Media's future not Europe's past

By Russell Heng

THE latest worldwide press freedom index compiled by Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) places Singapore at a lowly 147th position out of a total of 167 countries ranked.

The Government would probably have ignored the insult had Non-Constituency MP Steve Chia not dragged it out in Parliament two weeks ago.

Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts Lee Boon Yang gave a written reply to Mr Chia but unfortunately, the full ministerial statement is not on his ministry's website.

If The Straits Times had summarised him accurately, I understand Dr Lee to have argued that the Singapore media did not do well in the ratings because of its particular virtues and not its vices.

The RSF ranking favours the advocacy and adversarial role of the press which is not what the Singapore media is about, he was reported to have said.

That triggered off a curious thought. If not being captious is a merit to be coveted, then logically the Singapore media will want to progress to the 167th end of the scale.

If the best is yet to be, so to speak, that means pushing its way past several communist media systems like those of Laos, Vietnam, China and Cuba to share the accolade with North Korea at the bottom of the heap.

That thought fills me, and I hope you too, with horror.

To be fair, I do not think Dr Lee or any of his Cabinet colleagues have any such intentions at all.

I bet if they have to choose reading either the top or bottom 10 papers on the RSF index to be informed about the world, hands upon their hearts, they would probably opt for those at the top.

The top 10 RSF choices start with Denmark and include Ireland, Switzerland (more of this country later) and New Zealand.

If I have reasons to suspect otherwise, I would catch the next plane out of this place and all of you would be wise to follow suit.

In the last 10 years, my research career has been focused on the study of authoritarian media systems, particularly those under communist regimes such as Vietnam.

Significant differences exist between the Singapore media and those of Vietnam (ranked 161st on the RSF index) and Stalinist North Korea.

In a nutshell, the Singapore media is a lot better than them on many counts.

However, I will also add that while the abysmal RSF ranking of Singapore is extreme, it is also not without validity. Those countries at the bottom, Singapore included, do share commonalities.

Borrowing Dr Lee's kind and gentle words, I could describe these media systems as non- adversarial and not given to advocacy. But my preference would be to call them all variations of an authoritarian media system.

Fred Siebert's authoritarian theory of the press, found in that classic Four Theories Of The Press by Siebert, Peterson and Schramm, comes in useful here.

Published in 1956 with many reprints since, this slim cogent volume has been recommended reading for legions of mass communication students.

Four Theories Of The Press also posits a communist model that practises an even more extreme form of state domination over media, but both share a philosophical kernel that privileges state control of media.

Siebert traced authoritarian media regimes to 16th century Europe. He said its operating belief runs like this:

Why should those who have access to the mass media, who often are incapable of grasping the totality of purpose of the state, who most often are not completely informed of the objectives of state policy, why should they - through their ignorance or stupidity - be permitted to threaten the success of that which has been determined to be for the good of all?

From this perspective sprang a whole slate of measures to control the mass media through pre-Enlightenment Europe.

In Tudor England, Elizabeth I gave exclusive printing rights to select publishers of popular literature, an inexpensive method of identifying their interests with those of the Crown.

In continental Europe, the preference was for direct censorship. Almost all of Western Europe enacted laws to regulate public discourse.

Fiscal measures modulated circulation and profit; a form of getting at their pockets and hearts and minds will follow.

Authoritarian regimes did not often object to a discussion of political systems in broad philosophical terms so long as the media avoided direct criticism of current political leaders and their projects.

Elizabeth I permitted, and sometimes even encouraged, a wide latitude of discussion on current issues so long as her authority to make the ultimate decisions was not questioned.

For those who have followed the vicissitudes of the Singapore media since independence, do not all these sound familiar?

When he was prime minister, Mr Goh Chok Tong set a target for Singapore to achieve the 1984 Swiss standard of living by the new millennium.

Having met that, Singaporeans now inhabit a country with a modern European economy but a 16th century European media.

Is this another instance of being uniquely Singapore with nothing to be ashamed of, or a self-evident discrepancy that cries out to be resolved?

Dare I suggest that the new Prime Minister should set a goal for the Republic to achieve the Swiss 2004 RSF rating at some point during his term in office.

That means moving from 147th to the eighth position. Phew!

-- Russell Heng Hiang Khng is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies.

Hmmm...oh well, good food for thoughts and anyway, I had better get started on "Four theories of the press" soon...