| February
2003
The subtleties of censorship in Singapore
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Earlier this month, a graduate student in
journalism, from California, contacted me for my views about censorship in
Singapore. In one of his introductory emails, he framed his question very
clearly: "Singapore has developed a uniquely stringent standard with
respect to print and broadcast journalism, but they have not done so with the
Internet. I need to better understand why."
Expanding on this, he asked,
Subsequent to the email, we spoke on the phone for an hour, exchanging views. I gained quite a bit from that conversation, particularly the realisation that what is obvious to me as a Singaporean about our government's behaviour, isn't so to a foreigner. Perhaps then, I should put down in words some of my thoughts. Moreover, this is an opportune time to clear the air about the driving forces, because in the next few months, our Censorship Review Committee will be publishing its recommendations [1] That the Internet is almost completely unhindered by the Singapore government despite legal powers it has given itself, is a known fact. We can read any online newspaper from anywhere in the world. If you are willing to pay, you can access any number of pornographic sites (free porn is just wishful thinking, my dear) [2]. Singaporeans themselves have created talkingcock.com and sammyboy.com, both with a lot of political discussion, the latter with loads of sex as well – the girlie kind. On the boys' side, we have fridae.com, sgboy.com, and what you're reading now. Even on the government's own Remaking Singapore bulletin board, last year when I looked, there were hundreds of sarcastic postings about our all-pervasive, money-grabbing government. This is not at all what one imagines should be happening in heavily-regulated Singapore, certainly not when one compares it to our tame print and broadcast media. There, domestic political news is carefully filtered, commentary is generally pro-establishment, and nothing more titillating than beer ads are allowed. Even foreign journalists have been brought to heel through defamation suits, denial of press visas and circulation restrictions on foreign magazines. As for TV, it's stretching the boundaries already, to have gay characters in dramas or sitcoms, but if any episode has these characters saying they're proud to be gay, or insinuating that they might have a sex life, then such episodes are invariably cancelled. Yet we have ripe tits and moist pussies on sammyboy.com. We have callboys stating their prices and phone numbers on the web, while on bulletin boards, our cabinet ministers are called names in the crudest of language. However, there are exceptions, as the graduate student reminded me. There was a recent case of an article written and distributed electronically by Bloomberg News, about the appointment of Ho Ching as head of Temasek Holdings. Ho Ching is the wife of Deputy PM Lee Hsien Loong, and daughter-in-law of Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Temasek Holdings is the apex company controlling all government-linked companies in Singapore. Bloomberg was threatened with a suit for insinuating nepotism, and they apologised. Complete surrender. Does this mean that the Singapore government is about to get serious with the Internet? My take on this is we must avoid seeing things from the perspective of the technology: print versus broadcast versus Internet. In order to better understand how the Singapore government reacts, we need to slice into the issue along two different planes:
The impact of the medium is partly related to the technology, but also to how that technology is received. We can rank the various media by their impact. Broadcast is probably considered the most sensitive of all, and therefore the most regulated. The moving image can be very immediate; the audience tends to be passive, just soaking in the information (or mis-information) without much critical thought. There is wide accessibility, especially to children. As the American contact pointed out to me, the power of broadcasting may explain why Singapore is still prohibiting satellite television, and why the government has stakes in both terrestrial broadcasters as well as the cable re-distributor. Print is one rank below broadcast, but print itself is spread over many titles, from widely-read newspapers to nearly-impossible-to-find magazines. There are subjects which magazines can feature but which newspapers cannot. Here again, one can see the degree of regulation varying with the impact of the medium with magazines reaching a mature, educated readership given more leeway. Print, however, is seldom as graphic or as emotive as television. Moreover, reading is a less passive activity than watching television or listening to the radio, thus even high-readership newspapers have more wiggle room when it comes to political commentary. Despite the hype of the late 1990s, the Internet is not (yet) such a powerful medium. Look past the always-dazzling potential. The reality is that it has a number of features that reduces its impact. Firstly, access is nowhere as universal or as simple as TV, radio or print. Secondly, it s a diffuse medium: it has loads of content, but that also means users thin themselves out over a vast area, with many different topics and opinions. No single comment on the Internet is likely to have as much effect as an inciteful soundbite on TV. Thirdly, the Internet is a medium that is largely free of gatekeepers. TV, radio and print have producers and editors, but anyone can put things up on the web or circulate by mass email. The result is that most stuff on the Internet won't have the credibility of the more conventional media, reducing its impact. Unless of course, the information is put out under the masthead of an established news organisation like Bloomberg. Fourthly – and this applies more to the web than email -- it's a "fetch" medium. The user has to go out and get the information he wants. If you're not interested in politics, you aren't going to be reading about politics on the web. And whatever your area of interest, you will tend to go to the sites that reinforce your existing ideas than challenge them. If you're anti-PAP, you'll tend to be fetching anti-PAP stuff. If you're a born-again Christian, you'll be searching for Christian stuff. It's just human behaviour. The effort required to regulate the Internet may not be proportionate to the difference it's going to make. Ah, but what about sex? Surely our nanny-state wants to forbid such vices? That brings us to the nuances of subject matter. Censorship in Singapore has never been comprehensive. Unlike communist countries, there has hardly been only light censorship, if any, of foreign news or business news, give or take the flattering spin they put on government-linked companies. Basically, the motivation for media regulation by the Singapore government has been twofold:
The social engineering agenda has subtly changed over time. For a long while, discussion about race and religion was very carefully circumscribed, in order to preserve social harmony. But now, after the destruction of New York's World Trade Centre by al Qaeda, it is realised that the enforced silence about religion has only allowed extremist views to circulate underground without countervailing views being aired. With race, change has yet to come. It's still hard to dispute the government's construction of racial identity in the media. The mythic virtues of "family" were likewise held to be above criticism, and of course, there was a strong dose of Puritanism when it came to matters of sex and marriage. Gradually, there has been a little loosening up. The commercial trend towards showing more skin has been unstoppable, though one still can't write favourably of single parenthood. As for homosexuality, there used to be even more silence about this subject than of religion, and what little mention there was, was generally censorious or else dripping with condescension. But like sex in general, over the last 10 – 15 years, there has been increasing depiction of homosexuality in cinemas. On TV nowadays, having a gay character doesn't automatically disqualify a serial, so long as the character "behaves". In mainline newspapers, fairly neutral passing mentions are now common enough to be unremarkable. We've seen that with reports about openly gay mayors elected in Paris or Berlin, and the first gay marriage in Holland [3]. But editors are still careful to keep gay stuff brief and lightweight, i.e. as a minor facet of someone or some event, or as part of lifestyle chic. Heavy-duty pro-equality arguments, or any commentary lambasting the government's "pro-family" (thus anti-gay) policies, have yet to appear. Things may begin to evolve more quickly in the years ahead. The political doctrine has begun to shift from the importance of stability, Confucian values and conformity to the need for diversity, creativity and a global outlook. With this, the theoretical foundation for strict censorship on social issues is being eroded. The other impulse for censorship -- to buttress the ruling party's dominance – is much less negotiable, because it isn't a question of program, but of survival for the regime. Personally, I haven't seen any loosening up on this front and don't foresee any. Any writing that is judged to threaten their legitimacy, including moral legitimacy, such as the recent Bloomberg case, cannot expect to be tolerated.
© Yawning Bread
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Footnotes
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