Media Ethics in Singapore

By Tan Yong Bin
London School of Economics & Political Science

The government in Singapore holds a tight rein over the media for the general purpose of maintaining political stability. Laws governing media ethics in Singapore are regulated by the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA), and its subsidiary, the Media Development Authority (MDA) and entails the suppression of any material that purports to a) undermine the credibility of the government, and b) disrupt the racial and religious harmony prevalent in society. In addition, our conservative cultural upbringing also ensures that censorship of the media is robust enough to safeguard our young from undesirable materials.

In Singapore today, there are 18 licensed local newspapers- 17 are published by the leading media organisation Singapore Press Holdings (SPH); and the remaining one, a free newspaper called Today, is published by MediaCorp Press Ltd, which coincidentally is 40 percent owned by SPH. The Newspaper and Printing Presses Act of 1974, requires all newspapers to obtain the imprimatur of the Minister before they can go into circulation and also grants the Minister the power to appoint the management shareholders of all newspaper companies and to control any transfers of such closely held shares. In short, the media industry in Singapore is highly organised and centralised, with the higher echelons of power often having direct relations and affiliations with the ruling political party - the People’s Action Party (PAP). A prime example is the current chairman of SPH, who was a former deputy Prime Minister and a long-time serving member of the PAP.

Media ethics are especially important for a close-knit and multi-racial community such as Singapore. Our current peace and prosperity is built upon the foundations of past struggles and we have learnt a hard and painful lesson from the racial and political riots that plagued us in the early-mid 1960s leading up to independence. The media, while serving to inform and educate, cannot shirk the greater task of political expediency - that of ensuring political security and ethnic tolerance. Toward these ends and for good effect, the government is required to control Singapore’s media stringently. A resulting trade-off is the sacrifice of an unbridled culture of political debate, as publishers prefer to err on the side of caution and expurgate any politically sensitive content. The newspaper acts primarily as a medium to inform people of government policy and not as a means to facilitate the involvement of the public in the policy-making process.

The imbuement of media ethics in Singaporean society is a tacitly evolving process that is facilitated by the psychological conviction of a majority of the citizens that they are under constant scrutiny by the government, and thus motivated to be discreet in word and deed. This form of self-censorship is implicit and ambiguous, and its efficacy is even more powerful than that of explicit control . However, the future of media regulation in Singapore remains far from bleak. While Singaporeans may typically adopt the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach to politics, we are concomitantly acculturating to liberal western media practices via greater exposure through the Internet and cross-cultural exchanges. Any attempts by the government to buck this trend will only prove counterproductive and hinder our integration into global civil society. As a majority of the well-educated and widely traveled working class become desirous of greater media freedom, what is required is a concerted effort by the Singaporean media to synthesize the best western and Asian practices without compromising social and political integrity. The role of the media is gradually evolving from being a tool of the state to a medium of individual empowerment; the challenge is to manage this change and not inhibit it.