Impact of new media on politics

In the last 15 years, information technology has dramatically transformed their media environment. The fax machine, satellite television and Internet have made it difficult for governments to control or exclude the external media.

The Chinese government did not understand the new media when Tiananmen happened in 1989. The international media was staked out in front of Beijing's Great Hall of the People for President Gorbachev's visit. They stayed on to cover the huge protesting crowds. When the final crackdown came on June 4, the events were broadcast live to the world.

For years, those video clips were replayed each time the news covered China. In recent years, a new group of Chinese leaders have learnt to use the new media technology for their purposes.

China's Central Television has made remarkable progress and now co-produces programmes with many foreign stations, including CNN. In 1996, Chinese television signed the first joint venture with Rupert Murdoch's Fox Television to run a TV station called Phoenix Television. It played an important role in preparing mainland and Hongkong Chinese for the return of Hongkong to China on July 1 last year.

China has also kept abreast with the Internet and the government is promoting its use although service providers are state-controlled.

By the year 2000, China is expected to have over three million Internet subscribers; new websites are created daily. The Internet reduces the government's ability to control information flow, but China's leaders know they have to harness it to educate their people and help economic development.

The People's Daily and Xinhua News Agency were among the earliest to post websites on the Internet.

TECHNOLOGY: WORK IT

CHINESE leaders have also learnt to handle the international media.

The former foreign minister and vice-premier, Qian Qichen, used it to rebuild his country's reputation after Tiananmen. And when he became premier earlier this year, Zhu Rongji gave an impressive press conference broadcast live to the world. This new breed of Chinese leaders is confident, relaxed and ready to depart from a prepared text.

China's live TV coverage of two key events during President Clinton's visit in June this year surprised Americans: Clinton and Jiang engaged in a debate, and the American president's address to students of Beijing University followed by Q & A. In Shanghai, Clinton hosted a live radio phone-in.

They were unthinkable five years ago and have created a more favourable image of China. Many Americans believe that these live broadcasts will open up China and weaken its tight control of the media. I doubt if the outcome will be so straightforward. When Jiang said that just as Clinton was a strong defender of American interests, he was a strong defender of Chinese interests, the Chinese audience cheered.

The US President's support of the Dalai Lama might have won the hearts of Tibetans, but the sympathies of Han Chinese were with Jiang and their government.

Clinton's address at Beijing University aroused the nationalism of the students who resented being patronised. One asked what was behind Clinton's smile. Another asked how the American people would react if China were to send naval ships to Hawaii and sign a security treaty with other countries against one part of the United States.

These students are the inheritors of a strong nationalistic tradition that helped to overthrow the Qing dynasty, and during the 1919 May 4th Movement, rallied opposition to the Versailles Treaty that gave Japan control of former German concessions in Shandong. The Chinese people were proud that their students stood up to an American president.

Information technology itself is neutral, neither for nor against Western values and democracy. Leaders, whatever their systems of government, will learn to use the media technology for their purposes.

However, they have to work the technology, not suppress it. Governments that try to fight the new technology will lose.

Recent events in Indonesia provide a fascinating study of how the new media technology has influenced the course of political upheaval and reform.

Indonesia is a big country with over 17,000 islands straddling three time zones at the equator. It is kept together by an army that understands the centrifugal forces which could contribute to disintegration and separation. In the 1970s and 80s, action against rebels and dissidents came to the attention of the world media but rarely and only after many months, sometimes never.

Pictures and television footage were often not available. With the handheld camcorder and the satellite link-up, this has changed. A bloody crackdown in 1991 by the Indonesian army in East Timor was broadcast to the whole world, provoking a strong international reaction.

MASS INFLUENCE

THE outcome of this year's May riots in Jakarta and its impact on Indonesian politics vividly demonstrated the influence of IT.

At the beginning, many foreign journalists cheered on the demonstrators because they wanted to see Suharto go. However some of these demonstrators were looting and burning ethnic Chinese shops and premises. Then, several websites on the Internet informed the world in detail of the crimes and atrocities perpetrated against Chinese Indonesians. One posting pointedly asked why the Western media lionised the student demonstrators when some of them were the very same people who broke into and looted their homes and shops clean before torching them.

Chinese Indonesians who fled from Indonesia recounted the horrors they had experienced. When the news broke in cyberspace through mass e-mailing, in a matter of a few weeks, the whole world, and Indonesians themselves, came to know of what had taken place.

Eventually the front page of The New York Times of June 10 carried Seth Mydans on the organised raping of Chinese Indonesian women during the May riots.

This story was then picked up by other US media and international wire agencies. A senior Indonesian journalist at first thought that Seth Mydans' report was exaggerated. He investigated and discovered that Mydans had only uncovered the tip of the iceberg.

Information technology, in particular the Internet, has made it impossible for inconvenient news to be suppressed for long. Curiously, the international TV media has still not given this story much coverage. But enough has come into the open to change the course of the reform movement in Indonesia. On Aug 15, Indonesian President Habibie, in a televised speech to the nation, acknowledged that crimes and violence did take place.

He condemned the looting, rioting and "the violence and sexual harassment against women, mostly ethnic Chinese". He said: "All these irresponsible acts are indeed very disgraceful; they have streaked the face of our nation, a nation renowned for its good character and high morals, with shame. As a civilised and religious nation, we curse these barbaric acts." He instituted a panel of inquiry, now in progress.

Under the glare of the international media, it will take a life of its own and will have to report truthfully to retain credibility.

Because of the pressure brought on the Indonesian government by the international media, Chinese Indonesians hope that some justice may eventually be done. The Indonesian army has convened a military honour council to investigate the Special Forces officers involved in the abduction and torture of student activists in the months preceding the resignation of former President Suharto. Before the IT age, the matter would have been hushed up. Now it is no longer possible.

Even the former Commander of the Special Forces, former President Suharto's son-in-law, General Prabowo, has been investigated and dismissed from the army. To regain its credibility and the confidence of the Indonesian people, the Indonesian army will have to handle these difficult and sensitive issues in an open manner. They have to be as candid as the Americans.

However embarrassing it might have been, the American media had to report that it was the US army that had trained officers in Kopassus (the Special Forces) in the high-power techniques that they had misused.

NEWS DISSEMINATION

WESTERN media reports of events in Indonesia beamed back to Indonesia by satellite have also caused Muslim groups in Indonesia to react.

Amien Rais, who was popular with the Western media in the months before Suharto's resignation, has come under attack from extremist Muslim groups because he had condemned the atrocities committed against the Chinese. When questioned later about the reported 170,000 Chinese Indonesians who have fled Indonesia, he replied that the figure was an exaggeration, just as the figure of six million Jews killed during the Holocaust was exaggerated. Rais had to cater to his Muslim ground but his response was carried world-wide through the international media.

In East Timor, the hopes of those who oppose annexation by Indonesia have risen. The withdrawal of 1,000 Special Forces troops from the territory in two batches was presented by Jakarta to the international media as evidence of a change of policy. The policy pursued by the Indonesian army in Aceh in northern Sumatra is also coming to light.

In July, Indonesian Chief of Armed Forces General Wiranto apologised to the people of Aceh and announced that Indonesian combat troops would be withdrawn from the province. The course of reform in Indonesia is not easy to forecast. President Habibie's stance towards the media has been the opposite of that of his predecessor, former President Suharto. He has a deep interest in IT and communicates by e-mail with his close colleagues. He has spoken freely on previously unmentionable subjects. Unlike his predecessor, he engages the media in both a serious and lighthearted vein, presenting an image of a people-friendly President.

He understands that the international media can help build up the credibility of the Indonesian President and the government. To gain the confidence of foreign governments, on whose continued support Indonesia's survival depends, the President and his government have to be transparent and accessible to the international media.

This does not mean that Indonesia will become a Western democracy in the near future. Democracy based on one-man-one-vote may well lead to a break-up of Indonesia. It does mean, however, that government by Delphic oracles, enigmatic, and interpretable any way the government chooses, is no longer the way.

The new media technology has also affected the way the news was disseminated in Malaysia over the detention of the former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. CNBC and CNN broke the news to Malaysians and the world of Anwar's message which was videotaped just before his arrest.

Asiaweek, Far Eastern Economic Review, Asian Wall Street Journal, Time and Newsweek gave extensive print cover. Several dozen Anwar websites have been active on the Internet.

They have disseminated the news internationally in a way that would not have happened without the new information technology.

HERE TO STAY

THE new media technology is here to stay and will become more all-embracing with time. It will change the governance of Asian societies. These societies will adjust, adapt and adopt the new media technology while retaining their traditional core values.

Consider, for example, the Internet phenomenon. Many parents are worried about the easy access to hardcore pornography. Children are at risk from paedophiles. There are also many "hate" sites which fan racial and religious hatred.

Despite the difficulty of censoring the Internet, many governments are determined to establish control. The Chinese government tries to be very strict, at least on paper.

Singapore takes a practical approach. We know that it is impossible to censor the Internet effectively, so we censor only one to two hundred sites if only for reasons of pornography. We require every Internet service provider to offer as an option to parents a relatively sanitised version of the Internet called the Family Access Network. Instead of parents having to install and update the filtering software themselves, this is done at the server level by the Internet service provider.

In the coming years, regulators around the world will have to act together to combat cross-border crimes in cyberspace. The new technology is a force for both good and evil.

The Internet is as much a purveyor of truth as it is of outright lies. Although it may take some time, morality and wisdom must find a way to control and tame the new technology to preserve the fundamental values of society by which parents bring up their children to be good citizens. In responding to this challenge of new technology, Asian societies will seek solutions different from those of the West.

CARRYING OFFICIAL VIEWPOINTS

THE availability of bandwidth and the inexorable shift from broadcasting to narrowcasting will have an enormous impact on all human societies, both West and East.

This will make it difficult for governments to communicate their positions to the people. Without a clear enunciation of government positions and policies and the reasons for them, it is not possible to rally a people around common goals.

Instead of a clear and consistent message, we will have a cacophony of media voices sending a plethora of messages, many contradictory. Because of the different interests and objectives of journalists and media owners, the government's position may not get through at all. This will be bad for any society, democratic or otherwise.

Asian societies strike a different balance between the rights of the individuals and those of the larger community. There is a need to have an established official position known to its people. Asian governments will use whatever is the latest media technology for this purpose. This is not to say that the official position is exclusive.

Indeed, information technology is rapidly undermining whatever monopoly control of the media governments might have known. Thus, along with the official view, many other views are available and known.

It is important for a man to know what the official position is, whether or not he accepts it. The Catholic Church has always understood this. The Vatican maintains Catholic unity around the world by clearly communicating its official or doctrinal position. Whether the particular issue concerns contraception, Viagra or cloning, the Pope makes clear his position through official pronouncements which have his imprimatur. Catholics may read other views about the Church and its teachings in Times or Newsweek, but they make a distinction between the official view and the other views.

Whether or not they accept the official view is a different and separate matter. In the same way, Asian governments will require the official view to be carried in the media, along with other views over which they have no control.

A PLETHORA OF VIEWS

WHEN Hong Kong was a British colony, RTHK, a government broadcaster, communicated the official position of the colonial government and the commercial TV and radio channels were obliged to carry them. When Governor Chris Patten tried to commercialise RTHK before the handover, the Chinese government objected and RTHK continues to communicate the official view of the SAR government.

Singapore probably has the greatest concentration of international media in the region. Singaporeans are educated in English and have immediate access to the international media. In such a situation, it is crucial for the government to be able to communicate its position and policy to its people. Hence we have always insisted on the right of reply to any serious misreporting by the international media.

We cannot demand the same right of reply from media that do not need our permission to circulate in Singapore because they do not do so regularly. One result is that reports on Singapore in the US media that do not sell regularly in Singapore are often selective and sensational.

Two events which the US media frequently reported about Singapore in recent years were, first, our ban on import of chewing gum and, second, the caning of Michael Fay. Although many Americans supported our stand on these issues, this is not how we want our international image to be defined. Perhaps advances in media technology will one day enable us to give Americans a more objective view of Singapore.

Whatever it is, we cannot stop reports which are disagreeable to us. As an international trading and financial centre, our economy is fuelled by information. Our financial markets cannot afford to be a nano-second behind London, New York or Tokyo. Thus international news agencies, like Reuters, Bloomberg, AP, AFP and Nikkei, are all represented in Singapore.

In recent years, we have become a major television broadcast centre. CNBC, HBO, MTV, Disney, Discovery, ESPN and National Geographic are some of the international channels which up-link from Singapore. BBC World Service is available 24 hours on local FM. Because it is printed in Singapore, people in Singapore can read The Economist before they read it in London or New York. Cable TV in Singapore offers a more cosmopolitan menu of channels than is available in most US cities. There is a plethora of views available.

Singapore has managed this relentless flood of information not by blocking the flow but by stating its point of view in competition. Singaporeans expect the government to correct and refute false allegations. We defend our position in open argument and let our case stand on its own merits. Countries which try instead to block the flow will lose.

East Asia's media is in a state of flux. IT has altered the parameters for the operation of the media. Neat and clear-cut segmentation between national (domestic) and international (foreign) is no longer possible because the international (foreign) media cannot be totally excluded. It is similar to the revolution in telecommunications where new technology is beating national barriers by call-back systems for IDD dialling and Internet telephone. The barrier that still prevents the total penetration of national boundaries is language and culture. But that can be overcome by the international media giants as they develop the capabilities to deliver information in the language and the accents of the target country, using local faces like MTV and CNBC.

CHANGING TIMES

IT IS not possible to predict the eventual outcome. Technology is advancing not just in the media field. The IT revolution is changing the way people live and work, in other words, altering the way societies are structured. The world, including East Asia, is in an interesting and challenging period of change as news and information penetrate national frontiers.

Whatever the eventual impact of IT, for a society to hold together, it needs institutions and high points which citizens look up to. The media has the responsibility to preserve some of these high points, or at least not to diminish them unnecessarily. I was sad to see the British media systematically diminish the prestige of the British monarchy.

This is in sharp contrast to the way the Japanese media reports on their Imperial family. I do not believe that the Japanese people are the worse off for it. Not everything in life should be reduced to entertainment.

To say this in Los Angeles, the entertainment capital of the world, may be unwise. I believe, however, that despite advances in technology, the media in the various countries of East Asia will remain different from the media in America.

An Asian society cannot be held together without a sense of what is high and what is low.

Published in the Straits Times Oct 31 and Nov 2, 1998.