Singapore's press freedom haunted by monopoly
James Gomez Bangkok
The aspiration for a freer media requires that the necessary legal, social and political environment is present as variables to support its development. The economic dimension is important. But space created by economic investment alone can be taken away or shrink easily in event of an economic downturn if the other pillars for media development are not in place. That seems to be the Singapore case.
When announcements were made by the PAP government in June 2000 that additional media licenses will be issued to Singapore Press Holding (SPH) and MediaCorp for each to start additional broadcasting and print projects, there was much optimism. The long-standing monopolies of SPH in print media and MediaCorp hegemony in broadcast seem poised for new internal competition.
The imminent presence of more media products on the market led commentators to claim that internal competition among the media groups will result in freer media in Singapore. A year and a half has passed and the enthusiasm is giving way to somber economic realities.
Soon after the new licenses were given, SPH launched Mediaworks -- a television arm to manage two new channels in English and Madarin. It further executed plans to bring out two print publications Project Eyeball (a yuppie lifestyle tabloid) and Streats (a daily giveaway paper). It also launched a web portal -- AsiaOne, that hosts the online editions of the group's six newspapers, including its flagship English daily, the Straits Times and Chinese, Malay and Tamil papers.
MediaCorp introduced the free tabloid, Today and an additional sports channel, City TV. The Singapore Broadcasting Authority also granted MediaCorp two digital television (DTV) licenses allowing it to install DTV sets in buses and run a commercial DTV service. MediaCorp further announced plans for a regional 24-hour news television channel -- Channel NewsAsia to be carried by cable operators and go Asiawide on Sept. 18, Plans included Internet broadcast that were envisioned to cover Europe. Staffing in various overseas bureaus were increased with Singaporean correspondents and local journalists from the home countries.
At the start of the media liberalization project it was also announced that the cable TV industry which was monopolized by Singapore Cable Vision, who has the exclusive license which expires on 2002, will be reviewed. The expiry of this exclusive license coincides with a ban on private ownership of satellite dishes that lapses this year. These developments spiraled into discussions about the need to introduce media competition laws to check any aggressive behavior among the media competitors. It was announced that the Ministry of Trade and Industry may look into such a law.
Meanwhile there was an attempt by some concerned Singaporeans to set up a media watch group to raise standards and encourage fair reporting following the issuance of newspaper and television licenses. In direct response, the PAP countered that it will prompt the government-appointed media watchdog, the Publications Advisory Committee, or PAC, to be more watchful over local papers and to report regularly on trends in reporting,.
The PAP government, while issuing new licenses, continued to introduce legislation to control foreign broadcast and print media from interfering with local politics. They claimed that they needed to ensure that in the light of many foreign reporting agencies relocating to Singapore, the reporting of Singapore news, especially of politics is done by local media and not foreign. The extent of regulation to control information flow even went as far as legislating for guidelines restricting the use of the Internet and SMS during election periods in 2001.
The expectation that the media will be freer, even though misplaced, was strong in spite of the fact that the laws surrounding media control was not changed. This view was based on the observation that there was increased coverage of civil society initiatives, opposition party activities and alternative lifestyle issues in the additional news "space" created by the new media products. For the owners and managers of the new media products the inclusion of alternative news was seen as a necessary ingredient in selling media products in an increasing crowded market.
Additional media products also created more jobs and brought in younger journalists. These new blood brought in alternative news, even if their older and senior editors re-wrote their stories or dismissed some of them as not being "hard" news. At the same time, more local journalists moved to regional and international media companies -- MediaCorp lost newsreaders to the BBC, CNBC and CNN.
But at no time was media liberalization premised on a freer media. If anything, the reason for introducing local competition anchored on the presence of a large advertising revenue pie. It is this anchor on which the launch of more media projects was based that is now unraveling and additional space in the new media products stand to suffer a setback. Following patterns in international economy, media organizations are suffering the backlash of the Sept. 11 incident in the U.S. One of the high profile media casualties in the region was Asiaweek. In Singapore, the economic downturn has hurt advertising revenues -- the lifeline of the media industry.
That there were already signs of a media down turn in Singapore came with the closure of Singapore Press Holding's Project Eyeball. Started with much fanfare an "Internet" newspaper targeting at the young professional, this endeavor that had both a print and Internet version folded within the space of a year citing business reasons.
It was some how ironic that soon after, the private citizens' media watch initiative to monitor media reports in Singapore also folded in September 2001. The project entitled MediaWatch was registered as a non-profit organization in June 2001 and was hoping to raise US$122,000 for its operations. However, funding institutions stayed away citing the work that MediaWatch was about to embark upon as being political. Senior working journalists dismissed the need for any media monitoring by claiming that they were professional. Thus, MediaWatch's first and only public statement was about the short-lived Project Eyeball.
Two months down the road more bad news was to hit the industry. In November 2001, SPH announced that was axing 96 staff. AsiaOne Ltd -- its web arm -- announced that it had to lay off 23 of 111 employees and de-list itself. 73 of 380 jobs from its television broadcast unit, Mediaworks was also axed. The bulk of job cuts were at TV Works, the English language channel of Mediaworks. In December 2001, its free tabloid, Streats cut its circulation from 7 to 6 days a week.
In January 2002, MediaCorp announced that its mostly sports television channel City TV was being shut down and some of its programs transferred to other existing channels. It cut seven percent of its work force by laying off 200 employees and cutting the salaries of remaining staff in a bid to cut costs. In this context, the initial euphoria that suggested new competition laws for media was needed has died down.
Neither is there talk of introducing competition to the monopoly held by Singapore Cable Vision for cable TV. An additional and little known fact is many tiny web-based projects to provide entertainment and alternative news that sprung up suddenly in wake of the Internet boom have just as quickly died as the dotcom bubble burst.
The impact of the economic down turn on Singapore is clear. The additional space created in the media that featured alternative reportage is shrinking. So even the limited gain, without legal reform for a free media, is unlikely to grow further. Those laid off are younger journalists with new ideas; the older and conservative ones remain. There have been more rules than there are more real freedoms for the media. When the PAP government introduced rules to control the Internet, Sintercom, a lifestyle news website closed down while another, Think Center, terminated is online discussion forum in protest of the new rules.
Unless, there is another economic upsurge, there is unlikely to be more media products to emerge in the Singapore market in the short run. Given that the necessary legal, social and political variables are not in place to support a free media, Singapore is likely to lag behind in this area.
James Gomez is a Singaporean writer. He contributed this comment to The Jakarta Post.