JOURNALISM.cheriangeorge.net

Category: Thoughts

  • Online freedom: time to revise the Singapore report card

    Online freedom: time to revise the Singapore report card

    For all the thunderclouds and occasional lightning strikes that bloggers faced in Singapore, we at least used to be able to point to one, clear silver lining: Not one political site had been banned in 17 years of “light touch” internet regulation.

    Today, 10 December 2013, that silver lining is officially history.

    Through the government’s clumsy handling of one site that didn’t even pose a serious threat, Singapore has now stumbled into the company of authoritarian regimes that are prepared to outlaw politically inconvenient blogs. Although it could prove to be an unintended anomaly, the Breakfast Network’s death by red tape is nonetheless a landmark event in the brief history of online regulation.

    Of course, there has long been a class licence system and a registration system. And yes, the government always had the legal power to ask ISPs to block any site it chose. But that special treatment was reserved for a symbolic list of pornographic sites, as well as a few extremist religious sites and, most recently, one service that promoted extramarital affairs.

    Singapore’s vibrant ecosystem of socio-political blogs was spared the discretionary licensing regime that has blocked the development of alternative print and broadcast media. Blogs could be punished if what they published broke the law – but they were never expected to persuade regulators that they deserved the right to publish before they were allowed to do so.

    Until today.

    After trying to impose unnecessarily onerous registration requirements on two sites, one of them, Breakfastnetwork.sg, has decided not to comply. The Media Development Authority’s response: “Since Breakfast Network has decided not to submit the registration form, and will therefore not be complying with the registration notification, MDA will require that Breakfast Network cease its online service.“

    Technically, it is not the first time that a site has hit its own kill switch. Sintercom, Singapore’s first online magazine (it would have been called a blog, except that the word had not been invented yet), decided to close down after the government got it to register in 2001. But that registration process was far simpler, and it never reached the stage where the regulator demanded that it cease operations.

    What the latest move portends for internet freedom in Singapore is still unclear. Interestingly, when Breakfast Network was asked to register a few weeks ago, leading socio-political blogs like The Online Citizen and the Independent ignored the news. Perhaps most bloggers have reconciled themselves to the changing winds. Or, they are confident that they can still navigate safely through Singapore’s online environment. After all, even the Breakfast Network still lives – on its Facebook page.

    The most hopeful interpretation is that, in the words of one Facebook poster, the death of the site represents “more a fumble in execution than a change in policy” on the part of MDA.

    Whatever the case, a threshold has been crossed. Goodbye “light touch”. It was nice knowing you.

    MDA REPLY (14 December 2013)

    [I am not persuaded by MDA’s reply and will explain why when I have more time. In the meantime, I am running its reply here for the record.]

    Dear Mr Cherian George,

    1.      We refer to your 10 December commentary, “Online freedom: time to revise the Singapore report card”.

    2.      The Breakfast Network was asked to register because it had ceased to be a personal blog or website, but had incorporated itself as the Breakfast Network Pte Ltd (BNPL). As a corporate entity, Breakfast Network Pte Ltd has a greater possibility of coming under foreign influence via foreign funding. This registration requirement is simply to ensure that Breakfast Network will not receive foreign funding.

    3.      You declare that The Breakfast Network shut down due to “red tape” and “unnecessarily onerous registration”. We would like to clarify that this is not so. The Breakfast Network shut down because its editor and owner chose not to register, as required by MDA. Ms Henson claimed the requirements were onerous, citing the need to register volunteer contributors to her site. MDA issued a statement on 13 Dec 2013, refuting her claim. At no point was Ms Henson told that contributors needed to also register. She was only told that editors, including pro bono editors, had to register. As for the reporting of sources of revenue, MDA informed Ms Henson that she could suggest alternative ways of providing the required information.

    4.      Secondly, nothing has changed for Internet Content Providers. They continue to operate and publish under the existing class licence framework which has been in place since 1996. Under this framework, certain groups such as political associations and political websites have always been required to register with the MDA.  However, up until now, the registration requirement did not come with an undertaking not to receive foreign funds.  This is because up until now, the political websites which had to register were also gazetted as political associations, which meant that they were already prohibited from receiving foreign funds under the Political Donations Act.

    5.      You also characterise the registration process as an exercise for the Breakfast Network to “persuade regulators they deserve the right to publish before they are allowed to do so”. This is an astounding description. The registration merely requires the provision of names of persons involved in the provision, management and/or operation of the Breakfast Network, and an undertaking by them not to receive foreign funding.

    6.      Our internet regulations have not changed.  Neither has our long standing principle that politics should remain a matter for Singaporeans and Singapore only.

  • The trust deficit

    Freedom From The Press shows how the Singapore government has tried to insulate itself from press scrutiny in order to give the executive maximum room for manoeuvre. In the final chapter, I suggest that are limits to this model. It occurs to me that one major limitation is that a system that’s closed to competition is likely to viewed as untrustworthy, in an age when people value accountability and transparency. This is an idea I explored in a speech at the Institute of Policy Studies’ Singapore Perspectives 2012 conference on 16 January 2012. Here is an article based on the speech, which appeared in The Straits Times on 19 January 2012.

    Government needs to build up public trust

    Since last year’s General Election, the government has been intent on improving its communication with the public. Officials believe they must make their presence felt on Facebook and other social media platforms. And they show no sign of loosening their grip on mainstream media as a vehicle for reaching out to the public.* Through traditional and new media, the government will intensify its efforts to explain its policies.

    On its own, though, such engagement will probably fail to improve the PAP’s prospects. After all, it is not as if the government used to be reticent. Consider the most controversial issues of the GE: immigration, social safety nets, public transport, housing prices and ministerial salaries. On every one of these issues, the government’s position was articulated, loud and clear, before and during the GE.

    It strains credibility to say that if only government leaders had used Facebook and other social media earlier and more enthusiastically, voters would have been more receptive to these policies. Similarly, it defies logic to suggest that if establishment media had repeated government positions with even greater fidelity than they did, the gap between government and people would have been narrowed.

    Increased communicativeness will be more persuasive only if the context – the communication environment – changes. The element in the communication environment that is critically lacking is trust.

    There are at least three barriers to building the required trust. First, the primary platform through which government communicates with the public, the mainstream media, suffers from a credibility problem.

    In most areas of coverage, the media are professional enough to provide a valued and reliable service. However, on the most controversial issues of the day, the government’s media policy dictates that the professional judgment of editors must be subordinate to elected officials’ judgments. The press is expected to educate the public and rally the nation behind the government, rather than push the government to respond to the people.

    On all the election hot-button issues, mainstream media did reflect public disenchantment, but always in soft focus. Thus, people never got the impression that the media were on their side.

    Second, the communication environment lacks independent voices in public debates – state and non-state institutions that stand apart from the executive, with the competence and credibility to comment authoritatively on problems and policies. These could include ombudsmen, independent commissions, think-tanks and other non-partisan expert institutions.

    PAP philosophy has not been enamoured of such intra-elite checks and balances because of the fear that these would slow down governance and confuse the public. But these risks are small relative to the benefits, in the form of the increased trust that could accrue to the government when more of its decisions are subject to independent scrutiny by competent institutions.

    Finally, trust is eroded by conflicts of interest, between national interest and party interest. While there is significant overlap between the two, the interests of the ruling party and those of Singapore are not exactly the same.

    The most salient example is the way electoral boundaries are drawn. The process is, beyond reasonable doubt, managed to benefit the PAP. Similarly, unequal treatment towards opposition constituencies when rolling out government programmes and services simply does not pass the smell test.

    The number of such cases may be few, but the odour of partisanship hangs in the air and sticks to other unpopular policies, even those that an objective analysis might conclude are justified as being in the national interest. Cynicism will continue to corrode trust as long as there are specific areas in which the government has, in the eyes of any reasonable Singaporean, put party before nation.

    Building trust in the communication environment is critically important because citizens can only take so much information about policies before their eyes glaze over. Some will demand detailed facts and figures. If the government is on firm ground, it should have no compunctions about providing the data. For most citizens, however, it will be about taking a leap of faith, and that is where trust gives you wings.

    The PAP used to pride itself in the trust that it was able to command. But the way Singaporeans trust has changed, and not just in politics.

    In an earlier era, we had faith in doctors because of the aura they projected. Today, if we trust our doctors, it is not because we think they are gods, nor because we have studied medicine ourselves and can personally check on their every move. Our trust is based on the assurance that our doctors function within a regulatory system that compels them to act in our interest, that the penalties for those who fail to do so are very high, and that we can get a second opinion whenever we are doubtful.

    Such commonsense principles apply to the political sphere as well. It is neither policymakers’ high status nor repetition of their diagnoses and prescriptions that will persuade the public to swallow bitter medicine, but the assurance that they will open their decisions to independent scrutiny and verification.

    In his remarks at Monday’s Institute of Policy Studies conference, Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam credited the Singapore public with enough collective intelligence to make astute decisions in the country’s interest. As part of that sea change, accountability is prized far higher than traditional notions of authority.

    Since Singaporeans no longer expect their leaders to be demigods, evidence of fallibility is not a liability. On the contrary, timely and unvarnished revelations of government’s mistakes are the proof people need that they are operating in a trustworthy communication environment. Conversely, if institutions are only capable of reporting that the government is right, it should not be surprising when official communication is not believed.

     

    * This sentence was deleted by ST editors and does not appear in the published version. It is not a major loss and I agreed to the change (my submission was too long, so something had to give). I highlight the redaction here because it illustrates how the Singapore press does not like to say too much about the controls it faces. This distinguishes the media here from the media in most authoritarian states, where journalists try their best to reveal the conditions under which they work. What accounts for the Singapore media’s stoic silence? This is a question I try to answer in my book chapter, “Freedom of the Press: A Cause without Rebels”. (Yes, this is another shameless plug.)