Media
unlikely to be leashed
Sunday Post. April 23, 2000
INSIDE TREACK: BY DANNY GITTINGS
VERY few would seriously attempt to deny that Singapore
has a more docile media than Hong Kong.
Yet even in that much stricter island state, the government can have difficulty controlling what appears in the press. When asked if the Singaporean media should be mindful of the national interest - especially when making remarks that could inflame nearby countries - there was a note of resignation in Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong's reply.
"Sometimes they do not seem to," he said, during an interview with the Post last week. "Very often the press makes some remarks and the Singapore government gets blamed."
Perhaps he had in mind a recent column in the Straits Times that provoked protests from Malaysia.
It provocatively noted that, after the election of a new president to succeed Lee Teng-hui in Taiwan, Kuala Lumpur is now the only elected government in Asia with no change at the top in the past decade. To add insult to injury, columnist Chua Lee Hoong described Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad as "top dog", a term offensive to the nation's Muslims, as dogs are considered anathema in Islam.
Mr Goh might also have been thinking of a Straits Times editorial two years ago, which caused bad feeling in the SAR administration, by questioning Hong Kong's commitment to the rule of law, following a series of controversies involving Secretary for Justice Elsie Leung Oi-sie.
Either way, he seemed resigned to the reality that in today's more open world, his government cannot tightly control the media, even if it wishes to do so.
"We are going through that process where our neighbours need to learn there is a difference between the media and ourselves. If Singapore media wants to be a regional newspaper, then it is going to have to comment on politics," Mr Goh said, although he still hoped it could be persuaded to exercise some restraint.
This inability of the government, in a society far more tightly controlled than Hong Kong, to stop its media from publishing comments it considers against the national interest, should serve as a hopeful lesson to anyone who fears for press freedom in the SAR.
Especially after mainland official Wang Fengchao recently warned the local media on the same subject. He insisted matters relating to the national interest should not be treated simply as general news and warned journalists to be careful who they interview, after Cable Television broadcast Taiwan's vice-president-elect Annette Lu Hsiu-lien insisting the island has "independent sovereignty".
But, for all the controversy Mr Wang caused, there seems little prospect of most of the local media heeding him. Ms Lu's utterings continue to be widely reported, and will probably be even more so in the run-up to her May 20 inauguration.
Nor is there much to be feared in his call for the forthcoming law implementing Article 23 of the Basic Law to restrict such interviews. The SAR government knows full well that if it worded the proposed anti-subversion legislation in those terms it would never get through the Legislative Council.
That is not to ignore the dangers of greater self-censorship. But if even Mr Goh cannot persuade the Singapore press to toe what he believes to be the "national interest", then it is almost inconceivable that Mr Wang will have any more success in getting the Hong Kong media to do likewise.