Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Public Forum: Far East Economic Review Senior Editor

Role of Press in ensuring national security and public morals

  • Ensuring national security is not the equivalent of censoring the opposition, the arts, and entertainment
  • Role of press is in constantly questioning the government and its policies in order to provide for greater transparency and accountability on bothends
  • Role of press is not in securing short term/superficial stability, but in long term progress and national security as a whole
  • Everyone is exposed to the media, the fourth estate, hence the media has a responsibility to the nation and the people to stimulate and not stunt the political climate
  • A press which over-censors itself compromises itself and its own beliefs

Censorship is detrimental to the arts, media, and the government

  • Over-Censorship eg. the banning of FEER is not the behaviour of a prosperous, self-confident nation, and this image is projected to the rest of the world, making it detrimental to the image of the government
  • If information can be blocked and manipulated by the government, then Singapore will be unable to develop a strong knowledge based economy, or a knowledge based society.
  • Singaporeans will be unable to hold the government accountable and be sure that what the leaders say is the truth
  • Image of insecurity is a signal sent out to the general populace as well as the international community as a whole
  • Government may not be mature in stunting the creative juices of the arts scene by practising such censorship.

-09S06J Cassia, Claire, Chenxuan, Yongsheng, Shiyang

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