The Real Singapore made AU$474,000 in Google ad revenue in 17 months from Dec. 2013 to April 2015

Top photo by Howgene Leong

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