NPPA Ramblings.

Doing the research paper on NPPA is certainly quite depressing, especially when the facts seem to point towards the stifling of foreign press through shrewdly designed methods on local soil.

For example, here’s what I got from the FEER saga in 1986:

On Dec 17, 1987, American-owned Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) published an article titled “New Lights on Detention”, chronicling the meeting between Lee Sr. and the Catholic archbishop of Singapore. The article was based on the statements of a renegade priest absent from the meeting, alleging Lee Sr. of several actions, including preventing the publication of several comments by the archbishop. The offending article concluded by saying that the arrests constituted an attack on the Catholic Church.

Lee Sr.’s press secretary queried about the journalistic reliability of the article, since the main source was from an individual absent from the meeting. The editor of FEER, Derek Davies, printed the full letter but did not give a reply. (Two publications, Time & Asiaweek were previously sanctioned under the NPPA for failure to publish the infamous press secretary’s letter in full.) The secretary wrote another letter, which was published again, this time with an editorial article asserting the reliability of the disputed article. Also, Davies added in that editorial that FEER has the legal rights to print a quoted source even without verification of the facts, as it is indemnified against factual errors made by the sources.

(Which I don’t think is true, because even in US you can be sued for defamation for reckless disregard of the truth. However, defamation laws in Singapore are far more vague and loosely defined, alike strict liability clauses in its execution.)

As a result, the government gazetted FEER on December 26, cutting its circulation from 9,000 to 500 copies. FEER responded by pulling out of Singapore three days later.

FEER later published another distinctly different account from the renegade priest of the meeting, to which Lee Sr. replied through his press secretary, asking which account was correct. FEER published an edited version of Lee Sr.’s reply this time round. The full reply was only published when the government bought an advertisement space in FEER and ran the full reply.

In addition, Lee Sr. sued FEER, its printers, distributors, editor Davies and the reporter, Michael Malik, for libel. The hearing before the High Court in Nov 1989 rejected the defendants’ argument of fair comment and their responsibility to provide information to the Singapore community on the relations between the state and the Catholic Church. Also, Davies refused to be cross-examined. Presiding judge L. P. Thean found the defendants guilty of libel and awarded damages of $230,000, subjected to a 6% interest per annum from December 1987. The defendants were ordered to pay all legal costs as well. Dow Jones group (owner of FEER) appealed against the judgment, and Lee Sr. cross-appealed for a higher award of damages.

After FEER pulled out, the Singapore government made an offer similar to the one made to AWSJ for free circulation absent advertisements to affected subscribers. (The offer was for FEER to circulate an advertisement-free version to subscribers in Singapore affected by the gazetting of FEER.) FEER has declined the offer as well.

Shortly after, Dow Jones chairman Peter Kann wrote a critique of the Thean judgment which was published in the Wall Street Journal, the AWSJ and FEER. The Attorney-General of Singapore charged Kann with willful contempt of the court, stating that Kann has undermined the authority of the Singapore judicial system, and “could excite in the minds of the people a general disaffection with all judicial decisions.”

In response, Lee Sr. filed libel suits in Singapore and Malaysia against Kann and the editors, publishers, printers and distributors of FEER and AWSJ in January 1990. Significantly, no suits were filed in the US or Hong Kong (which was a United Kingdom territory then) against the publications. Francis Seow commented in his book, ‘Media Enthralled’, that it was a calculated move by Lee Sr. by “choosing his battlegrounds with care.” Lee Sr. was awarded $9,000 in damages in Singapore. Dow Jones group did not appeal, and instead, issued a statement saying that the amount of damages awarded was too small to justify the costs in filing an appeal.

In February 1991, Minister for Information Brig. Gen. George Yeo said in an interview that FEER and AWSJ were allowed to circulate freely in Singapore again if they held by the non-interference clause. Karen House, head of foreign publications of Dow Jones group, wrote that Dow Jones was willing to drop the appeal against the Thean judgment, to which Lee Sr. replied that he was willing to drop the cross appeal if Dow Jones bear all legal costs. Both parties dropped all legal cases against each other as part of a global settlement eventually, and some critics saw this as a victory for Lee Sr. for the prevail of his “hard-headed business considerations”.

FEER’s circulation was increased to 2,000 and 4,000 respectively in 1994 and 1995, although it still fell far short of pre-restriction figures.

In December 2004, FEER changed from a weekly to monthly publication, effectively rendering its status as an offshore newspaper under the NPPA invalid. This resulted in FEER being able to circumvent the requirements of the NPPA and circulate freely in Singapore.

At present, Lee Sr., his son, Lee Hsien Loong and immediate past prime minister Goh Chok Tong (now Senior Minister) is embroiled in another libel suit with FEER over a July 2006 article. The article charged that Singapore leaders use repressive methods to silence opposition leader Chee Soon Juan, secretary general of the Singapore Democratic Alliance.

This turn of events also prompted the revamp of the NPPA that required foreign publications to put up a security deposit and designate a local representative. FEER was subsequently banned once again for failure to comply.

It seem to me to be like this: As parents, you shield your own children by preventing adults outside of the family from commenting on your house rules within your house. And when they do so, you chide them, or chase them out of the house altogether. What happen? They end up bitching to other people about what’s going on in this household. It becomes a lose-lose situation.

Thin-skinned. Hypersensitive. Overprotective. These are just some of the few adjectives that foreign press, especially those that have been ‘persecuted’ as a result of NPPA, used on us.

And pursuing lawsuits on local soil, I find that a complete joke.

One day, when the parents pass on and the children grow up, the commentaries will come again. How are we going to deal with it?