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Singapore: Reporters with
borders
By Roxanne Toh
SINGAPORE - Singapore has been loosening
controls over a range of activities - from legalizing
bungee jumping to bar-top dancing and the employment of
homosexuals - but recent statements by officials' are a
reminder that more media freedom is slow in
coming.
Over the past few months, discussions
relating to the role of local and foreign media as well
as Singapore's ambitions for becoming a "global media
city" show that the city-state remains very cautious
about easing up when it comes to the press.
While it wants to become a hub for international
and regional media, it is also wary about negative - and
in its view unconstructive - coverage of and comment on
Singapore.
In November, Minister for
Information, Communications and the Arts (MITA) Lee Boon
Yang was quoted as saying that local journalists need to
remain firm in serving the national interest and "to
attract more international media".
But at the
same time, he issued warnings to foreign journalists
that the local media should not be used to amplify their
ideas of government and media policies.
Lee made
his comments in the wake of a controversy over an
article that the free-circulating daily newspaper Today
had published in October, written by Australian expert
in Asian corporate practice Michael Backman, who, Lee
said, had "crossed [the] line".
In his
commentary "Is Singapore paranoid?", Backman said
Singapore still maintains "the old-fashioned, outmoded
trappings of a Third World dictatorship" - yet it does
not have anything to hide.
He also argued that
the country needs to cultivate the "freedom to be
wrong", which in his opinion is parallel to media
freedom. Bar-top dancing is just "sleaze", not reform or
liberalism, Backman concluded.
Critics find
officials' approach to Backman's arguments - and their
objections to the fact that a local paper ran his views
- contradictory to what the Remaking Singapore Committee
(RSC), aimed at pushing a more open society and at
addressing economic woes, had set out to do when it was
established in February 2002.
In its July 2003
report to the government, the committee mentioned that
"the relationship between government and the people
should not be viewed as a zero-sum game", and that the
three qualities that had helped Singapore progress
rapidly include "decisive government action, close
people-government partnership and open communication
channels".
But if a "remade" Singapore shall
"embrace a diversity of peoples and ideas", skeptics
wonder why foreign journalists, who can contribute to
"the development of our governance and political
maturity", are excluded, as Joseph Wong Kok Sen wrote in
a November 19 letter to the Straits Times newspaper.
On the same day that Lee made his remarks,
Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew defined television as a
tool of guidance that, if it loses credibility, will
fail to serve its purpose.
He added that the
local market is too small to support two companies that
run several television stations - Mediacorp and
Singapore Press Holdings' Mediaworks - in remarks
interpreted as discouraging more media variety and
choices in the country. His remarks were a "subtle
warning" that one of these two key media companies bring
its shutters down, claimed an anonymous member of the
volunteer group Singapore Internet Community (Sintercom)
Forum.
"I was disappointed to hear the
government concluded that the market is too small,
because that's far from clear," said Cherian George,
author of the book Singapore: The Air-Conditioned
Nation, The Media and New Politics.
"Just
because the two dominant players in the Singapore media
haven't found the way to operate all their businesses
profitably, it doesn't necessarily mean others can't
make it," continued George, a postdoctoral fellow at the
National University of Singapore's Asia Research
Institute.
"They are assuming that these two
dominant players have exhausted the potential of the
Singapore market," he added.
Yet Lee Boon Yang's
remarks came as no surprise to Sinapan Samydorai of
Think Center, a non-governmental group trying to push
discussion of politics and human rights in a society
that frowns on open dissent. It is "not [a] new
pattern," he said.
According to ThinkCentre.org,
Think Center's Internet portal, Singapore is ranked
144th this year in the Second World Press Freedom
Ranking by the Paris-based non-governmental group
Reporters Without Borders. There are 165 other countries
in the ranking. The United States holds the 31st
position and North Korea the last.
At a Radio
Singapore International talk show in October, Mark
Cenite, assistant professor at Nanyang Technological
University's School of Communication and Information,
said the challenges to media in Singapore are different
from those of other countries.
"If you talk to
these folks ... what you find is they describe a climate
of some fear. I mean, nothing comparable to the
situation you have in some countries on the list where
reporters face violence as reprisals for stories," he
explained. "But reporters here do describe a situation
where they are walking on eggshells."
Some
foreign news agencies have regional offices in
Singapore, but the government tends not to look too much
at news meant for circulation outside of the country.
However, in the past, the government has stopped
circulation of magazines it deemed to carry unsuitable
material.
Singaporean laws require agencies to
possess permits in order to publish newspapers. The
Newspaper and Printing Presses Act of 1974 also requires
permission for the distribution, importation and sale of
"any offshore newspaper" in Singapore.
Often,
however, George says this "principle" is used against
individuals, as in the recent furor over Backman's
comments in Today, a publication owned by Mediacorp.
"He wasn't writing in an offshore publication
but in a Singaporean newspaper, with a Singapore license
to publish. It raises questions - most obviously, what
is the role of editorial judgment in publishing such
pieces?" challenged George.
Some say it is time
a country that has progressed so much since its
inception in 1959 became more confident and let its
people speak out and decide for themselves.
Jack
Sai, a final year mass communication student at Ngee Ann
Polytechnic, cites as an example the public debate
involving officials, academics and sex workers in
Thailand on legalizing prostitution.
"Such
issues need to be discussed very honestly because they
affect the country's economy and morality, which are
cornerstones of a nation. Bungee jumping and bar-top
dancing are merely associated with fun," he said in an
interview.
"The fact that the [Thai] government
treasured the opinions of even the prostitutes
themselves goes a long way in showing that everyone is
important, and all should be given a chance to speak,"
he added.
Dharmendra Yadav wrote in a letter to
MITA, a university and newspapers that Lee Boon Yang's
remarks are a "mockery" of Singapore's education system,
and the ability of its citizens to think about what they
read.
"Surely, after more than 10 years of sound
but competitive education, the reasonable individual can
be expected to separate news from comment," he said.
"Readers, listeners and viewers are today far more
discerning than those of the past."
(Inter Press
Service)
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