The case of Benjamin Bland, a fellow correspondent here at AsianCorrespondent.com, might not be surprising to anybody familiar with the press situation in Singapore. But, without being seen to be defending The Establishment, I just want to say that his whole experience with Singapore’s Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts (MICA) reeks more of bureaucratese than anything else.

Sure, his account illustrates the usual argument relating to the lack of press freedoms in Singapore, but I suspect it has got to do with the chronic “kiasi-ness” (literally means fear of death in Singapore colloquial-speak, can be used to refer to literal or metaphorical death) embedded in the hearts and minds of government bureaucrats. They are gate keepers, so when middle management bureaucrats don’t know quite how to handle something “new” or something that carries shades of grey, it’s better to err on the side of caution. Case in point from the Asia Sentinel article:

Over a cup of coffee at their office in a former colonial police station – possibly the world’s most stylish propaganda ministry – they probed me politely about my background and intentions in Singapore. They were friendly but seemed perplexed about the concept of freelance journalism, even though it forms the backbone of much foreign reporting these days.

“ If we have a problem with something that you’ve written, who can we speak to?“

Obviously, I told them, you can talk to the editor of whichever publication has commissioned any particular story.

“But what if we just don’t like what you’re writing in general?”

The questions I italicized were the exact questions my sources threw back at me in the early days when I told them Campus Observer, the campus online paper I co-founded in 2006 at the National University of Singapore (NUS), is an independent news outfit… and that we were answerable to nobody, other than ourselves and our readers. It was interesting, just as it was frustrating, that people, from the students’ union to the various offices in NUS, seemed to think there had to be a “higher power” accountable for press “responsibility.”

True, we were new kids on the block then… and it is impossible to tell whether they were reacting so cautiously because we were new, or because the concept of an “independent press” was new to them, or whether they felt threatened by that whole “free press thing” which generally tends towards speaking truth to power. But I also learnt it’s also perhaps not fair to expect people in Singapore, socialized to be accustomed to a state-controlled press as necessary for “social stability” (whatever that means) to be able to see the benefits of a critical press – especially since Singaporeans tend to think of the chaos of the American press as the default model of the free press.

This is misguided especially when we are in a position to forge our own press culture – and I believe with the Internet, it has been growing. I don’t need to repeat Amartya Sen’s arguments refuting the whole thing about free press not being endemic to “Asian” culture. But the dangers of repressing press freedoms is far greater because the end products are probably going to be partisan yelling – not good for civil, social and political dialogue because people just want to speak and not listen to one another.

This can’t be good for Singaporeans and any nation-building project. Press culture takes time to cultivate. It might be good for the party if the PAP government continues to maintain its strict press controls, but it wouldn’t be good for the country. There is a reason why so many top journalists and media companies choose to base themselves or their regional headquarters in Bangkok or even KL, instead of Singapore. The few who set up base in Singapore are usually very “sensitive” when it comes to local news.

So where does it leave the rest of us who are free press junkies in Singapore? I honestly don’t know. I am not saying Ben Bland is wrong… neither am I disputing the fact that the press isn’t “free” in Singapore. It is important to call out the lack of a free press when such an incident happens, but I do wonder it is maybe more useful to stop harping on the lack of press freedoms and just get down to the grim and hard work of shoe leather reporting… to just tell the many yet-untold stories in a fair and balanced manner. And if a foreigner doesn’t get to do it, maybe the numerous local sites can start doing the kind of neighborhood beat reporting that characterize American local news outlets?