The government Media Development Authority (MDA) says the new scheme will place such news sites on what’s termed a “more consistent regulatory framework”.
The licence requires online news sites to remove disapproved-of content within 24 hours of notification.
If in breach, the news sites risk losing a $AU40,000 bond.
Presenter: Liam Cochrane
Speaker: Siew Kum Hong, lawyer, human rights activist and former Nominated Member of Parliament in Singapore
SIEW: Absolutely, and I’m not going to make any bones about it. I think it’s absolutely a stand by the government to censor the online media. In fact, more accurately, it seeks to establish a mechanism, whereby the government can censor the internet. So right now, it’s just the list of 10 sites, nobody knows if that list will be expanded in the future. I do note that a couple of days ago, the Minister in charge actually said that sometime next year, there is an intent to introduce legislation which will also target overseas web sites reporting on Singapore news, so potentially this could include Australian web sites, the BBC, and so on and so forth. So I think this is definitely an attempt to impose some kind of censorship on the internet.SIEW: Well, I’m going to honest. I’m a critic of the government, but I’m also sceptical about this, because, for example, journalists do not get killed in Singapore, right, and yet we are in Singapore is ranked lower than countries and places where journalists regularly get killed, threatened and so on. So I think that list is a pinch of salt. But I think what cannot be disputed is that Singapore media is seen as extremely controlled and this is an attempt to control it further, because ever since the internet came along, suddenly we’ve had an explosion of discourse all taking place online and the mainstream media has been steadily experiencing loss of viewership, loss of engagement. People are just leaving traditional media for the internet,SIEW: I actually think it’s not just the foreign media. I think anyone with an interest in free speech should be involved in this and that’s all Singaporeans, all Singaporeans should be speaking out and pushing back on this, but also internationally. And it’s not just the media, right, because when you think about it, looking at the definitions used by the government, it’s not really just news sites like CNN or Wall Street Journal, or the Economist ad so on who could be affected. The definition is so broad that even say anything to do with Singapore, even its just food and its not political in nature or current affairs. A food site could conceivably come within the definition. So essentially what that means is that any business that’s interested in doing business in Singapore in the realm of information is potentially at risk. And extending it even further, a platform like Twitter or Facebook could conceivably fall in as a definition as well, because Singaporeans posting notes on Facebook, there’s online web sites. Should Facebook be come under this as well? So I think really any stakeholder with an interest in Singapore, whether its economic, in terms of economics, in terms of business, or free speech has to take a stand, because basically this is could the thin end of the wedge. There are no statutory controls over how far this could go and it is extremely worrying.
Singapore imposes stricter regulation on news websites
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