Countering PM Lee’s erroneous perception of the New Media
By Eugene Yeo, Chief Editor
It appears that the state media has started its propaganda machinery
ahead of the imminent general elections to nullify the threat of the
New Media and utilize it to the benefit of the PAP.
In an interview with CNA, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the
Singapore government is set to actively engage and leverage on the new
media at the next General Election due in 2012. (read full article here)
This means that a smear campaign is on its way to discredit
outspoken blogs like ours which dare to challenge the political status
quo in order to diminish our influence on undecided voters sitting on
the fence.
What PM Lee said in this interview is nothing more than
plain hogwash fit only to deceive nursery kids and an outright insult
to the intelligence of well-read netizens.
Allow me to decipher, dissect and dismantle the three inherent flaws in PM Lee’s argument for you individually on its own:
1. PM Lee claimed that the Singapore government has announced initiatives to relax rules governing new media such as trying to engage citizens online through portals such as REACH, the government’s feedback arm, as well as new media outlets such as Facebook.
These are merely pathetic attempts to engage netizens through
official approved channels in cyberspace and does not represent a more
liberal stance adopted by the regime with regards to freedom of online
speech.
On the contrary, netizens have been threatened publicly by a police
inspector and a minister of prosecution should they cross the OB marker
in their online postings.
A Hitler spoof on Ho Ching was taken down by Youtube mysteriously
though replicas of other non-related topics are still circulating
around. An ex-Singapore citizen Gopalan Nair was jailed for three
months last year for making a comment on his post which would not have
raised any eyebrows in other first world countries.
Let us stop kidding ourselves - the PAP has not and will not relax
its grip on the New Media and the only reason why it is not doing so is
because it is impossible for it to control the internet.
2. PM Lee noted there will always be a role for traditional media to present trusted, unbiased and informed opinions - even if some may feel that information generated by traditional media is rather tame compared to what is out there online.
Either PM Lee is living in his own delusions or he is still not
aware of the contempt many Singaporeans bear towards the traditional
media. “Trusted, unbiased and informed opinons” perhaps only from the
PAP’s perspective, but not according to internationally accepted
standards and norms.
Singapore’s mainstream media churns out the most untrustworthy,
biased and misinformed propaganda to hoodwink, mislead and brainwash
its citizens with the aim of keeping the PAP perpetually in power.
It constantly languishes in the lower rungs of the Press Freedom
Index published annually by the internationally respected Reporters
Without Borders, a media watchdog and its rank last year was 141st,
below the likes of Sudan, Algeria, Gambia and Nigeria.
This is what RSF said about Singapore media in its latest report in 2008:
“A “worthy” successor to his
father, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has done nothing to loosen state
control over the media. Journalists have a great deal more freedom to
cover international news than local affairs. And a political
documentary was hit by censorship.” (read full report here)
As the Temasek and GIC fiascoes have
more than adequately demonstrated, Singapore’s traditional media has
failed miserably in its purported role as a pillar of our nation to be
guardian for the people rather than a tool of the PAP to be used to
save its own skin, time again and again. Despite of the widespread
ramblings on the ground demanding for answers from the government, the
state media has maintained a deafening silence as if nothing has
happened.
3. Mr Lee said: “Well, there is a place
called the Wild West and there are other places which are not so wild.
And the new media - some of it are Wild West and anything goes and people can say anything they want…..But even in the Internet, there are places
which are more considered, more moderated where people put their names
down and identify themselves. And there is a debate which goes on and a
give and take, which is not so rambunctious but perhaps more thoughtful.”
What’s wrong with allowing people to
say anything they want? The best form of community moderation is to
allow unfettered access to information and complete freedom of speech
to allow the most sound and robust argument to win the debate through
competition in a free market of ideas.
As ordinary citizens, we are forever
handicapped in what we know because we do not have access to
information privy only to government officials and as such it is
unreasonable to expect us to verify whatever bits and pieces we know
first before we post.
PM Lee should attend the Parliamentary
sittings of the United Kingdom one day to witness for himself how
“rambunctious, unthoughtful and unmoderated” their proceedings are.
When British Prime MinisterTony Blair was grilled by both Labor and
Conservative MPs over the Iraq War, he stood umoved in his position for
hours to defend himself and rebuke all the allegations levelled at him
one by one.
The lack of any meaningful debate and
challenge to PM Lee’s iron-fisted rule in Parliament for years had made
him complacent and perhaps short of courage to take on a political
opponent in a one to one debate without any give and take. Only sissies
expect their opponents to give way to them and the kitchen will be a
more suitable place for them than in the Parliament. That kind of
explains why we don’t see live debates between political leaders here
unlike in other countries.
If what a netizen say is reasonable,
meaningful and insightful, does it matter if we know his or her
identity in real life ? What additional value does it add to the debate
? Only media sluts who crave for attention to inflate their egos and
self-worth prostitute their blogs to the PAP’s mouthpiece !
The PAP has always dismissed bloggers
who hide behind the cloak of annonymity as lacking credibility. We have
proven them beyond doubt that the message is more important than the
originator. Why do our readers keeping coming back to our blog in spite
nobody knowing our identities in real life ? Because what we wrote
strike a chord in their hearts and they know we have been speaking the
truth and nothing but the truth.
Last November, Zhi Yuan wrote an
excellent article to demolish the myth that bloggers must made
themselves known in life to gain some cheap credibility points and to
argue for the absolute necessity of annonymity:
While I agree that the credibility of a blogger will undoubtedly be
enhanced if he or she is known in real life, this is only feasible in a
free and democratic society which Singapore is not.
“According to the Reporters Without Borders Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents ,
“Bloggers are often only the real journalists in countries
where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they
provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and
sometimes courting arrest. Plenty of bloggers have been hounded and
thrown into prison…..
…..Bloggers need to be annonymous when they are putting out
information that risks their safety. The cyber-police are watching and
have become expert at “tracking down” trouble-makers”
Given the fact the Singapore government has all kinds of draconian laws in place such as the Internal Security Act and the Sedition Act to detain and arrest bloggers at will and the mainstream media has been
subverted to become a propaganda tool of the PAP, being annonymous is
for us the best form of defence and offence.” (Read Zhi Yuan’s article
‘How to wage and fight a cyber-guerilla war’ here)
Let us not fall into this ploy employed by the PAP to lure its
cyber-critics out into the open so that they can better manage and fix
them if the need arises. Once your identity is blown, you will
naturally self-censor your blog postings which will lead to a lack of
bite.
If you dare to cross the OB marker and offend the authorities, you
can be assured that the secret police will be digging up your past and
the state media on permanent standby mode to smear your character,
reputation and all you got with its psycho-psychiatrist Dr Chua ever
ready to pounce on you and declare you as having a XXX or YYY
personality disorder. And if you work in the civil
service, government-linked companies and quasi-government
organizations, you can effectively kiss goodbye to your career and
ricebowl forever.
So what makes those bloggers who “dare” to make themselves known to
the PAP ? Will they still dare to confront them heads on ? Or will they
shut up and act blur when the crunch comes ?
Now, I am sure most of you will not notice this cheap psychological tactic used by CNA. After
they were finished with PM Lee’s interview, they showed a 5 second clip
of The Online Citizen with its URL above to send a hidden message to
viewers that TOC is a “moderate” blog which PM Lee finds agreeable. (Watch the video on the right sidebar of The Singapore Enquirer here)
This is one of the many subtle, indirect messages the media can send
to entrap unsuspecting viewers and readers to generate the intended
perception they want in their minds and in this case CNA seems
desperate to give its viewers the impression that TOC is a PAP-approved
blog. (I will write more about some other well-versed tricks used by
the media to hoodwink its viewers another time)
I sincerely urge all netizens to stay viligant in the face
of the anticipated media onslaught by the traditional media together
with its accomplices in cyberspace to brainwash unsuspecting netizens
and to counter their spin and lies immediately as they arise. A lie not countered, rebuked and debunked in time will proliferate and become the new distorted truth eventually.
In such extraordinary times, we must stay together and draw strength
from one another. The true bulwark against the horrendous, despicable
and shameless lies propagated and perpetuated ad nauseum by the PAP
media to enslave our minds is not the alternative media, but a
well-informed and politically mature citizenry which can differentiate
the truth from the lies themselves. It is not the government’s business
to be the arbiter of truth when they have the power to withold and even
distort it in pursuit of its own interests
Every individual netizen or socio-political blogger has an important
to role to play in informing and educating their less knowledgable
fellow citizen to prevent them from falling pray to the PAP’s
omnipresent and overwhelming propaganda machinery.
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