Why Press Freedom in Singapore matters?

I think we are taking the values of free speech and free press for granted. While I do not deny we need to engage in self-censorship for issues like terrorism and official secrets to maintain Singapore’s national security, it is however our mainstream media’s role to provide the most accurate and the most unbiased information for all Singaporeans without any risk of intimidation by our government to prevent our journalists from writing about sensitive or embarrassing issues such as Singapore’s fast widening income gap, rising cost of living, foreign talent policy and Temasek’s foreign investments etc.

However, if our journalists decide not to take on an investigative role but instead adopt self-censorship in their news reporting in the name of “nation-building”, allowing the government to control any information to release to the public or withhold any undesirable piece of information so that the government can carry on with their agenda without any external pressure, the journalists are doing their readers a disservice as they are assuming the released information they have in hand is 100% accurate. And when they publish those “facts and statistics” in the newspapers, people will believe every single word that they read as truths.

Therefore, in order for our mainstream media to remain objective, it must be able to legitimately criticise the government and inform the public in the most complete and responsible manner. It is more important that we suffer small ailments or hiccups as early as possible than to cause Singapore to suffer major setbacks should any government policy fails in the future.

Al Jazeera on Singapore’s Singtel MioTV

It was reported in Straits Times yesterday that Al Jazeera has received permission to be broadcast in Singapore on Singtel’s pay-TV service, MioTV. A few questions may come to our mind:

What is Al Jazeera?

“Jazeera” means island. According to International Herald Tribune’s article titled “How Al Jazeera can go up a gear”, Al Jazeera is a Qatar-based TV which is owned by the royal family of Qatar. It launched its English Service, Al Jazeera International, on 15 November 2006 and has obtained TV rights in several countries and regions such as United States and the Latin America.

Who is in Al Jazeera?

According to Mediachannel.org, Al Jazeera has assembled a team of TV pros from BBC, APTN, ITV, CNN and CNBC, among others, and will have 40 bureaus worldwide with broadcast centres in Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London and Washington. Some of the journalists’ names include Peggy Holter, Josh Rushing and Mark Teboe. The Programming Director, Paul Gibbs worked with BBC and Discovery Channel previously. It would also be interesting to take a look at their code of ethics.

Has Al Jazeera received any criticisms on its coverage since it’s a Middle Eastern TV station?

United States President George Bush and his administrative leaders have called the station’s coverage inflammatory and misleading for its journalistic style biased in favour of Arab causes. Al Jazeera has also attracted numerous criticisms and controversies with regard to the war on terrorism:

The most famous controversy would have to be the false allegation over the telecast of videos of masked terrorists beheading western hostages in Iraq. Other controversies include the broadcasting of Osama bin Laden’s videos. In those videos, Osama defended and justified the New York’s World Trade Centre attacks on September 11, 2001. US accused Al Jazeera of engaging in propaganda for the terrorists.

Shocking enough? It seems Al Jazeera is not going to be another ordinary TV station seeking to increase its viewership base worldwide and their coming to Singapore is going to make a big difference to the already well-controlled mainstream media. Al Jazeera is certainly going to influence the way we see the world with more war news and gory scenes, and with more controversial issues such as the Singapore-Burma ties which has recently caused an embarassment to our Singapore government. Tony Birtley of Al Jazeera reported in the following video which includes interviews with Chee Siok Chin of SDP and Alex Au of yawningbread.org:

Al-Jazeera can be broadcast in S'pore: officials

Al-JAZEERA'S English channel has received permission to be broadcast in the city-state, the government said on Monday.

The Arab broadcaster's English news service will be available to subscribers of Singapore Telecommunications' (SingTel) pay-TV service, the Media Development Authority (MDA) said in a statement.

'MDA has approved SingTel's application to offer the Al-Jazeera English channel on MioTV - its IPTV (Internet Protocol television) service,' Amy Chua, MDA's director for media content division, said in the statement. Officials did not say when Al-Jazeera would go on the air.

Qatar-based Al-Jazeera has said it will provide an alternative perspective to international news channels based in Europe and the United States. Al-Jazeera's Arabic service, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in November 2006, has revolutionised news media in the Arab world, but it has also stirred controversy.

It gained worldwide recognition mainly due to its broadcast of videotapes issued by Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. -- AFP

A Foreigner’s Perspective of Singaporean Bloggers

Dr Henry Jenkins, the Director of MIT Comparative Media Studies Programme and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities, visited Singapore sometime ago and blogged about his experiences after hearing much about Singapore’s work culture and in particular, three very distinct stories of Singaporean youth "misbehavior" on the blogging platform. His full blog post titled Singaporean Girls Gone Wild contains excerpts below:

“Singapore is so known for its work ethic and sense of decorum that I have joked off and on about marketing a series of videos of Singaporean Girls Gone Wild which consisted of school girls in uniforms throwing peanut shells on the floor of the Raffles Hotel bar with wild abandon before returning to studying for their exams. After all, one of the first things that I ever learned about this country was that the law specified that one could be thrashed with a bamboo cane for chewing gum in public. My first impression then was something like that planet in Star Trek: The Next Generation where one could be put to death for stepping on the grass.”

On Wee Shu Min:

“When Wee Shu Min, the teenage daughter of a Singapore member of parliament stumbled across the blog of a Singaporean who wrote that he was worried about losing his job, she thought she'd give him a piece of her mind.

She called him "one of many wretched, undermotivated, overassuming leeches in our country" on her own blog and signed off with "please, get out of my elite uncaring face".”

On Sarong Party Girl:

“So in choosing to call her blog, Sarong Party Girl, the youth was trying to reclaim a negative term which embodies an explosive mixture of sexual and racial transgression, while no doubt thumbing her nose at traditional sexual morality in her country.”

He continued with:

“So rather than question why it is that the authorities had to act, or the merits of which is the more appropriate law to use, or whether this is a prelude to a political clampdown, the Internet's cause will be better served if active users weigh in and do their own clamping down...”

Indeed. That's what we should do. We do not require any regulations at all for the Internet is a free space for everyone.

MDA Directors doing Rap! Hype and Happening!

We have MDA directors doing rap! Do you remember Singapore’s P65 MPs doing a hip hop sometime ago to engage the youth? They certainly can’t beat the MDA directors! Very soon we will have senior grassroot leaders doing rap too to engage the elderly Singaporeans! This rap is so funny as it is making public officers in suits look silly! And Ya really gonna check out the other blogs!

MDA Senior Director's Rap

Cluelessness in Full Flight

Sing along to MDA Senior Management Rap

Yo! Singapore censor rap hits YouTube

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore's Media Development Authority, which regulates and censors media and the arts, has scored an unexpected hit on YouTube with a rap video about the city-state's media ambitions.

The YouTube posting has received more than 11,000 hits -- and a string of snide postings on the video site. The government body aims to promote the growth of the media industry, to promote "core values" and safeguard consumer interests, its Web site says. It hopes the rap video will showcase its potential to be "a vibrant media city".

But critics say this ambition does not rhyme with Singapore's regular censorship of films and theatre and the many defamation lawsuits its government have launched against foreign media.

In the video, middle-aged executives are seen moving and shaking to a rap tune, mouthing lines from a corporate brochure.

"William Hung is more entertaining," said one of the YouTube postings, referring to the goofy singer made famous in American Idol.

Update: The video has since been put up on the popular TechCrunch.

Study: Internet will slow by 2010

If you have a fast broadband Internet connection, enjoy it while it's still fast. According to a study by Nemertes Research, video and interactive web sites will begin to overwhelm Internet service providers as early as 2010.

"Users will experience a slow, subtle degradation, so it's back to the bad old days of dial-up," Nemertes President Johna Till Johnson told USA Today. "The cool stuff that you'll want to do will be such a pain in the rear that you won't do it."

According to the report, cable and phone companies, which provide 94% of the United States' broadband access, must invest about $55 billion to upgrade their networks to cope with the coming bottleneck. That is far more than planned, says Nemertes.

The biggest upgrades will need to be made in upstream data capacity. Until recently, the web was mainly read-only, and service providers built their networks around downloading. But with the explosion of video and photo sharing, self publishing (blogging, etc.), and bandwidth-intensive activities like video conferencing, networks will begin to feel the strain on the upstream end.

"Two years ago, nobody knew what YouTube was," said Johnson. "Now, it's generating 27 petabytes of data per month."

Much of the cost of upgrading will be in installation of higher-capacity lines, according to the Nemertes study. Verizon's new fiber optic service, FiOS, which reaches 1.3 million users in the US (myself included) is a start, but the study implies that the upgrade may not be happening fast enough to stave off an impending bandwidth crunch.

The news was reproduced from ReadWriteWeb

Singapore lifts ban on Mass Effect game

It’s pretty silly for Singapore to ban the game Mass Effect just because it contains some lesbian sex scenes. MDA was obviously only looking at the sexual content of Mass Effect and possibly also did not like the occasional use of the word “bastard” and at least one aggressive use of the word “bitch”. Thank goodness, they lifted the ban and allowed it to be released after all under an M18 rating. Adults like me who love gaming can finally get the originals from the stores in Singapore and need not worry about breaking the law by downloading it secretly from the internet. The article below was reproduced from Straits Times.

MDA lifts ban on game with same-sex love scene
By Leung Wai-Leng

In a reversal of its earlier decision, the Media Development Authority (MDA) has decided to allow role-playing game Mass Effect to be released here under an M18 rating.

The Board of Film Censors (BFC) said in a statement on Friday evening that it will selectively use games ratings to 'enable highly anticipated games to be launched in Singapore' until it puts in place a games classification system in January.

The statement said that 'this will allow such games to enter the market with immediacy and give the industry and members of the public a better understanding of the benefits of the proposed games classification system'.

Mass Effect was banned earlier for containing a same-sex love scene, making Singapore the only country to disallow its sale. It caused a furore among local and international gamers.

Other games with graphic violence such as popular action game Assassin's Creed - released this week - was allowed on store shelves after distributors affixed a consumer advisory label declaring the game 'Not to be sold to young children'.

The Art of Avoiding Answering Questions or Non-Reply

Jeremy Paxman was awarded a broadcasting award for outstanding contribution to television by the Voice of the Listener and Viewer in 1994 and 1997 and was given the Richard Dimbleby Award, Bafta's most prestigious award for current affairs, in 1996 and 2000. The following Youtube video is very interesting as it highlighted how UK politicians tried to avoid answering questions when being grilled by him. I certainly have not seen any such regular grilling sessions on our national TV. Perhaps our politicians can learn a trick or two from them

Lee Kuan Yew Dismisses Low Press-Freedom Ranking for Singapore

Singaporeans are free to read whatever they want, the influential founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew said of his country, which ranks near the bottom on a watchdog's index of press freedom. Lee was referring to the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) annual ranking for 2006, which placed the city-state at 146 out of 168 nations, and lower than Zimbabwe at 140.

RSF cited "new legal action by the government against foreign media" for Singapore's slipping six places in the rankings. "There's nothing that you'd want to read which you cannot read in Singapore," said Lee, who holds the influential title of minister mentor in the cabinet of his son.

"You can buy our newspapers and see whether we read like Zimbabwe..." he said Sunday night in a keynote address to the International Bar Association annual conference, which has attracted thousands of lawyers and jurists from around the world.

Lee said Singaporeans have wide access to information. "Everybody's on the Internet. Everybody's got broadband. They've got cable television, access to all the information. You can blog. You can do anything you like," he said in the speech which drew frequent applause.

"But we do not allow certain subjects to be made bones of contention." Lee said issues of race, language and religion had to be handled sensitively. Singapore is majority ethnic Chinese but with significant Malay and Indian minorities. "A multi-racial, multi-religious society is always prone to conflicts," Lee said. The city-state has bitter memories of past racial incidents in its early years and clamps down hard on anyone inciting communal tensions.

RSF has said Singapore's low ranking stems from "the complete absence" of independent print and broadcast media, the opposition's lack of access to those media, and other factors. Last year Singapore banned distribution of the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review magazine, saying it had failed to comply with media regulations.

Lee and his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, are suing the magazine's editor and Hong Kong-based Review Publishing, its owners, alleging defamation in an article last year based on an interview with pro-democracy activist Chee Soon Juan. "We are often accused of suing people for defamation," Lee told his audience.

But he said Singapore was built on the rule of law and did not tolerate corruption, in contrast to the surrounding region where "money politics" was a way of life. This means defamation action may be taken against those who impute dishonesty to government officials, in order to clear any doubts, he said. "As a result, people in Singapore do not equate their political leaders with second-hand car salesmen," Lee said.

The article was reproduced from Agence France-Presse.

Update: A more comprehensive article "Why are we still led by one man's philosophy?" written by Andrew Loh from theonlinecitizen.com discussed how our MM is using selective data and reports to suit his argument to explain Singapore's progress in the globalized market, and how Singapore has ignored 'softer indicators' like Happiness, Libido, Courtesy, Income Equality, Press Freedom, Asia Democracy and Prisoners Per Capita Indexes which are equally important indicators for a society which needs a dynamic, inspiring human spirit afforded by freedom of expression and human rights.

Transparency and Good Governance to Satisfy Singaporeans and Retain Talents

Singapore is already a financial hub in Asia alongside with Hong Kong and Tokyo, but it needs to retain high-valued talents to fill important positions in the private sectors, government-linked companies (GLCs) such as Singapore Technologies and Singapore Airlines (SIA), or even statutory boards such as CPF, HDB and LTA.

I applaud Singapore’s “leaving no stones unturned” kind of approach in attracting global and regional activities with the introduction of numerous initiatives throughout the years to enhance our competitiveness in the global market. Two important examples were the recent reduction of the corporate tax rate by 2% from 20% to 18% and the increase in the corporate tax exemption threshold from S$100,000 to S$300,000, both taking effect from Year of Assessment (YA) 2008. There was also an earlier initiative under the Unilateral Tax Credit Scheme for service incomes which allows to cover all service incomes remitted from all non-treaty countries such as the USA(Limited Treaty) with effect from YA 2003.

Providing all these benefits would undoubtedly enlarge our scope to attract more foreign investments as we are providing them with lower business startup and maintenance costs which could in turn push up net profits and benefit our economy.

However, Singapore has not done enough to retain talents that it wants. Yes, in terms of individual taxation for non-resident professionals in Singapore, the Inland Revenue of Singapore (IRAS), with immediate effect, has recently made it easier for the income tax filing of these professionals by announcing a final income tax of 15% levied on the gross income of these individuals in order to reduce the compliance cost incurred. The previous arrangement was a withholding tax (WHT) of 24.5% net of expenses. But more is needed to attract more talents to come here and perhaps taking up citizenships eventually as professionals usually do have high demands for transparency and good governance.

Transparency and Good Governance – If the government wants transparency, every institution must develop mechanisms that inform the public of their processes. It encompasses not just government institutions like Ministry of Finance or Ministry of Manpower but also the civil society and the media. The Singapore government ,which fully comprises PAP ministers, does not have any opposition leaders sitting in the cabinet to debate on policies before they are dished out to the public. Future ministers may act selfishly for their benefits or party with the help of a compliant, pro-government media to report only the necessaries. When more new unpopular policies are dished out without much engagement with the population, would they still stay in Singapore or would they pack up and leave for a greener pasture when the going is bad? Years of goodwill towards them would be wasted and we would still be back to square one, facing a shortage of talents.

Our government should really consider having more open and live TV debates for the good of all. Sensitive issues like the Compulsory Annuities and CPF changes, are tabled and debated among members of the government, social organisations, opposition parties, Singaporeans and foreigners. When these happen, there would be a less chance of a failure in policy implementation due to group think and:

a. the government is able to present its detailed studies and analysis yet shed off its ‘top-down’ authoritative approach of governance

b. social organisations like Society of Financial Service Professionals and Law Society could give their inputs and comments on the issues tabled

c. Singaporeans could decide for themselves if the government policies are fair to them

d. Foreign talents could decide for themselves from the discussions on employment and education for their younger generation for example, if Singapore is the right place for them.

I think if our government is able to allow more regular engagements among all sectors, it would make our Singapore society a more cohesive, dynamic and tolerant one and would make it so attractive to both Singaporeans and foreign talents who have intentions to make Singapore their home.

Burmese Sanction Unnecessary?

CNN's interview with PM Lee was aired on Friday evening but I was unhappy with PM Lee's answers to the questions on whether Singapore is a money laundering centre for members of Burmese junta and on whether Singapore should have more concrete actions other than just issuing statements. I will quote the interview reported by Reuters and Channelnewsasia.

If you have read through the whole article on both news providers, you might notice quotes by PM Lee like "dirty money and money laundering" were not published in the CNA article. I feel it might be an intentional effort by our news provider to prevent Singaporeans from questioning the government on this aspect probably because recently Singapore has had some hard time with Indonesia and the international media on the allegations of corrupt Indonesians running off to Singapore and parking their illegal money into our banks because of Singapore's strict bank secrecy laws which could make it convenient for money laundering activities to take place.

"Secondly, if you want to have sanctions, it cannot just be Singapore or even ASEAN, but all of the countries in the world have to do that, and that includes the Western countries, investors in Myanmar and its neighbours like China with big stake in Myanmar."

It is, of course, wonderful if all countries with economic ties with the regime could come together and agree on a trade sanction. Although calling for a total trade sanction against Burma may indeed be counter-productive, PM Lee does not seem to understand that, in the current situation, the junta leaders and their cronies seemed to be benefitting themselves more rather than benefitting the general population. Why, then should these countries continue to enrich the Burma dictators and help them to strengthen their grip on power? Cripple the military government by restricting exports of critical supplies (such as arms and telecommunication devices) necessary for the survival of their army and their stranglehold on the Burmese society. So it is wrong for PM Lee to say trade sanctions are useless but he should, instead, initiate talks with China and India for more real actions as suggested.

And I wonder if he would still say the same thing if there were Singaporeans killed during the crackdown? Is he still going to ignore the atrocities by the junta?

Can We Don’t Be So Materialistic?

Madonna sang: “I’m living in a material world, and I am a material girl.”

I believe everyone would be familiar with phrases like Money can buy you medicine but not health; a house but not a home; entertainment but not happiness”. It is true that money is a need to live in the modern society. Although it does reduce some of financial problems, money might not give you the ultimate and everlasting happiness. As famous author Mark Twain once said “Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.”

So let’s look at the consumer culture we have. It is continually bombarding us with the message through advertisements and fashion shows that materialism will make us happy.

Materialism makes the desire for Louis Vuitton bag even more. It makes you want to own the newest yet expensive Nokia WIFI phone. All these make you go on an open-ended course of dreaming for a luxurious lifestyle to maintain a level of acquisition equal to those of your acquaintance, setting up a social strata based on material goods. In my opinion, this pressure can also lead to relationship troubles and other associated problems.

To add on to the problems, we have a ruling party which focuses so much on material wealth. Material inducement such as HDB’s upgrading programme with S$180m for Potong Pasir and Hougang, and distribution of progress package “ang pows”, is the weapon they use to entice Singaporeans to vote for them.

Earlier this year, they announced a ministerial pay hike to woo more talents into the government. The leaders seemed to believe that all problems will be solved with money. How can they be so sure that the next generation of million-dollar ministers will not there just for the sake of high salaries? Won’t the government run a risk of attracting materialistic and self-serving talents who will not work for the people who voted them in?

Those who are courageous to devote or sacrifice themselves for their country, their belief or their idea are absolutely not driven by materialistic consideration. It is a kind of spiritual condition in the human nature and we have to enhance such a feeling through education and daily accumulation.

Materialism is bad for the soul. With the consumer culture so focused on materialism, there is a need to re-balance. We must seriously curb the increasing desire for material wealth. The mainstream media should not constantly glorify materialism and sensual gratifications in the form of branded products, fashion, jewellery and fine dining. And the government, together with the mainstream media, should take the lead in creating a society which is more concerned with spiritual, intellectual, or cultural values. Remember the familiar phrase which our esteemed leaders coined – it’s a nation-building effort for our future generations.

Citizen Paparazzi on Stomp

Citizen paparazzi is not a new concept to this modern world of ours. In Singapore, we now have Stomp, a citizen journalism platform created by Singapore Press Holdings, possibly with the hope of getting more Singaporeans to get more involved in Singapore’s current affairs.

However, it seemed that it has deviated from its original aim. One look on the webpages of Stomp, you will notice they are full of colours and juicy news. Perhaps this is one way of getting more traffic into their website and generating more advertisement revenue while letting netizens to engage in some form of active journalism.

In my view, getting more citizens to get involved in current affairs of our nation is not the same as allowing a platform for more paparazzi style of journalism where day-in-day-out, you see people uploading photos of interesting happenings in Singapore, describing crime scenes in great details, or maybe talking about girls. Can this really help the society to progress? I think not.

Instead, Stomp should really consider taking up an active role in getting more netizens to voice their views and perhaps organise real-time online debates on real social issues such as poverty, increasing income-gap, human rights etc.

Why should Stomp take the initiative then? The blogosphere we have now is too ‘scattered’ and certainly does not have a huge financial backing like SPH. Writing letters to Straits Times can sometimes be too much of a hassle, too formal and might put off the younger generations who might only be interested in short, more adhoc form of discussions.

Let’s put a stop to the apathetic nature of Singaporeans towards current affairs. Proper civic engagement can really make a vital impact on Singapore.

Rare Article in Newspaper on Opposition

In the weekend edition of the Today newspaper on 15 Sep 2007, there was this article titled "50 years on.. What keeps Workers' Party going?". When I read the headlines, I thought that it might be another article to highlight the strengths of the PAP and weaknesses of the opposition parties in general. But I was wrong. Although in the first paragraph the journalist praised the ruling party for creating an economic miracle, the following paragraphs totally caught me by surprise.

The rest of the paragraphs described the history of Workers’ Party throughout the short history of Singapore. Few items caught my eye:

The title -"50 years on.. What keeps Workers' Party going?" seem to suggest that the party is able to withstand the constant onslaught from the PAP and being 50-year old, it is a party which is wise, experienced and still popular among Singaporeans.

“One exception was the WP's call for a "caring society" in the 1980s, which offered Singaporeans an alternative policy.” and “But even this platform was somewhat usurped by the PAP Government when then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong took the reins in 1990 and unveiled a vision for a "gracious society". – Isn’t this phrase suggesting that the ruling party ‘stole’ the Workers’ Party’s manifesto?

“That means working the ground — Mr Low reportedly attends as many funerals as he can in Hougang — and convincing the constituents that its members can do as good a job, if not better than, their PAP counterparts in running an estate and helping them solve their municipal problems through non-governmental means.” – Why is the media giving the WP free advertisement, telling the public that WP is a party with ‘human touch’?

In my opinion, the media, on the government’s behalf, is probably trying to show to the world that Singapore is a true multi-party democracy and not entirely dominated by the PAP. This is probably due to the recent exclusion of Singapore from the Global Club of Democracies. Also, the timing of this article further confirmed my suspicion. As WP’s 50-year anniversary is still almost 2 months from now, why must the media publish this article now and not closer to their anniversary to make it even more relevant? Or is the media really going to be more balanced now?