Last year I spent a semester studying journalism (a crazy thought, I know) at a university in Singapore. I wrote for the area/campus newspaper, was a producer for the campus TV network and hosted my own radio show on the school radio band. All of the teaching staff in the communications department were foreigners. My newspaper teacher was a print man from England, TV head was Taiwanese and the radio adviser was an American who worked for Clear Channel as a Top 40 DJ.
While it took a long time for me to wrap my head around the way things worked, I finally understood the nuance of it all by the time I left. In the end, it was fascinating semester learning how journalism worked in a society so shielded from the media. The big story that helped this epiphany was the apparent attempted murder-suicide by an international student from Indonesia on campus.
When news broke that a disgruntled student stabbed his professor, and then “jumped” nine floors to his death, things got understandably crazy. The government and administration stepped in and tried to stop our reporting. However, they new the story was just too big to ignore. We had reports from students that the deceased student stabbed his professor, and in the altercation, the professor threw him over the balcony. It was never officially reported because we had people breathing down our neck. In the end, the story was simply a memorial for the student and a simple account of the official story. It was disappointing. The school went into saving face mode and set up ludicrous help lines, and counseling services to make it look like they cared.
I was one of two Americans in the class and the only one who ever argued at meeting for how journalism was “supposed” to work, I guess. I can’t count the number of times I fought my editors tooth-and-nail about how to approach a story. Asking a tough question was something the students were never taught. Questioning the system, especially as journalists, was something they just didn’t do. When someone said “no” to an interview, they gave up. The only way my professor kept from going crazy was to use his famously-dry wit.
After spending several long hours discussing journalism in Asia with my professor, he let me into some ideas that I never even considered, coming into the United States. The role of the media, as stated in the above article, is to make the government look good. If you make the government look bad, you are making the *people* look bad too. You are making the nation look bad as well. Given that most people perceive their city-state as fragile (they are in a weird delusional fear of Malaysia “retaking” the island), making the country look bad will be bad for everyone. And why would you want to make everyone look bad?
Another story I always remembered was a report students did on the rise of interracial marriages. Some students went around town interviewing interracial couples asking them how hard it was given the societal implications of their love. That part was good. Then, when it came to talking to students, the usual canned response was, “I would like to [date outside my race] but my parents won’t let me.” To me, they left out the most important question: “Yes, but would encourage your children to only date in their race?” Without that question, the report fell flat and looks like a PSA. It could challenge the way people thought about interracial marriage as something beyond, “it’s good for those people, and the city, but not for me!” Discussing the social issues is out of the realm of thought for the students. It took me a long time to accept it, but it helped me get through my time there.
Race and religion are a huge point of contention in Singapore, which is why you can’t discuss them at the Speaker’s Corner. The author left out that you can’t discuss language there either. Dialectical debates never end for the Chinese majority. Even though Singapore has four national languages and an ethnic Chinese majority, there are a lot of people from different places who believe a lot of things. It’s actually one of the reasons why I loved the city so much. The food and culture are amazing, the government, not so much.
One reason LKY came into power was after the race riots in the 1950s. The riots were very bad and left a huge stain on the image of the island for a while. People looked to Lee to keep things together during what Singaporeans called, “a dark time.” It was the sort of, “we will keep things in order if you do what we say,” kind of deal.
I have a million other stories, like how the opposition party leader went and talked at the university and the government yanked the story at the last minute from the print. It was a big fight for my professor, but he ended up losing in the end. The article wasn’t even about what the guy’s principles were; it was an article that said this man “visited.” The retort from the PAP (People Action’s Party) was, “he was a trespasser on the university, that’s not news.”
Anyway. Sorry for the ramblings.
Posted by John Gamboa on Wed 30 Jun 2010 at 01:53 AM
This comment appeared in the article “Press freedom lags in Singapore”
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Dear Mr John Gamboa,
Great Article. Spot on! The mainstream print media is highly controlled and bias in Singapore.
So it’s up to the power of the New Media. It’s called the Internet.
These websites will be very happy to print what you have to say and your million other stories. Please share your stories and I’m sure many awakened Singaporeans will be dying to read!
http://www.temasekreview.com/
http://theonlinecitizen.com/
http://www.sammyboy.com/
As an outsider objectively looking at this, and an engineer not a journalist, you were too close to the story. You were a journalist wanting more and more from that story – to send to print and make money from it, “pretty quickly” – hypothetically, as I realise you were a student. There is nothing suspicious about the SG Government INITIALLY stopping spurious reports about the student who stabbed his project supervisor. The root cause of the perpetrator doing what he did was that he had been up playing computer games and presumably not sleeping or doing his work fully, I think I’m correct in saying. Are the SG authorities wrong in looking for the correct root cause, to prevent future incidents of this nature? If this was left to journalists, that specific university, plus Indonesian students, would have been the scrutinised entities. In fact when everything panned out, all evidence was “on the table”, it went to court, and hopefully the event was a one-off because everyone saw the complete story and learnt from it. I would argue that in Singapore, the process is different only, in that the facts must be more watertight than in the West. Journalists are often not the best practitioners of “root cause analysis”, but Singapore Press Holdings I would argue employ some pretty capable and independent people compared to the West.
[...] which describes itself as a support network for unemployed Singaporeans. Transitioning had copied and pasted my comment in its entirety from the CJR (it’s also on my site as well). My comment is now entitled, [...]
Hi John .. this is an awesome analysis. I’m from Singapore, but I’ve since become an American citizen. Detached from my native country, I often read articles and blogs online about the political issues in Singapore. My father would often complain about the PAP when I was a kid, but as an adult, I’ve come to realize that maybe the PAP, possibly, at the moment, offers the best leadership for Singapore. I remember, as a student, the good teachers had to tread the very thin line between encouraging students to speak up and think for themselves, and stopping the discussion when it got too political. It’s just my guess, but it does seem they were afraid of getting into trouble.
But you are right. The media (not just in Singapore, however) often fails to ask challenging, thought-provoking questions. As I talk to my friends back in Singapore bout issues like the death penalty, controlled press, lack of a fair election, the government having a monopoly on civil service businesses like transportation and the phone company.. I know the issues bother them. They’re aware of them, and they complain about them. But when asked what they plan to do about it, the response is always the same – there’s nothing we can do. I guess even the US is guilty of a variation of those issues, with the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse, doctored press photos from BP on the oil spill, the bailout of Wall Street lining the pockets of bank executives, etc.
Anyways, I just wanted to thank you for your candid analysis.