Over the past few months, discussions relating to the role of local and foreign media as well as Singapore's ambitions for becoming a "global media city" show that the city-state remains very cautious about easing up when it comes to the press.

While it wants to become a hub for international and regional media, it is also wary about negative - and in its view unconstructive - coverage of and comment on Singapore.

In November, Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts (MITA) Lee Boon Yang was quoted as saying that local journalists need to remain firm in serving the national interest and "to attract more international media".

But at the same time, he issued warnings to foreign journalists that the local media should not be used to amplify their ideas of government and media policies.

Lee made his comments in the wake of a controversy over an article that the free-circulating daily newspaper Today had published in October, written by Australian expert in Asian corporate practice Michael Backman, who, Lee said, had "crossed [the] line".

In his commentary "Is Singapore paranoid?", Backman said Singapore still maintains "the old-fashioned, outmoded trappings of a Third World dictatorship" - yet it does not have anything to hide.

He also argued that the country needs to cultivate the "freedom to be wrong", which in his opinion is parallel to media freedom. Bar-top dancing is just "sleaze", not reform or liberalism, Backman concluded.

Critics find officials' approach to Backman's arguments - and their objections to the fact that a local paper ran his views - contradictory to what the Remaking Singapore Committee (RSC), aimed at pushing a more open society and at addressing economic woes, had set out to do when it was established in February 2002.

In its July 2003 report to the government, the committee mentioned that "the relationship between government and the people should not be viewed as a zero-sum game", and that the three qualities that had helped Singapore progress rapidly include "decisive government action, close people-government partnership and open communication channels".

But if a "remade" Singapore shall "embrace a diversity of peoples and ideas", skeptics wonder why foreign journalists, who can contribute to "the development of our governance and political maturity", are excluded, as Joseph Wong Kok Sen wrote in a November 19 letter to the Straits Times newspaper.

On the same day that Lee made his remarks, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew defined television as a tool of guidance that, if it loses credibility, will fail to serve its purpose.

He added that the local market is too small to support two companies that run several television stations - Mediacorp and Singapore Press Holdings' Mediaworks - in remarks interpreted as discouraging more media variety and choices in the country. His remarks were a "subtle warning" that one of these two key media companies bring its shutters down, claimed an anonymous member of the volunteer group Singapore Internet Community (Sintercom) Forum.

"I was disappointed to hear the government concluded that the market is too small, because that's far from clear," said Cherian George, author of the book Singapore: The Air-Conditioned Nation, The Media and New Politics.

"Just because the two dominant players in the Singapore media haven't found the way to operate all their businesses profitably, it doesn't necessarily mean others can't make it," continued George, a postdoctoral fellow at the National University of Singapore's Asia Research Institute.

"They are assuming that these two dominant players have exhausted the potential of the Singapore market," he added.

Yet Lee Boon Yang's remarks came as no surprise to Sinapan Samydorai of Think Center, a non-governmental group trying to push discussion of politics and human rights in a society that frowns on open dissent. It is "not [a] new pattern," he said.

According to ThinkCentre.org, Think Center's Internet portal, Singapore is ranked 144th this year in the Second World Press Freedom Ranking by the Paris-based non-governmental group Reporters Without Borders. There are 165 other countries in the ranking. The United States holds the 31st position and North Korea the last.

At a Radio Singapore International talk show in October, Mark Cenite, assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University's School of Communication and Information, said the challenges to media in Singapore are different from those of other countries.

"If you talk to these folks ... what you find is they describe a climate of some fear. I mean, nothing comparable to the situation you have in some countries on the list where reporters face violence as reprisals for stories," he explained. "But reporters here do describe a situation where they are walking on eggshells."

Some foreign news agencies have regional offices in Singapore, but the government tends not to look too much at news meant for circulation outside of the country. However, in the past, the government has stopped circulation of magazines it deemed to carry unsuitable material.

Singaporean laws require agencies to possess permits in order to publish newspapers. The Newspaper and Printing Presses Act of 1974 also requires permission for the distribution, importation and sale of "any offshore newspaper" in Singapore.

Often, however, George says this "principle" is used against individuals, as in the recent furor over Backman's comments in Today, a publication owned by Mediacorp.

"He wasn't writing in an offshore publication but in a Singaporean newspaper, with a Singapore license to publish. It raises questions - most obviously, what is the role of editorial judgment in publishing such pieces?" challenged George.

Some say it is time a country that has progressed so much since its inception in 1959 became more confident and let its people speak out and decide for themselves.

Jack Sai, a final year mass communication student at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, cites as an example the public debate involving officials, academics and sex workers in Thailand on legalizing prostitution.

"Such issues need to be discussed very honestly because they affect the country's economy and morality, which are cornerstones of a nation. Bungee jumping and bar-top dancing are merely associated with fun," he said in an interview.

"The fact that the [Thai] government treasured the opinions of even the prostitutes themselves goes a long way in showing that everyone is important, and all should be given a chance to speak," he added.

Dharmendra Yadav wrote in a letter to MITA, a university and newspapers that Lee Boon Yang's remarks are a "mockery" of Singapore's education system, and the ability of its citizens to think about what they read.

"Surely, after more than 10 years of sound but competitive education, the reasonable individual can be expected to separate news from comment," he said. "Readers, listeners and viewers are today far more discerning than those of the past."

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