Page 1 of
2 Media as
politics in Singapore By
Megawati Wijaya
SINGAPORE - Days before
Singapore Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam
announced the government's 2011 budget in
parliament, the political opposition offered a
glimpse of how it would allocate the national
finances in a "shadow" budget. The
state-controlled mainstream media gave the
opposition announcement scant coverage, but it was
picked up widely by a number of alternative news
websites.
To be sure, opposition criticism
of the ruling party's budget is nothing new. But
rather than being forced to wait for parliament to
meet to air their dissent, now opposition parties
are able to post pre-emptively their criticisms
online, shifting the time and space of Singapore's
political debate. Each opposition party's posts of their
competing budgets sparked
robust discussions in a variety of online forums.
Singapore's People's Action Party
(PAP)-dominated politics are increasingly being
contested online and over social media like blogs,
Facebook and Twitter. Pushed by the perceived
pro-PAP bias of the mainstream media, Singapore's
opposition parties are using various new media to
communicate with voters and express dissenting
views. Alternative news websites, including The
Online Citizen and Temasek Review, have won strong
followings by presenting more opposition views in
their news mix.
With general elections
expected to be held by June, it remains to be seen
if opposition parties can translate their blogs,
tweets and telecast videos into actual votes. The
PAP, which has dominated Singapore's politics
since 1959, now controls 82 out of 84 seats in
parliament. The PAP has come under consistent
criticism of curbing the national debate through
laws that suppress free speech and co-optation of
the mainstream media. But new media platforms are
fast changing the way politics are contested in
this wealthy city state.
Although the
opposition Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) is not
represented in parliament, its news and events
oriented website is the country's most popular
party site, far outpacing the number of hits
received by the PAP's site. The SDP's website is
regularly updated not only with the party's agenda
but also independent and often critical news not
carried by the mainstream press. The SDP's
Facebook page, meanwhile, also works to raise
funds for the party.
"[T]here are more
younger people in this forum than older ones,"
said SDP secretary general Chee Soon Juan at a
forum last December. "I think [the Internet] is
our best opportunity to bypass the traditional
media which is pretty much controlled by the
ruling party."
The opposition Reform Party
(RP) has taken a similar new media tack. The
party's secretary general Kenneth Jeyaretnam
maintains a personal Facebook page where he
interacts regularly with supporters and writes a
regular blog where he posts at length on hot
issues such as economic inequality. He says the
blog receives around 1,000 hits per day.
"In a place where there is still a huge
climate of fear that something will happen to them
when they are seen to be critical of the
government, there is a certain [comfort] of the
anonymity online," said Jeyaretnam. "Online
platforms have become a space where we can reach
out to people, bypassing other organs controlled
by the government such as the radio and TV."
Media machinations Despite its
democratic veneer, Singapore rates poorly in
global press freedom rankings due to a deeply
entrenched culture of self-censorship and a
pro-state bias in the mainstream media. Reporters
Without Borders, a France-based press freedom
advocacy group, recently ranked Singapore 136th in
its global press freedom rankings, scoring below
repressive countries like Iraq and Zimbabwe.
The country's main media publishing house,
Singapore Press Holdings, is owned by the state
and its board of directors is made up largely of
PAP members or other government-linked executives.
Senior newspaper editors, including at the Straits
Times, must be vetted and approved by the PAP-led
government.
The local papers have a long
record of publicly endorsing the PAP-led
government's position, according to Tan Tarn How,
a research fellow at the Institute of Policy
Studies (IPS) and himself a former journalist. In
his research paper "Singapore's print media policy
- a national success?" published last year he
quoted Leslie Fong, a former editor of the Straits
Times, saying that the press "should resist the
temptation to arrogate itself the role of a
watchdog, or permanent critic, of the government
of the day".
With regularly briefed and
supportive editors, there is no need for
pre-publication censorship, according to Tan. When
the editors are perceived to get things "wrong",
the government frequently takes to task, either
publicly or privately, the newspaper's editors or
individual journalists, he said.
Because
these complaints are neither formal in nature nor
made in writing, they are difficult to prove and
document. However, the behind-the-scenes pressure
has resulted in endemic self-censorship, including
only selective reporting on news about the
political opposition, according to Tan's sources.
Opposition leaders claim that their
parties are frequently the subject of
pro-government bias in the mainstream media.
"Reports by the mainstream media
consistently focus us in a certain light, for
example when we are fighting with other opposition
members. They also report on the most
insignificant part of our releases or events,"
said the RP's Jeyaretnam. "I often say that the
mainstream media's reporting of our press releases
is like reducing War and Peace to a
140-character tweet."
The country's main
newspaper, the Straits Times, has consistently
stood by its editorial decision-making. Editor Han
Fook Kwang said last year: "Our circulation is
380,000 and we have a readership of 1.4 million -
these are people who buy the paper every day.
We're aware people say we're a government
mouthpiece or that we are biased but the test is
if our readers believe in the paper and continue
to buy it."
The PAP-led government has
long argued for a compliant rather than
confrontational press. Until the advent of online
media, that control had been enabled by the 1974
Newspaper and Printing Presses Act (NPPA), which
stipulates that newspapers must annually renew
their publishing licenses with state authorities.
Meanwhile, newspaper companies must by law
be publicly listed with no shareholder owning more
than a small minority of shares. The NPPA also
provides for the creation of "management shares"
which have 200 times the voting power of "ordinary
shares" and whose owners must be government
approved. The two-tier scheme, in effect, allows
the government to decide on the newspapers' board
of directors and top office holders.
"Singapore's newspapers are, at least in
part, willing partners of the state ... In the end
it is difficult to avoid the conclusion, as much
as one may want to, that Singapore's political and
press culture is sustained not just by coercion,
but also by consent," wrote Cherian George, an
ex-journalist from the Straits Times and now the
associate professor at the Wee Kim Wee School of
Communication and Information at the Nanyang
Technological University, in a paper presented at
an international conference on media control and
technology in 1998.
The foreign press have
not fared much better. The government amended the
NPPA in 1986 to allow for curbing the circulation
of publications which were deemed to interfere
with local politics. Tan noted that at first some
of the foreign publications, such as the Asian
Wall Street Journal and the now-defunct Far
Eastern Economic Review, defied the government by
refusing to print government replies in full. But
after their circulations were cut down
drastically, a move which affected their financial
situations, they all capitulated and softened
their news coverage.
"A number of
defamation cases brought successfully by Singapore
leaders and which resulted in substantial damages
also blunted the foreign press' enthusiasm for
free-spirited reporting. Though not necessarily
friendly, the foreign press now no longer reports
on Singapore in the way it used to. It has been
brought to heel," said Tan.
Wired
society Singapore is one of the world's
most wired societies. In 1992, the government
launched its so-called "IT2000" master plan, which
envisioned an "intelligent island" where
information technology would permeate every aspect
of society. Nearly 20 years later, in many
respects, those state-led initiatives have
worked.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road,
Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
