Andrew Loh
Former Chief Executive Officer and Editor-in-Chief of the Today newspaper, said that he sometimes “shuddered looking at some of the stories that are displayed” in the Singapore papers. Comparing the local papers to the Financial Times, which he called a “class act” with “crisp” writings, he said of the mainstream press: “There is an attempt to go downstream by the Straits Times.”
An example he gave was the recent Straits Times coverage of the death of Ms Lo Hwei Yen who was killed in the Mumbai terrorist attacks. “Such a graphic story of her death… The question is: is that the way the pride of Singapore journalism should go?” he asked. “Where’s the going upstream?”
When asked by blogger Alex Au why he thought this was so, Mr Balji said it is because “we don’t have the talent.” “Journalists are the biggest threats to change in the media,” he said, “I don’t see that kind of talent in our young journalists,” he explained, referring to the lack of journalists who could delve deeper into the issues.
This blunt assessment was offered up at a seminar at the Institute of Policy Studies, National University of Singapore, titled “New Media Challenges For Old Media: From Behind The Battle Lines”. Mr Balji shared his views with invited guests ,which included officers from various government ministries and departments, journalists, academics and bloggers. Interestingly, 10 of the 40 invited guests in the audience were from the Ministry of Home Affairs, according to the list of participants which was handed out.
Mr Balji noted that the source of the problem was the lack of desire for change within the leadership itself. “Hardly anything has changed in the newsroom… since the 70s,” he said. “Where is the innovation in the media? None.” He observed that the editorial leadership of the press is now more focused on attracting the advertising dollar than anything else. “Editorial stories are predictable,” he said. “What you see on tv, tomorrow’s headlines in the papers is the same.” The mainstream media, in trying to be everything to everyone, has gone for breadth rather than depth, he said.
Despite his criticisms of the mainstream media, Mr Balji does not feel its survival in Singapore is under threat from New Media. This is because the prospect of an alternative online newspaper is still not a viable undertaking. Having explored this idea with several friends, Mr Balji said the biggest obstacle was finding a revenue model for such a business.
As long as this is elusive, the mainstream media (msm) will not face any pressure or competition to improve. However, this also means that the quality of content in the msm may suffer.
“Readership is not that perceptive in knowing what is good and not so good,” he said. “As long as this stays, there’s no threat.” He noted, however, that when it comes to coverage of local news, and because there is a lack of other news sources for news about Singapore, readers do not have a benchmark to assess the standards or professionalism of local news coverage. This results in the local media “going downstream” rather than upstream.
To Mr Au’s suggestion that smaller, niche models for alternative media would be the way forward, Mr Balji said he is not convinced this would work. “[The] main obstacle is advertisers,” he said. “I’m not convinced that advertisers will advertise on a niche product.”
He explained that even with an online newspaper which would cover just the top five stories in Singapore daily, it was a daunting prospect. His conclusion was: “Better give up.”
The other reasons he gave for why the local media faces no threats were that the two media companies in Singapore – Singapore Press Holdings and Mediacorp – are “quite entrenched”. “As long as there are no threats to the bottomline, no changes are expected,” Mr Balji said.
The Online Citizen asked if the resistance to change was more because of a larger societal issue – that of fear and self-censorship – rather than a lack of journalistic talent. The recent incident of a group of student journalists from the Nanyang Technological University whose report on the visit to the school campus by Dr Chee Soon Juan was prohibited from being published by the school’s authorities was brought up as an example. To this, Mr Balji agreed that there is this sense of fear in Singapore society. However, he feels that journalists cannot be like ordinary citizens with such fears. “That’s why we go into the profession,” he said. Despite the constraints, he feels that there’s still a lot which journalists can do.
Ultimately, he said, change in the local media will only come if there are threats to its dominance and if there are pressure on its bottomline. And with the government as its ‘biggest stakeholder’, policies towards the media will change only if the government feels there is a threat to its position.
PN Balji left Today in October 2008 and is currently the Director, Asia Journalism Fellowship, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University.
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ST is govt owned, …….talents? Tja. Crisp? The paper. FOS? Hands are tied.
errr….was Balji the CEO/ editor-in-chief when the Mr Brown incident happened after the GE 2006?
was/ is Today newspaper more upstream than any other mainstream newspaper when he was in charge?
did Today ever provide an alternative views for us before?
I believe Balji does have a point when he mentioned there is a lack of talent in the mainstream media. This particular lack of talent is deeply embedded in the Singaporean Psyche, in any given context. Most of us Singaporeans are programmed to think that it is suicide to go against the Status Quo in any organization.
In alluding to Focaullt, I see that the next generation needs to be more than just successful Yes Men. As a nation we have moved beyond the need for a monolithic movement towards prosperity. We need to be on the cutting edge. We need to be adaptable, equitable, and progressive thinkers. We should start challenging ideas (and not the people who thought of them) and have the moral and professional courage to voice them out. In order for any organization to progress beyond stagnation, it needs to value dissent, create niches of opportunity, and redefine paradigms.
I personally feel that we should look at this purely at the organizational level. I think we need to revise our perception of the printed media as the hallowed canon, and think about how we could all contribute to this long neglected aspect of innovation and excellence. I think in every organization, almost everyone can follow orders, and practically everyone complains. How many of us actually have the moral and professional courage to offer constructive criticism and offer suggestions for improvement?
I think many of us will be rudely shocked to find out just how receptive the leaders of the organization, even the government, actually are when it comes to new revolutionary ideas that would improve the quality of our systems and processes.
I think the key word here is competition. As long as there is no need to compete, there is no need to improve. Take a look at ST. As long as the majority of people feel that this is the ‘Only’ credible source of news in Singapore, the advertisers are going to stick with it as the most reliable medium in their daily activities.
What the online media needs to do is to get creative in the way it prodces offerings to the people who pay. As things stand, the online media is nice to those of us who want to get something of our chest but other than that, it’s not offering advertisers anything remarkably different.
Unless we, as an online community can be more than just a forum for grumbles and actually come up with a viable offering the main stream press will probably continue as is.
It is certainly laudable to work towards contributing to as illuminati said, to this long neglected aspect of innovation and excellence. The problem of late which I and many othershave noticed recently in toc is certain quarters may be starting to hold back and even hidding information. And its so obvious. They dont even bother to mask it. Its that obvious.
Why?
He also said that he was surprised that MHA replied to one of his newspaper commentaries on MSK saying: “Could we have done better? Probably yes”, so journalists have space to push.
And that advertisers and ad agencies don’t understand society has undergone a hard gear shift. Yet, ad money has stagnated since 2000 and >50% of ad revenue comes from outside Singapore now and not companies like, say, Singtel
IPS report on the event:
http://www.ips.org.sg/events/all/Seminar_New%20Media%20Challenges_181208/Seminar_Balji_181208.pdf
Bottom-line – change the political landscape!
Support the two party system and let
democracy flourish in Singapore!~
so we need to get rid of the PAP before we can expect any improvement in the sh*t times
I appreciate PN Baliji’s comments on the issue, but I take issue with his comparison of the mainstream media to the Financial Times. The Financial Times for their incisive and deep commentaries on issues. They may do some advocacy journalism, but when they do, they do it well, intellectually, and pragmatically. It has nothing in common with Singapore’s mainstream media, which is till now simply churning out the simplistic garbage sanctioned by the authorities.
Nonetheless, I agree that the problem lies with the lack of competition. The last time SPH and Mediacorp tried to take on each other, the government intervened with the argument that the market is ‘too small’. Rather, was the government actually afraid that media firms in competition, in order to produce better quality news to serve their customers and measure up to their competitor, will be churning out more truthful reporting and critiques that will inadvertently shine many a light on the unethical practices and dubious track record of the ruling party?
SPH got the short end of the stick, I remember, by having lost its television stations, while Mediacorp could keep its broadcasting monopoly while retaining a share of the print media market via Today. Perhaps because SPH is on a slightly looser leash than Mediacorp, the government would also rather keep SPH away from broadcast news where it was less likely than Mediacorp to sing its praises and instead could make potentially critical even if brief comments about the ruling party, given the fast-paced nature of broadcast news?
For a free and lively press to florish, the gahment must step back and stop prosecuting any reporter who wrote something they do not agree with. The press must be allowed to report the good, the bad and the argy. Remove censorship and let the private company operate all the media in the country and given time, a new press will grow in the place of the currently state controlled media. The West generally have a free media which had often been a pain to the gahment of the day if some policy or minister was found to be below public expectation. Would our PAP allow it or contemplate such a media? The control of the media started in 1959 and by now all we have is only a few left over. The sate is responsible for this sad state of affair in this sector.
wew.. pn Balji…. this ok