From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

14. Managing the Media
In the 40 years since 1959, the Singapore press has evolved away from the
norms set by the colonial government. We brought this about by laying down
out-of-bounds markers, mostly for our English-language pressmen. They had
been influenced by the British editors and reporters who used to be their
superiors in the Straits Times group. It took many years before a younger
generation of journalists in the 1980s recognised that the political culture of
Singapore was and will stay different from the Western norm. However, our
journalists are exposed to and influenced by the reporting styles and political
attitudes of the American media, always sceptical and cynical of authority. The
Chinese and Malay press do not model themselves on newspapers in the West.
Their cultural practice is for constructive support of policies they agree with, and
criticism in measured terms when they do not.
By the 1990s our journalists aged below 40 had all gone through similar
Singapore schools. Yet differences between the English, Chinese and Malay
press continue; the cultural gap has not been bridged. These differences are
evident in their editorial comments, headlines, selection of news and choice of
readers’ letters for publication. Chinese-educated readers do not have the same
political and social values as the English-educated. They place greater emphasis
on the interests of the group than those of the individual.
The main English newspaper, the 
Straits Times
, when owned by the British,
openly promoted their interests. It enjoyed the patronage of British commercial
firms that fed it with advertisements and of the colonial government which
provided it with news and revenue from publishing official notices. No local
English-language newspaper could ever reach even a fraction of its circulation
and influence.
The Chinese-language newspapers were left to their own devices. Their
owners, wealthy Chinese merchants, used them to advance their interests. To
attract readers, they played up news about China, Chinese education and culture,
and the war in China. The two main papers, the 
Nanyang Siang Pau
and the 
Sin

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Chew Jit Poh
, were owned by two wealthy Chinese families with right-wing but
opportunistic editors working through young Chinese journalists of whom most
were left-wing and quite a few were Communist Party cadres.
The vernacular papers – Chinese, Tamil and other languages – catered to
their readers’ communal interests and did not have any Singapore identity. The
Malay paper, 
Utusan Melayu
, printed in the Arabic script (Jawi), made itself the
vehicle of pan-Malay-Indonesian nationalism.
Almost from the start, the 
Straits Times
was bitterly hostile to the PAP. It
saw the non-communist leadership as a Trojan horse for the Chinese-speaking
communists. The 
Nanyang Siang Pau, Sin Chew Jit Poh
and several smaller
Chinese papers strongly supported the PAP because of its left-wing policy and
the united front we had with the communists. Many of the Chinese journalists
were pro-communist. The 
Utusan Melayu
was friendly in spite of our links with
Chinese-speaking communists because Yusof Ishak, its owner and managing
editor, was my friend and had appointed me the paper’s lawyer. He was later to
become the first president of Singapore. My early experiences in Singapore and
Malaya shaped my views about the claim of the press to be the defender of truth
and freedom of speech. The freedom of the press was the freedom of its owners
to advance their personal and class interests.
As the first general election for a self-governing Singapore approached in
May 1959, the 
Straits Times
became vehemently anti-PAP to prevent us from
winning and forming the government. We decided to meet it head-on. Raja had
worked for the 
Straits Times
as a senior writer. He confirmed our view that the
paper was run for British interests. It was managed by a big, burly, thuggish-
looking but competent English newspaperman called Bill Simmons. Simmons
took seriously my open threat to settle scores with the paper if, in spite of its
opposition, we won. It was preparing to move its editorial staff to Kuala Lumpur
after the election should this happen. I fired my first salvo in mid-April, two
weeks before polling day: “It is an open secret that 
Straits Times
editorial staff
would scoot to Kuala Lumpur.” I listed the flagrantly biased reporting by its
white expatriate journalists, warning that we would give it to them as hard as
they were giving it to us.
Next day, Raja followed up with an attack on the English-language
Singapore Standard
, owned by the two Chinese millionaire Aw brothers of Tiger
Balm (an ointment panacea for all aches and pains) fame. The 
Standard
had
turned against the PAP. Raja, who had been its associate editor for five years,
was told either to change policy or quit. He quit.

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I said we had to tolerate locally owned newspapers that criticised us; we
accepted their bona fides, because they had to stay and suffer the consequences
of their policies. Not so “the birds of passage who run the 
Straits Times
”: they
would run to Malaya from where they would proclaim their readiness to die for
the freedom of the press in Singapore. They used their most senior local man,
Leslie Hoffman, a Eurasian, to rebut me: “I am no bird of passage. I, who am
responsible for the policy and editorial content of this newspaper, intend to
remain in Singapore, even if Mr Lee and the People’s Action Party came to
power, and even if they use the Preservation of Public Security Ordinance
against me. … My home will be in Singapore.”
Brave words indeed. Before polling day, Hoffman had left for Kuala
Lumpur. A few days earlier, addressing an IPI (International Press Institute)
annual assembly in West Berlin, he said that my threats were “the outpourings of
a group of power-mad politicians”. He claimed the 
Straits Times
was “written,
produced and controlled by Malayans who were born there, who had been there
all their lives and who are genuine in their nationalism and loyalty to their
country”. He knew this was totally untrue. He called upon the IPI “to stop once
and for all an attempt by a party to get popular support and backing for its
declared intention to curtail press freedom”. That was exactly what we had the
right to do, to seek a mandate to deal firmly with foreign, in this case colonial,
interests in the press. It was our declared policy that newspapers should not be
owned by foreigners.
We won the election. The 
Straits Times
, its owners and senior editors moved
to Kuala Lumpur. They proved our point that they were cowardly, out to
preserve British interests, not to uphold press freedom or the right to
information. After we became independent in 1965, the 
Straits Times
moved
back to Singapore, did a complete turnaround and supported the PAP. This did
not increase my respect for it. When Malaysia’s pro-Malay policies forced the
Straits Times group to sell its Kuala Lumpur operations to UMNO, the ruling