Loosening the Reins in the Airconditioned Nation? Censorship Review Committee Recommends Changes to Existing Framework
Singapore has always been regarded as a strict country, some even term it facist, communist or militant. Perhaps from an outsider's perspective, the governance of the country comes across as such.
Lee's Law, a book by journalist Chris Lygate studies the perils of opposing the ruling party in Singapore, the People's Action Party (PAP) as exemplified in the case of JB Jeyaretnam - a prominant and vocal opposition politician - who has been crushed with defamation suits and bankruptcy, loss of his lawyer's license and expulsion from parliament.
Politics has always been a treacherous track to take in pushing for change. Opposition politicians, especially in Asian countries, often fall victim to ruthless silencing. Cases include Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia and Aun Sun Suu Kyi in Burma.
Change is a slow creature and the evolution of a country is something that happens in minute steps, not strides, and certainly not leaps. The political arena is perhaps not the best front for the battle of freedoms, though it seems the most effective and certainly the most prominent one.
The cultural sphere however, may be the best way to build awareness, acceptance and action. In Singapore, the public sphere, as populated by mass media such as movies, music, plays, publications, television programmes and the internet has always been subject to various forms of censorship, licensing or restrictions.
These regulations have come under review recently, giving much hope to media activists, artists and the general community.
The Censorship Review Committee was set up in 2002 and has just submitted a report to the Ministery for Information and the Arts. It states, "Censorship is not just about classification, or access control; nor is it simply about liberalisation or tightening up. Censorship is multi-dimensional, relating media and artistic expression to the social values of a community".
Balancing media and artistic freedoms with social cohesion has always been the cornerstone rationale for regulation in Sinagpore. Often the balance is skewed towards the latter, restricting much freedom for expression.
This is the way it works:
In liberal democracies, it is all about freedom of the press from government; in Singapore, it is about the government's freedom from the press. The PAP therefore maintains that the press should be independent, but subordinate to an elected government. In practice, this means that the tone of stories is crucially important. Stories can be critical, but must be respectful towards the country's leaders. They cannot ridicule or lampoon, or erode public respect for those in office. If disagreement persists, it is the government's duty to make a final decision, and journalists should not use their access to the public to continue plugging their contrary point of view. If they do, they would be judged to be engaging in politics, the proper place for which is in the electoral battlefield.
In Singapore, the press is not the bastian of democracy. Democracy resides in the elected government, which as George writes, "is the embodiment of democratic statement. Government, which expresses the will of the people, must be protected from the unelected press, which is prone to being swayed by private commercial interests, narrow ideological missions, or, at the very least, the hubris of journalists' inflated egos".
Journalism in Singapore is thus, based largely on the media model of the social responsibilty theory. Bound by the Newspapers and Printing Presses Act, self-censorship and organisational controls, newspapers strain at the leash of freedom of expression.
The CRC and the Minister for Information and the Arts has recognised the need for more freedom of expression.
Minister Lee Boon Yang writes, "Singapore has undergone a significant transformation. The influence and effects of globalisation are now even more pervasive. The Internet and infocomm technologies have had an enormous impact on many aspects of our life, work and leisure. Innovation and creativity have become important economic imperatives. Looking ahead, it is quite apparent that these changes will continue to exert enormous influence and impact on our society."
Recommending changes against a backdrop of Singapore's social structure and cultural make-up, the committee has proposed a tetrapartite formula that involves regulators, industry players, community and the artists. It has also suggested a belting scheme for television programmes that is very much like the Australian model.
Should these measures be enforced, there will be more chance for change given the leeway for informed debate, alternative viewpoints and increased awareness.
Opening up the cultural sphere may be the catalyst to change, the prod to Singaporeans' mute consent, and a subtle way of putting important issues into the public arena.
One hopes that if Singaporean journalists cannot or will not offer contrary views, then artists, playwrites, movie-makers might have to take up the mantle for freedom.
Spanish Officials have arrested an Al-Jazeera journalist with allegded ties to Al Qaeda. This is not just a case of suppression of the media, but another instance of the disricimination against non-Western media.
During the war in Iraq, Al Jazeera was constantly criticised for showing footage the Western media deemed exploitative, unnecessary or too gory. When the Arab media broadcast images of captured US soldiers, the Western media and the Bush administration were quick to jump up and cry foul, citing contraventions of the Geneva Convention's policies against treatment of POWs. No mention was made of the fact that the Western media were just as guilty of such depictions.
The Western media suppresses what goes against its own values and world views - and yet calls Third World and its media, undemocratic, restrictive and intolerant. But look the current state of affairs in America and even Australia, and we see that we've established laws and policies just as undemocratic, restrictive and intolerant.
The media, however has not pointed this out. They accuse Arab media for insensitivity and exploitativeness, but as Geneive Adbo writes, it is often American media who lack cultural sensitivities.
Her article, Reporting to a Western Audience About the Islamic World, details the lack of respect and arrogance of Western reporting.
Perhaps the media should be more reflexive and look to their own ways of reporting before criticising the reporting of media from "the other side". In any case, there shouldn't be a side. That's the whole point of journalism
Trading Safety for Freedom, Objectivity for Patriotism: How Sept 11 Has Changed Ideas of Freedom, and how the Media has Played Along
These days the stakes have never been higher and we need to realise that, in some ways, the world of information flow did change after the terrorist attacks on the US on Sept 11, 2001. And it has continued to change. There is a new hunger for international news. A need to understand the wider world. A realisation that the world is connected and events in one country can have an immediate or an eventual effect on all of us.
The way the news works has changed indeed. It seems with every war, governments learn ever quickly how to use information and the media for their own gains. See Vietnam and the lessons learnt from the horrifying black and white photo of a screaming girl, the skin falling off her back, her face contorted in an endless scream of fear.
Then comes the Gulf War with its video game imagery and herded journalists, managed like tourists on an African Safari. How sanitary and how neat. No bullet-to-the-forehead-photos, just green blips indicating a precise bombing, and the almost beautiful dance of white streaked firelight in the Baghdad Blitz.
The most recent change in the way we see news is the creation of the "embedded journalist". As ABC Mediawatch commented in a March broadcast certain journalists were so embedded that they seemed to think they had joined the marines.
It was simply too much for this force to take on by itself so they had to call in air strikes and artillery to try to clear away. Now we'll try to push in on the main objective.
- Martin Savidge, CNN, Friday 21 March 2003
We?
The media has been increasingly subject to scrutiny and subjugation since the War on Terror began. The Patriot Act, passed in the US in response to Sept 11, is much like Australia's ASIO bill and Singapore's Internal Securities Act.
It defines terrorism in over-broad terms and gives the FBI new powers of search and surveillance of personal information; including personal email and terms entered into search engines. US citizens as well as foreigners can be detained indefinitely without charges.
The American Center for Constitutional Rights denounces the act, saying "the principles of free speech, due process, and equal protection under the law have been seriously undermined" by its enactment.
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press points to section 215, the section most likely to affect journalist freedoms.
The section "allows prosecutors to obtain 'any tangible thing -- not just 'business records', as the Department of Justice keeps saying -- from anyone for investigations involving foreign intelligence or international terrorism. (The pre-PATRIOT law applied to specific types of business records of agents of foreign powers.) The person or business receiving the order is forbidden from telling anyone that the FBI sought or obtained the 'tangible things'. Since the order authorized by Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is obtained from the super-secret FISA Court, the order is essentially unappealable."
It is frightening to think that the automatic response to an event like Sept 11 is to trade freedom for safety, objectivity for patriotism and news judgement for marketability.
As it turns out, it was one of the world's most-watched media channel that started such an idea. Jack Gordon puts this very succintly in his prize-winning essay, Milksop Nation.
Twelve hours hadn't passed since the first airliner struck the World Trade Centre on September 11th 2001 before the talking heads on CNN turned their attention to the subject of how much freedom Americans would be willing to give up in order to feel more secure. I evidently missed the explanation of how they came to see this as the first and most obvious question written in the flames still rising from the rubble in lower Manhattan. As suddenly as the planes that had slammed into the twin towers that morning, the issue simply materialized in the vestments of the story’s anointed spin.
It is the pictures in our head that forms our perceptions of the world and none so influential to our perceptions than the media, theorised Walter Lippman the bastian of American Journalism. In this instance, the medias has certainly done well to formulate that equation that Safety = Giving up Personal Freedoms.
Graphics and promotions are an important backdrop, but ultimately the editorial values of the news channel have a much more significant role to play in defining the news brand to viewers.
CHRIS CRAMER
President of CNN International Networks
Dependable, comprehensive, fast, impartial, trustworthy: all words that many news editors would like to attribute to their channel.
But what really defines a news brand? What makes a consumer choose one news channel over and above another? Or does the viewer really care?
We are all increasingly overloaded with information.
Confession time here: I check my Blackberry wireless e-mail at least two or three times during the night and have been known to leave it on by my bedside and fire off replies when I should be sleeping.
Before I go to bed I check out the next morning's British newspapers from my home in Atlanta and do the same to the US media first thing in the morning. My home has 400 TV channels, there is satellite radio in my car - and then, of course, there are the 18 TV monitors in my office at CNN
Add to this the explosion of 24-hour news channels available all over the world in myriad languages and you conclude that access to news will no longer be driven by just which news programme is on air at a particular time of day.
And in this world of remarkable choice, channels cannot just be recognised by their logos and programme style. I believe that the viewer is far more discerning than that.
On air graphics and promotions are an important backdrop but ultimately the values of the news channel have a much more significant role to play in defining the news brand to viewers.
A news brand stands, quite simply, for journalism.
It is journalism and editorial values that bring viewers to their channel of choice. If that journalism meets their expectations, they will stay with the channel and, more importantly, keep coming back.
Editorial integrity, values and beliefs are at the very core of the brand of any news provider. At CNN, for example, our brand is about journalistic credibility: the strength of our reporting, the experience of the reporter, the skill of the cameraman or woman and that of the news editors who handle their output. It is about the technology with which we equip our journalists to enable them to deliver the latest news from the field. And, importantly, it is about how we look after these journalists in the field. How we help them deliver the story and deliver it safely without risking their lives in the process.
If it is to stand the test of time, a news brand should be about reliability and accuracy. A position of trust with viewers needs to be earned. A reputation as a channel of record can only be achieved through the standards set by its journalism. The viewer understands the difference between a channel which set its brand standards by the speed with which they throw material to air, without necessarily checking its veracity, and channels of authority and record.
That is why colleagues at Sky News have been so distressed at the recent incident concerning the apparent fabrication of a missile launch during the war against Iraq. They quickly realised that years of effort in defining and strengthening their brand were greatly damaged. Though all information brands have made mistakes - and the audience can be forgiving if the mistakes are admitted and rectified.
These days the stakes have never been higher and we need to realise that, in some ways, the world of information flow did change after the terrorist attacks on the US on Sept 11, 2001.
And it has continued to change. There is a new hunger for international news. A need to understand the wider world. A realisation that the world is connected and events in one country can have an immediate or an eventual effect on all of us.
Add to that the seismic events since Sept 11 - the war in Afghanistan, new upheavals in the Middle East, dark days in West Africa and the war against Iraq - and 24-hour news operations are constantly being put to the test. Now more than ever consumers need a trusted impartial news source.
Each and every story can set a test for editorial values and judgments and, in this context, every news editor must remember that a reputation arrives on foot but leaves by racehorse. A wrong decision can seriously undermine the trust of the readers, listeners or viewers.
On these occasions the independence, integrity and diversity of news channels are at a premium. And it is this, more than anything else, that will define our brands to our viewers. We have a duty as journalists to retain and build upon the trust that we have earned from audiences. They rely on us for news and we have a responsibility to deliver this as accurately and as speedily as possible. In that order - speed follows accuracy.
One worrying trend is the increasing over-use of certain, once respected, news phrases. Like "Breaking News'' or the use of the word "exclusive''. Breaking News should be just that, major and meaningful and sudden. Exclusives should be major stories obtained solely by one news organisation, not a different shot or camera angle or interview sequence. If we over-promise to the consumer and under-deliver, we cheapen the currency and gradually erode the brand and damage the valuable connectivity to the audience.
Brand managers discuss brand attributes, consumer propositions and the tonality or language of the brand. In the marketer's world, brand wheels apply as much to a news channel as they may to a soap powder. But whilst these have a role to play in providing consistent "look and feel'' for the channel, I would argue that they are not part of the conscious decision-making process by the news consumer.
For a news viewer there is a more fundamental decision to be made. They understand journalistic standards. And it is journalism they turn to. They tune into a channel where they are assured that they will get a level of quality and depth of news that is relevant to their needs.
If there is no dependable comfort for the consumer as they make their choice, then why on earth would they trust a channel enough to watch? And the choice is not random. It is not about who has the brightest colours or the most attractive presenters or the coolest graphics. It is driven by news values - which is the ongoing challenge for any news brand. And an ongoing challenge for the people who run it.
The most successful broadcast news brands are defined by their journalism. Their integrity - or the complete lack of it. The audience will decide.
The War Against Terror The Media Journalists in Peril
Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana is the 35th journalist to be killed in the line of duty this year. His death marks the 4th media personnel death since the war was officially declared over.
The media death toll in Iraq is now 20, with two journalists still reported missing.
Dana was shot at by US soldiers as he was filming outside a prison that had been under mortar attack earlier in the day.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported today that Dana's camera captured the last few moments before he died: "The videotape in Dana's camera showed two US tanks coming toward him. Two shots were fired, apparently from the tanks, and Dana fell to the ground."
The International Federation of Journalists have responded with a demand for an independent inquiry into the matter. Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary has called the incident proof of "casual disregard of journalists’ safety by military commanders."
“There must be a full, independent and public inquiry. We need to know what went wrong and why. We cannot accept that this is brushed aside as just another regrettable incident in the chaos of war.”
Dana's death comes just as the Pentagon released a report on a similar attack on the media at the Palestine Hotel on April 8. A US tank fired upon the building, which was filled with journalists. Two men died that day, another Reuters cameraman, Taras Protsyuk, and Spanish journalist Jose Couso. Others were wounded.
The IFJ has called the Pentagon report a "cynical whitewash" and Reporters Without Borders has deemed it "unacceptable".
These incidents bring to focus the extreme peril war journalists face, and even more importantly, the safety of independent journalists. The IFJ has voiced concern that "journalists working independently and [who are] not part of the group travelling under the supervision and protection of the US military – the so-called “embedded” journalists – are particularly at risk."
“In view of these incidents we must ask whether or not it is safe for independent journalists to work in Baghdad,” said White. “The only way the United States military can restore confidence that they are not ignoring the safety and security of independent media staff is to explain fully why these tragedies happened and to make sure they put in place procedures to avoid such incidents in future.”
It's the fourth appeal that Thai PM's family company, Shin Corp, is making against 21 editorial staff it fired over 2 years ago. The staffers were sacked after they formed a worker's union within the Shin Corp owned television station, iTV.
In a letter to the PM, the IFJ is calling for the Thakin to intervene and "ensure ITV withdraws the appeal and immediately reinstates the 21 journalists."
IFJ President Christopher Warren also urges him, "as Prime Minister of Thailand, to uphold media freedom and human rights - including trade union rights - in Thailand."
The case is significant as it eptomises the changing dynamics of media freedom in Thailand. Once hailed as one of the freest presses in Asia, things have changed drastically since the 1997 economic recession.
Thepchai Yong of The Nation writes that the legal battle is a "symbolic" fight for editorial independence "in an age when political intervention is eroding Thailand's reputation as having the freest press in the region".
iTV started as an independent television station in 1996. Its journalists guarded their editorial independence fiercely, believing their work important and set apart from the otherwise cronyistic broadcasting industry. In 2001, just prior to the elections, Shin Corp bought over the station. It was the journalists' bold accusations of political intereference and news bias that gave iTV management the motive to expel the "rebels". Citing financial downsizing, the 21 outspoken workers were dismissed.
Despite three rulings in favour of reinstating the journalists, iTV has done nothing. A 2002 report in Thai newspaper The Nation quotes iTV executives as saying that they regarded any ruling favourable to the "rebels" as "bad precedent" and would fight the judgements. The third ruling in 2002 by the Thai Labour Court found for the sacked employees and was of the opinion that the journalists had a constitutional right to resist editorial intereference and it was unlawful for the company to fire them for setting up a labour union.
This fourth appeal by iTV emphases the blatant disregard for both workers' rights and press freedoms in Thailand.
Vincent Brossel of Reporters Sans Frontiere Asia-Pacific desk remarks in an email interview that the case is significant. "Pressure from the government on the media companies has been increasing since Thaksin came to power. If the verdict goes against the journalists, it will be a new step in this deterioration for the independent journalism in Thailand."
// UPDATE Phone Interview with Jacqueline Park, director of IFJ Asia-Pacific: 7 August 2003
What has been the response to the petition? From a campaigning point of view, it has been very effective. The petition has revived interest in the issue. In Thailand, a lot of people had thought [the case] had just gone away.
How significant is the case for press freedom? I must stress that it is not only and important press issue but also a trade union issue. Journalists aren't usually unionised in Thailand. Apart from the Bangkok Post, which has its own worker's union, iTV is actually one of the first Thai media to form a union.
How about from a journalist's point of view? It is important that all journalists are able to organise collectively and speak for themselves. If they live in fear then they can't be free to report independently.
>> MORE INFO>> Shin Corp Background
Shin Corp is a telecommunications conglomerate with interests in wireless and satellite technology, e-business, media and advertising. Thaksin started the company in 1983. His wife and himself were majority shareholders till 2000 when they sold their shares just prior to the Thai general elections.
The company now rests in the hands of Bhanapot Damapong, his brother-in-law. Yingluck Shinawatra, Thaksin's younger sister is the president of on of one of Shin Corp's subsidiary companies.
