Something big happened in Singapore yesterday and it was on the front page of….the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. The kindest thing I can say about MSM here is that they don’t track events as thoroughly as the foreign media. But I know that’s a lie. So we have to read foreign versions of what happened in Singapore, filed by wire agencies and other publications. Or you get bits and pieces of what happened through social media and YouTube clips. I would have liked a comprehensive report on what the speakers said done by professionals who have a stake in this country’s future.
But I, a Singapore citizen, didn’t get it.
I suppose MSM found themselves in a tough position. There’s some OB marker somewhere they can’t cross, or won’t cross. So there was a piece in the Sunday Times which summed up the event. Bare bones. Not even a Page 1 picture. The organisers of the Say No to Population White Paper said 5,000 people attended, reported ST, which also cited AFP’s 1,000 to 1,500. The police, whom the MSM usually relies on for the definitive crowd size, said they didn’t monitor the crowd size yesterday. Unbelievable! Anyway, if ST could have quoted AFP, then it could well have come up with its estimate of crowd size – which it didn’t.
But why quibble about crowd size? It’s enough that it’s sizeable, and filled Hong Lim Park on a rainy day. And it was about a political issue. Finally, Hong Lim Park seems to be living up to purpose it was set up for a long, long time ago. Not just a forlorn place with a speaker every couple of months or so talking to a couple of people, but a place for civilised discussion and civil action.
That so many people turned up (who says Singaporeans are apathetic) over something so close to people’s hearts that even Parliament had tried to resolve makes this big news. Yet I see a constrained/restrained MSM. It is as disheartening as the label that the MSM did NOT attach to those Chinese SMRT bus drivers – that they were on strike, whether legal or illegal. It is as befuddling as the way MSM handled Professor Wolfgang Lutz’s assertions earlier this week that we got the ideal TFR all wrong. While it was still top news in ST, it was stuck at the bottom of the page.
What would have made my Sunday reading experience even worse is if they had ignored the Financial Times article on the mysterious death of American Shane Todd. A friend actually said it would not see the light of day in MSM because the incident crossed national boundaries and indicated sloppy police work. I replied that MSM would have no choice but to “recover’’ the story given that it’s gone viral.This wasn’t just a blog post that can be dismissed; it looked like investigative reporting done by the much respected FT. MSM did, with a police statement calling for evidence to be turned over, although I wonder what MSM would have done if the police declined comment…
Go buy my ex-boss’ book, OB Markers, if you want to know more about the relationship between The Straits Times and the Government. Mr Cheong Yip Seng gave away a lot of secrets, ending his book on a bright note – that things can only get better with more information forthcoming in the light of a better-educated audience and the internet.
I’m beginning to think he might be wrong.
You know, it’s popular online to rant about the inadequacies of the MSM, a pity since on most news fronts that do not involve the G, they do a decent enough job. It doesn’t help that newspapers’ premium news articles are behind a paywall, because those who have a bias against the MSM will simply NOT subscribe. While there are business considerations for the paywall, I firmly believe that restricting access is not good for any messenger. While the MSM might make more money, they are not going to be able to raise their profile or reputation for good reporting and writing behind a wall. Interesting conundrum.
I know from reading Nielson reports that most people still rely on MSM for their news. The trust level is high.
This is a sacred trust.
It shouldn’t be eroded by downplaying news that runs against the so-called national narrative.
It would be a pity would be if more and more people treat MSM the way the G is increasingly being treated – that they can’t be trusted. So you don’t just have one institution in trouble, but two.
You wouldn’t read about this though in the MSM.
Bertha Harian 
6 responses to “Reporting Hong Lim Park”
I am surprised the Hong Lim Park was not on the Sunday Times front page today, but it doesn’t matter if you read news online. Reuters, I think, carried a report featuring the rally organizer Gilbert Goh the day before the rally. All the agencies covered the rally. The International Herald Tribune’s Rendezvous feature also has a story on it. I saw the Financial Times story on the American Shane Todd, who died in Singapore, yesterday. If you use things like Google Alert and Trap.it, you get all the news you want about Singapore that the local mainstream media may play down. Singapore News Alternative links to foreign media reports on Singapore. You can no longer rely on Singapore mainstream media to cover everything on Singapore — and it’s not necessary, if you read news online.
The NPPA stands in the way of our nationhood. Where it once helped unite, it now divides. While a government rag like ST has all the right in the world to publish their own narrative and the narrative of their paymasters, the NPPA silences a large part of the Singaporean narrative, and makes our nation so much weaker and poorer.
Is the glass half-full or half-empty ? The AIM scandal was woefully under-reported, but then perhaps we should be grateful that that story even saw the light of day at all.
You’re misreading the amount of trust people have in the media. NTU did a survey a couple of years back and an overwhelming majority of respondents believe that the Straits Times is systematically biased towards the government. The survey was done by the same faculty that produces journalists. They must have thought that they’d be going into the business to save journalism from oblivion, or something.
SPH has no idea how to run its online business. The vast majority of their online businesses have been abject failures. (Project Eyeball and RedNano. Note to SPH: don’t ask your kids to name your business ventures.) What the ST doesn’t realise that it has such a monopoly and critical mass that it is probably one of the few newspapers in the world that can be fully free-to-access and do very well purely on advertising income.
Speaking of the business side, Rupert Murdoch owns the most viewed and most profitable news website in the world: the Daily Mail. It has eclipsed many bigger names in the US, and it’s completely free. If there ever was a model a useless, gossipy newspaper like TNP can aspire to, it is that. Funnily, Mr Murdoch is also the world’s #1 advocate of the paywall, and most of his paywall experiments have been abject failures, especially with the Times of London.
It’s not that people who’re against the MSM or the government won’t subscribe to the Straits Times. Journalism is not just about the art of putting words together, and newspapers are not solely about putting together a comprehensive base of news.
For someone who knows who difficult it is to put a newspaper together, you think that it’s harsh that people judge the ST by the 1% rather than the 99% of its work. But for me integrity is the 99%. For me journalism is just as much about integrity as it is about the art behind it. It’s supposed to be non-fiction. It’s supposed to be the unvarnished truth.
1. It does reflect The Straits Times priorities when a tycoon’s latest expensive toy makes Page 1 and an event with wider impact on our country doesn’t.
2. The reticence shown by our MSM when reporting on Singapore politics is well-known…..& even acknowledged by reporters themselves. Reference http://wikileaks.org/cable/2009/01/09SINGAPORE61.html
3. Personally I find it rather hypocritical that incidents involving political parties & political families from other countries – especially Southeast Asian countries – are given wide coverage but similar incidents in Singapore are rarely covered. Which, in my opinion, is sad because it drives a thriving underground news / rumors ecosystem.
4. When Singaporeans feel they need to rely on foreign news sources to find out what’s really happening in Singapore, the value of our mainstream media channels drops very quickly.
[…] was nowhere to be seen. This was strongly criticised by ex-journalist Bertha Henson in her blog: “The kindest thing I can say about MSM here is that they don’t track events as thoroughly […]