"First it was the price of water, then it was the tudung. Now it is land reclamation," he said.

Last week, one of the republic's parlimentarians, R. Ravindran, accused Malaysian leaders of lacking diplomacy by using the media to raise bilateral disputes.

So intrusive is the media perceived to be that in his recent visit to Kuala Lumpur, Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said, "These problems will arise from time to time and if played up by the press, will become a big issue and more difficult to ourselves as both sides have their manoeuvre room restricted." The savaging of the Malaysian media raises an important question. What is the role of the media in the conduct of diplomacy and, more importantly, foreign policy? According to a former Malaysian diplomat, the confusion that arises over the Malaysian media's coverage on bilateral concerns stems from that poorly understood word — diplomacy. Many wrongly see the word as something that signifies both foreign policy and diplomatic negotiations. There is a difference between the two. Foreign policy should never be a secret because the public should know the Government's stand on issues such as the Palestine-Israel conflict, treaties that it has ratified such as the World Trade Organisation and countries such as Israel.

The conduct of diplomatic parleys should always be confidential. An on-going negotiation should not be hampered or frustrated by leakages to the press since this may paralyse the process. But the press can report on the progress and outcome of the negotiations.

According to Harold Nicolson in Diplomacy, "Today, the masses are expected to take an interest in foreign affairs, to know the details of current controversies, to come to their own conclusions effective through press and parliament. At the same time, however, current issues have been rendered complex and inter-connected.

"Thus, whereas the man in the street is expected to have an opinion on international problems, the very complexity of the problems has rendered it difficult to provide him with the information on which to base judgment".

Due to the complexity of the issues, the media has to take a hard look at them and find a framework that can accommodate a tough analysis as well as a reassessment of the issues leading to a certain stand or policy.

The coverage on the rates of the water supplied to Singapore was triggered off by a reader's letter to the Editor, questioning the high cost of treated water in Singapore despite the fact that Malaysia sells raw water at a cheap rate.

There was an exchange of letters, some of which frankly bemoaned the folly of Malaysia's generosity. Singapore's reclamation works captured attention when a local Malay daily started reporting on how it had affected the livelihood of some fishermen in Johor.

Since it is the duty of the media to follow up on public concerns, several perceptive analyses and reports on the comments of Malaysian leaders were duly carried. But the reportage lacked jingoism. Nor did the reports spout the same point of view.

Notably, the editorials did not display any excessive zeal. Utusan Malaysia, for example, published a commentary by Lt-Gen (Rtd) Zaini Mohamed Said who warned that water was a security issue which could lead to an armed conflict.

He also alerted Malaysians to the fact that the Singapore military is stronger and more sophisticated, and both sides would end up as losers in any military misadventure. The gamut of reactions to the water and reclamation issues shows that interests are competing entities perceived divergently by different people.

In trying to digest Singapore's assaults on the Malaysia media, the pertinent questions are: Did the media pander to the prejudices of its readers and create a hype of its own? And did the media coverage imperil ties? The truth is, it is hard to see how the media could have contributed to the debasement of the diplomatic process and failure of negotiations.

In any case, touchiness about media reports on its own country's conduct of foreign policy should not derail diplomatic negotiations or drive leaders from both countries to recklessness and fecklessness.

The wider accusation is that the media is "used" to raise bilateral issues. Perhaps, it is a measure of our naivete that expressions of concern over the cheap rate of water, the livelihood of the fishermen and the state of our sea lanes are seen as politically planted and, worse, something that jeo-pardises the supposed behind-the-scenes person-to-person diplomacy.

But the fact remains that the media has a role to inform, question and protest against any actions detrimental to national interests. Unfor-tunately, Singapore seems to expect our journalists to come from obscure rags that are openly patronised by the Department of Information.

It is true that the media, like others in the world, fixes the agenda for public preoccupation. This does not mean the fixing comes from others apart from the Group-editorin-chief. And certainly, the media should not ignore public opinion. Yes, we do editorialise certain issues but all newspaper publishers in the world, including Singapore, marshal their editorial pages in support of various political initiatives.

In evaluating the media's role in the conduct of foreign policy, criticism and the lack of information are the hazards of the job. In the absence or lack of official information and in the face of reticent public officers, the media conducts its own parallel investigations and turns the scraps it has uncovered into stories — sometimes to see them repudiated, not least condemned.

Along the way, there will be missteps or unsound judg-ment. Unfed, the media can sometimes misleadingly file reports, to borrow Henry Kissinger's words, "proving that media headlines do not necessarily correspond to the rhythms of history".

The days where the government could mould public opinion in support of an already determined foreign policy direction, such as the Tonkin Gulf case where President Lyndon B. Johnson inflamed public opinion to escalate the Vietnam War, are coming to an end. Singapore has to wake up to this reality.

As pointed out by a former Foreign Minister of Israel in Diplomacy for the Next Century (1999), "There is no way of putting the clock back to an era in which negotiations were sheltered from domestic constituencies.

"The modern negotiator cannot escape the duality of his role. He must transact business simultaneously with his negotiating partner and public opinion. This requires a total modification of diplomacy techniques."

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