No newspaper is objective in its reporting.
They invariably report news to shape public opinion that reflects their owners’ or minders’ interests, and in more oppressed societies, to serve those interests.
The notion that The Straits Times is committed to “truth-seeking, accuracy and fairness” making it a “bedrock of credibility….and foundation of trust”, is a myth that is carefully and expensively cultivated.
Even when it can’t make its own keep, when the Republic is ranked 123rd out of 180 countries for press freedom, that myth must still be maintained, because it is a crucial vehicle for the government to shape public opinion.
Indeed, the government is subsidising SPH Media Trust (SMT) to the tune of $900m for 2022 to 2027 – with taxpayers money – and there is no reason why the spigot will be turned off thereafter.
SMT owns all the mainstream newspapers in Singapore. Besides the ST, it also owns those in Chinese, Malay and Tamil. It does not have a Board of Directors; instead, its editorial direction is guided by institutional members, who hail from a small segment of society, namely, government-linked businesses and institutions.
These institutional members include DBS, UOB, OCBC, Mapletree, CapitaLand, Fullerton, PSA, SingTel, Changi Airport Group, NUS, NTU, SMU, SUTD, and NTUC Enterprise, with the government holding veto power through its control of special management shares.
Using the mainstream media, these institutional members would invariably cultivate a public opinion that is conducive to business – be it a bigger population, being more welcoming of foreigners and foreign workers, defending Free Trade Agreements when the public became aware of them, rationalising state subsidies to industries as helping workers, shaping education as a means to a good job rather than developing the student as a person, even deliberately not reporting newsworthy events that are detrimental to certain businesses.
The public opinion that they shape is generally aligned with the government’s belief that the wellbeing of Singaporeans ultimately rests on economic growth – which is a rather shallow view of human beings as it reduces them to machines; if ever there were an independent institution here upholding human rights, it would never be appointed as an institutional member of SMT.
The fact is that every newspaper has an agenda, reflecting its owner’s priorities. Thus, when Prime Minister Lawrence Wong says that “Singapore needs trusted media that continue to present balanced perspectives, surface different points of view and hold meaningful conversations – so that we can better understand one another…”, he is simply mouthing a meaningless motherhood statement, as politicians are wont to do.
If his government truly wants newspapers to surface different points of view, then it should allow different independent newspapers representing different segments of society and perspectives to operate, because no single newspaper, by definition, is objective.
It is only through the clash of different points of view that we get to “better understand one another”, derive a deeper understanding of issues that affect all of us, and become more tolerant of different opinions and embrace diversity.
The sad fact is that Singapore has regressed in press freedom. During the colonial era and well into post Independence, there were independent newspapers, including The Straits Times, Sin Chew Jit Poh, Nanyang Siang Pao, Utusan Melayu and The Singapore Herald, but most were brought under state or state-linked control by the mid-1980s via direct state regulation, media consolidation, and legal mechanisms.
The Newspapers and Printing Presses Act (NPPA) was introduced in 1974. It required every newspaper to have an annually renewable permit from the government. They were also required to issue “management shares” which were controlled by government-approved stakeholders.
Nanyang Siang Pao and Sin Chew Jit Poh were forced to merge to form the Lianhe Pao on the grounds of duplication and inefficiency, thereby reducing diversity.
By 1984, all the surviving newspapers were consolidated under Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), which became the dominant print media monopoly closely aligned with the government.
Post 1990s into the digital era, with the emergence of online newspapers and blogs like The Online Citizen (TOC) and Yawning Bread, the government extended control to online media licensing, take-down orders and POFMA directions.
To add insult to injury, when the media arm of SPH was no longer viable as a business, it was hived off to the government (SMT) to be paid for by taxpayers. Since then, the people have been paying to have themselves brainwashed!
The government will never willingly give up the various institutions and mechanisms it has steadily built up to control the people, including the mainstream media, as doing so will make it more difficult to control the public.
It behoves the people, including the opposition parties, with the Workers’ Party bearing the heaviest responsibility, to ceaselessly pressure the government to gradually loosen its control of the people, for they cannot blossom into better human beings otherwise.
There may have been a time for control, especially during the decade post-independence, when we were struggling with communal violence, economic sufficiency, and low educational levels, but that period has long passed.
In many respects, the government is similar to a parent, and as parents, we must let our grown-up children live their own lives, be independent and be who they innately are meant to be, and not mould them into digits.
If we still need to control them and teach them how to live their lives when they have grown up, then we have failed miserably as parents.
The post The Myth of Objectivity: How Singapore’s mainstream media serves power, not the people appeared first on The Online Citizen.
