'Singapore journalists have a difficult job'

source: 'Today' newspaper, 9 February 2007. The article was adapted from a speech given by Kishore Mahbubani

Our world is no longer black and white - it is one of great moral ambiguity. For all of us, especially those who live in the media world, handling this moral ambiguity will be a major challenge. I'm going to illustrate this by showing how in this so-called black and white world of ours, the black is not so black and the white not so white.

When the Singapore media is ranked internationally, in an index of press freedom, it is ranked about 148th in the world, close to Iraq. Is this a fair portrayal of where our media stand in the world? Sadly, it is not.

Instead, it reflects the closed minds of those who have a black and white view of the world. These closed minds believe that there is total freedom, including press freedom, in the West, and no freedom at all in places like China. This view is wrong. Let me explain this by giving you some examples.

America is the standard-bearer of freedom, including press freedom. Hence you would expect that when a country like America decided to go to war with Iraq, you would find an environment where people had complete freedom to say what they wanted to say.

A Brazilian journalist told me that he was in America in the months leading up to the war in Iraq - a truly major world event. He expected to see a huge raging debate about the merits or demerits of the Iraq war. Instead, he found a culture of silence. There was little debate. Indeed, there was a tremendous amount of intimidation. If anyone stood up and said he was opposed to the war, as a friend of mine, Charles Kupchan (who teaches at Georgetown University) did, he received a thousand emails denouncing him, calling him an enemy and asking him to leave the country. How could this happen in a land of absolute freedom?

Let me give another example of moral ambiguity. About a year ago, two professors - John J Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago, and Prof Stephen M Walt, then the academic dean of the John F Kennedy School of Government at the Harvard University - wrote an academic paper on the impact of the Israeli lobby on American foreign policy. The article was commissioned by a magazine. However, after the authors wrote it, the contents were considered so explosive that not one magazine in America would dare to print it. Even a great university like Harvard - the number one university in America and perhaps the number one university in the world - had to remove the logo of the Kennedy School from that paper when it was posted on its website.

This story also illustrates the real limits of freedom. In some cases the limits are imposed by the state; in other cases, by society.

I do not tell you these stories to suggest that the United States is in any way more defective than any other country. In fact, I have written a book which emphasises that the US has done more good for the world than any country has. The US, for all practical purposes, also enjoys more freedom than any other country. It is nonetheless not a country where you have total and absolute freedom. There are constraints and there are limits.

On the black-and-white view of press freedom, China is on the black side. China is a country that is supposed to be a closed society. Human rights reports on China written by people with this view would tell you that China hasn't changed since 1949 and that it still remains a politically closed society controlled by the communist party. Recently, Freedom House, the single most quoted organisation on issues concerning freedom, came out with its annual global survey and ranked China very low - 177th out of a total of 194 countries.

What is amazing is that China's ranking in this Freedom House list has not changed significantly since 1972, when you had the travails of the Cultural Revolution and people were in enormous agony and distress all over China. Thirty-four years have gone by. China has opened up. The Chinese people have never had a better existence.

In terms of personal freedom, each Chinese citizen now enjoys far more freedom than he or she has ever enjoyed, maybe in centuries. By any definition of the term, the degree of personal freedom in China has improved by leaps and bounds since 1972. Yet China's ranking on the Freedom House list has hardly changed.

There is clearly something wrong in the way organisations like Freedom House (which is partially funded by the US government) measure freedom.

The simple moral of these stories is that the "white" world is not so white and the "black" world not so black. We all live in shades of grey, in realm of moral ambiguity.

Where does that leave Singapore? Where do we stand? Are we among those who are more free, or are we among those who are less free?

Frankly the only people who can answer the question honestly are the people who work in the Singapore media. It is they who have to decide, daily, what to report, what not to report, how to report it and what to say, what not to say.

Many of you might think, "Oh, poor us. We're in Singapore. We have very narrow OB markers. If we were somewhere else, things would be much easier." But there are OB markers everywhere. There's no society without OB markers. And in each society, there's a constant struggle about what to report, or what not to report.

At the same time, as you struggle with these OB markers, you have to be guided by some critical considerations. The challenge you will face is that these critical considerations will pull you in opposite directions every day.

On one hand, like any other journalist in any other country, you have to bear in mind the specific national circumstances of your country. We're a multi-racial country. In a world where most multi-racial countries of similar size have failed in maintaining ethnic harmony, we're the exception. Why are we the exception? I suspect it's because we observe very strict rules on what you can or cannot say on ethnic issues.

On the other hand, you also know that you would lose all your credibility if you are known to censor or fabricate news. To maintain your credibility, you have to develop a reputation for reporting, not distorting, the facts. In short, when you become a journalist in Singapore, you have one of the most difficult jobs.

Professor Kishore Mahbubani is the Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, and author of "Can Asians Think?" and "Beyond the Age of Innocence Building Trust Between America and the World." This is adapted from a speech he delivered at the MediaCorp News Awards.

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