On 17 February 2022, Mr Patrick Daniel gave his first lecture as IPS’ 11th S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore. A veteran journalist and editor with a three-decade career with Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), Mr Daniel was appointed in July last year as interim Chief Executive Officer of the newly established SPH Media Trust.
This was the first of a three-part IPS-Nathan Lecture series themed Stewardship of the Singapore Media: Staying the Course, in which Mr Daniel examines pressing issues facing Singapore’s media landscape and legacy news media in the face of disruptions caused by the rise of the technological giants and Internet media.
Mr Daniel’s first lecture, titled “The Singapore Media's Long and Winding Road: 1824 to 2022”, outlined the trajectory of Singapore’s print media from its beginnings as colonial-era newspapers, to the media’s rocky relationship with the People’s Action Party (PAP) government post-independence, and the disruptions caused by the rise of the tech giants and social media.
Press Freedom and the Context of Singapore
Mr Daniel began with the global debate over press freedom. He outlined five aspects of this debate: freedom of expression; freedom of the press; “the marketplace of ideas”; the media as the “Fourth Estate”; and media laws. He also outlined the government’s views on them.
Countries, even democratic ones, differ on the caveats to freedom of expression, said Mr Daniel. From looking at different countries’ Constitutions, he observed that democratic countries can generally be divided into two groups. Most countries, including those in Europe, have freedom of expression but with restrictions such as laws on defamation, while the United States and the United Nations provided for freedom of expression without any caveats.
As for freedom of the press, he highlighted how the US Constitution is the only one which explicitly provides for it, while in other countries, press freedom is an extension of freedom of expression with no special provisions for the press. Journalists are protected by their own individual right to freedom of expression, but this freedom is different from press freedom if “the press” is seen as a platform provided by owners for journalists.
Mr Daniel noted that many countries have promulgated media laws that restrict not only free speech but also press freedom. These laws have been established to curb the power of the press. Such laws also prevent journalists, editors and owners from abusing their powers.
On “the marketplace of ideas”, which originated from English philosopher John Stuart Mill, this posits that the truth or acceptance of ideas depends on their competition with one another, rather than the opinion of a censor such as the government or other authority. As for the concept of the media as the “Fourth Estate”, this proposes that the press has the power and responsibility to play a watchdog role to check on abuses by those in authority, and to “hold truth to power”. The PAP government does not believe in either of these Western-centric ideas, said Mr Daniel.
Mr Daniel also expressed scepticism whether the notion of "the marketplace of ideas" would apply today in light of the proliferation of false information, and the increasing burden of media consumers to separate fact from fiction. However, he acknowledged that a greater diversity of views is desired by Singaporeans.
On the media as the fourth estate, he said the government wants the Singapore media to instead help promote societal values and advance nation-building efforts, but in his view, this need not be its only role. The local media can and does play a societal role, he said, citing how during the COVID-19 pandemic, the media has worked to correct misinformation, clarify pandemic measures and encourage individuals to get vaccinated.
Singapore media laws, he noted, have been premised on the historical threat of clandestine subversion of the media. “It is hard not to draw the conclusion that the constant worry about subversion, which arose from the PAP's long history and long fight with the communists, has shaped our media laws,” he said.
This sentiment is apparent in the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act (NPPA), Singapore’s main media law, Mr Daniel said. Enacted in 1974, it contains provisions against foreign ownership and funding of local media, ownership of the media by powerful individuals, and foreign media deemed to be interfering in domestic politics.
Other laws include the Broadcasting Act, Defamation Act, Official Secrets Act, Internal Security Act and more recently, Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) and Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act (FICA). The challenge for the Singapore media is to do its job while staying within the ambit of these laws. Mr Daniel noted that laws in Singapore are applied and are not for show.
On greater diversity of views, Mr Daniel said such views should firstly not be based on falsehoods, propaganda or hate speech. He expressed concern about some readers’ inability to even discern between fact, interpretation and opinion. In this, the media can play its part by first presenting the key facts on issues accurately, before reflecting the diversity of opinions on those issues fairly.
Looking Back at History
To understand Singapore’s media landscape, Mr Daniel went into the history of media development, from colonial times to the post-independence period. He highlighted pivotal moments which have shaped the media landscape as well as the government’s relationship with the media.
Singapore’s first newspaper, the Singapore Chronicle, was started in 1824. Interestingly, a licensing regime had already been established then by the British East India Company, based in Calcutta, with prior vetting of content lifted only in 1833. The Straits Times was founded in 1845 by Armenian merchant Catchick Moses.
The first locally owned English paper, the Malaya Tribune, was launched in 1914 by Dr Lim Boon Keng. Billing itself as “the people’s paper”, its circulation overtook The Straits Times, particularly because it was priced at only 5 cents. In 1938, The Straits Times cut its price to 5 cents as well, a move which historian Mary Turnbull said changed the character of the paper towards more coverage of “local events and Asian life”.
Another turning point was the Maria Hertogh riots of 1950. The press was blamed for emotional reporting that fuelled racial passions against Europeans and Eurasians, a number of whom were killed or wounded in the riots. Mr Daniel cited Turnbull’s observation that the riots led the paper to tread more warily on race and religion and to avoid stoking conflict.
1959 was another important year as Lee Kuan Yew fought in Singapore’s first self-government election and aspired to become the prime minister. As The Straits Times’ colonial owners did not support Mr Lee and the PAP, the two sides had frequent clashes, with Mr Lee accusing the paper of being “birds of passage”. After Mr Lee won the election, The Straits Times moved its main operations to Kuala Lumpur. It returned fully only in 1972.
During Singapore’s post-independence period, the government intervened significantly in the media landscape, said Mr Daniel. This came in two forms: First, government action against newspapers — from the 1971 closure of the Eastern Sun and later the Singapore Herald for being funded by foreign sources, to the crackdowns on executives and editors of Nanyang Siang Pau in 1971 and on Berita Harian in 1976 for alleged communist links.
This “knuckleduster era” was followed by the second aspect: active government interventions to reshape the media landscape. In 1982, the government steered the merger of Nanyang Siang Pau and Sin Chew Jit Poh under a new company, Singapore News and Publications Limited (SNPL). The stated aim was to preserve the commercial viability of the Chinese press in the face of the increasing dominance of English.
“There was a conscious need to preserve space for the Chinese-speaking population and secure the institutions that sustained Chinese language and culture. It was really active stewardship on Mr Lee’s part to preserve that,” said Mr Daniel. This was followed soon after by another merger in 1984, backed again by strong government involvement. This time, Straits Times Press merged with SNPL to form Singapore Press Holdings (SPH).
One further major attempt at reshaping Singapore's media landscape came in 2000, after America Online, a young Internet company, announced plans to acquire Time Warner, a long-established media giant, to form AOL Time Warner, Inc. For Mr Lee, this move signalled a new conceptualisation of an all-encompassing media — from the Internet to entertainment, defined by dot-com companies. The grants of TV licences to SPH and print licences to Mediacorp were later unwound.
The last two decades saw massive Internet and digital disruption. SPH faced the “Incumbent’s Dilemma” of how to disrupt itself. As Mr Daniel put it, “It was not as if we had our heads in the sand and didn't see the coming disruptive technology — we did see that. SPH's problem was simply that disrupting and cannibalising your own lucrative legacy business was easier said than done. In fact, it was just so hard to do.”
With digital disruption and the rise of digital advertising, SPH saw a secular decline in its advertising revenues, worsened by the advent of the pandemic in 2020, during which its media business registered its first ever loss.
Going Forward: The SPH Media Trust
Addressing the recently formed SPH Media Trust (SMT) — as a not-for-profit entity that took over SPH’s media business — and the discussions over the annual funding of $180 million from the government for an initial period of five years, Mr Daniel said the SMT would have to demonstrate that they are worthy of this funding.
On the concern over the paper’s editorial independence, Mr Daniel acknowledged comments by Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh about how content could be “tainted by allegations” of political interference. However, his view was that credibility is something to be judged by readers. “The proof will be in the pudding, in particular the judgment of readers. If we lack credibility, no one will read us no matter how much money we get.”
Question-and-Answer Session
The session was moderated by Professor Chan Heng Chee, Ambassador-at-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and IPS’ 7th S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore.
The questions centred on the subject of press freedom, The Straits Times’ historical role in supporting nation-building under the PAP government, and how the paper could support a greater diversity of opinions in domestic policy, such as publishing op-eds of opposing views.
One participant asked how the SMT would assure the public of editorial independence when it obtains funding from the government, and with laws such as the NPPA. Mr Daniel opined that sentiments about the media’s lack of editorial independence might be anachronistic and held by individuals with views rooted in the 1990s.
“[The question of] independence is something in their heads. They think that the government is telling us what to write. I am saying to you, that judgement can be made very easily. Just read the paper and you can tell whether it is one-sided or not. I am confident that going forward, we will be able to show that we can produce good, balanced articles.”
In response to a viewer’s question, Mr Daniel said that The Straits Times does publish parliamentary speeches by opposition politicians, “provided they are worth publishing”. When asked further if there were moments in his career where he felt the state of press freedom had relaxed or tightened, Mr Daniel responded that it depends on who was the prime minister at that point in time.
One participant asked about how the World Press Freedom Index could be more accurately measured. Earlier in his lecture, Mr Daniel had briefly discussed Singapore’s low position (160 out of 180 countries) on the Index done by Reporters Without Borders. Mr Daniel felt the methodology of the Index should be audited for accuracy. He also stressed the Index evaluates the level of freedom available to the media, as opposed to the quality of journalism in Singapore, a point which many critics misunderstand.
A second group of questions centred on SPH’s financial future, such as if the subscription model could be viable for legacy media outlets, and if SPH would try to expand its reach overseas. Mr Daniel responded that the test of whether a paper has value is if people are willing to pay for it. With 400,000 paying subscribers across SPH’s platforms (The Straits Times, Lianhe Zaobao and The Business Times), this testifies to the model’s continued viability. At the same time, the paper continues to publish free content such as news concerning COVID-19. On overseas expansion, Mr Daniel affirmed that SPH will be expanding overseas, as he believes their products would have a good audience abroad.
Click here to watch the video of lecture I.