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Newspaper and Printing Presses Act

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 10 months ago

Newspaper and Printing Presses Act

 

The Newspaper and Printing Presses Act (NPPA) came about in 1974, replacing the Printing Presses Ordinance which the PAP government had inherited from the British. Under the NPPA, the PAP retained the spirit, but not the style, of the Printing Presses Ordinance. The licensing rules of the Ordinance were retained – licenses, granted on a discretionary basis, were needed to operate printing presses, as well as to print or publish newspapers. However, the style of administration was changed. The PAP did not carry forward the relatively non-interventionist style of British rule; hence, diversity in the press began on one of its first descents.

 

Broadly speaking, the NPPA is significant on four counts.

 

 

Licensing

 

The NPPA requires that no newspapers are to be printed or published without a permit. This permit is granted, refused or revoked upon the Minister’s discretion. Also, the permit can be granted but “subject to conditions to be endorsed thereon.” An example of such a condition is that, for newspapers that are published in Singapore, the Minister may direct the language that the newspaper is printed in. A permit usually lasts for a year unless it is revoked. Also, it may be renewed.

 

However, not every publication requires a licence. For example, licensing is not required for offshore newspapers if there are less than 300 copies in circulation for every issue. Beyond this, however, offshore newspapers still require licensing. The Act has defined an offshore newspaper as one “published outside Singapore...which contains news, intelligence, reports of occurrences, or any remarks, observations or comments, pertaining to the politics and current affairs of any country in South-East Asia”. Also, under this definition an offshore newspaper is one published “at intervals not exceeding one week”. Periodicity is thus another factor that affects licensing. A permit is needed for periodicals that are published weekly or even more frequently.

 

It is not only newspapers that are subject to licensing, however. Licensing also applies to printing presses. The permit for newspapers is a separate entity from the licence for printing presses – it is, as the Act says, “in addition”.

 

The NPPA requires anyone who wants to “keep and use a press for the printing of documents” to get a licence, and this licence can be withdrawn, indefinitely or otherwise. This was a continuation of the discretionary licensing that the British colonial government had practiced under the Printing Presses Ordinance.

 

Management Shares

 

The NPPA states that newspaper companies, which must be public companies, shall have two classes of shares, management shares and ordinary shares. Management shares can only be issued or transferred to those who have the approval of the government. Holders of management shares have 200 times more voting rights than ordinary shareholders with regards to “the appointment or dismissal of a director or any member of the staff of a newspaper company”. This in effect gives government nominees control over the so-called top management of a newspaper company.

 

Ordinary shareholders were, from 1977, limited to a 3% stake. This was to prevent the rise of, to borrow Lee Kuan Yew’s words, any “wealthy press baron” who might inject his political beliefs or agenda into a newspaper.

 

The aspect of management shares is a significant feature of the NPPA. As opposed to, say, outright government ownership or blatant censorship, this is arguably a more subtle, yet no less powerful, means of control. It is argued that this method of control is wise precisely because of its subtlety (see calibrated coercion). Indeed, the NPPA helps the government maintain control by defusing control (giving it an economic aspect) and keeping it behind the scenes. For example, Lee Kuan Yew had this to say about the giving of management shares to banks and other establishment figures: “They would remain politically neutral and protect stability and growth because of their business interests.” This can be said to be a calibration of the newspaper company’s pragmatic interests (e.g. profits) such that it is in line with the interests of the government.

 

No foreign ownership

 

There was to be no more foreign ownership of the press. This is not surprising given the historical antagonism between the foreign-owned / controlled press and the PAP. The latter’s main bone of contention is that such newspapers are not obliged to be socially responsible in their reporting, and do not give heed to the distinct needs of a developing nation such as Singapore.

 

Lee Kuan Yew said in a letter to the Straits Times in 1959: “The folly of allowing newspapers to be owned by people who are not citizens or nationals of the country, is that their sense of responsibility is blunted by the knowledge that if the worst came to the worst, they could always buzz off to some other place. Hence the clear-cut distinction in our attitude to locally owned or controlled press and foreign-owned or controlled press.”

 

The events of 1971 were arguably an impetus to action – in that year the Nanyang Siang Pau, Herald (believed to have been financed from foreign sources) and Eastern Sun (which had received nearly HK$8 million from an alleged communist source in HK) were said to be involved in “black operations”.

 

Regulates foreign publications

 

The NPPA regulates the sale, reproduction and distribution of foreign newspapers. Article 24 (1) states that the Minister may declare any newspaper published outside Singapore to be “engaging in the domestic politics of Singapore”. Circulation of foreign publications can be restricted – as the Asian Wall Street Journal, Far Eastern Economic Review, Time, Newsweek and The Economist can all attest to.

 

For example, the Asian Wall Street Journal was gazetted (so called because the restriction is announced in the weekly Government gazette) in 1987, and this led to a debate between the US State Department and Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The latter’s stance was, naturally, synonymous with the general PAP view: that foreign publications can be irresponsible because they do not have a stake in Singapore. The government said that it had “never undertaken any obligation to uphold a ‘free and unrestricted press’, let alone to accept the American definition of that term.” In a historian’s words, “the circulation of foreign journals was a privilege, not an automatic right” (Turnbull, 1995).

 

Indeed, with regards to the gazetted foreign publications, the Singapore Law Review (1990) said that it is “difficult to see how their articles undermined our racial balance or our social togetherness”. It notes that the articles in question - Time for its inaccurate article on the transfer of District Court Judge Michael Khoo, Asiaweek for its story on the Marxist plot, among others – in fact appeared in the local press as well, and hence “there was no chance of a skewed view building up”.

 

A review of the controversial practice of “gazetting” took place in 1988, two years after it came into being. This was because newspaper companies such as The Economist, US News and World Report, and Business Week all relocated their Singapore bureaus, while the Far Eastern Economic Review ceased distribution in Singapore. All this did not reflect well on Singapore’s image – The Economist even said in its journal that gazetting “makes nonsense of Singapore’s ambition to be a regional information centre”.

 

Thus the NPPA was amended to allow for the reproduction for sale of gazetted journals, but these journals were to be sold for no profit – advertisements had to be blacked out. The aim of this was to prove that foreign publications “are not the champions of freedom of information that they claim to be” (Ramchand, 1990), and that they are interested in profits instead. However it is argued that this is not all that effective a move. One reason is that it might make it seem that the government is being antagonistic to these companies, another is that these companies have never hidden the fact that they do need revenue to survive, and it is thus not reasonable to expect them to sell their publications at a loss.

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