Growing need for reports on world through local lens

There is a need to have Singaporeans reporting on the world from the Singaporean perspective, said Minister for Communications and Information Josephine Teo in Parliament yesterday.

Mrs Teo was responding to several questions from MPs on SPH Media Trust (SMT), which had spun off from mainboard-listed company Singapore Press Holdings to become a not-for-profit entity last December, and shared its plans with the public last month.

She said that to boost its thought leadership capabilities, SMT will also expand its foreign bureaus, host more events and forums, and establish more partnerships to build an international audience.

Said Mrs Teo: "As much as the media is coming under challenge throughout the world, we must be mindful that the major powers are waging a constant battle for hearts and minds worldwide - including our hearts and minds in Singapore.

"As a small country, we are especially prone to influence campaigns - overt or covert. And as a multiracial, multilingual country, we are especially prone to the cultural, social and even political influence that countries like China and India can continue to exert abroad."

"A Singaporean reporting on China, for example, would afford us a lens very different from an American or a European doing so. Thus, the growth of SMT's overseas bureaus is an important area of capability development we want to support."

The minister noted that the direction SMT is charting is promising, but will require significant investments over a period of time, and said that SMT will likely be loss-making during the transition.

"The Government is ready to put support behind SMT's transformation. We are committed to safeguarding the information space for our citizens," she said.

She added that government funding of news media is common in many countries, and has increased in some cases during Covid-19, underscoring the public good that trusted journalism provides in a complex environment.

In 2020, the French government introduced a subsidy package of more than €480 million (S$733 million) to support its news media in weathering Covid-19 losses and moving to digital platforms, while Norway and Sweden rendered €43 million and €65 million in aid, respectively, to their press.