Mockery and sensationalism

Compared to the amount of space given to reports about paedophiles in other countries, hardly anything is written in Singapore's press about campaigns in the West for equal treatment for gay citizens and gay unions. The 'why' would be interesting, but I don't have any information on the editors' thoughts and intentions, so I won't speculate on this. (But I'm sure you have your conspiracy theories.)

If you depended solely on Singapore newspapers for news, you'd never know that there are such things as Gay Pride Marches in major cities, attended by hundreds of thousands of people. You'd never hear of the Gay Games. And you certainly would not know that a major battle is being fought in the courts and the legislature in Hawaii for equal recognition of same-sex marriages. There has not been a squeak in the Straits Times except for one or two columns in 1996, saying that President Clinton had signed the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA") into law. I remember thinking, when I read that report, how meaningless it must be to 99% of Singaporeans to have such a story pop out of nowhere. There had been no previous mention of the Hawaii campaign, nor any articles discussing the issues. The average reader of the Straits Times would have had no context within which to understand DOMA.

Then on June 30, 1997, 'gay marriage' figured again, in one passing reference. The Malaysian Minister for Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, Datuk Megat Junid, was reported to have said, "we must never neglect our culture and religions although we are striving for greater economic progress. We do not want the Western type of progress where almost anything goes, including marriages between the same sex."

His aim was to warn Malaysians about the dangers of westernisation, and pointing to same-sex marriages was an easy way of showing how absurd things have become 'over there'. I can imagine the audience sniggering at the thought, which must have been the intended effect. His remarks were a form of mockery.

Three days earlier, The New Paper, a local tabloid, carried a story about the US Supreme Court's ruling that the Communications Decency Act was unconstitutional. Its headline screamed "INTERNET PORN OK" and its opening sentence went, "In the name of free speech, posting porn on the Internet is no crime." It's the kind of sensationalism that is all too common everywhere.

It was meant to make the reader go "tsk, tsk, what is the world coming to?", and "you see? America's going down the tubes!"

The article itself gave the brief facts, and quoted some reactions, but did not explain why the US Supreme Court decided as it did. Which meant the reader would be no wiser, i.e. no better informed about the issues, than before. Obviously, it is not the business of this newspaper to inform and educate its readers, but merely to pander to their ignorance.

Both these tactics, of mockery and sensationalism, work by pandering. They only work when you have an audience who share a rather limited view of the world. They have to have a parochial outlook, and some kneejerk prejudices which you can use the doctor's little mallet on.

With such an audience, you can pick almost any issue that is at the cutting edge of thought, be it scientific, social or judicial, and it will be outside, way outside, the tiny box of comprehension that your audience is capable of. And because it is outside that tiny box, it will seem bizarre, crazy, and maybe ludicrous.

Take scientific. "And Charles Darwin says we are descended from monkeys!" Ho ho ho ho. (This statement still entertains audiences today, 150 years later. It says a lot about the audiences.)

By the same token, we now have "almost anything goes, including marriages between the same sex" and "in the name of free speech, posting porn on the Internet is no crime".

Yet these are serious issues, and one is poorer for not trying to grasp the arguments for and against.

In the case of same-sex marriage, the issue comes to the surface the moment one can see some basic facts and following through logically: that people are not homosexual by choice, that gay and lesbian people are as capable of love and commitment to their partners as heterosexuals, and they similarly desire to form life-long unions. Furthermore, the State confers on the married couple a vast number of benefits, but by confining these benefits to opposite-sex couples, the State discriminates against those citizens whose natural inclinations are to seek partners of the same sex. As a matter of justice, the State has to withdraw benefits given to opposite-sex couples, or give equal benefits to same-sex ones.

In the case of the Communications Decency Act ("CDA"), this now-overruled law was intended to make it an offence to send smutty material to minors. The problem was that it was very broadly phrased, and anyone who put up sex-related material onto the internet, even birth-control or HIV information, would be caught by it. The US Supreme Court recognised that the nature of the internet was such that someone who puts up such material cannot control who gets it. It also noted that the internet was a medium in which people generally had to fetch information for themselves, not like TV where it is beamed at you if you leave it on. Yet the CDA put the onus on the provider of the information, when the responsibility should properly belong to the retriever (or the parents in the case of children). Furthermore, by cutting off sex-related information at source, the CDA denied adults of such information, if they should want it. The liberties of these adults would be infringed.

Now why should adults have the liberty to obtain pornography? It's sick, it degrading, it's offensive! Hold on now, that's subjective. The US Supreme Court has for a long time taken the view that no one has a monopoly on Truth, least the all, the government. It is not for the government to decide what is good information and what is bad. It is for each (adult) individual to decide for himself. And since the CDA would have suppressed a certain class of information, it was unconstitutional.

By making an effort to understand the reasoning involved, we begin to appreciate the complexity of the subject. We learn to think more critically and to shed some outdated or unfounded nostrums. In other words, we widen the box we live in.

Alas, most people don't make that effort. They are content to find amusement in the antics and the sophistry of the intellectuals outside the tiny box of their minds. On this propensity is built the trade of newspaper editors, and the rhetoric of politicians.

© Yawning Bread 

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