Category: Journalism.SG

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CHERIAN GEORGE

August 15th, 2011

Lee Hsien Loong has called for online spaces where Singaporeans and the government can engage in more balanced, open and rational debate on issues. In the Prime Minister’s National Day Rally speech, he noted the prevalence of “cowboy towns” in cyberspace, circulating “ridiculous untruths”.

“But there must be places… where people recognise … are reliable, where you can have a open debate, where different views are expressed, but it’s balanced, and if you go there you know that, well, to start off with you can assume that it will make some sense,” he said.

He did not say how such spaces could form, or whether the government intended to create or facilitate such sites. Until recently, it has been pushing its official feedback portal, REACH, as the best place for citizens to engage the government. Last night, however, Lee made no mention of REACH, perhaps acknowledging that no official site can counteract the anti-government storm in cyberspace.

Mainstream news organisations should have a better chance at creating neutral, moderated forums. They start off with significant advantages, including the largest audience base and the resources to manage such sites professionally. But their success at creating credible online discussion platforms will depend on how much freedom they are granted by the government. Netizens are not likely to forget how Today axed Mr Brown as a columnist after the government voiced its displeasure at one of his pieces.

The most effective solution would be bottom-up projects, created independently by established bloggers with street-cred. Could Singapore’s socio-political bloggers, for so long seen as a thorn in the government’s side, be the answer to the PM’s prayers?

The idea is not as far-fetched as it may seem. Privately, several independent bloggers have voiced unease at the ugly mob behaviour that swamped cyberspace during the general election. The experience has sparked internal discussions about how best to manage readers’ comments, in particular, since that’s where irrationality has run riot.

There are also established bloggers who are no longer content to converse only among the converted. They want to widen the online debate so that it does not attract only anti-government voices. (I’ve made a similar point in an earlier piece.)

Don’t be surprised, therefore, if you see some of Singapore’s influential independent bloggers creating new platforms for national debate in the coming months, either by developing new websites or by reorienting their existing ones.

But even if they build them, will government sympathisers and spokesmen come? One thing that will have to change is the PAP’s politics of intolerance, which has contributed to the polarisation of debate in Singapore. Its “with-us-or-against-us” philosophy has kept establishment types away from pluralistic spaces. (The classic illustration was the PAP’s refusal to take part in The Online Citizen’s multi-party forum before the general election.)

For example, the typical establishment individual would probably refuse to contribute an article to an independent medium that also carries opposition party voices. In Singapore’s political culture, he would assume that any such medium would be blacklisted by people at the top, and that anyone who participates risks being tainted by association. Or, perhaps it is simply that most establishment spokesmen lack the confidence to engage in debate on a truly level playing field.

So allergic has the establishment been to bloggers that, as recently as 2009, public universities were compelled to distance themselves from a workshop organised to promote responsible blogging, originally planned with their support.

Thus, PM Lee’s wish for open, balanced and reasonable online spaces requires a cultural change on the part of the establishment as well. The government will need to find within itself the capacity to respect the role of independent websites as convenors of Singapore’s online politics.

Unedited transcript from PM’s National Day Rally speech:

Engagement online, I think we need to learn to do it better. It’s not easy to do, but it’s important because the digital media is continuing to grow in importance. Five years ago, Youtube was insignificant. Facebook didn’t exist. All you had was Mr Brown. Today, Mr Brown has a lot of competition. We in government have a lot of competition, and we have to be able to operate in that space.

It’s not easy because it’s anonymous, it’s chaotic, it’s unfiltered, unmoderated, and so the medium lends itself to many negative views and ridiculous untruths. Any number of them. I won’t repeat one because otherwise you may misunderstand and think it’s true. But if you just open at random you will see them.

And we have to do our best to counter this, to prevent untruths from circulating and being repeated 5, 10, 20 times, from leading people astray, and after a while, you’ve heard it so often, you can’t remember where you saw it, but it must be true; but it’s not.

So our ministers have to get better at this and you know many ministers are blogging now, Facebook; and they have to communicate in a different medium, and convey nuance poiicy, intentions, explanations, in a more personal way, engaging people. But it’s not just the ministers, the government as a whole has to be more active and adept, engaging Singaporeans online.

We can’t be in every corner of cyberspace because there are a lot of cowboy towns out there. But there must be places which grow where people recognise that these are places which are reliable, where you can have a open debate, where different views are expressed, but it’s balanced, and if you go there you know that, well, to start off with you can assume that it will make some sense. Whether it’s right or wrong, we have to consider but it’s not rubbish.

So we’ve got to get there, be in cyberspace and use it constructively to explain issues, to shape opinions, to rally support, and to make Singapore work better.

August 12th, 2011

The law on contempt of court has been clarified by the Court of Appeal in the recent Alan Shadrake case, according to the July 2011 issue of Inter Se, a publication of the Singapore Academy of Law. One issue that the court discussed is what test to apply when deciding whether there has been contempt.

The most liberal jurisdictions, such as the United States, use the “clear and present danger” test, which outlaws only the most extreme speech. At the other extreme, judges could apply the “inherent tendency” test, finding someone in contempt even when there is only a remote, fanciful possibility that his words may undermine public confidence in the administration of justice. Until recently, the “inherent tendency” test was used in Singapore.

Writing in Inter Se, justice law clerks Justin Yeo and Calvin Liang note that in the Shadrake case, the Court of Appeal avoided either extreme and instead went for the “real risk” test, whereby “the court concerned must make an objective decision as to whether or not that particular statement would undermine public confidence in the administration of justice, as assessed by the effect of the impugned statement on the average reasonable person.”

Shadrake was judged to have scandalised the court in his book, Once a Jolly Hangman. Although the Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal, it differed from some of the High Court’s findings and clarified the “real risk” test.

Contempt of court is a common law offence, but it is currently being drafted into the statute books. Professor Kevin Tan, interviewed by Inter Se, said that legislation is “a good way to go” and hoped that a “real likelihood” test would be inserted into the Bill: “In other words, the words uttered or written should have a real likelihood of bringing the courts into disrepute or challenging its independence.”

Contempt of court, together with defamation, are the laws that most frequently ensnare the media and other commentators in Singapore.

August 3rd, 2011

A group of countries and international NGOs is launching the Open Government Partnership, “a new multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance”.

To become a member of OGP, countries must adopt an “Open Government Declaration”,  develop a national action plan, and commit to independent reporting on their progress.

Governments must also exhibit a commitment to open government in four key areas. Any government can join OGP at any time once they have demonstrated that they meet these minimum criteria. Based on these criteria, 79 countries are said to qualify already for membership. Singapore is not yet on the list.

The four criteria are:

1. Fiscal Transparency

The timely publication of essential budget documents forms the basic building blocks of budget accountability and an open budget system.

2. Access to Information

An access to information law that guarantees the public’s right to information and access to government data is essential to the spirit and practice of open government.

3. Disclosures Related to Elected or Senior Public Officials

Rules that require public disclosure of income and assets for elected and senior public officials are essential to anti-corruption and open, accountable government.

4. Citizen Engagement

Open Government requires openness to citizen participation and engagement in policymaking and governance, including basic protections for civil liberties.

The initiative was announced in Washington DC last month and will be formally inaugurated in September.

“Rather than seeing citizens and civil society groups as competitors, governments from the North and South asserted that private actors, commercial and non-profit, are essential partners in solving complex social problems. And this requires a new social contract, a shift from eGov to WeGov,” writes Aleem Walji in his World Bank blog.

by

CYRIL PEREIRA

July 21st, 2011

What started as a damage-limitation fire-fight for Rupert on his News of the World (NoW) tabloid, has in two short weeks turned British politicians into a frenzied attack pack, shot the two top policemen at Scotland Yard, scythed his closest lieutenants, split his family and tarnished his legacy.

It all crumbled suddenly. Rupert looked worn, out-of-touch and isolated – to await the modern equivalent of a very British beheading. The last British monarch tried and axed by Parliament was Charles I in 1649 – accused of treason for warring Parliament to pursue personal interest above the good of England. There is déjà vu in the current drama for uncrowned King Rupert. His tabloids goosed British Royalty too.

The charge against Charles I read in part the “wicked designs and evil practices of him, the said Charles Stuart, have been, and are carried on for the advancement and upholding of a personal interest of will, power, and pretended prerogative to himself and his family, against the public interest, common right, liberty, justice, and peace of the people of this nation.”

In his imperious initial response, Rupert told Parliament he was too busy to attend their hearing till August! But the previously cowed politicians having lost their terror of Murdoch, dispatched the Serjeant-at-Arms to deliver the summons at his Wapping HQ. His diary found space for Parliament.

Up till the 7th of July, Rupert Murdoch was the man believed to have the power to make and unmake governments in the UK and Australia. He could call on and trade favours with prime ministers, presidents and politicians across the globe. He was never shy to leverage undue influence. He answered to no one. He was above and beyond politicians and parliaments.

In America his Fox News network polarized politics, championed the Iraq war and amplified extreme right wing agendas. It played fast and loose with the lie that Barack Obama was a Muslim and born outside the United States – the latter if true, could disqualify him from the presidency.

The televised British Parliamentary hearing of three hours yielded no admission of prior knowledge, approval or complicity in phone-hacking and payments to the police. A grim faced Rupert declared it as the “humblest day of my life”. He was not responsible for what happened at the NoW. He was betrayed by people he trusted.

James rested the company’s passivity on the closed police inquiry of assistant commissioner John Yates (resigned this week), clearance from the toothless Press Complaints Commission (declared by the PM to be soon replaced) and News Corp’s own internal inquiry of 2007 led by Les Hinton and Rebekah Wade (both resigned this week) which concluded that a rogue reporter was at fault.

Geoffrey Robertson QC, who in 2009 called for editors to quit the PCC said:“The PCC is a confidence trick that has ceased to inspire confidence – other countries which respect free speech have statutory ‘press ombudspersons’ who adjudicate public complaints, direct retractions and compensation, enforce rights of reply and monitor ethical standards. “

When the captain of the ship, first and second officers all declare they were unaware of phone-hacking and payments to the police, one wonders who then was on the bridge? Who made the rules, who defined the parameters, who called the shots? All three pleaded ignorance and absolved themselves of responsibility.

News Corporation is a tight ship. It monitors revenues, profits and losses across all business units, on a weekly basis like clockwork. Rupert speaks to his principal CEOs at least once a week. Any threat to the organization would have been flagged up immediately for guidance from The Boss.

The plea of ignorance just does not wash. Rupert is the last man on whom the label ‘lax’ can be pinned. At the hearing he even sought to pose as an ethical and upright media leader who believed phone-hacking and payments to police to be “wrong”, thumping the table repeatedly for emphasis.

Out of the blue and out of context, he commented on the salaries paid to ministers in the Singapore government as the reason it remains the most corruption-free State globally. It was not clear whether he was implying that salaries of British MPs or Metropolitan police (or both) should be reviewed to prevent them falling prey to expenses fiddling and tabloid back-handers.

The salaries, bonuses and pay-revisions PAP ministers accorded themselves was a moot point in the recent elections which left significant sections of its society unimpressed and displeased. Some wondered if the once noble aspiration to serve society has been debased by crass commercial rewards. Many asked why ministerial failures did not result in dismissal as they would in business.

By any measure of leadership accountability, Rupert and James should be up for summary dismissal by News Corporation for gross negligence and dereliction of duty if nothing else.

News Corporation even with the ‘Murdoch Discount’ is valued at US$41billion. A corporation so large, in the business of news and spanning the globe, cannot be left in the clutch of such ineptitude at the very top. The News Corporation board itself seems to be a creature of Rupert, unable and unwilling so far to act decisively. Nell Minnow, of Governance-Metrics International describes it as the “ultimate crony board”.

One is reminded of the pathetic performance of BP CEO Tony Hayward at the US Senate hearings on the Gulf of Mexico oil rig disaster. BP employed 90,000 staff globally. Tony Hayward denied awareness of the cost-cutting obsessions which compromised safety standards across the company. He did not know who approved such dangerous compromises and how such risky operations at sea were supervised. Perhaps he too was betrayed by the people he trusted?

Two high profile CEOs of high profile global corporations, both clueless when internal malpractice explodes into world news? Such lame excuses are unacceptable from corporate chiefs and political leaders. They are given too much power over people, resources and policy to be allowed to slither away.

How did daily news conferences at NoW consider which stories to pursue and which to make the front page? Did the private detectives employed report to the editor? If such authority was delegated, who then authorized the phone-hacking? Who passed payments to police contacts? Who signed off?

The hearing was no wiser after three hours of the Murdochs.

While he held forth at public forums about “independence of the press”, Mr Murdoch dictated editorial policy when it mattered to servant-editors at all his newspaper and broadcast properties. He paid well for unquestioning loyalty and got it. The Wall Street Journal this week dashed out an unseemly editorial accusing ‘commercial interests’ of rival media in the UK and USA for lambasting News Corporation. He is dumbing down the WSJ like he dumbed down The Times.

Mr Murdoch espoused no particular political ideology. Some might call it a lack of principles. If anything was consistent in his media philosophy, it was profitable opportunism. If that meant pandering to the public appetite for ritual sacrifice of the rich and famous, so be it. If that meant offering a megaphone to Christian fanatics of America’s Bible belt and the kooky Tea Party wing of the Republicans, he would oblige. If bare breasts and titillation will outsell rival tabloids, fine.

Mr Murdoch stakes out and dominates spaces squeamish publishers avoid. Did he have anything in common with the politics and politicians his media championed? Or empathy for the lives and reputations of individuals and families his tabloid press destroyed? No. It’s just business. Nothing personal.

It was all about astute market positioning with Fox News in America and unbridled tabloid terrorism in the UK. Other publishers just did not have the stomach for this level of sustained crudity.

The pressure to meet a daily strike rate on scandals and denouements made his UK tabloid editors slide beyond legality into allegedly criminal practices now being more thoroughly investigated by the Met and Parliament. NoW or The Sun were not alone in this. Phone-hacking and payoffs to police are alleged to be widely practiced by all the tabloids.

All of this raises existential questions about the un-wisdom of allowing such media ownership concentration and the urgent need to: quarantine media from politicians, government and Big Business; protect citizens from intrusive paparazzi and privacy invasion; establish a press ombudsman with real statutory powers, and hold editors accountable for sins of commission and omission.

– Cyril Pereira is an independent media consultant based in Hong Kong. He advises CEOs and implements a variety of projects across ASEAN and India. He served 15 years with the South China Morning Post as Director, Newspaper Operations and was Publisher, Asia Magazine. Pereira initiated the annual Asian Publishing Convention (APC) in 2007 of which he is co-chair. It completed its 5th cycle in Bangkok early July.

by

CYRIL PEREIRA

July 18th, 2011

Asked what his priority was upon arrival in London to take charge of the unraveling of his UK newspaper, News of the World (NoW), Mr Murdoch pointed to his red haired CEO of News International, saying “Her”.

That gave the game away. Rebekah Wade (before she became Mrs Brooks) was editor of the NoW when much of the celebrity phone-hacking and cheque-book journalism scandal was rampant. She was promoted to CEO by Rupert. She was in charge of the internal investigation that declared it to be the work of one rogue reporter. Some charitable commentators speculate that Rebekah Wade was covering up the scandals from the chairman who knew nothing.

Anyone familiar with how the Murdoch organization works will know that nothing of significance is allowed to happen in any part of the global empire without direct approval of The Boss. None of his minions dare risk any initiative without express permission. After securing that, they gloat over lesser minions in turn, ordering them to charge up whichever hill.

Rebekah Wade knows too much of how high up the phone-hacking, pay-offs to police and hush money to victims was sanctioned. At the Parliamentary hearing will she confess? She has stood steadfast so far, denying any knowledge of these shenanigans. But if she were subsequently to be charged for complicity in criminal activity, will she spill the beans on her boss?

Mr Murdoch is a master of realpolitik and the mesmerizing power of money. He knows only too clearly where his priority lies in this case. Will Rebekah Wade endure a term in prison with her trap shut, like Andy Coulson before her? Let us watch this morality play unfold.

Loyalty more than competence, is prized highly in family businesses. It plays to the insecurity of the owners. At News Corporation that is worth gold.

How did NoW & The Sun hold such influence in the digi-logue era?

Ingrained in the British polity is a free press pride of mythic proportions. Mr Murdoch converted that to a license to print money by feeding the prurient and voyeuristic instincts of society. British institutional reluctance to interfere with the mechanics of a rigorous press worked to his advantage. Using this fig-leaf of press freedom, his gutter press outreached.

“Give the people what they want” was his amoral justification for a diet of boobs on Page 3 of The Sun and lurid sexual peccadillos of politicians and celebrities across NoW pages. Mr Murdoch’s low opinion of his readers is amply summed-up by a former managing director: “Most people are like sheep. Let’s shear them.”

Often innuendo was enough to ruin careers and reputations. It sold his newspapers vigorously ahead of his more inhibited rivals. Neither Mr Murdoch nor his editors cared about the lives they broke. They never let facts get in the way of a good story. An editorial fund to pay off victims who initiate libel suits was just a cost of doing business.

To keep up a daily menu of startling disclosures year after year for this cynical publishing formula, required stretching beyond court hearings and crime beats (available to all newspapers). It required hacking into private telephone conversations, voicemails, sms plus paying sleuths to steal confidential banking and hospital records.

This yielded rich dividends for the Murdoch papers. They were never short of saucy leads, embarrassing photographs or helpless victims. They ‘scooped’ the competition routinely.

The other tabloid rivals have shown remarkable restraint in not putting the boot into the Murdoch press. There is widespread suspicion that they are also guilty of phone-tapping and payments to police. Parliamentarians are calling for a comprehensive investigation into the links between the police, tabloids and the shadowy world of private detectives.

The toothless Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has again been unmasked as an utterly ineffective entity created not to self-regulate but to block independent investigation of errant members. Following the current NoW controversy, Parliament has pledged to scrap the PCC and replace it with a body independent of both the newspaper industry and government.

Digital disruption of News monopolies

The dominance of NoW and The Sun in the UK is all the more remarkable when elsewhere the Internet, Blogs, Facebook and Twitter have evolved a dynamic eco-system of crowd-sourced, realtime, instantaneous horizontal distribution of news, views, opinion and debate.

It was Dr Indrajit Banerjee, a Director at UNESCO in Paris who coined the term “Digi-logue” to describe converging analogue and digital technologies and content flows. His point was that the established academic ways to map, study and analyze Press, TV, Radio & Online channels as parallel communication need to be radically re-framed to make sense of the new realities. The boundaries are blurred and new possibilities are enabled.

Dr Andrew Taussig and I were privileged to be invited to address the Plenary session he chaired at the recent AMIC Conference in Hyderabad – on precisely this phenomenon.

For near 200 years newspapers perfected a super-efficient cycle of news production and mass distribution in a controlled, linear process with the editor at the centre. The editor decided what will be printed and how the story will be told. More importantly, he decided what will NOT be printed and which stories will NOT be told.

The true power of the press was its ability to hide critical matters from public knowledge. Authoritarian governments and Big Business leveraged compliant editors to mislead the public.

The digi-logue environment has broken that stranglehold on news and opinion which mainstream press and TV enjoyed. Tweets from Sohaib Athar in Abbottabad:“A huge window-shaking bang here in Abottabad…I hope it’s not the start of something nasty” was the first indication of the remarkable American raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout which left the Pakistani military clueless even after the helicopters left with his body. No reporter was there to file the story.

Nic Newman of The Reuters Institute at Oxford University says that Twitterers are “influencers”. “The audience isn’t on Twitter but the news is on Twitter”. Celebrities and politicians now regularly tweet their daily meetings and travels with a growing fan network. Sashi Tharoor, former UN Under-Secretary General and later junior minister in India’s Foreign Ministry, got into trouble for his tweets on meetings with foreign dignitaries and for lamenting travelling ‘cattle-class’ to conform to the Congress Party’s strictures on public travel for MPs.

Alternative media compensate for discredited mainstream media

Closer to home, Singapore’s recent elections and the ongoing Malaysian politics demonstrate the far reaching effects of social media, mobile communications and the Internet as citizens initiate, share, query and distribute information virally to groups and individuals without the agency of mainstream press or TV.

This is having interesting effects on the behaviour of journalists, editors and politicians. Mainstream press which once dismissed Bloggers out of hand, now follows the established ones closely to track the cyberchatter of posts and counter-posts. They quote Bloggers in press reports. The Malaysian government has invited Bloggers to press conferences. Dr Tony Tan bidding for Presidential elections in Singapore, announced his decision on a Blogging platform to reach young voters.

Governments and their intelligence agencies are vigilantly tracking cyberchatter for clues to political sentiment and the public will. The Chinese government is particularly adept at this silent eavesdropping. It has resulted in delayed statements from the Prime Minister to address public anger about rising food prices and unaffordable housing.

This crowd-sourced feedback bypasses the inefficient and unreliable network of spies and informers who filter intelligence for their political masters. In some ways this is an amplified, authentic mirror of public sentiment to governments which hopefully will reduce misbehaviour of the power structure.

What are the lessons for the business of News?

It is all out there. The news process is becoming a ‘curation’ of content from formal, informal and co-opted amateur sources on mobile phones, You Tube, Facebook and Twitter. Trusted brands have an advantage in credibility on all platforms which consumers access at different times of the day, from home to office and back. The people, formerly known as the audience, now participate in the process of news creation, sharing and verification.

Digital distribution of rich media blurs the previous distinction between printed, online and broadcast channels. News producers have to become multimedia orchestrators for consumers who want to read, see, hear and experience news. Tablet publishing is the first such integrated rich-media platform for busy citizens on the go.

The garden variety reporter will be useless. Domain experts who comment, analyze and contextualize news will be needed to add value to content. News will be channel agnostic.

Dependency on advertising will diminish as news businesses find new revenue streams from consumers, brands and transactions.

– Cyril Pereira is an independent media consultant based in Hong Kong. He advises CEOs and implements a variety of projects across ASEAN and India. He served 15 years with the South China Morning Post as Director, Newspaper Operations and was Publisher, Asia Magazine. Pereira initiated the annual Asian Publishing Convention (APC) in 2007 of which he is co-chair. It completed its 5th cycle in Bangkok early July.

by

CHERIAN GEORGE

June 23rd, 2011

Citizen journalism in Singapore appears to have made a major breakthrough, with the Tony Tan Campaign for President inviting some of the country’s most influential political bloggers to its press conference announcing his candidature this morning. Along with mainstream media reporters, The Online Citizen and Lee “Mr Brown” Kin Mun were also at the Elections Department to witness Tan pick up his eligibility forms. For a change, independent websites did not have to pick up the intelligence through backdoor channels, or need to gatecrash the event. TOC, Mr Brown, Leong Sze Hian and other bloggers received the information from Tan’s office yesterday and honoured the embargo on the news.

After coming face to face with the presidential hopeful, the persistently irreverent Mr Brown tweeted, “Dr Tony Tan not only has presidential hair, he has really good skin.” At the press conference, TOC lived up to its progressive values by asking Tan for his views on the use of defamation law against critics, and on the exercise of the presidential pardon in death penalty cases. Leong, Singapore’s most numerate citizen journalist, asked Tan how much money he stood to lose by giving up his GIC and SPH posts.

I am told that Tony Tan’s aides decided on yesterday’s invitation list independently; it was not orchestrated out of the Istana. But as the presumptive government-endorsed candidate, Tan’s move could become a landmark in relations between the state and Singapore’s intrepid and often unruly alternative online media. Until now, the government has refused to treat any of these sites as engaging in bona fide journalism. Bloggers have long complained that government departments do not respond to requests for information. When The Online Citizen organised a pre-election forum for all political parties to share their ideas last December, the People’s Action Party would have nothing to do with it. TOC highlighted the ruling party’s conspicuous absence by leaving an empty chair on stage. The election regulations’ ban on campaigning on the “cooling off” day and polling day also discriminate against citizen journalism: only licenced news organisations are exempted.

The decision by the Tony Tan Campaign to loop-in bloggers is undoubtedly one result of May’s groundbreaking general election. Online media were obviously influential, and sections of the establishment may have decided that they have no choice but to do business with them. Tony Tan’s likely challengers, Tan Cheng Bock and Tan Kin Lian, have lost no time in courting alternative media coverage.

If the government were to follow the presidential hopefuls’ example, it would be a calculated risk. While officials probably still can’t stand TOC’s guts, such sites represent the more rational and reasonable end of the ideological spectrum in cyberspace. TOC, together with Alex Au’s Yawning Bread and some other individual blogs, have been noticeably pushing for more credible online journalism within their extremely limited means.

Most importantly, they have shown some commitment to accountability. They operate openly rather than behind cloaks of pseudonymity, they are not above correcting factual errors when these are pointed out to them, and they practice either pre- or post-moderation of comments to keep discussions within certain bounds. Of course, if government wants an echo chamber, it will remain bitterly disappointed by the alternative media. If, however, the goal is to divert some of the cyber chatter from flowing underground and into the gutter, it makes eminent sense to start taking Singapore’s more serious citizen journalists more seriously. Even if they are not as experienced as professional journalists and lack the reach of mainstream media, they can at least be treated as unusually engaged members of the Singapore family. This message was not lost on TOC, which posted on Facebook, “Foreign press not invited to Dr Tony Tan’s press conference. TOC is.”

This morning’s move is something of a leap of faith. Assuming it is not a one-off and is instead a sign of things to come, there are bound to be teething problems. Each side will probably start off with unrealistically high expectations of the other. If these expectations are not moderated, the experiment could end prematurely and sullenly. Bloggers will have to understand that the huge and complex machinery of government is not going to transform itself overnight. Indeed, a blogger-friendly media engagement policy is probably easier to implement for a small and discrete Presidential Election campaign office than it would be for any government ministry.

On the establishment’s part, officials need to be clear that the success of the experiment cannot be measured by how quickly bloggers and their readers are led to the “right” answers or to a “consensus”, but by the inclusiveness and civility of the conversation: as long as more and more people are trying to persuade one another – rather than ignoring or shouting down one another – such engagement between government and alternative media would be strengthening Singapore’s governance and civic life.

May 12th, 2011

Writer Catherine Lim, famed for feeling the pulse of Singapore’s political culture and getting under the skin of the PAP, predicts that the 2011 General Election will force changes to the way the ruling party manages dissent. She doesn’t see the party divert drastically from the conciliatory tone that it ended the campaign with. “Neither the people nor the opposition would allow that. For by now, this promise must have sunk enough in the minds of a newly defiant electorate for them to protest as soon as they see it is not being kept. … Prediction: the most feared, most infamous instrument of PAP control—the defamation suit against political opponents—will be a thing of the past, fading away with its regular exponent, Lee Kuan Yew.”

Click here for the full article.

March 21st, 2011

Journalist and citizen media guru Dan Gillmor will be speaking about his new book, Mediactive, at NTU on Monday 28 March. All are welcome.

DAN GILLMOR

MEDIACTIVE: WHY WE SHOULD ALL BE

PARTICIPANTS IN MEDIA, NOT JUST CONSUMERS

Synopsis: We’re in an age of information overload, and too much of what we watch, hear and read is mistaken, deceitful or even dangerous. Yet we can take control and make media serve us – all of us – by being active consumers and participants.

Date: 28 March 2011 Time: 10am – 12noon

Venue: LT 11, Blk NS2, NTU

To register: click here or email siddeeqa@ntu.edu.sg

Gillmor is renowned as probably the first journalist to have a professional blog, while he was a technology writer in Silicon Valley’s San Jose Mercury News. His first book, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People (2004), was highly influential, urging journalists to shift from “lecture” mode to “conversation” mode in their dealings with the public.

On his new book, Mediactive, Gillmor says, “My goal with this project is to help turn passive media consumers into active users — as participants at every step of the process starting with what we read.”

He is so committed to this new way of doing business that the project lives under a Creative Commons licence and can be downloaded freely as a PDF from his website. However, for a more comfortable read, you can pick up a copy of the properly bound book at the book talk.

Gillmor is visiting Singapore next week as a guest of the Temasek Foundation – NTU Asia Journalism Fellowship and the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information.

Next Monday’s book talk is organised by NTU Libraries.