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August 6th, 2007
DOHA – People in Singapore have welcomed the move by Al Jazeera English to secure broadcast rights in the city state. Read the story on gulf-times.com.
– The reporter, DANIEL ONG, is a student at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information on internship in Qatar. He is also a contributor to the Press-pedia section of journalism.sg
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August 2nd, 2007
The poet, William Butler Yeats, once said: “Think like a wise man, but communicate in the language of the people.”
The voices of the people are coming to us in a myriad of ways. Today, Singapore has one of the world’s highest PC, Internet and mobile phone penetration rates. It is noteworthy that our mobile phone penetration rate in May this year hit a high of 109.5%, while household broadband penetration rose from 68.4% in April to 69.2% in the same month.
As technology becomes more advanced, the lines between traditional and non-traditional forms of media are blurring. Movies can be watched in cinemas, on television and over the Internet. News can be obtained from newspapers, radio, TV, Internet and also through SMS, MMS and the Blackberry. Consumers are now in greater control of what they watch, how they watch and when they watch.
Speed of delivery of news also becomes important, particularly in crisis management and communications. In the event of disaster, people inevitably turn to the Internet for the latest breaking news. When the shootings took place at Virginia Tech University on April 16, people were blogging about the incident and posting eyewitness accounts within that same morning, if not the hour. CNN posted a clip taken from the mobile phone of a student who had captured the shooting, while over at the BBC, emails were pouring in from students on campus. One of them came from a student who described how the gunman tried to shoot his way into the classroom. Meanwhile, journalists trawled Internet sites like Facebook to glean more information through the personal pages and memorials of users, sparking off a debate about journalism ethics in online space.
If nothing else, the Virginia Tech massacre brought home the reality of Web 2.0 – the power of social networking sites to inform, communicate and bring people together. Underscoring this is the emergence of the “Prosumer” – a user as well as producer of media content and services – and the whole concept of user-generated content.
Online platforms like YouTube, mySpace and other blogging websites encourage the creation of user-generated content. Closer to home, we have STOMP – the Straits Times Interactive online portal that encourages users to “connect, engage and interact” with other users.
The popularity of YouTube is such that now, it is the fastest growing brand in the world, with 36 million registered users. At its peak, it was registering 1 million new users a month although with competition, this growth has slowed down. Social networking and user-generated content are not phenomena restricted to the English-speaking world. It is a phenomenon that is being repeated the world over. In China, there is Tu-dou – a Chinese version of YouTube. In Japan, the social networking site “Mixi” is red-hot with users.
To put participatory media in perspective, a recent study done by Jupiter Research stated that three quarters of Internet users aged between 18 and 25 are creating or reading user-generated content. Another third of those over age 55 are also participating in user-generated content as well. In Asia, we have close to 400 million Internet users and the number is increasing year on year.
In Singapore alone, out of the 1,723,300 Singaporeans Internet users aged 15 and above, approximately 45% downloaded and uploaded content such as digital photos, games and music in 2004. Around 32% did video streaming downloads.
Beyond generating the 1-minute-just-for-laughs clips one sees so often on YouTube, user-generated content is becoming increasingly sophisticated and targeted. There are now lobby groups for a million causes, and many take it upon themselves to “right this world.” This is the rise of “Citizen Journalism” where the average Joe plays a role in not just reporting the news, but also in setting the news agenda.
In fact, such is the social influence of the new media that traditional media businesses are starting to heed the wake-up calls. In March, BBC inked a deal with YouTube that will see short news and entertainment clips made available on the service. More recently, BBC announced its intention to lay bare the reporting process with a multi-media experiment. It will release a series of behind-the-scenes videos detailing how it compiles its news packages. Unedited footage of interviews and shots for reports will be posted on the Internet along with pages of the reporter’s research notes.
CNN, meanwhile, will partner YouTube to sponsor two presidential debates in the run-up to the US presidential elections next year. The two forums will feature video questions submitted to YouTube. These will then be broadcast and answered by the candidates live on CNN.
What will this mean to you as professionals in the PR and communications industry?
For starters, the new media space has created many more platforms for communication. For communicators, there is tremendous opportunity in harnessing this multiplicity to package and niche-cast information for targeted audiences.
Citizen journalists and media content developers will have more ways to spread their messages than before; and the growing new media channels will only increase their influence and fuel their creativity further.
The dynamics of trust – probably the most vital element in the business of Public Relationships – has changed dramatically today. The wired generation puts more faith in the collective wisdom of crowds online, such as that found in aggregated blogs and online forums, than on isolated voices in traditional media.
Users are blogging about their life experiences – and this sometimes includes experiences with products and services. They are forming online communities – and sometimes, this means the accidental formation of groups with common product or service consumption patterns.
It is not surprising that our local blogosphere has also seen a corresponding growth in figures. According to a news report in Straits Times’ Digital Life, there are now 862,000 bloggers in Singapore who engage in social discussions online, compared to 502,000 last year.
This next generation of users can be described as technically competent and savvy in creating content, marketing it – and themselves – online; linking to other individuals and corporations; forming communities; creating influence; and, making their voices heard.
It is interesting to note how a local web start-up has started a service, called Shared Copy, that enables visitors to leave comments as they surf the web. Think of it as sign-postings or scribbles on the wall that others can call-up when they are on a particular webpage that has been marked on. While, from a technical perspective, all this will do is change the way others behave on websites, think of the potential impact that user-generated notes can have on the corporate websites and reputations of your clients and organizations!
The volume and diversity of online conversations will also lead to multiple niche communities that cannot be reached or engaged through traditional PR tactics like press releases or even conventional advertising.
While this poses a challenge to PR practitioners, it also creates a tremendous opportunity which can work for, or against you. You have a mandate to understand them before they become mainstream; and to use them strategically and responsibly in the interest of the organizations you represent, as well as customers and other stakeholders.
Let me give you an example of how online platforms can be used to spread your marketing message and broaden your target audience reach: Between March and April this year, we launched an innovative and successful public initiative called Hi-Def Showtime to bring the High-Definition TV experience closer to the community.
The first competition of its kind in Singapore, Hi-Def Showtime presented participants with the challenge of promoting HD technology through a creative routine. The clips were filmed in HD and shortlisted clips were subsequently posted online for the public to vote for their favourite clips.
Over six weeks, an astonishing total of some 416,400 votes were received. The contest clearly struck a chord with the community and the online medium offered an easy and instantaneous way to engage public interest.
The new media consumption habits and the rise of citizen journalism present fresh challenges for regulators. Where do we draw the line between freedom of expression and the responsibility of creation? Even as we encourage technological advancement and the involvement of the people, the regulator also has the responsibility to protect minors from harmful content.
At MDA, we realize that it is futile to fight the onslaught of the new media and “prosumerismâ€. In fact, we don’t want to because we see the positive effects of prosumerism. It provides a good way for the people to become socially aware and engaged in the concerns of society. It is also the most effective platform to reach out to the younger crowd. Some of our politicians have been writing blogs and engaging in candid cyberspace talk with their constituents.
So how do we harness the potential of new media while safeguarding our values and protecting public interest? On the policy front, our response has been to put forward a class license framework. This is a licensing scheme that needs no prior approval or application, and automatically deems content providers of Internet, 3G and other new media service to be licensed, while requiring that they comply with certain content conditions.
In Singapore, our focus is on content that is harmful to minors or offends racial or religious sensitivities. As long as these issues are not encroached upon, we regulate these media forms with a “light touch” — whether the content is generated by Prosumers or professional content providers. This pragmatic approach allows room for people to engage and experiment and ultimately, contribute to a more creative and innovative society. At the same time, we co-regulate with the industry by encouraging our players to be responsible by setting standards and drawing up their own codes of practice.
Equally important is the need to educate our people on the opportunities and pitfalls of new media, to help them to be able to discern and consume media critically and to participate responsibly. In the past year, we have worked with partners from the people, private and public organizations to organize close to a hundred media education campaigns that reached out to nearly 5% of our population. But clearly, more needs to be done.
Recently, the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts set up the Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society or AIMS to study and advise the Government on the long-term social, ethical, legal and regulatory implications of the new media.
And to complement AIMS, both MICA and MDA have also established the Internet and Media Advisory Committee to provide advice on media literacy policies, issues and programmes. The committee, comprising members of the public and private sectors, encourages Singaporeans to use new media for work, learning and play in a responsible and discerning manner.
It is apparent that the media landscape has changed drastically and irrevocably. With the rise of Citizen Journalism, companies and individuals have to navigate a business landscape that is far more transparent, and often, a lot more tricky.
In this environment, shoddy customer service now risk harsh criticisms on blogs and online forums where electronic word-of-mouth transmission is a powerful tool in spreading news; where disgruntled employees can very easily start a blog to lash out against their employers.
Your organizations, your clients and even your vendors are, more than ever, subject to the scrutiny, demands and whims of an empowered and “always on, always connected” public. And the work that you do – “managing relationships through effective and strategic communication” – has become far more complex and more vital today.
Remember that your role and skills as communicators and influencers bring with it an increased responsibility to abide by higher standards of transparency and honesty. And the fact that you are intimately in touch with customers and stakeholders puts you in a position to offer much more valuable counsel to the orgnisations that you work for or with.
Because you help organisations build trust with the public, you hold a very important role, not only to businesses, but also to customers and to society at large. Just as organizations depend on you to communicate their goals and plans, their stakeholders look to you to create a trusted platform for that communication and to ensure that their voices and feedback are heard as well.
Let me conclude with a quote by the noted American journalist, Edward R Murrow:
“The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it.”
I wish you well as you continue your journey in learning this exciting aspect of the media landscape. And I encourage you, in true collaborative spirit of the social and new media, to share that understanding; and together, gain mastery over strategies and tactics that will help you, and the companies you represent, to communicate better.
This article is edited from Dr Christopher Chia’s keynote address at the IPRS Conference on 1 August.
by
July 20th, 2007
Of the types of trade periodicals in Asia (e.g. healthcare, law, energy, aeronautics, chemicals), IT trade magazines probably generate the most revenue and have greatest circulation. Every company either buys IT, or makes it.
By IT trade magazines, I mean free periodicals mailed to IT professionals. The category excludes technology inserts in newspapers and consumer tech and IT magazines, which follow another business model.
The large relative market size of the sector, however, does not seem to imply quality. As a reader of one of these titles, you might learn that:
In other words, there is not much locally-written content that is not like a press release. IT stories coming out of outlets in the Australia, Europe or the U.S., on the other hand, are deeper, sharper and more well-balanced. They are more likely to name and shame bad IT suppliers.
The absence of editorial freedom might seem an obvious cause of the quality problem. But if a genie appeared today and made all evil, tyrannical, money-grubbing publishers vanish, you’d find writers cranking out the same material the next day.
It’s my opinion that compliance has been built into the Asian system, with three forces at work on the editorial team: Soft and hard control, and low career expectations.
Soft control
This is the most widely used, as it creates the least amount of disharmony between parties. A key source of control is the PR organisation. Without publicists, almost all local IT content would disappear from the pages of IT magazines. This co-dependency, of course, leads to mutual back-scratching. Editors who don’t honour the code can find the news tap suddenly turned off.
Asia’s tech writers also awash in gratuities from PR organizations—junkets, lunches, drinks, gifts. In some countries, cash gifts are sent to editors for placing stories and to writers attending press events. It’s also not uncommon for Asian tech journalists to moonlight as publicists and copywriters for the same organisations they are covering.
Multinational publishing firms, with an eye on ethics, have explicit bans on gratuities such as lunches and junkets. The rules are mostly ignored in this region as publishers don’t want to risk offending sponsors with by refusing of a lunch.
There is an interesting business dilemma here. Because vendors spend large sums flying writers to exotic locales, there is less to spend on ads or sponsorships. And why pay for ads when you can buy journalists?
The other source of soft control is the business manager of the publishing company. In the last decade, the pool of available sponsors has shrunk due to supplier consolidation. It would be safe to say that today, roughly 80 percent of publishers’ revenues come from 20 percent of IT suppliers.
The names of these sponsors are made known in any number of office meetings. It would take an especially thick-skinned editor to ignore the implicit directive.
Hard control
IT writers in other parts of the world also receive goodies from vendors and are co-dependent on PR professionals, yet their stories show much more verve and independence. Hard control is one key difference.
In Asia, editors report to a business head—the general manager, publisher, editorial director, or managing editor. This business head hires and fires the top editor.
This is true even of Asian branches of US, European or Australian publishers, even though back home, editors report to a chief editor, who is supposed to make editorial decisions independently, and who may report to an editorial board. I also believe that trade journalists in the West seem to be more protected against dismissal compared with Asia.
Asia editorial heads do not usually report to a global editor. They report to the regional business head, formalising the system of hard control.
Contrary to the stereotype that publishers tell editors what to write, hard control in the form of agenda-setting is rare. It shatters the illusion of editorial independence and the editor loses face in front of staff.
Most times, the business head will drop hints. The consequences of ignoring the hint puts this method firmly in the realm of hard control. But since the editor is usually handpicked by the head of business, hints are enough.
It’s also interesting to note also that Asian publishers are no different from their Western counterparts in citing editorial independence as a virtue they possess in vast amounts. The perception of independence is good for business: It wins reader trust, and sponsors want to ride on that trust.
Low career expectations and standards
True story: To an editor, a publisher hints, in a very roundabout way, that a vendor has a large ad order and hopes journalists will be sent to the press event. The editor gets the message and a reporter is sent. The vendor then cancels the order, saying he’s changed his mind. Angry publisher suddenly drops the veil and tells editor to kill the story.
To save me from any possibility of a libel suit, I should mention that the publishing firm is not based in Singapore.
Low job expectations – that the job is all about writing to please the paymasters, not the reader – leads to a lack of initiative in looking for stories not generated by PR. This leads of more reliance on PR, which leads to more soft control, which leads to even lower expectations.
Solutions
The picture painted thus far may seem bleak, but it’s no bleaker now than it was 10 years ago, when the boom in IT publishing started in tandem with dotcoms. A win-win solution for everyone—publishing firms, PR organisations, journalists and sponsors—will come about if sponsors expect more from publishers.
Transparency
Asian publishers typically balk at the cost of using accredited circulation agencies; a push from sponsors is needed. Circulation is a useful indicator of editorial quality. If readers consider a magazine spam, they will decline to be put on the mailing list.
Marketers should also ask quality-control questions such as: How much content is local and how much is lifted from other sources? How large is the editorial team and what are their roles? What are their qualifications?
Market research
Rather than relying on numbers supplied by publishing firms, marketers could seek independent confirmation of reading preferences. For example, if it becomes apparent than Asia readers prefer U.S. web sites for IT information, marketers could vote with their dollars and advertise on the U.S. sites instead, and make it clear to local publishers that they had better raise their game.
Accountability
It’s my opinion that in recent years, the roles PR (creating goodwill) and marketing (understanding consumers) have changed, at least in the IT industry here in Asia. Both groups are now responsible for new sales—helping the sales division notch up higher numbers.
This is both sad and wasteful. Sad because it has increased the use of soft and hard control, and wasted the talents of PR and marketing people. If a story is run, you can’t tell if it was through good PR or the indiscriminate use of hard control. Any fool can threaten to withdraw sponsorship, burn goodwill, and cause people to quit.
By returning PR, marketing and sales to their original roles, a virtuous chain reaction could result, benefiting everyone.
– John Lui (johnlui@singnet.com.sg) has been a journalist in various IT publications for seven years. He is a freelance writer today.
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July 13th, 2007
The Li Hongyi controversy is another case of Net-induced disclosure of government information. Pre-internet, such an incident would have been confined to coffeeshop talk; mainstream media may have been pressured to suppress it. Nowadays, it’s much harder for the authorities to sidestep the gossip; the pressure is on them to engage it openly.
The result is today’s story in The Straits Times, reporting that the young SAF officer Li Hongyi, incidentally the son of the Prime Minister, had been reprimanded for not following proper procedures when he e-mailed a letter of complaint to several other servicemen. The details have been reported and dissected elsewhere. For media watchers, however, the most interesting aspect of the case are the respective roles played by bloggers, the mainstream media and Mindef.
Li’s email swiftly made its way to the blogosphere. The internet chatter was picked up by The Straits Times, which asked Mindef for a response. Mindef’s public affairs department then issued a statement. ST reported the story today on page H4.
All this seems unremarkable, until one remembers how different things used to be: the government as a whole was stingy with information that it didn’t think the public needed to know, and the SAF was particularly tight-fisted.
In 1991, for example, when an RSAF helicopter crashed and killed four on board, the military was furious with The New Paper for carrying a report that went beyond Mindef’s brief official statement and quoted unnamed “informed sourcesâ€. Nowadays, Mindef is much more forthcoming with details about such incidents.
Netizens probably can’t take all the credit for the changes. Mindef would have probably become more transparent in its handling of majorly bad news with or without the internet. But the internet may be responsible for changes in the way the government handles less life-and-death gossip, such as the Li Hongyi case. With surprising swiftness, such controversies are moving from coffeeshop talk to official statements and public debates.
This trend dates back at least as far back as the Nassim Jade controversy of 1995, when the debate over the Lee family’s discounted condo purchases shot straight from the informal rumour mill to Parliament. This was a sign of things to come. Although the government, thankfully, does not attempt to respond to every online accusation, it does appear to be sensitive to fast-spreading gossip that threatens to erode public trust. And when ordinary citizens are behind the circulation of such gossip, the government is not above fighting it in the best way possible – with more information.
In March this year, second information minister Vivian Balakrishnan noted: “The most potent impact the new media will have on politics is that politicians will find it impossible to lie in the future. The truth will always be out there because somewhere, someone has the facts, or has seen something, and will publish it.â€
He added: “Fortunately for us in Singapore, we have run a clean system, and hence have nothing to hide. That is the key reason we do not fear the new media.†However, even if the government had nothing to hide, it was accustomed to managing the flow of information on its own terms. If the Li Hongyi case had happened 10 years ago, officials may have asked the press to ignore or downplay the story, on the grounds that it was an internal SAF matter. Editors may have been persuaded that it was not a story of real consequence and acceded to the request. In many cases, in the absence of any on-the-record response from the parties concerned, a newspaper would be risking legal action if it went ahead and published rumours.
What’s changed is that bloggers are pre-empting such negotiations and careful decision-making within the establishment. When the information is already “out thereâ€, it changes the calculations of both newsmakers and mainstream media.
However, it would be a mistake for bloggers to get carried away by a misplaced sense of power. Post-internet, Singapore still has the SAF Act and the Official Secrets Act, under which the circulation of Li’s email could quite possibly constitute an offence. As far as we know, the authorities have not addressed this aspect of the case. This restraint on the government’s part is politically wise – but bloggers are by no means immune to legal action in similar cases in the future.
by
July 11th, 2007
A research paper in the Civil Service College publication, Ethos Perspectives (December 2006), provides a window on current thinking within some sectors of the administration.
The new media challenges our current assumptions about citizen engagement in the policy-making process. Blogs as a tool for governance can only be effective if governments can develop the right approach, in the context of its values, environment and vision, for engaging its citizenry. In addition, there is an urgency to review current media policies so that it can address the challenges and opportunities of the new media. Before we are too quick to label new media as the playground of the young and restless, or consider hard-headed measures to harness the power of blogs, we need to better understand the motivations and socio-demographics of bloggers in order to develop a more informed strategy to connect and interact with these netizens.
by
July 10th, 2007
Writing in Today, veteran editor P N Balji argues that newspapers need to practise less government-centric journalism to retain their readers’ interest and fight the trend of falling ad revenue. Read the full column on Today’s website.
So, what are the media managers doing? Opening up new revenue streams by investing overseas, kick-starting alternative media ventures and wooing expatriate readers who are surging into Singapore now that the floodgates have been thrown wide open. But these are slow-burn measures, risky and tentative. What is more important is to relook the kind of news in our media. Today, domestic news coverage has got an over-emphasis on government information, with nearly every item containing a mention of a minister, government policy or view. The end result is that the news gets predictable and even boring, as one group of young Singaporeans said during a focus group discussion.
by
July 3rd, 2007
In one of his final speeches before stepping down as Prime Minister of Britain, Tony Blair held an unflattering mirror up to the press. His widely reported speech (it was reproduced in The Straits Times) is likely to strengthen Singapore leaders in their conviction that press freedom is overrated.
June 28th, 2007
Anwar Ibrahim, the former deputy prime minister of Malaysia turned iconic freedom fighter, spoke on the closing day of the AMIC annual conference in Singapore.
Partial recording of Anwar Ibrahim’s speech
(Apologies for the poor quality of the recording.)Â
by
June 27th, 2007
The need to pursue quality journalism and keep faith with its sources are why The Straits Times will continue to “vigorously resist” pressure to disclose its confidential sources, said its editor Han Fook Kwang. He reiterated that Singapore courts’ recent rulings on the Prebon-BCG case do not change this position.
Han said that the company would back its reporters all the way if they chose to be in contempt of court and risk going to jail in order to abide by the professional ethic to protect their sources.
He revealed that ST had encountered similar demands to reveal sources in the past and had always said no, confronting lawyer’s letter with lawyer’s letter. Usually, the matter ended there without going to court. He said that the Prebon-BCG case was different because the multi-million-dollar stakes meant that the two broking firms were prepared to go all the way.
He explained that ST had exhausted all legal options, but in the end had to leave it to the journalist to decide whether to reveal the source. Whatever the decision, ST would have backed him all the way “legally, financially and professionallyâ€, he said.
On a more positive note, Han emphasised that such cases were extremely rare and the recent setback was no reason for journalists to change their approach to newsgathering.
He was speaking at a forum organised by the Singapore Press Club and the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information (WKWSCI) about the so-called “reporter’s privilege” to keep sources confidential. Other speakers were lawyer Peter Cuthbert Low, Ang Peng Hwa, chair of WKWSCI, and Peter Lim, former editor-in-chief of The Straits Times group.
Peter Lim recounted his own dramatic experience after the 1981 by-elections when, at a specially convened press conference, he was asked to reveal the source of a story on possible bus-fare hikes by the late Ong Teng Cheong, who was then communications minister.
In the subsequent ST report, Lim was quoted as saying that he was proud of his reporters for sticking to principle and refusing to divulge their sources. The quote, Lim said, did not win him any fans in the upper reaches of government.
The legal experts surveyed relevant laws around the world. Ang noted that source confidentiality was never an absolute right but rather an “issue of balance†– courts also had to take into account the interests of justice. Both Ang and Low made it clear that the trend globally was towards greater protection for reporter-source confidentiality, since the ability to gather information was central to the universally recognised right of freedom of expression.
However, do international trends matter, when Singapore constantly asserts that it is an exceptional case? Low noted that so many countries were moving in the same direction that the trend was hard to ignore. Ang added that even the relatively undeveloped “-stans” of the former Soviet Union had stronger recognition of reporter’s privilege in their new constitutions. While Singapore need not have identical laws to the rest of the world, it should not be so far off as to become an outlier, he said.
Han added that while Singapore was a special case in certain other respects – particularly in the kind of relationship it wanted between government and press – the issue of reporter’s privilege was not one of those where Singaporean exceptionalism seemed relevant. The principles were fairly universally accepted and there was a global convergence in thinking, he said.
Newspapers and their sources: The issue of privilege
Straits Times coverage of the Prebon-BGC case by Lee Su Shyan
The dramatic confrontation between government and the Straits Times over an unnamed source – PDFs of the ST reports of the time.
by
June 27th, 2007
While the Internet has opened up unprecedented opportunities for dissent, Singaporeans have not exploited it, said panelists at a media conference yesterday.
“Singaporeans just do not seem to know what to do with it, nor do they seem to care to use this instrument for political ends,” said Arun Mahizhnan and Tan Tarn How from the Institute of Policy Studies. They speculated that this could be a result of a young generation that views democracy in terms of prosperity, stability, security and responsibility rather than “freedoms, rights and political choice”.
Tan added that Singaporeans may not actually feel repressed as Singapore is “a very free society” where people can freely engage in almost anything – besides political activity.
The IPS researchers were part of a panel addressing freedom of digital speech at the 16th annual conference of the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre being held this week.
Fellow panelist Alex Au, a gay rights activist, pointed out that the government’s “light touch†regulation on the Internet had given “unprecedented leeway†to dissent online, but that this has had little impact on Singaporean’s electoral behaviour.
“But no one should be under the illusion that that is all there is to it. The government does carry a big stick behind its back,” Arun added.
The state attempts to “control what is actually controllable” by “narrow[ing] the retaliatory action to those that seriously challenge a principle, or a value that the society cherishes … rather than attack all and sundry offenders.” He cited racial harmony, protection of minors and public decency as examples.
Law professor Tey Tsun Hang from the National University of Singapore agreed that regulation of online media was not as heavy as print media controls, which he described as “sophisticated, calibrated and effectiveâ€.
Arun said this difference in regulation was creating “a sense of schizophreniaâ€. For instance, while the Singaporean blogger Mr Brown, also known as Lee Kin Mun, was allowed to criticise the government online, he was chided when he wrote a similar column in a mainstream media publication Today.
When quizzed by a member of the audience about the future of media regulation in Singapore, all four speakers agreed that it was unlikely that regulation of online media will tighten. However, any evolution will be slow.
“The fairways are getting wider… the OB markers will be reduced in numbers but in certain cases the intensity of the OB markers will remain,†said Arun.
In a separate forum on media law, constitutional law expert Kevin Tan touched on how previous court rulings in Singapore suggested that the “newspaper ruleâ€, which protects journalists from revealing their sources, is not a “sacred cow of journalism that cannot be slaughtered†in Singapore.
As for the Sedition Act, he pointed out that while similar laws in many other parts of the world had become disused or even been repealed, it was recently used against two Singaporean bloggers who made racist remarks online and was even being “strengthened and renewedâ€.
– journalism.sg photo by Lin Junjie.
Tan Tarn How and Arun Mahizhnan
Freedom of Speech in the Digital World — Drawing Boundaries in a Borderless World
Electric Fences and Land Minds: Behind Singapore’s Regulatory Regime
Virtual Insurgencies: Gay Speech on Singapore’s Internet
Recent Developments in Singapore Media Law & Practice
