Position Paper 1: Perspectives of 'Local' News

Singapore: 'Switzerland of the East'



I wanted to examine a country that falls between the United States and North Korea when it comes to general press freedom. Using the RSF Press Freedom Index, I came across Singapore at #158 out of #180. For reference, the greater the number of the country, the less press freedom in that country. The United States resides near the middle at #45 while North Korea is the least free country at #180.

I found Singapore between Kazakhstan (#157) and Sudan (#159), two countries that I would not consider in the same mindset of Singapore. Egypt (#166) borders Sudan to the north while Saudi Arabia (#170) resides to the East across the Red Sea. Kazakhstan shares a border with Russia (#149), one of the most dangerous countries in the world in the eye of an American. With all of this in mind, I am supposed to believe that Singapore, a country renowned for its cleanliness, beautiful urban greenery, and massive shopping malls is on-par with countries in civil-unrest?

As it turns out, Singapore is not the shopping-mall utopia I dreamed it to be. In fact, it's very Orwellian when it comes to news distribution and is nowhere near as free as Switzerland (#8).

"In 2020, Singapore’s colour on the World Press Freedom Index map changed to black, meaning that the situation there is now is classified as “very bad.” Despite the “Switzerland of the East” label often used in Singapore government propaganda, the city-state does not fall far short of China when it comes to suppressing media freedom. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s government is always quick to sue critical journalists, or apply pressure to make them unemployable, or even force them to leave the country. The Media Development Authority has the power to censor all forms of journalistic content. Defamation suits are common and may sometimes be accompanied by a charge of sedition, which is punishable by up to 21 years in prison." [source]

I examined two online news sources based in Singapore or Southeast Asia: Channel News Asia (CNA) and The Straits Times. The first thing that stuck out to me about the websites was the 'edition' button at the top. Both websites are in English but have a Singapore version and an international version. There is no change in language but there is a change in the types of stories that are displayed.

Channel News Asia's Singapore version features stories solely from Singapore while the international version of the website features a couple of stories from across the globe, but the feed is still mostly Singapore based news. The Strait Times's international version is completely different than the Singapore version, featuring mainly international stories and hardly any Singapore-based news. There seems to be a leniency towards Asian-based news stories.

There is also a distinct lack of Singapore politics on the front-page of Channel News Asia. There is a subsection of the website dedicated to politics but there seems to be more Singapore politics news coverage on the international version of the website, which is strange. I wonder if the aforementioned Media Development Authority has anything to do with that. The Straits Times has a wide variety of stories on both the Singapore edition and international edition.

Unlike the front-page of CNN, I have not seen any stories criticizing politicians or political offices on either website.

I took a look at both the Channel News Asia and The Strait Times Twitter accounts. Both news outlets have about one million followers but receive minimal interaction with their tweets. The posts on Twitter are primarily international stories and I saw very little about Singapore on either Twitter account at the time of writing this.

I used Twitter Audit to check the legitimacy of the followers of Channel News Asia on Twitter. It found that over half of the million followers of the account are fake accounts, which is indicative of the low amount of interaction on the page. I also checked The Straits Times's account for bots but the page has not been audited in nearly a decade. Seven years ago, the account had about five thousand followers wherein half were fake accounts.  


The international stories are easy-to-follow and straightforward just like the Singapore-based stories. I could not find any major difference between the way they were composed. However, the websites are notably different from any American news outlet in the way stories are showcased and what the stories are about. It seems that these news sources cannot critique their government or any major neighboring government such as China. It is not what I envisioned a censored news outlet to look like (a lot less black sharpie), but the signs are there.

The stories are well written so I'll give them that.

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