In the box on the right, are the ratings and rankings for countries in the Asia Pacific, together with a few reference countries such as USA and France. The more points, the worse the situation for the press.

As you will notice, the only countries ranking lower than Singapore are dictatorships such as Burma and Pakistan, or communist countries such as Vietnam and China.

Indeed, Singapore is also a one-party state, and all the main newspapers and broadcast stations are either government-owned or government-controlled. See the article Control of the press: the 1% lever for more on our law that gives the government the right to appoint directors and editors for any licensed newspaper (and you don’t have to ask whether there are any unlicensed newspapers).

Perhaps our journalists are not assassinated like a few have been in Russia, which, ranking at 140, is quite close to Singapore’s, but they certainly have lost their jobs. For a tale of how a transgressing reporter is dealt with, read Here’s hoping Today doesn’t become yesterday. The same incident was cited in Reporters Sans Frontieres’ 2004 Annual Report on Singapore:

An adviser to former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew reprimanded Today editor Mano Sabnani in November for allowing a report to be published about a trip by Lee's wife to London for medical reasons. The young journalist who wrote the story, Val Chua, reportedly had her press card suspended.

It should be noted though, that Val Chua’s byline is appearing in 'Today' again, and from none other than Santiago, Chile, where she is following the Singapore delegation to the APEC summit.

More famously, various foreign media have been bullied not to write searching articles about Singapore. Some, such as the Far Eastern Economic Review, have had their circulation curtailed. Others, such as the International Herald Tribune and the Economist, have either been sued in court for libel or threatened with such suits. In a recent case, the Economist was alleged to have libeled the Lee family when it said having the wife of the Prime Minister as head of the holding company that owned most government-linked businesses, suggested nepotism. The Economist chose to apologise and settle rather than fight the case in court. No one has yet won such cases against government figures in Singapore. 

She also named the biggest litmus test of Singapore really opening up "If somebody sues the Government and wins." If that were to happen, "I think Singaporeans will sit up and say 'Ooh'," she said. [1]

Thus, there’s no surprise at all that you don’t sue the government for the freedom to report as you wish.

The government’s line is that foreigners have no right to comment on Singapore’s internal politics. Well, that’s handy, isn’t it? You can always bully your citizens who live under your laws or work for your news organisations, but it’s a little harder to bully those who don’t depend on you for a living. A neat example of what happened in one such instance was captured by Reporters Sans Frontieres in their 2004 Annual Report on Singapore:

'Today', one of the three English-language dailies, ran a column in October by Australian journalist Michael Backman that was scathing about Singapore's system of censorship. He criticised the information minister's meddling in editorial content, the system of publication licences and the regime's paranoia.

The government's reaction was acrimonious. In a response published five days later, the information ministry insisted that the media system was suited to Singapore's circumstances. At the start of November, information minister Lee Bon Yang told the Press Club that foreign journalists should stay out of Singapore's politics. He said Backman had knowingly crossed the line and meddled in internal politics. He also insisted that the government was not going to liberalise the censorship system just to please an excited minority and that censorship was needed to protect society from violence and a decline in morals.

I will come back to the last sentence of the above later. Needless to say, I haven’t seen Michael Backman’s byline again.

Foreign reporters, even visiting journalists, have to get a permit before they can report on Singapore. This is essential if they wish to interview anyone from the administration. Even if they didn’t, but filed a story that said they met with some private citizens who said this and that, the government can use that as proof that instead of being here on a social visit, the reporter had been working while in Singapore, and therefore would have committed a crime under our laws. Intimidation has been honed to a fine art.

The Straits Times bills itself as "one of the world's most respected newspapers" and it does indeed have a reputation for its Asia coverage. But it practices systematic self-censorship in its domestic reporting. Its competitors are Today and Streats, which dare more often to publish independent commentaries on the domestic situation. Nonetheless, the only real freedom is to be found on a small number of Internet sites operated by government opponents or by some of the few independent journalists. But they risk very heavy fines for defamation

* * * * *  

A Member of Parliament, Steve Chia, submitted a written question in Parliament about Singapore’s pathetic ranking in the Press Freedom Index. On the right is the Straits Times story of his impertinence.

And you know what? The story itself was a model of self-censorship, providing ample proof of the state of our media.

It has the following features

• The headline merely parrots what the minister said in his reply, no matter how inane.
• Of the 20 sentences in the story, 17 essentially reported what the minister said.
• The first 8 sentences set out the minister’s boasts about Singapore being ranked at or near the top of other lists. These point to Singapore’s superior connectedness to the global economy and to efficient corruption-free administration. Effectively the minister said that we’re a smooth-running dictatorship that does business with the world, and he seemed to expect that such a rebuttal would refute any grumble about the lack of press freedom.
• The 8th, 9th and 10th sentences in the Straits Times story gave the essential background to the story, which was that Singapore had scored poorly in the Press Freedom Index.
• Then it was quickly back to whitewash. Sentences 11 to 20 repeated the minister’s (painful, to anyone with intelligence) justification for failing to measure up.

He said that the media in Singapore operated on a different model -- the defence of particularism -- and brazenly added that our model was one of a "free and responsible press whose role is to report news accurately and objectively."

By that he implied that the press in the 88% of the countries that ranked higher than us were neither free, responsible, accurate nor objective.

Equally bold-faced, he said, our press offered a "platform for diverse views and to reflect the debate on national issues." I would ask my readers to reflect on why the local media was completely silent about gay issues this year, including the Nation 04 Party that was advertised by none other than our Tourism Board, and on why nobody has yet written on the almost unaminous belief of Singaporeans that nepotism exists here.

Then the minister conjured the ghosts of threat. If we didn’t have the (tightly-controlled) situation that we have, there would be race riots, terrorism, disease and immorality. Did he say that, really?

Read these sentences, from the Straits Times' report of the minister's words

At the same time, it has to be sensitive to national interests, such as protecting racial and religious harmony and the shared values of society.

The model had evolved out of Singapore's special circumstances, he said.

It had enabled the media here to strengthen the resilience of Singaporeans in the face of intense economic competition, terrorism threats, infectious diseases and social ills.

The same spectre of threat was used to justify censorship, as reported in the 2004 Annual Report. Remember the last sentence quoted earlier? "Censorship was needed to protect society from violence and a decline in morals."

And as a final flourish, he said that our "media has a tremendously important role" and better this than gaining the "favours of international ranking associations."

Of course, by this point at the end of the Straits Times story, the average reader was expected to have forgotten that the minister’s defence relied on scoring tops in some other surveys on global connectedness and administrative efficiency.

I grant that the news report itself may not be the place to point out the above. It is a valid argument that in good journalism, reporting should be clearly separated from commentary. But this only begs the question: was there follow-up commentary? None that I could see. Frankly, I didn't expect the Straits Times to consider it necessary.

Coming back to reporting itself, did you notice that the Straits Times did not devote a single line to quoting the MP who first asked the question? It would have been a more balanced story if the interrogation was featured as much as the reply. One could then have seen what Steve Chia's point was in putting the question to the minister.

Nor did the Straits Times quote anything from the 2004 Annual Report of Reporters Sans Frontieres, except the line about "no independent media" followed quickly by "plenty of access to foreign media".

On the whole, the Straits Times essentially became the minister’s apologist, giving his reply at length, without equal space to the originating report or the interrogator.

© Yawning Bread