Agents of the Police State

Recommended Article: Climate Control in the Singapore Press (Kudos to Steven, who added an extension regarding the criteria of being an elite in Singapore)

Although I was quite well-aware some former intelligence officers worked in the national press, I had no idea of their prevalence.

"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."

There is also of course the juicy bit, that describes how efficient they are in framing the national ideology and boundaries of debate and issues.

"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."

How paradoxical it is that Verghese Mathews, "a former Singapore ambassador to Cambodia and visiting fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies" submitted a letter to the Forum page on misguided self-censorship (though his area of interest had to do with a completely different subject: corporate management). But here is his rationale which can be just as easily applicable to the dangers of self-censorship in news reporting:

"Big countries and major powers, it can be argued, have in place other checks and balances which provide access and expression to alternative ideas and policies.

Can we say the same of a small country like Singapore? What if the very same sources for alternative proposals themselves practise self-censorship?

More importantly, and what bothers me most, is that in such a climate of pervasive self-censorship a bad decision may be perpetuated despite those in the decision-making ladder recognising it as an error. In our system very few will risk career or job security by being the one to point out the error.

We accept that Singapore is vulnerable in many ways. I would suggest that it is in the marketplace of alternative ideas and in dispassionate discussion of alternative policies that this vulnerability is well addressed.

At the end of the day, we are all losers if something meaningful is not undertaken."