From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

Asiaweek
cocked a snook at us. The
press secretary to the minister for home affairs had written to point out errors in
an article in its magazine. 
Asiaweek
printed parts of this letter as an article (“A
Distortion of Facts, You Say?”), attributing it to the press secretary. It not only
deleted significant parts but added more than 470 words of its own, lengthening
it by more than half, without the press secretary’s consent and without disclosing
this to its readers. The press secretary wrote to protest against this alteration of
his letter and asked that his original and subsequent letters be published
unaltered. 
Asiaweek
refused. We restricted the magazine’s circulation from
11,000 copies to 500. A month later, it published the letters unaltered. We lifted
the restriction, after a year.
In December 1987 the American-owned 
Far Eastern Economic Review
published an account of a meeting between me and the Catholic archbishop of
Singapore regarding the arrest of 22 persons involved in a Marxist conspiracy.
The article was based on statements made by a renegade priest who had not been
present at the meeting. The 
Review
alleged that I had called a press conference
without the archbishop’s knowledge, tricked him into attending it and prevented
a comment by him from being publicised. It said the arrest constituted an attack
on the Catholic Church.
My press secretary wrote to ask why it published an article based on
statements of a person not present at the meeting without checking the facts with
the archbishop or me. The editor, Derek Davies, printed this letter but did not
answer the question. We wrote to repeat the question. The editor printed the
letter and added at the same time that what the priest had said was true. He

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claimed that a newspaper could legally print anything it wished, true or false, so
long as it was able to quote a source who had actually made the statement. It was
under no obligation to check its facts to satisfy itself as to the truthfulness of its
source, or to verify the assertions with other witnesses, nor could it be held
answerable for any lies and libels thereby published. Davies was brazen and
defiant. We restricted the 
Review
from 9,000 to 500 copies, and I took out a writ
for libel against him and the weekly.
He then published another letter from the renegade priest giving a new
account of my meeting with the archbishop. We wrote to ask which of its two
versions of the meeting was correct. The weekly printed an edited version of my
press secretary’s letter, suppressing much of it, claiming the subject matter was
sub judice
. However, when the Singapore government bought advertisement
space in the 
Review
for the letter, it was published, the 
sub judice
excuse
abandoned.
I won my libel action in 1989 when Davies did not go into the witness box to
give evidence and be cross-examined. Davies left the 
Review
soon afterwards.
Before our issue with the 
AWSJ
was settled, I was invited to speak to the
American Society of Newspaper Editors at a meeting in Washington DC in April
1988. I accepted. I quoted the US State Department’s 
aide-mémoire
, “that where
the media are free, the marketplace of ideas sorts the irresponsible from the
responsible and rewards the latter”, and pointed out that the US model was not
universally valid. The Philippine press was based on the US model. It enjoyed
all the freedoms but it had failed the Filipino people. “A partisan press helped
Filipino politicians to flood the marketplace of ideas with junk, and confused
and befuddled the people so that they could not see what their vital interests
were in a developing country.” I stated my position:
“Singapore’s domestic debate is a matter for Singaporeans. We allow
American journalists in Singapore in order to report Singapore to their
fellow countrymen. We allow their papers to sell in Singapore so that we
can know what foreigners are reading about us. But we cannot allow
them to assume a role in Singapore that the American media play in
America, that is, that of invigilator, adversary and inquisitor of the
administration. No foreign television station had claimed the right to
telecast its programmes in Singapore. Indeed America’s Federal
Communications Commission regulations bar foreigners from owning
more than 25 per cent of a TV or radio station. Only Americans can

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control a business which influences opinion in America. Thus Rupert
Murdoch took up US citizenship before he purchased the independent
TV stations of the Metromedia group in 1985.”
Through these cases, Singaporeans realised that what the foreign press
wanted was to sell their papers to our growing English-reading public. They did
this by being tendentious at the expense of the facts. Naturally they did not like
their slanted articles straightened out. When they discovered that if they twisted
our arm, we could tweak their noses in reply, biased reporting became less
frequent.
In July 1993 the