The Seng Han Thong controversy has produced a flash flood of protest in the midst of a climate already fouled by the SMRT debacle. Such was the interest in the episode that my instant posting on Journalism.SG made it the site’s busiest day ever (which admittedly isn’t saying much – Jo...
Reading The Online Citizen’s sensational report on what a PAP MP said about Malay and Indian MRT drivers and then watching the video itself, I wondered how the website’s reporters might have covered Barack Obama’s landmark speech after winning the Democratic Party nomination in 2008. ...
Singapore would have been a better place in March 1992 had The Online Citizen and its followers been around. That month, PAP backbencher Choo Wee Khiang stood up in Parliament to complain that there were too many foreign workers congregating at Serangoon Road on weekends. He said, in ...
PAP backbencher Baey Yam Keng has provided one of the most considered establishment assessments of new media in the post-GE period. In contrast to the moral panic that has been sweeping through government ranks, Baey argues that there is no need to over-react, and that the government ...
Edited extract from Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's speech during the debate on the President's Address, 20 October 2011. For a PDF of the full speech, click here . It's necessary and healthy for our politics to adapt to changes and to be up-to-date and in sync with the times because...
Workers' Party MP Pritam Singh called for a Freedom of Information Act in his speech in Parliament on 20 October 2011. Here is the relevant extract from his speech. What a Freedom of Information Act would do is to allow ordinary citizens to pull information from public bodies that hav...
Amy Khor, chairman of REACH, has encouraged the Government to engage netizens on sites that "allow for reasoned and constructive debate and gain traction". "Netizens themselves who desire rational discourse should support such sites or else start them," she said. Khor's speech in Parl...
After a General Election in which online dissent left PAP politicians smarting, the government is considering new laws for the internet. It has hinted at stiffer regulation in its Addenda to the Presidential Address for the opening of the 12th Parliament. The Law Ministry says, "Among...
Text of a presentation at the IPS conference on the Impact of New Media on General Election 2011, 4 October 2011. One major development facilitated by the internet has been the growth of amateur or “citizen” journalism, marching to the beat of a different drum. Alternative media start...
This article is based on a talk given at a Singapore Press Club forum on Reporting the 2011 Elections on 13 September 2011 at the SPH Auditorium. This year’s elections did not fundamentally alter Singapore’s power structure, but they have transformed the political landscape that the p...
Singapore was presented with a double bill feature on censorship this month. There was the Wikileaked diplomatic cable reporting that young reporters felt frustrated by newsroom gatekeepers. And there was Tan Tarn How’s play, Fear Of Writing , staged by TheatreWorks. Between the two, ...
MediaCorp's controversial television coverage of this year's general election has been given the gentlest of feedback by a government-appointed consultative panel, the Programme Advisory Committee for English Programmes (PACE). MediaCorp had been roundly criticised by the public for e...
Andrew Loh, one of the editors of The Online Citizen until just after May's General Election, has launched a new socio-political website, Public House . The site doesn't have an "About Us" page yet, but Loh is understood to be one of the site's founders. Loh, who helped to create TOC ...
Lee Hsien Loong has called for online spaces where Singaporeans and the government can engage in more balanced, open and rational debate on issues. In the Prime Minister’s National Day Rally speech, he noted the prevalence of “cowboy towns” in cyberspace, circulating “ridiculous untru...
Citizen journalism in Singapore appears to have made a major breakthrough, with the Tony Tan Campaign for President inviting some of the country’s most influential political bloggers to its press conference announcing his candidature this morning. Along with mainstream media reporters...
There’s an old saying, attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche, that goes something like, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” There’s an older and more famous saying, “Thou shall not kill.” These two different takes on adversity are, of course, not really contradictory. The quote from...
Journalist and citizen media guru Dan Gillmor will be speaking about his new book, Mediactive , at NTU on Monday 28 March. All are welcome. DAN GILLMOR Mediactive: Why We Should All be Participants in Media, not just Consumers Synopsis: We're in an age of information overload, and too...
The liberalisation of online campaigning rules raises intriguing questions about the upcoming polls. At one level, the move merely acknowledges the new realities, as Alex Au of Yawning Bread told the Today newspaper. But, so much more space is being opened up for legitimate use that o...
The heft of the government’s ‘light touch’ has descended upon local sociopolitical website The Online Citizen , just as it passed the four-year mark of its inception. According to an announcement posted on the website on Tuesday, the government signalled its intent to gazette The Onli...
