Sunday, August 07, 2005
Climate control in the Singapore Press
by Eric Ellis
The Australian, June 21, 2001
I'm sitting in the tiny office of Cheong Yip Seng, editor-in-chief of
Singapore's The Straits Times. And he's waxing lyrical about the paper
and its contribution to the tiny South-East Asian nation that he's seen
leap from Third World slum to First World wonder.
Cheong, 57, has been with the paper since 1963. He's proud of the paper
and its contribution to modern Singapore. And he's proud, too, of the
former intelligence operatives in his newsroom.
There's Chua Lee Hoong, the ST's most prominent political columnist.
She might be Singapore's Maureen Dowd, except The New York Times's Dowd
didn't work with the secret police for nine years. There's Irene Ho on
the foreign desk. She was also an "analyst" with Singapore's
intelligence services. So, says Cheong, was Susan Sim, his Jakarta correspondent.
And there's Cheong's boss, Tjong Yik Min. From 1986 to 1993, Tjong was
Singapore's most senior secret policeman, running the much feared
Internal Security Department, a relic of colonial Britain's insecurities
about communism in its Asian empire. Now Tjong is a media mogul, the
executive president of SPH, Singapore's virtual print media giant, which
controls all but one of the country's newspapers.
I ask the affable Cheong, as the "journalist's journalist" he says he
is, if he's comfortable having such people in powerful positions on his
editorial staff and, indeed, running the company. "Why not?" he beams.
"These guys have good analytical minds . . . they are all kindred
spirits."
What's wrong with this picture? For many Singaporeans, nothing. After
42 years of comfortable living in a near one-party state, and a wealthy
one at that, it's what you've come to expect.
Walls may not have ears in Singapore, but many locals aren't fully
convinced they don't. And so they've affected this curious idiosyncrasy,
which I call the Singapore Swivel.
I've seen it constantly in the two years I've been based here. It
happens when discussions graduate from small talk to opinions. The
interviewee goes "off-the-record", the voice lowers to a whisper, and the head
slowly turns left-right-left-centre, scanning the location, checking
who's within earshot. The Swivel speaks to the probably unfounded
suspicion that the "wired island" is monitoring your activities.
Some Singaporeans talk of their country's "climate of fear", more
charitably described as a "contract" with their leaders: keep our economy
soaring and we won't challenge the restrictions imposed on our civil
liberties.
Step out of line in Singapore and you will be politely requested by the
regime to step back. Do it repeatedly and openly and be prepared for
the state machinery to crank into action against you, as it did in 1987
against lawyer Teo Soh Lung and businessman Chew Kheng Chuan. They were
among the 22 Singaporeans detained, some beaten and tortured, by
Tjong's ISD for being suspected "Marxists" – a charge roundly denied and one
from which even the Government has backed away.
Teo and Chew were held without trial for more than two years, often in
solitary confinement, in a cell their captors called the "Shangri-La
suite" in a sardonic tribute to Singapore's famous five-star hotel. A
slight, 51-year-old lawyer who keeps a poster of Martin Luther King Jr on
her office wall, Teo remembers Tjong as "Mr Beady Eyes".
"He was a sneering character; he had very shifty eyes," she recalls.
"He never beat me himself . . . I disliked him intensely, and I'm sure
the feeling was mutual."
Independent Singapore's first Harvard College graduate, Chew, 43, has a
different sense of Tjong. He quite liked him. "I saw him probably 20
times during my detention," remembers Chew, now a successful businessman
and chairman of The Substation, one of Singapore's few forums for
alternative theatre. "He was always quite polite. Tjong seemed to take a
shine to me. I think he was intrigued by me, wanted to know what made me
tick.
"I think he was baffled by how someone who'd been to Harvard could
possibly be in this situation. I found him a lonely man, a somewhat
solitary person."
That Chew and Teo can talk openly about Tjong and their ISD experiences
shows how far Singapore has liberalised in recent years. The Government
says it is committed to openness and airing contrary views. But the
message seems to be taking its time to sink in at the ST.
Take the way it dealt with a hot local topic recently – ministerial
salaries. On June 29 last year, Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister, Lee
Hsien Loong (Lee Kuan Yew's eldest son) announced massive pay rises for
cabinet ministers. Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong's annual salary would
jump 14 per cent to $2.25 million, or $187,000 a month, five times that of
the US president.
On May 11, six weeks earlier, the independent Hong Kong-based
think-tank, the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy, released a survey of
expatriate businessmen on political leadership in Asia. The survey ranked
Singapore as Asia's most capable government. The findings were carried
by the major wire agencies on May 12, in Hong Kong by Agence
France-Presse and by the Reuters bureau in Singapore.
In Singapore the story didn't appear in the ST until June 26, when it
was splashed across the front page headlined "S'pore Govt rated top in
Asia". Three days later the Government announced the ministerial pay
increases. That same day, the ST carried another excerpt of the same PERC
report, headlined "PERC: Govt's economic policy makes the difference".
From June 30 to July 7, as controversy raged in Singapore salons about
whether already well-rewarded ministers deserved their increased
salaries, the ST evoked PERC's rosy view of Singapore's Government another
four times.
Is it just a coincidence that a six-week-old report became front-page
news in Singapore just days before the Singapore Government justified
its massive pay rise?
"If you want to arrange the facts in that way, I suppose that you do
have a case," says editor-in-chief Cheong. "But I'm a newspaper and I
must accept information that is given to me and then I make a judgment
whether I want to use or not use it."
Other times news judgment can appear downright wacky. In early 1999,
Lee Kuan Yew wished to The Wall Street Journal that someone would invent
air-conditioned underwear – because that way "everyone can then work at
his optimum temperature and civilisation can spread across all
climates".
A news editor on a mainstream Australian newspaper might hand the item
to a wry columnist. The medical writer might consult some physicians as
to whether the nation was in good hands. And the science writer might
ring boffins to see if boreal boxers were possible.
Not at the ST, which ran it as a straight story on page one. A month
later, it published a 1455-word feature quoting local academics and
engineers hot for the idea – with an illustration of how a "cold suit" might
work.
Lee is famously intelligent and while refrigerated undies are a
fantastic notion, anything's possible. The cooling Calvins inspired a book The
Air-Conditioned Nation, by former ST journalist Cherian George, who
views Singapore's success through the prism of air-conditioning. He writes
that Lee designed this air-conditioned nation "first and foremost" for
the comfort of its citizens, believing they are more more interested in
money than "high-minded political principles".
"Central control" is a feature of air-con, writes George, and "comfort
is achieved through control".
George could have added to that last line "and through people like
Tjong Yik Min". Tjong, 48, led the ISD though one of Singapore's most
paranoid periods, the attack on "Marxists". The following year he was
awarded a gold public administration medal for services to the state.
Tall and owlish, Tjong seems the quintessential behind-the-scenes
operator. Although one of Asia's most powerful people, there is not one
interview or feature published about him appearing on any media database.
His home number is unlisted and he ranks just a few lines in Singapore's
Who's Who – listing his job at SPH.
Tjong rarely makes public appearances. Even those who have regular
contact with him know little of his family or personal life. It is believed
he is married with children, and enjoys karaoke.
"He has a very good mind, very sharp, very focused. He's not just a
blind loyalist and I think is a true believer in the Singapore system,"
says a local TV personality who knows him. "He arrived at that view after
careful intellectual consideration."
Mention Tjong's name in Singapore and three things usually come up.
Paramount is that he ran the ISD during the 1987 blitz. Second, is that
he was a classmate of Lee Kuan Yew's son and prime ministerial heir
apparent Lee Hsien Loong. And third, is that he's of Indonesian-Chinese
extraction.
In Singaporean terms, the first speaks to the wariness many
Singaporeans have of the ISD. Part CIA, part FBI, part Secret Service, the ISD is
the hammer the Singapore Government has engaged to whack – sometimes
literally – real or imagined threats to stability.
The second reference speaks to Tjong's perceived influence with
Singapore's premier political family. Says James Minchin, author of the Lee
Kuan Yew biography No Man Is an Island, "The civil service is full of
people determined to do their master's bidding and Tjong falls into that
category."
The third reference is controversial in a country where race and
nationality can be politically charged. It alludes to his family name,
rendered in the style of Indonesian Chinese, generally regarded as country
cousins by Singapore's ethnic Chinese ruling elite.
But there's a fourth aspect to Tjong, which he again refused to confirm
or be questioned on. Several sources claim his older brother was once
suspected by Singaporean authorities of being a communist – one source
even says he heard it directly from him, adding that the brother was
once "deported" to China in the 1970s.
The claim, which would be shocking in a nation that via loyal
functionaries such as Tjong has assiduously rooted out its suspected communists,
thickens the mystery surrounding Tjong. But in the context of the
region's painful post-colonial transition to independence, the speculation
simply speaks to the myriad struggles of the era, within nations, and
often families. As for Tjong, his loyalty to Singapore is unquestioned.
Media asked Tjong repeatedly for an interview and for answers to a
series of questions but he declined. SPH spokesperson Liew Kim Siong says
Tjong "prefers to keep a low profile".
Tjong's official SPH profile says he left the civil service in 1995 to
join SPH. On paper, that's correct. But a predecessor as intelligence
chief, and as media titan, Singapore's President S. R. Nathan, provides
a clue about how power flows in Singapore between the public and
private sectors.
A 1974 law gave the Government direct control over print media via the
introduction of so-called "management shares" of publishing companies,
which allowed the Government to select who could hold this stock. This
way the Government didn't need to nationalise the press but could
influence its board.
Editorial appointments could then be made by directors. A 1977
amendment prevented ownership of more than 3 per cent of a newspaper's stock,
which has had the effect of preventing alternatives to the ST group.
The rationale to change the share structure was to ensure that
"undesirable foreign elements" weren't able to control Singapore's press.
Happily for Lee's Government, it also ensured a largely compliant press.
The Washington-based Freedom House's 2001 measure of press freedom – a
survey that wasn't reported in The Straits Times – says Singapore has
one of the most restricted presses in the world, ranking alongside
Zimbabwe, Liberia and Iran.
In Singapore, there is no credible alternative to SPH. It publishes
nine daily newspapers across Singapore's four official languages.
The combined group circulation is more than 1 million – some 25 per
cent of Singapore's population – and by SPH's own numbers, its titles are
read by 4 million people every day.
The ST – described by SPH a "one of the most respected newspapers in
the world" – is the flagship, circulating 392,000 copies daily. It even
gives its name to Singapore's stock exchange index. Last year, the
company made $485 million, some 40 per cent of revenues, a profit margin
Aus- tralian publishers dream about.
SPH's only daily competition is an afternoon freesheet owned by the
government broadcaster. The domination that SPH has over Singapore's print
media is as if every paper in Australia, bar one, was owned by the same
company and the group president of that company formerly ran ASIO.
Chua Lee Hoong, Singapore's most prominent political commentator, is
very open about the fact that she is a former ISD "analyst".
"It was on the [staffroom] noticeboard when I joined," she beams.
But her colleague in Jakarta, Susan Sim, is in a quandary and for once
it's not the arcane politics of arguably the ST's most sensitive
foreign posting that's got Jakarta-based Sim perplexed.
I asked Sim if it's true she's also ex-intelligence, as her
editor-in-chief Cheong maintains. But she seems deeply miffed, even mystified at
the notion.
Now I'm mystified. If intelligence services such as the ISD are
Singapore's "most valuable assets", as Lee Kuan Yew once described it, how
could that constitute a slur in Singapore? Surely as a good Singaporean,
she'd have a stronger case if I said she wasn't an ex-spook if she
actually was? I ask her to clear it up by confirming or denying. I get no
response.
But Chua is not coy. "I'm not ashamed about [being ex-ISD]."
Chua is a classic example of the system working for Singaporeans, and
Singaporeans paying it back. The Government sent her to Oxford
University for a degree in politics, philosophy and economics. Her
pro-government columns are perceived by analysts as insights into official thinking.
"Is the ST a government mouthpiece?" she asks, then answers herself:
"Yes . . . and no".
It's not China's People's Daily, Chua insists. "The key editors are not
government appointees or necessarily [the ruling] People's Action Party
members but they are loyalists in a general sense. It's true of every
major institution in Singapore."
Chua admits Singaporean journalists self-censor – "they do everywhere,"
she says – but "editorial interference" is too strong a term to
describe the input of authorities. "It's much more subtle than that. I would
say we are sometimes, but not often these days, reminded to be mindful
of the boundaries."
Chua brings to her commentary "certain basic assumptions" about
Singapore's national interest. It so happens they often accord with the
Government and its over-arching demands of its people.
Part of the challenge, Chua says, of being a journalist and possibly
even being a Singaporean is testing boundaries that are "not clearly
defined" by the Government, "perhaps on purpose".
"It's part of our culture, part of our maturing as a nation."
That means little campaigning journalism and no established culture of
investigative reporting. An underground press is virtually
non-existent, in large part because of the Government's restrictive press laws.
The system functions like a big corporation, designed to maximise
profit. The Government maintains an upbeat information department,
frequently holding press briefings lauding economic achievements but rarely or
publicly discusses substantive matters of policy and politics.
"Government press control might shock one's liberal western mindset,
but this is now a well-entrenched part of national culture," says Roland
Rich, a former Australian ambassador to Laos and co-author of the book
Losing Control, which analyses press freedom across Asia. "You get the
government you deserve and in Singapore you also get the press you
deserve."
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