An Inside Look into How Straits Times Operates
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An Open Letter to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore
Published by PranayGupte.com on 2004-11-20
November 19, 2004
The Honourable Mr Lee Hsien Loong
Prime Minister
Republic of Singapore
Dear Prime Minister Lee:
Between March 2004 and until November 16, 2004, I was a global-affairs columnist for The Straits Times, and wrote with admiration and respect about your extraordinary nation that you, Minister Mentor Lee and others have helped shape. Several top government officials such as Foreign Minister George Yeo and others frequently commented on my accuracy and good will concerning Singapore.
I write this because I was abruptly terminated by The Straits Times on November 16, without any explanation. After an international career of four decades with the New York Times, Newsweek International, Forbes and The Earth Times, this was not the sort of humiliation and indignity that I expected from Singaporeans.
Not so long ago, an important member of India's federal cabinet took me aside and asked why was it that Singaporeans were racist. I was floored by the question, which the official asked in all earnestness. In his long career dealing with ethnicities and communities all over the world, he said, he had never quite encountered the sheer arrogance and hubris demonstrated by Singaporeans.
"They think that they know it all," he said, noting the absurdity of a nation of four million people taking on a country of 1.2 billion people. "Even a minor Singaporean official will talk down to someone as senior as me."
I don't know if I fully agree with the cabinet official. Singapore and India, in fact, have been working hard at building stronger political and economic relations: they are about to sign a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA), which covers not only trade but also investment and services. The Indian government hopes that Singapore, which has US$1.3 billion invested in Indian technology and telecommunications companies, will bring in an additional US$2.5 billion to help build India's languishing infrastructure next year. Singapore, in fact, is the biggest Asian investor in India, and third only to Mauritius and the United States. Singapore - whose GDP of US$100 billion is less than a sixth of India's - expects to attract more Indian hi-tech professionals, and also hopes that India will use it as an offshore center for financial transactions.
Unlike my friend, the Indian cabinet official, I don't believe that this is a racist society. Indeed, I have been overwhelmed by the good will and graciousness of everyday Singaporeans. It's easy to make friends here, and people have been uniformly and extraordinarily kind to me. In fact, I have been genuinely touched by the gestures of sweetness and thoughtfulness from everyday Singaporeans.
But this is certainly a "rules-driven society" - in the words of my friend Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani, a Singaporean of Indian descent who was his country's Permanent Representative at the United Nations and is now Dean of the new Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy here in Singapore.
Ironically, it was my article about the new School - named in honor of your father. Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's founding father - that may have precipitated my involuntary departure from The Straits Times on November 16.
But before I come to a fuller examination of the episode, let me say a word or two about the paper, which will be 160 years old next year. It's a beautifully designed paper, with 90 percent of a typical day's edition of 200 pages consisting of ads. I was hired in March 2004 as its global-affairs columnist. I wrote columns under my own byline three or four times a week; I also wrote at least one or two longish analytical features and profiles each week. And I wrote unsigned editorials (which are called leaders here, in the British fashion) mainly on developing countries, international finance, global politics, India, and the Middle East - subjects that I've long covered in a journalistic career spanning four decades. -
The paper is run by many editors with virtually no background in journalism. For example, my direct editor was Ms Chua Lee Hoong, a woman in her mid 30s. She was an intelligence officer for more than nine years. Other key editors are drawn from Singapore's bureaucracies and state security services. They all retain connections to the state's intelligence services, which track everyone and everything. As you can imagine, this only sustains the image of Singapore as an authoritarian society that will go to any length to control the people who live and work here.
At the newspaper, I was struck by the total absence of conversation or banter in the huge newsroom. Having spent two decades at the New York Times, including my student days in the United States, and having run my own newspaper subsequently, The Earth Times - not to mention my 18-year tenure as a columnist at Newsweek International, plus 16 years at Forbes as a contributing editor - I was accustomed to the spirited atmosphere of news rooms, not to mention disagreements and disputes. Minor clashes of personality are inevitable in any enterprise, but more so in a news room where there are severe deadline pressures every day.
I believe that what precipitated my termination from the paper on the morning of Tuesday, November 16, was my refusal to include in the article about the Lee Kuan Yew School some falsehoods about Mr. Mahbubani that two editors suggested that I should insert. They both claimed that Mr. Mahbubani has had problems with the nation's security services and that he was viewed as a radical when he was a student at what was then the University of Singapore (now National University of Singapore).
There was no way that I could independently confirm such suggestions. Moreover, I believe they were false. Mr. Mahbubani may have been a student activist in his writings for the university newspaper - but since then has distinguished himself for nearly four decades as Singapore's emissary in various places. The fact that he was named head of the Lee Kuan Yew School is testimony to the high regard in which he is universally held. (His first book, "Can Asians Think?" was a best-seller in Asia and Europe, and also did pretty well in the United States. His next book will be published in the spring by Public Affairs in New York.)
It would have been simply inappropriate to include unsubstantiated stuff about Mr. Mahbubani's alleged radicalism during his student days. And it's highly unlikely that he would have risen as high as he has, had he been really considered a national security risk. My own feeling is that among some of the intelligence and bureaucratic types who run the Straits Times, there isn't universal good will toward the Lee Kuan Yew School or its dean.
Like newsrooms everywhere, the newsroom of the Straits Times has its share of jealousies, resentments and fiefdoms. Perhaps some editors were unaccustomed to my directness and forthrightness, although my immediate colleagues will testify to my general cordiality and willingness to cooperate with everyone. As evidence of my loyalty to the newspaper, please allow me to report to you that I worked seven days a week, producing an enormous body of work that was published in The Straits Times. I worked in this manner because I am a professional who enjoys his vocation - and because the Singapore story is a fascinating one.
Regrettably, The Straits Times is a poorly run organization. For example, my editor, Ms Chua, killed a substantial quote that I obtained from Mr. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, chairman and publisher of the New York Times, on the grounds that he was "distracting." When I wrote an e-mail note to Mr. Sulzberger, whom I've known for a long time, to explain why his generously given quote to me was not used, here's what I received from Mr. Cheong Yip Seng, the editor-in-chief of the Straits Times:
we do not do this on this paper, namely apologise to a newsmaker whose quote we did not use. if i were the newsmaker, i would think poorly of the paper. if the nyt uses every quote of a noteworthy newsmaker, they will need to double the pages they use daily.
----- Forwarded by Cheong Yip Seng/SPH on 14/11/2004 06:37 PM -----
Needless to day, Mr. Cheong missed my point entirely. Arthur Sulzberger had made a special effort to communicate with me from 13,000 miles away to give me a long personal statement about the New York Times and its directions. He did so out of high regard for Singapore and because he wanted his views known in the community here. I used the quote in a column on the media, but, of course, it was edited out. I felt that in view of my own long tenure at the Times, and my friendship with Arthur, I owed him an explanation, at the very least. It was common courtesy on my part, not brown-nosing to Arthur, who doesn't take to kindly to obsequiousness anyway. -
Ms Chua, my editor, also killed two other exclusive interviews I'd obtained in recent days, mainly through my access to important people gained over four decades in international journalism. She said that what was said by Dr. Supachai Panichpakadi, the Director-General of the World Trade Organization, and Mr. Peter G. Peterson, Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations - and the author of a recent best-seller - was "boring." Mr. Peterson, in fact, is a friend of your father, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who he's invited to speak on several occasions at the Council on Foreign Relations.
In fact, both were timely interviews. Dr. Supachai spoke about ending textile quotas which, starting in December, will give developing nations unprecedented access to the markets of industrialized nations. And Mr. Peterson spoke about the troubling U.S. deficits, and how both Republicans and Democrats have been irresponsible about dealing with the current-account deficit that's expected to balloon past US$600 billion this year
Ms Chua further recommended that I should turn to a white colleague in the news room for lessons on how to ask questions. Since I didn't come to the Straits Times to be re-educated in journalism - after a pretty distinguished career of my own - I felt that her advice was inappropriate. She was, of course, well within her rights to kill any story she wanted, but people like Dr. Supachai and Mr. Peterson aren't usually accessible to newspapers of little international import such as The Straits Times.
Be that as it may, I thought that the editor - who was trained as an intelligence officer, not as a journalist - was way out of line in recommending that, at age 56, I should take lessons in journalism from a white man at the paper. Among the things that I was hired for, incidentally, was mentoring young people at the Straits Times.
Now some people I know in Singapore would regard Ms Chua's behaviour as racism. I do not. But another episode in the news room last week certainly suggested racism to me. A Chinese colleague of mine - a fellow columnist named Mr. Andy Ho - had changed the thrust of my column on Deepavali, which happens to be a national holiday here. While his technical editing was superb - and I told him that - what appeared in the paper subsequently simply wasn't my voice. What was especially striking for many readers was that my column was physically placed in a secondary spot to a contribution on Islam by an outside writer. That this should have been done on the Hindu New Year struck many readers as downright questionable.
When I approached Mr. Ho about this, he waved me away in our newsroom like one would a persistent beggar. Perhaps he did not realise the significance of that gesture when directed at a Hindu-born person like me, however secular I may be in my sensibilities.
But he repeated his gesture in a manner that was so dismissive that I then addressed him by the only appropriate response, a barnyard epithet. I was struck, not by his gesture alone - I've seen worse during a career in journalism spanning four decades - but by the expression on his face. It left no doubt in my mind whatsoever that he would qualify for what my friend, the Indian cabinet official, would most certainly call a racist. -
"Racist" is a hot-button word, never to be employed lightly. As an Indian-born, US-educated journalist, I have never been exposed to racial discrimination. Quite the contrary. America - supposedly still a land of great racial divides - has been generous to me, truly a land of monumental opportunities.
But here's another anecdote concerning a Singaporean that was certainly sobering to me when it happened.
Some time ago, a recruiter from a venerable Singaporean institution looked me up in New York, my home since I was in my early twenties. I was being offered a job, but at a salary far less than a white gentleman I knew with considerably less experience. Why was that?
"Because you are an Indian," the woman recruiter said.
"I'm an American," I replied.
"It doesn't matter what your nationality is," she said. "You are a person of Indian origin, and that's how our compensation is structured."
Needless to say, it was an offer that I had no problems refusing.
Years later, when I finally arrived in Singapore - which was some months ago - I was quite astonished to see how many non-Singaporean Indians in professional positions were serving with coolie-like servility that they would never display back at home. What was going on here?
"You have to play by the rules," one Indian-born colleague said. "You cannot shake the boat too much. In fact, you dare not shake it at all. The money is good here, so I can swallow an insult or two."
The behaviour of Ms Chua, the editor, may be simply the kind of office politics that people holding power engage in every now and then. But it's also part of a broader attitude that I detect among many Singaporeans in journalism's top echelons here - that no one else's record or accomplishment or opinion counts but theirs. Any divergence of view is immediately regarded as subversive dissent.
This is an important point because if Singaporeans are going to be perceived as filled with hubris and an unbending my-way-or-highway attitude, it is going to be increasingly difficult for this country to attract the talent it needs to sustain its economic ambitions. In fact, young Singaporean professionals are emigrating to Australia and Europe in record numbers because they feel stifled here.
For example, I would be very curious to see how many top-notch Indian professionals in technology and the sciences actually wind up in Singapore once the ambitious Singapore-India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement is signed this month by Prime Ministers Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore and Manmohan Singh of India.
Why am I sceptical that there isn't exactly going to be an exodus from India to Singapore? Precisely because of what that Indian cabinet minister told me. Singapore can attract all the cheap coolie labour it might want, but the word has gotten around in the Indian professional community that this isn't the place to come for personal and cultural fulfilment.
One Indian sociologist put it very succinctly, if harshly: "Yes, Singapore will get all the white trash it wants. Yes, it will get all the brown trash it wants. Anything's better than living in villages without electricity. But it's going to have problems getting the brown sahibs it needs."
Without those brown sahibs, Singapore will lose out to its neighbours in the great globalisation game. Already, its consumer prices and cost-of-living are driving potential talent to places like Bangkok, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur. Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Delhi aren't such bad places to live and work in either, especially if you are in the technology sector.
Singapore, in short, is facing severe competition, and it's falling behind already. Does that mean by calibrating its culture to be more welcoming to outsiders is the answer? It's one answer, certainly. Does that mean Singaporeans should tolerate dilution of high professional standards? Certainly not. But why would any self-respecting professional coming to work here want to compromise his own standards?
And so back to that question: Are Singaporeans racist? Well, of course some of them are, just as surely some Americans are, and Australians and Argentineans and, dare I say, even Indians.
But Singapore lives in a unique goldfish bowl, and its own standards of economic excellence require its citizens to be more sensitive and magnanimous when it comes to dealing with outsiders. After all, Singapore has created a pretty well-functioning secular society for itself - even though some might argue that, in the cultural scheme of things, Tamils and Malays play second sitar to the Chinese.
This is such a beautiful place with such beautiful and giving people. It's hard not to be a well-wisher. But the Straits Times as a model of dynamic, open-minded journalism? It will happen on the day that it starts to snow here on the equator.
So what am I going to do next? A book or two to complete. Plenty of museums to visit in Singapore. Certainly scores of great food joints. Nice people to spend time with, as long as I avoid the paper's editors, of course. (I must report to you that I've been given just three more weeks to leave the country.)
Would I still recommend Singapore as a place to visit? Yes, I would, most definitely. And as a place to stay? Yes, I would, most certainly. But I wouldn't expect The Straits Times to practice the journalism of fairness and forthrightness. This simply isn't the place for that. There are very many dedicated professionals at the paper, but they live and work in fear of the nail-pullers who are running the news room. I got out before they pulled out my nails. But it still hurts.
It hurts because I brought genuine good will and an established international record to Singapore, as a US national. I came here because of my personal admiration and respect for you, your father and several of my friends in Singapore's government, diplomatic and financial communities - such as Ambassador Tommy Koh and Ambassador Mahbubani.
I do not intend to play victim, of course. But I thought that I should write to you at some length about what has been on my mind since my unfair and wholly unwarranted dismissal from The Straits Times. The episode has already been picked up by the international media community, not something of my making or choosing but because it reinforces the stereotypes that many outsiders have of Singapore as an intolerant place. I know that this isn't the image you wish your country to have, but there it is.
I thank you for your time. As always, I wish you and Mrs Lee very good health. And please be assured of my continuing high regard for you and for the secular society that you have created in Singapore. I only wish that Singapore is more gracious to its well-wishers.
With great respect,
Yours sincerely,
Pranay Gupte,
Senior Writer and Global-Affairs Columnist -
After reading this, i wonder how much of what ST reports is true or just pure brainwashing by people in command.
Is the ST an open ISD run by intelligence agents?
Article taken from: http://www.pranaygupte.com/articles/200/ -
which is why i don't read that crap anymore
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If he was a singaporean complaining , I would care
Right now , he is an american foreign talent - I don't care what crap he says. I got enough of foreign talents taking jobs away and I don't care about him losing his job.
He , being an american, should know how the capitalist system works. USA has the hire-fire system that he should know well about. Yeah yeah he can complain about discrimination. He can go fly a kite. There are singaporeans who are out of a job - his job can be given to a singaporean - LOCALS FIRST! -
yes, the gahmen has more control over the press than u think. dats why u don't see any good article/comment abt opposition parties and such....
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This is only his side of the story.
As a veteran journalist he should know that he was joining a state-controlled newspaper. He should expect bureaucrats to be there and to toe the lines.
There maybe racists in ST (in fact in most places) but I think he is also no angel. Didn't he tried to ingratiate himself with PM Lee in the letter? -
Wake up pearlie- you are in Singapore!
And in Singapore everybody (except the illiterates) knows our media is clearly pro-Government and more.... Period!
Do you know who is Leslie Fong? Han Kwang Fook?
Did you ever read articles in ST written by our Dear Leader ?
One has to be either blind or low in IQ not to be able to detect foul play! -
Fully agree with fymk as far as job is concerned. American companies use high power headhunters to recruit you like you were a superman, and you quit whatever job you are doing, bringing along your ".. international career of four decades....." and join them thinking that you are better appreciated, only to be "abruptly terminated" after a few months for all kind of reasons. He is right that "this sort of humiliation and indignity" cannot be expected from Singaporeans, but he forgot that singaporean, especially the government are learning from the american, and learning fast.Originally posted by fymk:If he was a singaporean complaining , I would care
Right now , he is an american foreign talent - I don't care what crap he says. I got enough of foreign talents taking jobs away and I don't care about him losing his job.
He , being an american, should know how the capitalist system works. USA has the hire-fire system that he should know well about. Yeah yeah he can complain about discrimination. He can go fly a kite. There are singaporeans who are out of a job - his job can be given to a singaporean - LOCALS FIRST!
Can those singaporean laid off by the american companies then write to Bush??
However, whether this guy really stepped on some sensitive toes, went OB, or simply cannot tahan a young chinese lady boss, we do have another indication that journalism in singapore is pretty much under "control".
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hear hearOriginally posted by fymk:If he was a singaporean complaining , I would care
Right now , he is an american foreign talent - I don't care what crap he says. I got enough of foreign talents taking jobs away and I don't care about him losing his job.
He , being an american, should know how the capitalist system works. USA has the hire-fire system that he should know well about. Yeah yeah he can complain about discrimination. He can go fly a kite. There are singaporeans who are out of a job - his job can be given to a singaporean - LOCALS FIRST!
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hi miong
your iq like not very high either leh....
didn't i said ST was state-controlled? so, it's unreasonable to expect it to be a govt mouth piece? as an experienced journalist, the kehlin should know what he was in for. he chose to sell his soul and work in that shitty place and yet when things didn't turn out to what he expected, turned around and cried wolf.
was i in a storyland then? ...... mm ... maybe ..... "the boy who cries wolf" -
Tough luck Gupta, you chose to work for the ST, thinking that you could get the dough and stay clear of any aspersions cast on your journalistic skills.Sorry man, this is Singapore, where the press is ranked just above North Korea and Myanmar in terms of realistic journalism.You should have known, being the "foreign talent" that you are.But thanks for airing your grieviences, however, please be a man and not some girlie-man and sulk all day.If you are angry, do something concrete,like sue the ST.You may not win, but at least you will find support from people, unlike your current pouting.
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Aiya, this is old news if you grew up in Spore. Precisely the thing that I pui pui on and moved on to build a life some where else. Now then you know!? Big deal.
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yes lazerlordz, he was doing something concrete - telling tales and sucking up to PM Lee.
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Yeah, the little guys on the ground can see what the people at the top cannot. And the top keeps telling the little guys that what they can see with their eyes are not real.Originally posted by fymk:If he was a singaporean complaining , I would care
Right now , he is an american foreign talent - I don't care what crap he says. I got enough of foreign talents taking jobs away and I don't care about him losing his job.
He , being an american, should know how the capitalist system works. USA has the hire-fire system that he should know well about. Yeah yeah he can complain about discrimination. He can go fly a kite. There are singaporeans who are out of a job - his job can be given to a singaporean - LOCALS FIRST!
An example:
What do you mean foreign talents are taking away jobs from locals? The local media announce support for governmentÂ’s stand that foreign talents are here to help Singapore grow what. (I donÂ’t have the full article, but a summary can be found at http://www.contactsingapore.org.sg/nm/global_talent/news/030626_a_gt.htm?ReleaseID=79
Citizenship doesn't entitle you to a job
25 June 2003
ST's commentary by Chua Lee Hong said that people should stop calling upon the Government to limit the number of foreigners allowed into Singapore to work, because, as they argued, citizenship ought to have its privileges. She cited the case whereby SIA pilots should by now have drawn a lesson from the pay dispute that was been referred to the Industrial Arbitration Court: Never assume citizenship had its privileges where the market was concerned. Reason being was that more and more white-collar jobs were being exported to lower-cost countries made possible with technology, in particular the Net, and the common English language. Particularly, the airline industry, in which technology and language were homogeneous and unified worldwide would find it even easier to do so.
She warned that pilots should know better than most that they were easily substitutable. But in the bigger picture, here in Singapore, other white-collar flight was as much of a threat as it was in the US. She said that anecdotal evidence showed that many white-collared retrenched workers here were still unrealistic and thought that their joblessness was temporary, and that things would return to the halcyon days of the mid-1990s. She concluded that what was happening to SIA pilots, and to white-collar workers in America, should serve as fair warning.
Also, have you forgotten that last year, 2 NTU professors were whacked hard by the govt and the media for irresponsibly reporting that 3 out of 4 jobs created went to foreigners. They have taken their data from none other than MOM website, but were blasted because their findings lack important data not displayed. The correct figure supplied by the government is that 9 out of 10 jobs created went to Singaporeans. Yeah, thatÂ’s right.
And right, the economy performed well this year due to our capable leaders -- all your worries are a mirage. The poor and the old will not be left behind. More Good Years Ahead! -
I believe that Pranay Gupte has already done something concrete. If he has been weak-willed, he could simply have swallowed his pride and changed his attitude to a yes-man at SPH. This way, he could simply have kept his job. But I believed that at the age of 56, with 30++ years of experience in journalism, he simply refused to work in a way that degrades journalism (eg. reporting false information, reporting biased views etc). Certainly, I do not think he is sulking --- I guess the feeling is more like having misfortune fall on him even though he stuck to his ethical code of conduct.Originally posted by LazerLordz:Tough luck Gupta, you chose to work for the ST, thinking that you could get the dough and stay clear of any aspersions cast on your journalistic skills.Sorry man, this is Singapore, where the press is ranked just above North Korea and Myanmar in terms of realistic journalism.You should have known, being the "foreign talent" that you are.But thanks for airing your grieviences, however, please be a man and not some girlie-man and sulk all day.If you are angry, do something concrete,like sue the ST.You may not win, but at least you will find support from people, unlike your current pouting.
To take SPH to court is going to be a huge waste of money. He is not going to win. In fact, the govt has successfully sued international magazines before – so much so that they were cowed into being cautious when reporting news regarding Singapore.
The article is certainly well-read and circulated on the Internet. Just go over to his website to read some of the readers comments: http://www.pranaygupte.com/comments.php?index=199
But the main point I want to stress is not the foreign talent issue, but the issue that the media in Singapore is effectively under control, so much so that it always seem to be the little citizen that is at fault if he isnÂ’t making it in Singapore. -
On what ground can this guy take SPH to court? wrongly dismissal? He has no case.Originally posted by ObviousMan:I believe that Pranay Gupte has already done something concrete. If he has been weak-willed, he could simply have swallowed his pride and changed his attitude to a yes-man at SPH. This way, he could simply have kept his job. But I believed that at the age of 56, with 30++ years of experience in journalism, he simply refused to work in a way that degrades journalism (eg. reporting false information, reporting biased views etc). Certainly, I do not think he is sulking --- I guess the feeling is more like having misfortune fall on him even though he stuck to his ethical code of conduct.
To take SPH to court is going to be a huge waste of money. He is not going to win. In fact, the govt has successfully sued international magazines before – so much so that they were cowed into being cautious when reporting news regarding Singapore.
The article is certainly well-read and circulated on the Internet. Just go over to his website to read some of the readers comments: http://www.pranaygupte.com/comments.php?index=199
But the main point I want to stress is not the foreign talent issue, but the issue that the media in Singapore is effectively under control, so much so that it always seem to be the little citizen that is at fault if he isnÂ’t making it in Singapore.
Previous govt legal actions against international magazines are irrelevant here.
His open letter does expose the type of journalism practised in singapore, but that is not news to many people in singapore. It is up to us, singaporean to find a balance view. Read reports and commentaries published elsewhere; buy local newspapers and magazines when you are in another countries, tune in to the local news and please do not confine yourself to reading only NYT, Newsweek, Forbes, Times, Economists, read news reporting in other languages, chinese, malays or whatever language you know!
Media is used to influence people! you can't change SPH or Singapore, but you can decide who you want to listen to and if you want to be influenced.
Has PM Lee replied??? -
Quite true.If we cannot get a fair piece of journalism from our broadsheet, let's not waste too much time on it.
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I donÂ’t think the PM will reply to the letter. For what reason does he want to act oil to the fire? Pranay Gupte is not suing SPH for that matter. I also do not think anyone will sue him, since it will no doubt be a source of publicity in itself. That Singapore newspapers are political-based may be apparent to many, but not to all.Originally posted by sgdiehard:On what ground can this guy take SPH to court? wrongly dismissal? He has no case.
Previous govt legal actions against international magazines are irrelevant here.
His open letter does expose the type of journalism practised in singapore, but that is not news to many people in singapore. It is up to us, singaporean to find a balance view. Read reports and commentaries published elsewhere; buy local newspapers and magazines when you are in another countries, tune in to the local news and please do not confine yourself to reading only NYT, Newsweek, Forbes, Times, Economists, read news reporting in other languages, chinese, malays or whatever language you know!
Media is used to influence people! you can't change SPH or Singapore, but you can decide who you want to listen to and if you want to be influenced.
Has PM Lee replied???
There are many in Singapore who were brain-washed from young to act according to what the govt dictates. Also, many of the older generation are pro-PAP supporters. I do not blame them since they lived in a totally different period. Unfortunately, they are also the group that is most likely to be adversely affected by govt policy changes. I am young and can fend for myself, but it makes my blood boil to see how simple people can be deceived by sweet talk.
The article is solid as it gives an internal view at how the ST operates. It confirms what many people suspect but had no proof --- which results in the situation where their suspicions become only opinions. This letter at least provides firm ground for opinions to become facts. -
Yeah, whether it is information overload or underload, the best defense is to think for oneself and not be bound to some defined bias.
Have a laugh:
The legend of obviousman: http://www.udel.edu/communication/COMM418/begleite/humor/nonsequitur.htm
Help Singaporeans wake up --- Be Cynical! -
More people than we know are aware that Singapore newspapers speak only what the government wants them to speak, but many of these people agree with the government.Originally posted by ObviousMan:I donÂ’t think the PM will reply to the letter. For what reason does he want to act oil to the fire? Pranay Gupte is not suing SPH for that matter. I also do not think anyone will sue him, since it will no doubt be a source of publicity in itself. That Singapore newspapers are political-based may be apparent to many, but not to all.
There are many in Singapore who were brain-washed from young to act according to what the govt dictates. Also, many of the older generation are pro-PAP supporters. I do not blame them since they lived in a totally different period. Unfortunately, they are also the group that is most likely to be adversely affected by govt policy changes. I am young and can fend for myself, but it makes my blood boil to see how simple people can be deceived by sweet talk.
The article is solid as it gives an internal view at how the ST operates. It confirms what many people suspect but had no proof --- which results in the situation where their suspicions become only opinions. This letter at least provides firm ground for opinions to become facts.
Many people benefits from the present government, many people accept the present government when they compare the other governments in the region, many people make do with the present government until they can see a more viable alternative....."brain-washed"???
Older generation are pro-PAP because they want status quo and they don't want to take risk. These older people saw how the government closed down newspapers and fired journalists even before you were born. They don't need to see more proof.
There are people who think differently from you!! If you simply write these people off as "brain-washed" or "simple", you will never understand them and will never get them to see your view. -
we all know how the media can be used to brain-wash brainless-all-accepting singaporeans.
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Those who are brainless cannot be brain-washed, and those whose brains are full of shits also cannot be washed, you need to flush it. We can thus infer that those who were brain-washed have brains and their brains are not full of shits.