Let people form body to oversee Net content: Panel

source: Sunday Times, 22 June 2008, page 7, above the fold

Views at forum differ as to whether Govt should be involved in identifying members

By Goh Chin Lian

The issue of who should set up a consultative body of citizens to moderate Internet content - as proposed by a group of 13 bloggers - came under scrutiny at a forum yesterday.

A prevailing view among the seven panellists was that the Government should not have a hand in it.

'There is merit in civil society doing it on its own...There's no need to depend on the Government to regulate social values,' said media academic Cherian George yesterday.

He was speaking at a forum on Internet regulatory reform, organised by the Nanyang Technological University's Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information.

He is part of the group of bloggers who submitted a proposal on Internet freedom to the Government in April.

They want, among other things, a guarantee of freedom to use the Internet to discuss political issues and promote political views.

Also, any regulation of online content should not be at the administrative discretion of officials, but through a court of law or preferably moderation by a consultative body of citizens, they said.

It should comprise independent content providers, people familiar with digital technologies and regular Internet users. It would give its views, say, when a blogger is seen to behave irresponsibly.

This issue attracted the most attention from the 30 or so people in the audience.

Among them was Mr Cheong Yip Seng, chairman of the government-appointed Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society.

He wanted to know who would form the committee and if members' views would carry enough weight.

Mr Arun Mahizhnan, deputy director of the Institute of Policy Studies, who is not part of the group of bloggers, believed civil society can do the job on its own.

Citing the Nature Society (Singapore) as a successful example that was not government-appointed, he said it has earned the moral authority to speak on environmental issues over time.

Law undergraduate Choo Zheng Xi, of The Online Citizen blog, felt that the consultative body might lose credibility if the Government was involved from the onset.

'It would be a major stumbling block going forward,' said Mr Choo, one of two leaders among the 13 bloggers.

But the other leader, Mr Alex Au, who writes the Yawning Bread blog, had a different take.

He reckoned that in Singapore, the Government - which tends to initiate things - could take the first step in appointing members to this consultative body.

Yesterday's forum also discussed the bloggers' proposal to scrap laws against offending racial and religious feelings, or promoting hatred against a racial or religious group.

They had argued that such acts would not immediately threaten the community, compared to acts that incite violence on racial and religious grounds.

But there was a dissenting voice among the bloggers. Graduate student Ng E-Jay, who blogs on sgpolitics.net, is against repealing the laws.

He said: 'It's a bit too optimistic to think that such hate speech targeted at race and religion would spread slowly.'

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Political films' emotive appeal

The power of political films in swaying emotions was an issue that sparked a short debate at a forum yesterday.

One view was that political films have the potential to distort the truth and influence people wrongly.

It was a concern raised by Mr Cheong Yip Seng, chairman of the government-appointed Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society.

Sharing the lessons learnt from a recent study visit to Canada, he said: 'What struck me was the unanimous opinion that political films do have a great impact on emotions.

'We heard some of the techniques used do have this effect of distorting the truth.'

This has led two countries, Japan and South Korea, to have laws that minimise the emotive impact of such films on the political process, he added.

Mr Cheong was responding to a proposal by a group of bloggers to remove laws that ban party political films. It was discussed at the forum on Internet regulatory reform, where some of the bloggers were on the panel.

His remarks, however, elicited a dissenting view from another forum participant.

Institute of Policy Studies senior research fellow Tan Tarn How said there was nothing wrong about the emotive appeal of political films.

Why is it bad that people react emotionally to such films, he argued, adding: 'Voting should not only be rational, but also an emotional process.'

Mr Tan also countered the argument that political films could distort the truth.

'I'm quite willing to allow the existence of falsehoods out there as long as there are other truths to counteract them, rather than have one 'truth' that is allowed to speak,' he said.

Goh Chin Lian

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