“Shut up and take my money” – narrating state funding, independent journalism, and public trust in Singapore

ABSTRACT

In May 2021, Singapore Press Holding (SPH), the country’s newspaper conglomerate, announced its restructuring into a not-for-profit entity in response to the global decline of the news industry. The government pledged an annual S$180m budget to the new SPH Media Trust (SMT), raising concerns about the ability of the news entity to break away from government control, but these were dismissed with political assertions that editorial independence had ‘always existed’. This paper analyses the government-led public discourses surrounding SMT, highlighting a two-prong narrative approach: obfuscate the social role of the media in Singapore, and downplay the need for accountability over public funding for SMT. Applying a Foucauldian framework for evaluating discursive practices in governance and measuring these narratives against public service journalism scholarship, this paper probes the constructed determinants of journalism’s social role in Singapore. It proposes that similar evaluations can be applied to discourse about journalism in other societies.

KEYWORDS:

• Public service journalism
• boundary-work
• media funding
• media freedom
• Singapore

Overview

The mainstream media in Singapore is commonly viewed as the government’s mouthpiece by those most sceptical of the industry’s political independence. Such views are often accompanied by snide remarks about how the national broadsheet, The Straits Times, was essentially the newsletter for the ruling People’s Action Party. Wide-ranging laws that govern the newspaper industry – chiefly the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act 1974 – and the broadcasting and online news industries – the Broadcasting Act 1994 – contain limits for what news outfits can publish. These Acts impose broad-ranging restrictions on media coverage of issues relating to race, religion, state secrets, and social morality; restrictions on how funding from foreign sources must be reported to the authorities; and grants the government rights to appoint senior editorial positions.

Even with these restrictions, Singapore's mainstream media continued to thrive. Various attempts by the Singapore government to introduce competition to the media industry have ended in an effective return to the status quo, with the Singapore Press Holding (SPH) retaining a near-monopoly of the newspaper industry, and the national broadcaster MediaCorp doing likewise for television and radio. Such efforts at introducing competition in the media market can be seen as little more than attempts to talk-up free-market ideals dressed up as ‘liberalising’ the industry without actually implementing any real or sustained change to enhance the liberty of the industry (Lee, 2010). On the other hand, such a pseudo-liberalisation has only further entrenched the prime positions of SPH and MediaCorp as the leading media conglomerates in Singapore. Foreign media entities have been significantly reduced through regulatory practices, leaving the only challenge to SPH and MediaCorp coming from an emerging online media industry that is constantly hobbled by legal wranglings with the government and limited funding opportunities (Lee & Ansari, 2017). Such regulatory frameworks and legal actions have led to the entrenched dominance of mainstream media, particularly of SPH publications in the newspaper sector.

This is not to say that Singapore's mainstream media is immune to the issues faced by most other news outfits around the world – declining readership, losses in advertising funding, and the consequent trimming of newsroom staff. With the news industry facing the challenges of hostile politics, digital media, and an increasingly difficult economic environment (Dudley, 2023; Edmonds, 2010; Giles, 2010; Newman, 2023), the relatively stable news industry in Singapore seemed to have been affected by some of these factors. In October 2020, SPH announced its first net loss of S$83.7 million for the financial year, compared to the net profit of S$213.2 million posted the year before (Channel NewsAsia, 2020). In the announcement, SPH attributed the loss to circumstances beyond its control – the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on advertising revenue – while maintained that circulation figures held steady, despite cuts to staff numbers in its newsrooms in previous years. The need to keep its news businesses afloat was projected as a matter of grave national importance, but was nevertheless a liability to its otherwise healthy investment portfolio.

By May 2021, SPH announced it would hive off and restructure its news business into a not-for-profit entity (Ho, 2021b), eventually named SPH Media Trust (SMT), availing itself to both public funding and advertising revenue to sustain its newspaper products. This was followed by the government’s announcement in February 2022 that it would fund the new not-for-profit to the tune of S$900 million over 5 years to help its restructuring efforts (Lay, 2022). Government support for SPH was justified on the grounds of SPH being an important national institution, given its wide reach to the reading Singapore public, and a need to keep it functioning in the face of the global decline in the news industry.

The simplest and least charitable view of the series of announcements would be that direct government funding has effectively put the last nail in the coffin of ‘government mouthpiece’ allegations. However, it is just as necessary to understand how this regulatory development represents and, more importantly, constructs the way Singaporeans perceive and expect of their news media institutions. The way in which the new SPH not-for-profit entity was rationalised and argued for by the government revealed an attempt to normalise a prescribed role that the media plays in Singapore society. This effort is less about justifying whether a newspaper company is deserving of public support and funding. Instead, it is about establishing trust through reconstituting a preferred form of ‘media independence’, in turn justifying public support for this normalised ideal. The narratives that promoted trust in SPH effectively enhance ‘differentiated subject-positions and subject-functions’ (Foucault, 1991, p. 58) occupied by the media and the government in Singapore society, and in turn becomes ‘a practice which is articulated upon the other practices’ (Foucault, 1991, p. 70) of funding and public (non-)accountability. Turning our focus to these trust-building narratives, particularly in how they have evolved over time, invites a critique of how assertions of journalistic trust serve to entrench power, and to problematise these assertions. Taking this approach allows for the analysis of similar narrative processes in other societies, in turn enhancing discussions about the broader issue of declining trust in the media less in terms of ‘what can we do to build trust’ and more in terms of ‘what must we do to re-negotiate our understanding of trust’.

In undertaking this analysis, this paper will begin with a brief study of the evolution of the Singapore media environment to provide a brief history of media funding and some context for how trust in the Singapore media has been established. It then moves on to examine the specific case of SMT, charting the political narratives published in news articles from October 2020 to July 2023 about the SMT development. A brief textual analysis of the development will be used to identify the discursive-interpretive and social-contextual practices (Fairclough, 1995) surrounding SMT. I argue that these practices play a significant role in establishing normative standards of journalism in Singapore. It will then place this narrative practice alongside contemporary analysis of media trust and public service journalism to evaluate its deeper impact on the journalism profession. In concluding, this paper will draw brief pointers on how a study of narratives can be applied in other social-political contexts, such as Australia’s public discourse around the ABC and public service journalism.

Funding a national institution

Both the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act 1974 (NPPA) and the Broadcasting Act 1994 (BA) outline a somewhat subjugated relationship between the government and newspaper owners, and these are couched mainly in commercial terms. Any newspaper that seeks to operate and publish in Singapore needs to obtain a permit from the authorised government ministry, which is renewed on an annual basis. The Acts forbid news outfits from receiving foreign funding from non-commercial sources, meaning only commercial paid advertising is permitted. Through the NPPA, the government is at liberty to dictate who can be a shareholder of a newspaper company, how many shares they can hold and how they can dispose of the shares. For instance, ‘management shares’ can only be held by individuals or organisations pre-approved by the government, and each holder has a 200-times multiplier on voting rights. These rights relate to matters such as ‘the appointment or dismissal of a director or any member of the staff of a newspaper company’ (‘Newspaper and Printing Presses Act’, 1974), although this measure had not been visibly used to date. The pretext of these restrictions, often cited by government officials and political leaders, was to ensure that only Singaporeans can participate in Singapore politics, signalling the government’s tough stand against media platforms that it deemed to be intent on destabilising Singapore’s political environment.

Notably, there are no restrictions for local media to seek funding through local commercial sources and investment initiatives. This granted SPH the ability to seek advertising revenue and build up an investment portfolio in real estate, retail, and telecommunication operations (Burgos, 2022; Lim, 2019; Singapore Press Holdings Ltd, 2021). Domestic funding sources can include both commercial and public sector advertising, and while the government does not provide a clear indication of public sector advertising across media platforms on a year-on-year basis, estimates from the Ministry of Communication and Information suggest this to be in excess of S$100 million annually (Ministry of Communications and Information, 2023). The combined effects of laws limiting funding and adopting an open commercial model meant that mainstream media is funded mainly by those who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo of continual political stability and the economic progress that comes with it (George, 2007).

The limitations within the NPPA and BA that govern foreign funding were designed with the specific intent of keeping the news industry as a primarily domestic business, which in turn affirms the trustworthiness of a news publication. It allowed the government to valorise the mainstream titles of SPH and Mediacorp over independent online publications that often have little choice but to obtain funding from any source they can get. More recent instances where this spectre of foreign interference was played out involved a website charged with sedition and forced to close down after it was unable to provide details of its overseas funding (Spykerman, 2015), another denied business registration due to seed funding obtained from American philanthropist George Soros (Sin, 2018), and a third shut down for failing to declare funding details (Kurohi, 2021) and accused of foreign interference (Lai, 2019). Hence, not only was this threat of foreign interference through funding formalised in law, but it became the continuing mantra with which the government dictated the way all forms of media should conduct business and maintain the public’s trust.

In effect, the government established a double-merit principle for dealing with news publications: first, the merit of any news publication is determined by the government more than any universal or international standards of journalism; second, this merit is often commensurate with the ability of a news outlet to be commercially viable. Even when the government decided to tap on global media markets at the turn of the year 2000, it maintained a protectionist approach by openly endorsing the ‘quality content’ from SPH and MediaCorp that would be ‘better able to hold our local audience with attractive local content’ (Lee, 2000, p. 3). The media was valued as a ballast for social stability as it avoided the editorial principles of liberal foreign media (Ang & Lee, 2001). This view was backed up by the government at every opportunity it had to dismiss media freedom, frequently supported by the characterisation of ‘Western media’ as being too willing to give up their principles of press freedom and journalistic integrity for ‘the economic reality which is fundamental’ (Yeo, 1995, p. 6). This narrative practice suggests that the government was only using the market as a façade for tightening its grip on power (Rodan, 2003), talking-up liberalisation as symbolic or gestural progressiveness (Lee, 2001, 2016; Lee & Lim, 2004). In so doing, the government defended its own suppression of media entities by extolling pragmatism over hypocrisy, establishing its version of the discordant reality in which all media outlets in Singapore operate: political suppression of the media is to be expected, particularly if genuine commercial objectives are suspect.

Such affirmation of mainstream media served to impress upon journalists and the public that the unquestionable quality of local mainstream media was deserving of local support. The competence, comprehensiveness, objectivity, and professionalism of the local mainstream media, its avoidance of ‘aggressive journalism’, and its steering clear of the ills of an increasingly liberal online media environment (Lui, 2009) was what the government espoused as factors that established public trust. By contrast, independent online media, portrayed as the ‘lunatic fringe’ that offered nothing for the progress of Singapore society (Chang, 2011) often bore the brunt of public reprimands and legal action (Lee & Ansari, 2017; Lee & Lee, 2019). The valorisation of local media as an integral part of Singapore's socio-political fabric, repeated ad nauseum in mainstream news reports and editorials, would set the tone for the next evolution of the Singapore media environment: the restructuring of SPH into SMT.

Buttressing trust in Singapore media – a narrative genealogy

The transformation of SPH into SMT was rationalised based on a decline in the Singapore printed news industry. In March 2021, SPH announced that it would be undergoing a structural review meant to ‘unlock and maximise long-term shareholder value’ (Yang, 2021). The newspaper giant had posted a net profit of S$97.9 million following its first ever revenue net loss of S$83.7 million from the COVID-induced economic downturn (Tan, 2020). The chief executive officer of SPH, Ng Yat Chung, highlighted the decline in advertising revenue as a main cause and identified a need to place the media business on a more sustainable footing. By May 2021, SPH announced that it would restructure its media business into a not-for-profit entity that would ‘focus on quality journalism and invest in talent and new technology to strengthen its digital capabilities’ (Ho, 2021b). The not-for-profit company would be able to seek funding from both commercial sources and public monies from the government, with the government immediately committing to ‘provide funding support … to help accelerate its digital transformation and build capabilities for the future’ (Ho, 2021a). This funding would be to the tune of S$180 million per year over the next 5 years (Lay, 2022). Previous shareholder arrangements under the NPPA would cease to apply to the new company, effectively signalling a complete turn-around in how the government had, until the restructuring, exerted its arms-length influence over SPH through management shareholders.

To provide a clearer understanding of the public discourse surrounding SMT’s restructuring, a textual analysis was done on news coverage on the transformation from the two most widely read news publications in Singapore – The Straits Times and Channel NewsAsia, representing the flagship news products from SPH and Mediacorp, respectively. A total of 55 news articles were collected, representing a near-comprehensive dataset (excluding charts and radio and video content) starting from 13 October 2020 when SPH announced the net loss in revenue that precipitated the restructuring, to 6 July 2023 when the government closed its arguments in Parliament about its funding principles for SMT. The qualitative analysis software NVivo was used to generate a broad overview of the key themes discussed during the announcement and debate, represented in the word cloud in Figure 1. The results indicated a narrative that leaned heavily on corporate interests, with the most common stemmed words (that is, words like ‘fund’ and funding’ were grouped together) being ‘business’, ‘company’, and ‘funds’, while ‘trust’ ranked the sixth most frequent term used, represented in Figure 2.

Figure 1. Word cloud representing the top 1,000 stemmed words of at least four characters long from media articles about SMT’s restructuring published from 13 October 2020 to 6 July 2023.

Figure 2. Top 10 most frequently used stemmed words in media articles about SMT’s restructuring published from 13 October 2020 to 6 July 2023.

Even discounting the frequency in use of ‘SPH Media Trust’ (71 counts in the original dataset), the dominant focus on ‘trust’ far surpassed any descriptive term used for SMT and its restructuring process. Conversely, words like ‘accountability’ (15 counts) and ‘transparency’ (2 counts) appeared infrequently and predominantly in January 2023, long after the government had committed to funding SMT. The articulation of what accounts for this ‘trust’ was led primarily by political actors. Only three editors from The Straits Times penned commentaries, mainly to affirm the favoured position of trust that SPH publications held among the reading population, rather than define what that trust entails or what it means to earn and maintain it. Collectively, a broad overview of the narrative process surrounding SMT’s formation suggests a concerted effort, led mainly by the Singapore government, to create a ‘societal order of discourse’ (Fairclough, 1998, p. 145) around the meaning of ‘journalism’ that is centred on trust. The effort was focused on privileging certain discursive policy frames while excluding others (Fischer, 2003) – in the SMT case, the affirmation of trust in SPH publications fortified the policy position for unwavering funding support by the government for a journalistic product of presumed repute.

A more detailed analysis of the specific narratives that surrounded SMT’s formation is required to shed light on the politically led normalisation of this ‘trust’ in Singapore’s newspaper products. The rest of this paper will reveal that this affirmation of trust placed no emphasis on some of the desired characteristics of funding public service journalism. These characteristics include institutional boundaries such as legal frameworks, administrative independence, or arms-length funding to avoid media capture, maintaining media diversity (Foster & Bunting, 2019; Murschetz, 2020), the need for accountability and transparency in funding, equitable spending, and incorporating civil society into the funding framework (Burnley, 2017; Dragomir, 2018). Nevertheless, rather than attempt to re-map the SMT model to these characteristics, this paper will focus on uncovering the discursive practices that led to the normalisation of trust as a criterion in Singapore journalism through the course of SMT’s narrative genealogy.

Umbrage-gate – a pivot to public funding and blanket trust

The SMT restructuring effort was an interplay between trust and editorial independence, which became a persistent theme throughout the public debate, but came to the fore during the press conference when the formation of the not-for-profit was first announced. A reporter had asked SPH CEO Ng Yat Chung if the new media company would ‘pivot to emphasise editorial integrity ahead of advertiser interests’ (Yahoo Singapore, 2021). Ng’s visibly angry response would spawn a host of internet memes when he chastised the reporter, ‘taking umbrage’ at her audacity to suggest SPH publications had ever forsaken its editorial independence. In retrospect, the question was not unreasonable in view of the historical position the government has taken about editorial integrity, highlighted above. The valuation of commercial interests over the journalistic integrity of foreign media outlets, to the extent that commercial success became an indicator of a news publication’s excellence, has clearly pervaded the way quality journalism is understood in Singapore. The government’s sceptical dismissal of journalistic integrity was based on its professed ‘practical test of whether the journal is more interested in sales and advertising revenues, or in defending the freedom of information’ (Lee, 1987, pp. 12–13). As such, while observers have noted that the transition of SPH to public funding has only affirmed the government’s long-standing suppression of media freedom (George, 2021), there are nuanced points in the debate that suggests the formation of SMT represents a decisive departure from how such suppression used to be effected.

Public discourse around the formation of SMT and the funding support from the government had sought to paper over the government’s long-standing dismissiveness towards media independence. When queried in Parliament about how government funding, the lack of oversight mechanisms, and the appointment of a former government Minister as its chairperson, then information minister S. Iswaran simply stated that ‘the culture of editorial independence already exists in Singapore’s media industry’ (Lee, 2021), citing surveys and studies by market analysis and research institutions (Edelman Trust Institute, 2021; Soon, 2020). The new information minister Josephine Teo dismissed criticisms about editorial independence as ‘too predictable’ and incongruent with how the public continues to ‘exercise their choice on a day-to-day basis in consuming news media’ (Ong, 2022). When it was revealed in early 2023 that the former SPH had inflated circulation figures to boost advertising revenue, raising the potential for fraudulent criminal conduct (SPH Media Group, 2023), Teo sought to delink the continuation of government funding to SMT from the incident, affirming that no public funds have been involved in the alleged falsification of circulation figures (Ang, 2023). It was clear that the government had no intention of using the incident as a benchmark to judge the integrity of SMT or to legislate some form of independent review mechanism or institutional body that would adjudicate the proper use of public funds given to the new entity. The government alone was to continue deciding on the benchmark for public service journalism in Singapore.

In reviewing the evolution of SPH into SMT, trust was taken for granted as a default characteristic of Singapore’s leading newspaper business, from which a funding and governance model of minimal public scrutiny was created. This assumption is in line with the Singapore government’s long-held dismissal of editorial independence, fuelled by a suspicion, warranted or otherwise, over how the media can destabilise a country’s political climate. In providing government-allocated funding to SMT, the government will inevitably face allegations that it is attempting to influence the newspaper business. Rather than remove itself from such accusations by, for instance, establishing an independent and publicly accountable body to oversee the management of such funds and to establish journalistic standards (Reid, 2014), the government has instead declared the editorial integrity of SMT as a given. This can be seen in both internal affirmation – for instance, in the case of SPH falsifying circulation figures – and in external defence – for instance, when the government issued a statement to defend itself and local media against perceived accusation of being ‘an illiberal state’ with ‘an allegedly captive media’ (Goh, 2023). Such arguments might baulk liberal-democratic sensibilities of journalistic integrity but were aimed at strengthening public perception of SMT as a trusted national institution and the government’s unchallenged right as regulator, whereby discourse becomes ‘the vehicle of the law: the constant principle of universal recoding’ (Foucault, 1979, p. 112).

It is also worth noting that the discursive practice that affirms SMT’s public value as the purveyor of public service journalism neither sought the concurrence of the reading public nor reflected the way SPH journalists evaluated themselves. The public can play a significant role in defining what public service media should be and in turn ‘alter the centre of media power and governance away from political appointees to the citizenry’ (Reid, 2014, p. 37). However, the blanket assertion of the quality of SMT publications, seen in the Umbrage-gate exchange and in parliamentary discourse, effectively bypassed this role and revolved around projecting journalism as something that is about the public rather than with the public (Iggers, 1999). Such assertions present ‘media quality’ in a sterile environment, undebated and untested by either journalists or the public the media platform is assumed to serve.

Trust by default and discursive formation

Narratives about the role of Singapore media in its nation-building relationship with the government have found congruence in the Singapore public and journalists alike, where the media’s disdain for an adversarial attitude towards the government is seen as a virtue rather than a blight on its trustworthiness. In a sample study of 1,200 news consumers, Tandoc and Duffy (2016) noted that Singaporeans regarded the role of journalism ‘conveying a positive image of political leadership loaded with being an adversary to the government, setting the political agenda, and influencing public opinion’ (Tandoc & Duffy, 2016, p. 3352), which suggests Singaporeans do not see these roles as contradictory. Surveys with Singapore journalists by Hao and George (2012) revealed that less than a third of journalists view investigating government claims as an important journalistic role, and an even lower proportion placed importance on discussing national policy. Such avoidance of journalism’s public function increases with greater seniority among the ranks of the profession (Hao & George, 2012, p. 98), indicating a practice of newsroom cultural assimilation. Similarly, Wu (2018) noted an ideological disdain for the Fourth Estate role of the media, whereby ‘the Singapore press took on the role of cooperating with the government to achieve social stability and economic growth’ (Wu, 2018, p. 1296). This view is not novel and has been echoed in earlier works by notable scholarship on Singapore’s distinctive political-media environment (Ang, 2005; George, 2007; Rodan, 2003) and by journalists themselves (Rowlins, 2019). Indicatively, the liberal-democratic value of freedom of expression played second to a collectivist ‘pro-Singapore’ mindset and trust in the government.

At this juncture, this paper departs from the studies presented by Hao & George, Tandoc & Duffy and Wu. While these scholars have presented a predominantly cultural-centric analysis of how journalists and the public understand and evaluate the role of journalism in Singapore society, they fail to acknowledge the integral and direct role that the government has historically played in the formulation of this role through public discourse. In particular, the discourses that surround each evolutionary step of media policy had only solidified the two narrative positions identified at the start of this paper – the obfuscation of the role of public service journalism in Singapore society and the brushing-aside of political accountability in supporting such journalism. This narrative practice goes beyond the ‘crisis narratives’ that revolved around the confluence of interests between the government and the media towards ‘“survivalism” and “Asian values”’ (Wu, 2018, p. 1303). In fact, public narratives about the value of Singapore media range from the government’s regulatory intervention in the media industry from the 1970s to the 1980s, the subordination of the media to policy imperatives in the 1990s, the pseudo-competitive model adopted in the 2000s, and the final fragmentation of this competition leading to SMT thereafter. Rather than look at media policy as ‘the result of mute processes or the expression of a silent consciousness’ among the governed, this paper examines policy as ‘a practice which is articulated upon the other practices’ (Foucault, 1991, p. 70) that affirms public valuation of the media.

The latest case relating to the formation of SMT, then, invites a closer inspection of the discursive formations that define journalism as a practice in Singapore, even when the mechanisms of such a system of funding and governance remain a concern. These discursive formations at once emanate from political directives as much as they are ingrained in how the media actualises itself. The use of ‘metajournalistic discourse’ to define the practice where ‘the meanings of journalism are formed and transformed by actors inside and outside of journalism’ (Carlson, 2016, p. 350) are critical to this reimagining of journalistic quality. The multifaceted attempts at defining the boundaries of journalistic work happen mostly during pivotal moments when challenges to the practice occur, such as in instances of journalistic malpractice or shifts in media policies. They are also tied to the socio-political environment that journalists find themselves operating in, and in turn reshape that environment. The risk of an existential threat, such as when funding becomes a challenge, allows a public service media platform to move beyond mere affirmation of journalistic superiority, but instead defends itself as ‘a site which reproduces the indeterminate basis of democracy’ (Craig, 2000, p. 113). In this regard, the most notable point about the discourses surrounding SMT was the boundary setting – led mainly by political actors – that defined public understanding of journalism, with SPH journalists playing an almost obligatory role in going along with that definition. Similarly, the public had limited ability to contribute to that definition for the now public-funded SMT.

The policy-led approach to defining journalistic standards and quality has been a defining feature of Singapore’s history with media regulation, with the formation of SMT being only the latest example. Surrounding the public’s understanding of the role of journalism in predominantly legal and regulatory frames meant that the ‘arguments and debates that constitute and shape the various policy networks or “policy communities”’ (Fischer, 2007, p. 105) tend to be led by the government, mostly in legalistic terms. This discursive practice of policy framing outlines the way Singapore journalists and the public understand and negotiate journalistic quality, where each repetition of values and norms, simultaneously discarding what is deemed irrelevant, ‘lays the conceptual groundwork for possible future courses of action’ and in turn constructs ‘the socio-political world in and on which they act’ (van Hulst & Yanow, 2016, p. 99). Doing so cements the Singapore government’s mantra of valuing the rule of law and by extension entrenches the media in protective narratives that relate to foreign interference, the perils of which have always been couched as the collapse of Singapore’s supposedly unique and vulnerable democracy. At the same time, it grants journalists and the public pseudo-agency in professing to speak on behalf of their interests in alignment with national interests. The practice is evident in how senior editors of The Straits Times, the flagship broadsheet of the newspaper conglomerate, have continued to define the publication in terms deeply ingrained with the policy speech of the government (Fernandez, 2017; Ong, 2018; Veloo, 1994). The continuity between policy discourse and metajournalistic discourse reflects how SPH publications self-actualise their role in political and policy terms. Paradoxically, it is the ability of the media to deliberately abdicate journalistic integrity that compounds rather than undermines the Singapore public’s trust in the media.

Recontextualising – journalism as political discourse

Refocusing the public debate on SMT to its two primary narrative discourses – the obscurity of the role of journalism in Singapore and the underrating of political accountability in managing a publicly-funding entity – allows us to view discursive practices in other societies with a similar evaluative approach. Critical analysis of media governance and politics in Singapore mainly points to established systems of calibrated coercion (George, 2007) or the translation of electoral support into obedience amongst citizens by punishing dissent while rewarding compliance with well-timed benefits (Morgenbesser, 2017). However, less detailed attention has been paid to how such political legitimacy has been entrenched through affirming ‘conformity to the established rules … and the shared beliefs of citizens’ (Morgenbesser, 2017, p. 213). The formation of these rules and shared beliefs were critical factors in the SMT case and were established through public narratives about how journalistic media should be governed and what public service journalism should mean. Such normalising practices are not confined to autocratic rule; in fact, establishing social norms intrinsically depends on representative democracy – be it Singapore’s autocratic variant or more liberal models – where ‘the exercise of political power can be modelled and rationalized according to the exercise of freedom by the governed’ (Dean, 2010, p. 143). By comparison, the example of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) presents an even more compelling examination of how political discourses ‘function as a principle of exclusion and segregation and, ultimately, as a way of normalizing society’ (Foucault, 2004, p. 61).

How the ABC is normalised as a public service institution is continually debated and described through political discourse. While enjoying high levels of public trust, the ABC is subject to evolving evaluations about reporting standards, transparency, and biases among the reading public (Edelman Trust Institute, 2022; Flew, Dulleck, Park, Fisher, & Isler, 2020). Such evaluative standards are often contested by politicised discourses about the meaning of ‘public interest journalism’. A government of a more progressive bent might champion the ABC’s independence (Meade, 2022), while a conservative government might question the partiality of its editorial content (Meade, 2020b). There are also demands for the ABC to function and be managed like a government department (Burgess, 2020; Karp, 2020), presumably in lieu of it being funded by public monies.

Of greater interest is the ability of the ABC to respond to such narratives and assert its self-perceived role as a public service institution. Such responses can vary between affirmations of media independence (Meade, 2020a) or intrinsically tie them to perceptions that they are government funded (Shepherd, 2023). Efforts to re-assert or reimagine its position in public discourse about its role (Buttrose, 2020; Sales, 2023) allows the ABC some agency to affirm ‘its status as a public broadcaster’ and ‘recast its publicness’ (Craig, 2000, p. 111). It is this interplay of discursive practices between politics and the media institution, ‘of establishing the positions occupied and modes of actions used by each’ and ‘the possibilities of resistance and counter-attack on either side’ (Foucault, 1980, p. 164), which contributes to broader public expectations of the national broadcaster. Granted, the ABC is a vastly different organisation from SMT, with very different points of origin, governance structures, political climates, and socio-cultural backgrounds. Nevertheless, evaluating discursive practices surrounding its evolution will provide a more introspective view of the perceived value of public service journalism in Australia. A proper evaluation of the ABC’s discursive genealogy will need a more detailed analysis than this paper can do justice to. Yet not unlike SMT, such discursive practices have become ‘a play of specific transformations’ that are ‘linked together according to schemes of dependence’ (Foucault, 1991, p. 59) that draw politically defined connections between media funding, independence, and trustworthiness. Such linkages might vary between different societal contexts, but nevertheless hold sway over how journalists imagine, defend, and represent themselves to their public.

Conclusion – redefining boundaries

The switch to a public funding model for SPH Media Trust in 2021 was hailed by the government and the newspaper conglomerate as a positive step in ensuring the sustainability and quality of Singapore’s most trusted news brand. Faced with a challenging media climate that saw the decline of the news industry around the world, the Singapore government moved to protect what has historically been a valued national institution by promising public funding. Yet the public narratives that supported this significant change did little to justify why such a switch was needed or how accountability to the public would be established. Instead, the government emphasised the high quality of SMT publications as the critical factor for ensuring its survival, ignoring concerns that the news outfit has traditionally held political biases that favour the government’s national agenda.

This narrative idealisation of journalistic values was echoed during Umbrage-gate, when the chief executive of SPH dismissed legitimate questions about editorial inclinations and integrity in lieu of public funding. The much-parodied episode affirmed the abdication of the public service responsibilities of Singapore journalism in holding the government to account. However, rather than see this as reflective of a unique trait in Singapore journalism, as various researchers have done, this paper tracks the discursive history of political speech that dictated and affirmed the meaning of public service journalism for the Singapore public and journalists. Funding sources, which the government had used to annotate a media platform’s editorial independence, were dismissed as irrelevant when challenged with the possibility of state influence through public funding. Instead, the government affirmed that ‘a culture of editorial independence already exists’ in SMT publications, using the public’s continuing subscription to newspapers as proof to chastise critics for claiming otherwise.

More critically, the affirmation of public funding for public service journalism as the result of public trust, rather than a precondition for editorial independence, has allowed the Singapore government to define what such trust means and what the media must do to maintain that trust. Such definitions and demands run the risk of the state setting the boundaries of public service journalism, more so than journalists can define it for themselves based on the interest of the public they serve. A refocus on these formative narratives that structure idealisations of journalism and threaten editorial independence in any society requires a closer examination, particularly given the precarious state of journalism and receding trust in the profession.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).