A recent article that caught my eye

‘Media too timid’ in election coverage: Panellist’
by William Han, The Straits Times, 26 February 2006

At a recent forum on politics, the mainstream media was criticised for being ‘too timid’ in its election coverage.

Mr Viswa Sadasivan, a former current affairs producer and current chairman of TV production company The Right Angle Group commented that local media needed to play ‘less safe’ as there was still room to manoeuvre and ‘push the envelope.’

He also took the media to task for portraying opposition members in a bad light with unflattering photos and unfair coverage.

I quite agree with Mr Sadasivan. And just like our tourism campaign tagline of ‘Uniquely Singapore”, the country has certain idiosyncrasies and unspoken rules that make our media very unique.

While freedom of speech is encouraged, the media practices self-censorship for fear of upsetting the powers that be. Once in a while, you hear gossip of ministers taking errant editors to task for unflattering articles! But this is just hearsay…

With the major media companies government-linked, it is no wonder that coverage is skewed positively in its favour, bringing to mind what we’ve covered in a previous module about news bias etc.

But where do we start in bridging the gap? To be fair, I have often felt that TODAY newspaper was doing an okay job, as it sometimes offered alternative perspectives in its commentaries and columns.

So all is not lost…just need to get the rest on the bandwagon so that Singaporeans have an unbiased opinion about local politics, which will ultimately lead to informed decisions when it comes to casting their votes.