The Straits Times is a whore - so what?

What about the Straits Times?

Over the last few days, there's been a lot of bitching about unfair coverage of the elections. The venerable old dame of the Singapore news scene has been demonised as a painted hussy, a shameless whore sent to walk the streets for the government. Other people complain about the reporters: they're gutless government shills, who have no integrity or worse, whine and say it's just a job.

My reaction is... well, I don't have one, really. Because... nothing new there.

A newspaper has the duty to be objective? Can you hear the historians sniggering off their collective wrinkled ancient asses at you? A newspaper may have the duty to be objective. Whether it actually is objective is something else. As any academic worth their tenureship will tell you - objectivity is something we sell to the JC students and freshmen. It's a little lie we tell. The truth is - no one's objective. If you truly wanted to be objective, you'd have describe the scene right down to shoelaces, underwear brand, and every last pearl of wisdom dripping from every last candidate's mouth.

(As an aside, if anyone knows how to erase the mental image of pearls dripping from George Yeo's mouth, please tell me how. )

What happens in the newspaper is that it's story telling on the run - they need to tell you the story. So stuff gets edited. And the end result - isn't objective, and how balanced it is depends on who's watching. And the first objective of newspapers isn't to rock the world, it's to tell the story, as accurately as possible.

But we could go back and forth all day on how objective the Straits Times is (my answer, nope, not at all), and we'd never reach a conclusion. (Rather like every last bloody GP paper I ever had to write)

I think the greater question is this: Why is the Straits Times so determinedly middle-of-road, and conservative? If the answer is because it's the mouthpiece of the government - why then, we elected the Straits Times the same time we elected the government. Change the government, change the Straits Times.

But I think that part of the problem is that there is no body else. Take a look at the US - you have Fox News (Republican) versus New York Times (Democratic, baby-killer, gay down to the janitor). While admittedly a flawed comparison, since it's TV versus print, it still goes to show the diversity of viewpoints possible within MSM. And because there's more than one paper, it's possible for a newspaper to push one side of the issue more than the other side - or to put it in more diplomatic terms - take a stand.

And as for the readers - well, if you don't like the NYTimes, just walk two steps over and pick up the NYPost. Or skip the whole thing and pick up the latest on alien abductions in Wyoming. See? You have a choice. Just pick the newspaper that tells the version of the news you like better.

But in Singapore - we're unique, just like everyone else! - if you're an English-language reader (and far too many of us with Chinese/Malay AO-levels are English readers only), there's no getting around the Straits Times. Don't tell me about "alternative" viewpoints of the "braver" newspapers like Today - Today's news is written with fact-checking as an option. It's the Straits Times or nada. At least until someone manages to break into the monopoly, and for a history of such attempts and related journalism in Singapore, check out Dr. Cherian George's blog.

So the Straits Times has to be all things to all people. And if you've ever had a conversation with your friends in the Econs/Engineering department - well - you might find that they like the ST. The ST is "just right". And that should tell you something about people - they don't like their world shaken up - they don't like to be disturbed. They like something that fits in with their worldview - the world as they know it.

(And before you get feeling all happy and snobby - so do you. It's just that your world view is different from theirs.)

In short, people don't want to hear man bites dog. They want to hear dog bites man. They don't want news, they want olds.

And because of that, the Straits Times is doing its job just fine.

So lay off the old lady. She's in bed with the government and gets fucked by them every single day. And if you've looked at the headshots of the PAP recently, you'll realise that it's punishment enough.