Bye, Bye, Review

What a long week it has been.

New responsibilities, more work, but a challenge that I am really enjoying.

So, Far Eastern Economic Review has refused to say sorry or withdraw their remarks about Singapore. They are now banned from the country. I'll have to get my copy when I am at a foreign airport. Some of my colleagues feel that the Review had gone too far cos they did not come across as objective. It was too biased, they say. I think there is no such as objectivity in news but that's better left for another day. I think that by choosing to carry a particularly story on any topic (and not another), the editors are in fact deciding what is important for them. And they don't have to explain why. That is the purview - and privilege - as well as responsibility of the press. To have an agenda. To have an opinion. The best reporters are those who have a mind of their own and not afraid to use it.

I applaud the Review's decision. Rather than give in and apologise like many other magazines/papers/wires have, they choose to have their circulation rights here withdrawn. That speaks for something. Press freedom. We have been so brainwashed by the system that we think it's ok to stop people from writing anything on grounds such as "national security" and "economic progress". We are so tame that we feel offended when a reporter does not mince his words when criticising Singapore. After all, half the time, people don't criticise Singapore or do so with euphemisms or phrases that don't mean what they really intend to say.

So, the Review has written a long letter to its readers in its latest issue to explain why they can't get it anymore in Singapore and Mr Lee has come out to say that in Asia, "the countries which have been most successful at improving the lives of their people do not always have the most aggressive media... Each country will have to evolve its own model of the media that works for it."

And what do you get? A national paper that is ineffectual, a local press that bristles against the suggestion that it is part of the government, but which refuses to be anything more.

I don't know what Mr Lee means by "improving people's lives" but I think China has also used the same argument, about 30 years ago. Is that what we really want to be?