Journalism in Singapore

Losing Faith of the Printed Word
I just spent the past hour and a half watching a BBC documentary on Tehran, and what struck me was the spirit of journalism, both of the BBC journalist and the journalists in Tehran. If Prof. Mahbubani said journalists have a tough job in Singapore, I suppose he was not speaking in terms relative to Iran. The Iranian journalists seem to display tenacity and passion I don't sense from reading the Straits Times. But I'm making an unfair comparison because those Iranian journalists featured didn't work for the equivalent of the ST - they work for smaller outfits that nonetheless have impressive circulation.

In the documentary, Rageh Omaar said that despite being news-obsessed, Iranians were "losing faith of the printed word." They browse newspapers but don't buy them. They have the fourth largest blogging community in the world, and Iranians are increasingly turning to Satellite TV and the Internet.

Foreigners tend to have an overly pessimistic impression of Iran - that it is a repressive regime when in fact there are many elements of democracy. The documentary makes me feel Singapore doesn't stand very far from where Iran is in terms of media freedom. We all have to paraphrase issues in euphemistic ways, and that is if we're allowed to talk openly about them. Bloggers are ok, so long as they do not attract too much attention. The "red lines" or "OB markers" are too broad to be useful - we are allowed to say what we want as long as we know how to dance around land mines.

An Iranian film had to be censored extensively before it could be screened locally, but went on to win at International Film Festivals - sounds familiar to Singapore? Journalists, documentary makers, filmmakers, visual artists have a central part in our world, because they communicate to us and remind us what we should be doing to progress our world.

Perhaps the reason why Holland Village Voice started out as a novel modeled after Kundera's is because I deeply feel and fear that media freedom in Singapore is an illusion. I felt compelled to speak in riddles, as Kundera did.

The old (circa May 2006 elections) post below was my attempt at writing about a character who censors the Singapore media in his own way.

The Sound of Silence
[Fiction]
The living room sounded silent as Tina turned her key, so she was surprised to see her Pa sitting in front of the TV (he had muted the news because the Progress Democratic Party was on). Her Pa had declared a cold war on her ever since the campaigning started. She sighed, but felt amused her Pa was exercising his censorship over the PDP. A refreshing change from work, perhaps.

Pa had sustained an unforgettable memory of loss. His mother tongue (Hokkien), and his university were both systematically eliminated. He was a radical Chinese educated. Today he speaks Singlish proudly, as if never wanting to let go of the vestige of his identity.

"There is no Singaporean language," sends Tina through her MSN window. She has always been irked by her boyfriend's accent and consistently incorrect grammar, but she was exhausted from work, and in no mood to fight.

She wished she was back in the Village, shopping for trail mix or thumbing a discounted Murakami she was musing whether to buy or finish reading. Snapping out of the irrational wish, she turned on the TV in her own room so she can watch the PDP broadcast sans censorship. Somehow, her finger yearned for the mute button.

Problem Facing the Straits Times Forum

Recent posts on Coffee & Cigarettes and Yawning Bread touch on, among other issues, the standards applied by the Straits Times Forum Editor. The triggers were 1. A letter by Mr Heng about "Old people have the social and moral obligation to take care of themselves." 2. Prof. Kishore Mahbubani speech at MediaCorp News Awards about "Singapore Journalists Have a Difficult Job."

Issue has been around
The issue of the ST Forum selection criteria has definitely been around for a while. I vaguely remember an old website called "Not the Straits Times Forum" that published rejected letters, and recently we've seen a new project "Straight Times Forum" that attempts to achieve the same.

On this archived tomorrow.sg page, you will find a blurb highlighting a November 2005 analysis carried out by lzydata on his blog Singapore Ink about the breakdown of ST Forum letters. It was pretty obvious how warped the selection criteria was. Unfortunately, Singapore Ink is neither active nor archived.

In May 2005, I had a brief e-mail exchange with someone from ST. The journalist from ST wrote an article about Singaporeans being apathetic about the China-Japan row then. I wrote him an e-mail suggesting that the ST Forum, by choosing to publish letters of complaint instead of those discussing serious issues, isn’t helping.

Specifically, I singled out letters like ""She shed 9kg. Now she is underweight" and "Luggage Blues on Valuair" as instances that should be directed to agencies of consumer affairs and the companies themselves.

You can read more on the comments portion of an archived tomorrow.sg page. I want to focus on his reply:

Defending the Straits Times Forum (in May 2005)

1. ST Journalist (not the ST Forum editor): ST is a paper that is "everything to everyone."
2. ST Journalist: Forum editor goes for the best and the widest range of issues.
3. ST Journalist: There are plans to publish all received letters online.
   

Those three points are weak, and highlight a single problem - declining readership:
ST is not "everything to everyone." It is not a community newspaper
The journalist romanticized the monopolistic role of the ST by saying that ST needs to publish letters like banning cats in HDBs because it is a community paper at the same time it is a national paper. But the Straits Times is not a community paper - it is a ruling party influenced publication. After the online elitist debacle about "poor people not helping themselves," Mr Heng's "old people not helping themselves" letter sounds terribly offensive and lacking in political savvy, and creates the suspicion of a background force propagating the mantra that Singapore cannot regress into a welfare state.

A community newspaper would be concerned about old people getting injured, and reporting on how the rest of the community is acting to improve the situation. Unlike the ST, a community newspaper does not publish letters telling people their foolishness is to blame for their own injuries, that they constitute a "time bomb."

I hope no one mistakes my next reference as bad taste, I mean it all in positive terms: Nobel Prize winner Alan MacDiarmid recently died because he "fell down stairs in his home." He was rushing to catch a flight. Would Mr. Heng consider Dr. MacDiarmid morally and socially irresponsible? He is a Nobel Prize winner after all, responsible for much more than taking care of grandkids (a noble task I must say. I love you, Grandma). He was just living his life to the fullest. I don't know what advice Mr Heng would give Dr. MacDiarmid - don't be last minute?

More disturbing is ST Forum Editor's decision to publish that letter. What did he/she mean to achieve by selecting such a letter of bad taste? If the argument is to provoke debate, should the ST Forum then publish letters of bad taste sliming the ruling party's policies? The ST cannot pretend to be a community newspaper because it is not - it tries to portray itself as close to hearts of Singaporeans so more Singaporeans would read it, but Mr Heng's letter exposes ST's inability to understand what a community newspaper does.

Forum editor goes for widest range of issues, but "best letters?"
Some of the most best, meaning most insightful articles/opinions on Singapore are now appearing on the Internet, as writers find that they no longer have to be at the mercy of an opaque ST Forum policy. As more Singaporeans head online to debate national issues, the ST Forum will not have the best letters sent in to begin with.

More letters published, but not all
The ST Forum can't publish all letters, because of strict OB markers. The Internet has more relaxed rules (thankfully). Another reason why the ST Forum's readership is being diluted - why be told what to think?

Personally, I haven't been reading the ST Forum for a while. Or the ST. Not from the lack of trying - here's a good reason: I am a STI Online subscriber, but I frequently reach the screen that says that the ST servers are overloaded, and please wait or come back later. I don't get that - I thought the point of subscribing is so I'm supporting the purchase of more servers so I don't get that screen.

Anyway, as Yawning Bread implies, I agree that the ST is facing serious problems of the readers' trust and the exodus to online sources. I grew up reading the ST cover-to-cover, so I hope it will be given the freedom to develop into newspaper like the New York Times, read at places far from its source, rather than what it is today - a newspaper with a captive audience it can't keep captive.

Examining Singapore's ties with Burma

Even the Economist couldn't save Burma
Even the usually insightful Economist newspaper stumbled when it came to the topic of how to save Burma. Its July 2005 opinion piece can be summarized as: the West and the East should come together and use carrots and sticks, but only if Burma's military junta responds to them. While the Economist's suggestions appeared to lack in novelty and applicability, they highlight the two fundamental problems: the lack of a cohesive response cause nations' efforts to negate each other and Burma's dictatorship does not seem to care anyway.

Singapore's ties motivated by economics, "untroubled by politics"
Like many others, Singapore's government did not know how to solve the complex political problems in Burma. So it decided to be all carrots. Once a major trading partner and investor in Burma, Singapore's approach was motivated by economics and as an article by a Burmese non-partisan exile journalist puts it, Singapore was "untroubled by Burma's political problems." The moves to keep Burma stable were probably to keep this golden goose alive. In contrast, some other ASEAN/Asian countries like Malaysia and East Timor were much more outspoken about demanding the release of Aung San Suu Kyi (democratically elected leader under house arrest). Even the exit from the Burmese markets in recent years were economic, rather than a protest against the military dictatorship.

The incapable opposition politician
Using choice words and video bites, Singapore's mainstream media portrayed Dr. Chee Soon Juan as a madman who made baseless accusations like Singapore's ties with Burmese drug lords. Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs stayed close by featuring him as a criminal and liar. Dr. Chee (and many Australian newspapers) used Burma to argue that the Singapore government was hypocritical - trading with drug lords yet hanging drug traffickers. The problem for Dr. Chee, other than lacking uncensored access to Singapore media, was that he did not and probably could not offer a better solution. Had he attained office through the Burma issue, he would have stopped trade with Burma, but that would not have solved Burma's problem. Prior to the general elections in 2006, opposition politics on a broader scale suffered from the same problem - criticism without better solutions.

The trouble with Singaporeans
It is not as much as Singapore's government is apathetic about Burma's civilian poverty and military atrocities as Singaporeans are. We might be too obsessed about money to care about our South East Asian neighbors' developments.

Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts fails to keep pace with changes
Although, MICA no longer has the monopoly on ICA, it insists on blunt instruments like banning FEER. By attempting to prevent Singaporeans from reading dissenting opinions about Singapore's previous trade ties with Burma, MICA instead makes dissenting views forbidden fruit and maybe Dr. Chee more believable (as if the government had something to hide). Truths may not always be self-evident, but they usually emerge after debate, not one-sided coverage by the Straits Times. If we are to move on to the next phase of our highly mobile and cosmopolitan city with a social problems time bomb (read: casino) embedded at its heart, we need more media freedom. And maybe we already have more media freedom. I don't think I will get into trouble for typing this post. But of course, if I were Burmese, I might be arrested and tortured. Help Burma, Singaporeans.

Further reading/participation:

• The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma by Dr. Thant Myint-U
• Dr.Thant Myint-U author event at UCBerkeley
  
• Freedom from Fear by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
  
• Action Burma: Free Aung San Suu Kyi

Note regarding reading the full article on the Economist:

• If you do not subscribe to the Economist.com, you may still have access through news archival websites like Factiva and LexisNexis through your school or company
  

Tintin in Singapore

I went to a talk called "Comics Strips in Belgium - The big success of a small country."

The first reason Willem De Graeve, deputy director the Belgian Comic Strip Center, gave for the success of comic strips in Belgium is Hergé, creator of Tintin. He described how Tintin inspired many young Belgians to choose drawing as a career, and today Belgium has the highest concentration of professional comic artists in the world.

I feel that comics help define culture in Belgium - a country that might otherwise struggle with an identity crisis from being sandwiched by three bigger neighbors who used to colonize it (Netherlands, France, Germany). Belgians speak Dutch (Flemish), French and German. Arguably, the lack of a spoken national language created a visual alternative in comics.

Singapore appears similar in that we have bits and pieces of our culture from China, India, Malaysia and Britain, all (but India) of which used to hold political sway over our country. We struggle with the same language issues - there's English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil, none of which are our own. Other than food and Singlish (more on this later), we don't have much we define ourselves by.

Perhaps we Singaporeans can be defined as being mostly very materialistic? It is difficult to imagine a Singaporean parent supporting his/her child's ambition of being a cartoon artist. We lack inspiring role models who have taken more alternative paths to success. Is that because we prefer everything, including success, to happen within the short term?

Growth of culture is tied to media freedom. Contrary to that, the Singapore government views the media as a form of control, and culture as a form of tourist or export revenue.

Culture is inevitably intertwined with politics. Tintin began his career uninterested in politics. Although in Tintin's debut, Hergé spread counter-propaganda against Soviet communism, he was acting as a mouthpiece for a conservative Catholic newspaper. As he progressed in his career, he became more interested in political causes. The Blue Lotus is widely regarded as the turning point, where he infused the story with anti-Imperialist sentiment.

Today, Singapore filmmakers run into the censorship wall frequently. Although sometimes the issue is politics, most of the time it is because films use Singlish. Singlish films gets the worst of both worlds - they would not qualify at the Academy as a foreign language film, but would get cut by Singapore censors. Why? Apparently, 2 hours of Singlish exposure in the cinema is dangerous, considering we get many times that in our everyday lives. I call the Singapore government action against Singlish the disease of autoimmunity.

Perhaps if we belong to an *dirty word alert* elite stratum, we can avoid Singlish, supposedly the language of the heartlanders? You hear Singlish much less in locations like Paragon and Palais Renaissance. Is the current debate on elitism a failure of Singapore's supposed meritocracy?

As it happened, Tintin was read by the upper class in Belgium. There was a corresponding comic, Spirou, popular among blue collar. I don't know if there was a class issue with Tintin.
The speaker today, Willem De Graeve, said that Tintin is a hero, not a superhero, and we can find a bit of him in ourselves.

Do we see everyday leadership in our politicians? Probably no, but I'm glad Wee Shu Min's dad was honest in his opinions. I would rather know of his true leanings than have him pretend he sympathizes. That's the part I like most about some Singapore politicians - I may not agree with them, but at least they're still not smooth enough and let their tails out of their coats now and then.

Towards the end of today's discussion about Belgian comics, a few of us in the audience brought up the idea of fan culture in comics. Since the speaker was a Public Relations man and not an academic, he was not entirely familiar with Henry Jenkin's work. Eventually, a Belgian girl from the Comparative Media Studies explained the ideas to him in Dutch. I actually understood quite a bit of their conversation. Listening to a discussion about fan culture in Dutch was one of those moments when I felt my diverse education paths converge.

Yet I fear. Will "useless" skills like understanding other countries, understanding others unlike us be appreciated in Singapore? Is there only a single path to success in Singapore - agree with what's printed on the ST, support the ban of Feer, keep hushed about condoning the house arrest of Aung Sang Suu Kyi (while trading with the drug lords indirectly).

I'm not talking about the Chee Soon Juan version of being a self-burning martyr. I'm saying that it is hypocritical to hold back alternative views claiming to champion heartlanders who care only about bread and butter issues while telling heartlanders to grab their own bread and butter.