TR EMERITUS

From our Correspondent During a dialogue on the changing media landscape with some 200 members of the Singapore Press Club, Acting Minister for Information, Communication and Arts Rear-Admiral Lui Tuck Yew said the mainstream media can meet the Internet challenge by continuing to stay accurate and balanced in its coverage - not by becoming adversarial or one-sided like socio-political blogs. (read article here) "Newspapers in the West have seen their circulation and advertising revenue take a dent, as more readers and viewers migrate online. However the mainstream media here still holds a secure position despite the emergence of sites like Wayang Party and The Online Citizen." he said. (Wayang Party is the predecessor of Temasek Review) Obviously, Mr Lui and his colleagues from MICA have been keeping track of both sites' readership which have increased by more than 50% in less than a year. Though the increase is remarkable, it still has not reached a stage where it is sizable enough to compete directly with the mainstream media and pose a threat to them. As an example of selective reporting on the blogosphere, he cited a recent online video of an elderly Singaporean woman who makes a living by collecting and selling scrap cardboard. The video was flagged by several bloggers earlier as evidence that Singapore does not take care of its poor and elderly. But the online commentators 'did not mention she had a three-room flat that was fully paid for, and that she has five children but did not want to rely on them to support her'. The reason why online news sites are unable to find out more about the elderly woman's background is because they do not have access to state resources and information like the mainstream media. We do not even know where to locate her. Besides, these sites are run by part-time amateurs and not full-time journalists who can afford all the time in the world to conduct a thorough investigation into the story they are writing. Singapore's alternative news media is still in its infancy compared to Malaysia's. There is a difference between an online news site and a blog. A news site like ours churns out news from Singapore and around the world on a daily basis while blogs publish commentaries which may or may not be updated daily. The next stage of development will be to turn professional. There is a lot of potential in the new media industry especially in Singapore where there is only one company - SPH in the business. It is time to give it some competition and allow consumers have a real choice. Under the present circumstances, it will be make perfect sense for the two most popular socio-political blogs in Singapore to pool their limited resources together and collaborate to increase their readership collectively as a unit. This will involve setting up a new media company to venture not only into online publishing, but into other business opportunities such as online advertising, blog TVs and website design to generate revenue to sustain the operations. The company will have to run not only socio-political sites, but other "mundane" sites like entertainment, sports, leisure and healthcare as well. Given the generalized apathy of Singaporeans, it will be foolhardy and suicidal to depend solely on politics to attract the crowd. The key strategy will be to draw in passive readers through other means, get them hooked to the site and "indoctrinate" them slowly over time. Sites run purely by amateurs and volunteers will not last long because there is simply no incentive or motivation for them to work on it unless there is some form of monetary reward or compensation at the very least. The two news sites in Malaysia with the highest readership - Malaysiakini and the Malaysia Insider are both run by full-time journalists. Journalists do not come cheap in Singapore. A fresh Malaysian journalist out of university commands a monthly salary of only RM $2,000. A Singapore journalist will fetch a basic salary of more than S$2,500 a month. Despite the difficulties ahead, we have no choice but to take this route if we are to build a credible online news daily which will one day exceed the readership of Channel News Asia. Mr Lui need not be too worried about the rising readership of sites like ours. In fact, they will become more moderate and less adverserial in order to capture the mainstream audience. As Mr Lui himself admits, "the established media cannot escape the speed and immediacy of the new media." Whether the government likes it or not, the new media is here to say. Today we are the ones who are proposing the setting up of new media company to challenge SPH's dominance. We may or may not succeed, but one thing we can be sure of, somebody will eventually achieve this feat some day. It is only a matter of time. Instead of fretting over the purportedly biased, inaccurate and aggressive reporting of the new media, why not make use of the opportunity to build bridges with them to create a win-win situation for both parties? The government has to change its attitude and behavior towards bloggers, in particular those who blog on socio-political affairs. Nobody has the monopoly on truth. There is always two sides to the same story. Adopting a paternalistic stance against bloggers will only peeve them off and "radicalize" them further. Rather than seeing them as potential troublemakers to be taught a lesson, the government should start treating news site operators and bloggers as partners in building a better Singapore for our future generations. When we criticize the government, it is not because we hate them or bear a grudge against them. It is because we care for our country that we have decided to speak out though our criticisms may not be entirely justified due to our limited understanding of the situation on the ground. Take for example the AFP video quoted by Mr Lui which triggered a torrent of criticisms from bloggers earlier against the government for not taking care of its poor and elderly. Will Mr Lui prefer that netizens remain nonchalant about it after watching the video? Though bloggers may have wronged the government, the fact remains that they are doing so out of genuine concern about the plight of the poor and needy in our country. Being the Minister for Information, Communication and Arts, Mr Lui should understand the importance of communication. His ministry has to do much more to reach out to the online community, listen to what they have to say and engage them on an equal basis to create a more open, transparent and competitive media landscape. Perhaps the best way to "neutralize" the threat posed by the alternative news site is to liberalize the mainstream media itself: allow journalists more leeway and independence to report on socio-political affairs in Singapore. Some Singaporeans turn to the new media because they are sick and tired of the daily spins and propaganda churned out by the Singapore media to insult their intelligence. There will come a day when a significant segment of the population become so disillusioned and disgusted with the mainstream media that they stop reading it altogether resulting in them devouring whatever the new media has to offer even if it does not quite reflect the reality. This is exactly the situation in Malaysia which allows online news portals like Malaysiakini to grow, proliferate and prosper. The Singapore media is living on borrowed time. The only reason why they appear to be dominant now is because their opponents are still pretty weak, poor and inexperienced, but we are learning the ropes fast and the gap between us is narrowing with each passing day.  Read More →

From our Correspondent An influential newspaper in Miami, a southern city of the U.S. had lavish generous praise on Singapore's education system and its "national obsession" with education. (read article here) Andre Oppenheimer, a columnist of the Miami Herald went on a study trip to Singapore to learn why Singapore's students score so well on international science and maths tests. He came back visibly impressed and inspired by what he saw. During his weeklong visit, Oppenheimer was literally blown away by Singapore's public libraries at malls, big media headlines about students who excel academically and even Singapore's ubiquitous 2-dollar note, which shows students in a classroom listening to a professor, with a university in the background. Oppenheimer wrote that there are " some things that Latin America, a region that has some of the world's lowest education standards, could learn here." "Only four decades ago, when Singapore was told by Great Britain that it could no longer remain a British colony, Singapore was so poor -- and hopeless -- that no other country was interested in taking it over. Its per capita income at the time was the same as Jamaica's. Today, largely thanks to its focus on education, Singapore is the world's ninth-richest country in per capita income. Comparatively, the United States is 10th, Mexico 82nd and Jamaica 123rd," he wrote. Oppenheimer noted that Singapore ranks No. 1 in several categories of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), test of fourth- and eighth-graders' abilities in math and science. While Singapore students were first in science in the TIMSS test, U.S. students ranked eighth. Most Latin American countries rank so low in broader international academic tests that they don't dare participate in the TIMSS. Oppenheimer attributed Singapore's successful education system to its founder and ex-Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew who made English the first language to be used in all Singapore schools in addition to their mother tongues which are relegated to being a second language. Under Lee's leadership, Singapore's education system was transformed into one of the world's toughest academic meritocracies, where children are ranked by their academic performance, from first to last starting from Primary 1. The discipline of Singapore students also left a lasting impression on the American journalist. He observed that whenever a visitor turned up in class, the students will bow automatically. They wear uniforms all the way through community college-like technical schools. Mohawk haircuts, dyed hair, jewelry or baggies are a no-no, even in junior college. Singapore's Education Minister Ng Eng Hen told him in an interview that technical schools or ITEs are the "jewels of his crown". "Almost all countries have good universities, but few have a system of good vocational schools," he quipped. The high education level of Singapore is fast becoming its Achilles' heel. Because of their proficiency in the English language, Singaporeans are one of the highest prized and mobile workers in the world. According to government sources, there are as many as 145,000 Singaporeans working or studying overseas. In a survey done byExperiences 2009, the organiser of an annual US education convention, of 153 Singaporean undergraduates at 15 top US universities, as many as 79 per cent prefer to work in US after they graduate. Only 18.1 per cent want to return to Singapore immediately after they complete their studies. (read Asiaone report here) The brain drain suffered by Singapore is getting considerable for the government to set up an "Overseas Singapore Portal" to keep in touch with Singaporeans living overseas. In the last two years, the Minister of Home Affairs Mr Wong Kan Seng went on a tour of a few countries with significant numbers of Singaporeans such as Australia, Britain and even far-flung Uganda to remind them to "keep the Singapore flag flying high." In a way, Singapore is becoming a victim of its own success. Well educated and skilled Singaporeans are in a position to tap on the increasingly globalized and competitive labor market to seek better opportunities to improve their lives. Many often do not return after living overseas for a number of years. Source: Miami Herald  Read More →

By Philip Bowring from South China Morning Post The selfishness of the upper echelons of the civil service, from which come the chief executive, the financial secretary and other apparatchiks, never ceases to amaze. This week, the South China Morning Post reported the growing concern in government circles about the ageing population and the strain it would place on the economy. Commissioner for Census and Statistics Fung Hing-wang noted that the flood of 1950s and 1960s migrants will soon be retiring. Financial chief John Tsang Chun-wah, in his budget, warned of the fiscal burden of an ageing population. All true enough, even if the concern is belated. But what does the overpaid, underqualified bureaucratic elite propose to do about it? Answer: absolutely nothing that will get in the way of its enrichment. It is obvious that, for most of us, the increased percentage of old people will mean that most will need, even want, to go on working past the retirement age of 65. Even if individuals do not want it, society as a whole will probably demand it. That is already beginning to happen in Japan and some western countries which are 10 to 15 years ahead of Hong Kong in the ageing process. But meanwhile, in Hong Kong, the senior civil servants - and employees in the ever-growing number of quasi-government organisations - are sticking to their "rights" to retire not at 65 but at 60, an age set at a time when life expectancy was at least 10 years less than today. A recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report says that "productive employment is now possible well into the 70s". Yet Hong Kong's elite is, by its own admission, brain dead at 60! According to the Federation of Civil Service Unions, the lower and middle ranks of the service want to have retirement extended to 65 as they will have difficulty living for 20 or more years on their modest pensions. An extension would also, the Civil Service Bureau admits, save HK$540 million a year now were the age to be raised to 65. There are two reasons why the upper echelons resist. First, there would be fewer opportunities for promotion up the ladder, doing a brief stint at a senior post then retiring on a suitably fattened pension. Senior Government Officers Association vice-chairman Philip Kwok Chi-tak admitted as much. "Having the old hands at the helm for all eternity would affect the grooming of the next generation," he said. In other words, so-called public servants treat the system as a great gravy train, maximising chances for as many as possible to reach the higher ranks, regardless of competence. Second, raising the retirement age to 65 would limit opportunities for senior officials to jump ship to earn fat salaries by peddling inside influence on behalf of those seeking government contracts and favourable decisions. The Independent Commission Against Corruption, a creature of the bureaucracy, does not even try to police the cronyism and delayed payoff system that connects senior bureaucrats to the private sector. The Legislative Council and media are sometimes a watchdog. But moving the retirement age to 65, as well as tightening rules on post-retirement jobs, would have a big benefit to the public interest - as well as saving a lot of taxpayers' money on pensions to 60-year-olds. The Civil Service Bureau says the government has no intention of changing the retirement age. Meanwhile, ordinary people face the prospect of government support for per capita age allowances and health spending being reduced. Low-income earners who have saved regularly have seen those savings whittled away by negative real returns on bank deposits. Adding to the looming age crisis is a birth rate that is only half the replacement level (if those to mainland mothers without right of abode are excluded). Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen may want us all to follow his Catholic Church and stop using condoms. A better solution to the fertility drought would be, as France and Scandinavia have found, to reduce the cost of having children, through direct support payments and nursery schools. But that would be "socialism". For the likes of the chief executive and financial secretary, socialist featherbedding (plus cronyism) is reserved for one class of people - the senior civil service. Source: SCMP EDITORS' NOTE: Temasek Review is a paid subscriber of the South China Morning Post  Read More →