PROPERTY
CARS
JOBS
However, the economic dimension is also important and can help create additional media space.
But space created by economic investment alone can be taken away or shrink easily in the event of an economic downturn. That seems to be the Singapore case.
When the Peoples Action Party (PAP) government in June 2000 announced that additional media licences will be issued to government-linked companies, Singapore Press Holding (SPH) and MediaCorp, for each to start additional broadcasting and print projects, there was much optimism.
The long-standing monopolies of SPH in print media and MediaCorp hegemony in broadcast seem poised for new internal competition.
The imminent presence of more media products on the market led commentators to immediately claim that internal competition among the media groups will result in freer media in Singapore.
Economic realities
By the end of 2001 the initial enthusiasm was giving way to some somber economic realities.
Soon after the new licences were given, SPH launched MediaWorks — a television arm to manage two new channels in English and Mandarin.
It further executed plans to bring out two print publications Project Eyeball (a yuppie lifestyle tabloid) and Streats (a daily giveaway paper).
It also launched a web portal — AsiaOne, that hosts the online editions of the group's six newspapers, including its flagship English daily, the Straits Times and Chinese, Malay and Tamil papers.
MediaCorp introduced the free tabloid, Today and an additional sports channel, City TV.
The Singapore Broadcasting Authority also granted MediaCorp two digital television (DTV) licenses allowing it to install DTV sets in buses and run a commercial DTV service.
MediaCorp further announced plans for a regional 24-hour news television channel — Channel NewsAsia to be carried by cable operators and to go Asia-wide on Sept 18. Plans included Internet broadcast that was envisioned to cover Europe.
Staffing in various overseas bureaus was increased with Singaporean correspondents and local journalists from the home countries.
At the start of the media liberalisation project it was also announced that the cable TV industry which was monopolised by Singapore Cable Vision, which has the exclusive licence which expires on 2002, will be reviewed.
The expiry of this exclusive license coincides with a ban on private ownership of satellite dishes that lapses this year.
These developments spiraled into discussions about the need to introduce media competition laws to check any aggressive behaviour among the media competitors.
It was announced that the Trade and Industry Ministry may look into such a law.
More legislation
Meanwhile, there was an attempt by some concerned Singaporeans to set up a media watch group to raise standards and encourage fair reporting following the issuance of newspaper and television licences.
In direct response, the PAP administration countered that it will prompt its own appointed media watchdog, the Publications Advisory Committee, or PAC, to be more watchful over local papers and to report regularly on trends in reporting.
Meanwhile, the Media Group at the Feedback Unit — a government department set up by the PAP to solicit responses on various issues from the public — set out to also discuss current media developments.
The PAP government, while issuing new licences, continued to introduce legislation to control foreign broadcast and print media from interfering with local politics.
This is needed, they claimed, in the light of many foreign reporting agencies relocating to Singapore.
The extent of regulation to control information flow even went as far as legislating for guidelines restricting the use of the Internet and SMS during election periods in 2001.
Although there were reactions from the foreign media and a couple of local NGOs to the PAPs measures, there was a predictable silence from the PAC and the Feedback Unit. There was little reaction by the public or the local media to these moves.
Nevertheless, the expectation that the media will be freer, even though misplaced, were strong.
This view was held even though laws surrounding media control were not changed. Proponents cite as evidence, the increased coverage of civil society initiatives, opposition party activities and alternative lifestyle issues in the additional space created by the new media products.
For the owners and managers of the new media products the inclusion of alternative news was seen as a necessary ingredient in selling media products in an increasingly crowded market.
Additional media products also created more jobs and brought in younger journalists. The new blood brought in alternative news, even if their older and senior editors still re-wrote their stories or dismissed some of them as not being hard news.
It was a common complaint among the young journalists that the stories they filed were often re-written and sometimes tamed beyond recognition by their editors.
Partly in pursuit of a better job and partly in search of greater freedoms, more local journalists moved to regional and international media companies. MediaCorp lost several of its newsreaders to the BBC, CNBC and CNN.
Economic foundation crumbles
But at no time was media liberalisation premised on a freer media. If anything, the reason for introducing local competition anchored on the presence of a large advertising revenue pie.
It is this foundation, on which the launch of more media projects was based, that is now crumbling and the additional space in the new media products, as a result, stands to suffer a setback.
Following patterns in international economy, media organisations are suffering the backlash of the Sept 11 incident in the US. One of the high-profile media casualties in the region was Asiaweek.
Other regional and international media organisations are also trimming down staff size and cutting back on travel and other related expenses.
In Singapore, the economic downturn has hurt advertising revenues — the lifeline of the media industry. That there were already signs of a media downturn came with the closure of Singapore Press Holdings Project Eyeball.
Started with much fanfare as an Internet publication targeting at the young professional, this endeavour that had both a print and Internet version folded within the space of a year citing business reasons.
Its high news stand price of S$0.80 did not go well with readers and the number of copies sold per day remained low throughout its existence.
It was somehow ironic that soon after, the private citizens media watch initiative to monitor media reports in Singapore also folded in Sept 2001.
The project entitled MediaWatch, registered as a non-profit organisation in June 2001, was hoping to raise US$122,000 for its operations.
However, funding institutions stayed away citing the work that MediaWatch was about to embark upon as being political.
Senior working journalists dismissed the need for any media monitoring by claiming that they were professional.
Thus, MediaWatchs first and only public statement was about the short-lived Project Eyeball.
More bad news
Two months down the road more bad news was to hit the industry. In Nov 2001, SPH announced that it was axing 96 staff.
AsiaOne Ltd the older and conservative ones remain.
There have been more rules than there are more real freedoms for the media. In fact, when the PAP government introduced rules to control the Internet, Sintercom, a lifestyle news website, closed down while another, Think Centre, terminated its online discussion forum in protest of the new rules.
Unless, there is another economic upsurge, there is unlikely to be more media products to emerge in the Singapore market in the short run. Given that the necessary legal, social and political variables are not in place to support a free media, Singapore is likely to lag behind in this area.
JAMES GOMEZ is a Central Executive Committee member of the Singapore Workers Party and founder of the Think Centre.