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COMMENT: MDA’s actions again cloaked in opacity

Andrew helms publichouse.sg as Editor-in-Chief. His writings have been reproduced in other publications, including the Australian Housing Journal in 2010. He was nominated by Yahoo! Singapore as one of Singapore's most influential media persons in 2011. The views expressed below are his own.

On 29 July, the Media Development Authority (MDA) revealed that it had notified the “promoters” of The Independent, a news and current affairs website, to register under the Broadcasting (Class Licence) Notification. Once registered under this law, the website “will be required to undertake not to receive foreign funding for its provision, management and/or operation.”

The MDA said, “The Government has received specific information which gives it cause for concern over foreign interest to fund The Independent.”

The team behind the website, which includes former editor of the TODAY newspaper, PN Balji, and Kumaran Pillai, former editor of The Online Citizen, has since issued a response to the MDA’s statement. In it, it said:

"The founding shareholder's agreement for The Independent… states very clearly that the shareholders to this enterprise is restricted to Singapore Citizens/Permanent Residents or Singapore Registered Businesses/Companies/Societies, that is, The Independent expressly prohibits the acceptance of foreign funding and has taken cognizance of the relevant provisions of Section 43 of the Broadcasting Act (Cap 28)."

"We would like to highlight that the posture of The Independent is and has always been to be a [sic] purely Singaporean-funded media operation which does not accept foreign funds, was formulated and documented 19 April 2013, that is at an early stage of the venture's formation."

What is troubling about the episode so far is this:

The MDA acted on what is apparently a tip-off of “specific information which gives it cause for concern over foreign interest to fund The Independent.” This “specific information” has apparently turned out to be untrue, according to The Independent’s statement. The site’s shareholder’s agreement, formulated on 19 April, states that foreigners are prohibited from being shareholders of the enterprise.

As blogger Howard Lee asked: “How did he authorities receive this “specific information”, who specifically gave this information and how did MDA verify the accuracy of this information? Are our policy makers making policy decisions on information that they care not to reveal? How, then, would we know that future decisions are made with good data collection and analysis, instead of acting on a hunch, rumour or unverifiable tip-off, a practice which the Minister of Communications and Information has took pains in Parliament to weed out of citizens?”

If the regulatory body acts so arbitrarily on unnamed and mysterious tip-offs, it can only damage and erode the public’s trust in it.

The MDA, once again, hides behind a wall of opacity, as it did with the new Internet regulations it introduced in June, when it failed to provide satisfactory or clear explanation on the many questions raised by the public.

For example, till this day, the all-encompassing MDA definition of what constitutes “news” leaves many doubts about the real intention behind the regulations.

Even the Minister for Manpower, who is not directly involved in Internet regulations matters, was roped in on national television to provide some explanation. In the event, he was unable to provide any clarity on the matter either. In fact, he admitted:

“In [sic] hindsight, more details should have probably come out earlier. When some of the details were not addressed upfront in the initial release, I think people began to speculate and think, ‘This is censorship…’”

The Minister for Communications and Information (MCI), Yaacob Ibrahim, had to eventually resort to urging an unconvinced public to trust the MDA to be “judicious” in enforcing the new regulations.

"I want the online community to understand: this is not an attempt to clamp down on anybody,” Yaacob said on 5 June, explaining the new regulations. “This is to ensure that those who are in the business of reporting news do it responsibly."

But as this latest episode with The Independent shows, how can the public trust the authorities to be “judicious” in its enforcement of the rules when its actions are cloaked in opacity, and based on what looks like unsubstantiated tip-offs?

Has the MDA really learned its lesson in being more open and forthcoming as the Manpower Minister had advised?

More importantly, would the MDA reconsider its notification to The Independent to register as the MDA’s actions seem to be based on what is apparently a wrong claim and indeed wrong information – that the “specific information” it had received which gives it cause for concern over foreign interest to fund The Independent” is in fact unsubstantiated?

And would the MDA care to explain to the public how it came to decide on the actions it took based on such apparently false information?

If, however, the MDA is certain that the “specific information” it received is truthful and concrete, would it care to share it with the public, so as to allay concerns and suspicions of ulterior motives behind its actions?