Joel Qin and Erika Lim, exchange students from Singapore, this week gave the Journalism class some valuable insights into the way that foreign media operates. In their presentation, they pointed out that the internet and globalisation is threatening laws that Singapore has in place, and provided a statement by the Minister Mentor, Lee Kuan Yew, in which he accepted that "we cannot stop this. If we stop this, we stop the progress. We are marginalised".
Having conducted research into the current censoring of media, particularly global, in Fiji for a university project, I was not surprised to hear of Singapore's similar stance. As Joel stated, the reasons for their ranking of 133 in press freedom is due to their banning of foreign magazines (The Economist and the Far East Economic Review) and the fact that their two main media outlets (MediaCorp and Singapore Press Holdings) are government-owned.
Like Fiji, and even China to a lesser extent, the prominent role of citizen journalism in Singapore has been to provide the local community with access to information that they would otherwise be unable to obtain. An example provided in the presentation included the wrongful hanging of Vignes Mourthi in 2003, which only came to light courtesy of The Online Citizen. However, the conundrum is that whilst Singaporeans are gaining valuable knowledge on such issues through citizen journalism and the internet, their local media is suffering due to a lack of freedom.
Personally, I believe that Singapore should embrace globalisation, rather than maintaining their localised laws. As Joel and Erika stated, it is up to the Singaporean government to determine whether or not to "retain probably-soon-to-be-obsolete laws, or strive to find a social equilibrium for media freedom". This blogger believes that for the sake of local media in Singapore, the government does need to allow less restrictions on the media, but traditional laws should still be respected.
Why do I believe that there should not be mass changes of traditional localised laws? I discovered, during research on the censoring of Google in China for a recent assignment, that many locals did not find it to be a negative thing, as censorship of the media is a part of their culture. In the Western world we believe it to be denying basic human rights, but this is clearly a biased opinion based on a differing of cultural structures. As Joel and Erika put to the class, would we challenge Singapore's 'media freedom' if we had lived with it in Australia our whole lives. I would have to say the answer to such a question would be a definite no.
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