In Part 2 of his analysis of media regulation under prime minister Lee Hsien Loong, CHERIAN GEORGE (Hong Kong Baptist University) examines the government’s management of the press. He observes that, as social media grew in importance, the government became less invested in a credible national newspaper than his predecessors were. The full article was published as a chapter in the edited volume Lee Hsien Loong and Singapore.

The news publishing behemoth, Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), having given up trying to earn enough profit to satisfy shareholders, was restructured in 2021 into a government-supported entity with no formal commitment to editorial independence. Singapore became probably the only advanced industrial, non-communist country without a major daily news organisation not dependent on state funding.

Public funding of independent public service media is an established feature of most capitalist liberal democracies: these organisations’ strong charters and governance structures make it difficult for politicians to intervene in editorial appointments and day-to-day newsroom decisions. The absence of any such protections at SPH Media meant that the relationship between press and state power more closely resembled media in China’s hybrid marketised-but-state-led system than, say, The Guardian, which The Straits Times cited as an example of a newspaper published by a trust (Tham, 2021).

Management and policymakers blamed SPH’s commercial decline wholly on global, technological disruptions. It is true that the Internet Revolution had battered news media’s advertiser-supported commercial business model. But this was not the full global picture. Elsewhere, fatalities from the technological shakeout were mostly lower-ranked newspapers in big cities, and the main newspapers in second-tier cities and smaller towns. In the primary cities of open, advanced industrial countries, the market could still support at least one major quality news publisher, even if with non-existent profit margins. That surviving commercial entity is usually a legacy media company that leveraged its depth of talent and experience, its relationship with its audience, and its competitive instincts, to reinvent itself for the digital age. Most have had to cut corners. But they tend not to cede control to the state that the public counts on them to monitor.

SPH’s failure to find another way hinted at some level of political, corporate or editorial mismanagement that had been allowed to persist for too long within an industry protected by a strict media licensing system. It is unclear what due diligence was performed before Lee’s Government decided that spending S$900 million over five years on SPH Media did not amount to throwing good public money after bad.

To industry veterans, the decline in standards from the late 2010s was sharp and obvious. Even before the 2021 overhaul, The Straits Times was echoing the government’s voice with greater fidelity and shutting out alternative viewpoints more comprehensively than it did under Goh Chok Tong or even Lee Kuan Yew (Balji, 2019). When asked in a 2024 interview why articles in The Straits Times sounded like government press releases, its chief editor replied that most people, including those in his newsroom, trusted government press releases as “kosher” and having “no agenda” (Teh Tarik with Walid, 2024). This betrayed a degree of credulousness that his predecessors in the 1990s and 2000s would have found unprofessional.

Of course, the PAP always opposed an adversarial press. But how this principle was translated into day-to-day government–media relations varied across time. Goh said that he did not want a “subservient” press or a “government mouthpiece” but one that had its own sense of Singaporeans’ collective interests (Goh, 1995, 2005). The clearest indicator that Goh meant what he said was his government’s tolerance of the journalism of the Today newspaper under the leadership of former SPH veteran P. N. Balji from its founding in 2000. Despite being government-owned, Today was given the latitude to publish sharp, interpretive page-one stories and critical opinion pieces. Today toned down after Balji left in 2004. It ceased publication at the end of September 2024.

Even Lee Kuan Yew had a grudging respect for the journalism profession and seemed to feel that a high-quality local press would be a feather in Singapore’s cap. He understood that journalism required long years of experience and a professional ethos that could not be picked up easily by a team of nimble mandarins parachuted into the newsroom. The senior Lee’s paradoxical position was captured best in his legendary message to the late S. R. Nathan who took over as chairman of the ST group in 1982. While unapologetic about dispatching a civil servant to run a private media company, Lee cautioned Nathan that The Straits Times was like a “china bowl” that would be hard to piece back together if he broke it. “Try not to,” he is reported to have ordered (Goh, 1995).

An earlier generation of top editors knew who was boss, but was also protective of their autonomy. This delicate balance required keen political judgment on both sides. Former Editor-in-Chief Cheong Yip Seng, who ran the group under three PMs, was perhaps the first establishment figure to appreciate that this fragile partnership was at risk. His 2013 memoir, OB Markers: My Straits Times Story, tried to educate both sides about the value of the mutually respectful relationship that had been built over decades. His words of caution could not hold back the tide. Under Lee Hsien Loong, The Straits Times got caught in a vicious cycle of increasing self-censorship by the press and micro-management by officials. The fate that Lee Kuan Yew tried to avoid — the loss of a strong, commercial national news organisation — eventually befell The Straits Times and its sister papers: the china bowl cracked.

2011: A turning point?

Its management of SPH, as described earlier, does not appear to be in keeping with the PAP Government’s reputation for foresight and timely intervention. One reason could be that the press had declined in value as a means of communication with the public. Ministers grew less invested in the media’s credibility. Press coverage, or “earned” media — stories that journalists independently decide are newsworthy — used to be the ultimate prize of marketers. Social media, however, has allowed advertisers unprecedented access to the public via “owned” media (their own social media accounts, for example) and “bought” media (such as sponsored segments on an influencer’s show). In the eyes of the PAP, earned media may have diminished in status, a trend most clearly shown by the number of policy announcements that were made on politicians’ Facebook pages instead of at news conferences.

From the mid-2010s, governments discovered they could reach their publics via social media, making politicians less dependent on courting news media organisations. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, for example, does not give press conferences. In the eyes of Singapore’s leaders, similarly, the value of a professional press corps appears to have diminished.

Another reason was the shock of GE2011, when the PAP lost a group representation constituency, Aljunied, for the first time. From the 1980s, the PAP vacillated between two very different responses to the electorate’s occasional rebuffs: broadening its tent or closing its ranks. The former approach plays up its broad-church identity to push the opposition to the fringe. This was especially the case in the years just before and after the handover from the Old Guard to the Goh Chok Tong’s Second Generation leadership. This period saw Tommy Koh’s directorship of the Institute of Policy Studies; the rehabilitation of arts doyen Kuo Pao Kun; the vocal Kanwaljit Soin and Walter Woon taking Nominated Members of Parliament seats; the outspoken backbencher Tan Cheng Bock animating the House; and The Straits Times’ weekly Insight section for political analysis, for example.

In the PAP’s press model, national news organisations would always be required to amplify the voices of leaders at the pinnacle of the political hierarchy and, at the other extreme, shut out taboo topics and personae non gratae (George, 2012). In between, though, is what can be called a zone of legitimate disagreement. When the PAP was in broad-church mode, this zone was wider and more lively, generating interesting news and commentary for the media to carry.

The broad-church strategy came with a risk: it could further stimulate rather than satiate people’s appetite for critical views. Furthermore, some PAP leaders might not be able to cope with a highly competitive marketplace of ideas; hence the other strategic response to setbacks — closing ranks. In such times, leaders demand that the wider establishment, including the national media, does not stray from the official line.

Lee Hsien Loong considered GE2011 to be such a blow that he immediately accepted the resignations of Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong to signal that the government would be open to the new, unencumbered by the past. Ironically, the rest of the younger Lee’s tenure was marked by a more dogmatic closing of ranks than anything witnessed in the previous decades when his two predecessors were in the Cabinet (George, 2020). It was post-GE2011 that the heavy hand replaced the light-touch approach to Internet regulation, as recounted earlier. The Straits Times also paid a price for GE coverage that had been uncharacteristically fair. Its editor Han Fook Kwang was removed soon after. Thus, as a siege mentality replaced broad-church tolerance, the zone of legitimate disagreement narrowed, making mainstream news media seem increasingly like party mouthpieces.

Lee Kuan Yew established and consolidated the principle of executive dominance in the governance of Singapore. The media, like other non-state institutions, were forced to accept a subordinate place in the pecking order. Goh Chok Tong’s Second Generation leadership tried to come to terms with Singaporeans’ appetite for alternative points of view. It enlarged the space for political participation, which directly and indirectly benefited the media. Lee Hsien Loong’s premiership ended with a more hybrid media system. The PAP now has media — whether earned, owned or bought — that let its leaders speak with little risk of contradiction. But these safe spaces represent a shrinking core, surrounded by increasingly unruly media activity where state narratives are routinely mocked, countered or just ignored. Lawrence Wong’s Fourth Generation leadership will need to decide if this is an inheritance that needs reform and if so, how.

– Part 1 of this article can be read here. Cherian George is a professor of media and politics at Hong Kong Baptist University and an editor of AcademiaSG. This article is excerpted from “Tightening media regulation in an era of pluralization”, a chapter in Lee Hsien Loong and Singapore, edited by Gillian Koh, Mui Hoong Chua, and Terence Ho (World Scientific, 2026).

References

Balji, P. N. (2019). Reluctant editor: The Singapore media as seen through the eyes of a veteran newspaper journalist. Marshall Cavendish.

Cheong, Y. S. (2013). OB markers: My Straits Times story. Straits Times Press.

George, C. (2020). Air-conditioned nation revisited. Ethos Books.

George, C. (2012). Freedom from the press: Journalism and state power in Singapore. NUS Press.

Goh, C. T. (1995). Speech by Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong at The

Straits Times 150th anniversary gala dinner at the Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Centre, Convention Hall, Level 6, Suntec City on Saturday, 15 July 1995 at 8.00 PM. https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/speeches/record-details/742c5865-115d-11e3-83d5-0050568939ad

Goh, C. T. (2005). Speech by Mr Goh Chok Tong, Senior Minister, at the 5th anniversary dinner of Today newspaper, 31 October 2005, 8.30 PM at Tower Ballroom, Shangri-la Hotel. https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/20051031995.htm

Teh Tarik with Walid. (2024, February 14). Censorship and the future of print media with Straits Times editor Jamie Ho (episode 76). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpZBYiogqfI

Tham, Y. (2021, May 17). SPH restructuring: Balancing the interests of all stakeholders at the heart of move. The Straits Times.