VERY few would seriously attempt to deny that Singapore has a more docile media than Hong Kong.
Yet even in that much stricter island state, the government can have difficulty controlling what appears in the press. When asked if the Singaporean media should be mindful of the national interest - especially when making remarks that could inflame nearby countries - there was a note of resignation in Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong's reply.
'Sometimes they do not seem to,' he said, during an interview with the Post last week. 'Very often the press makes some remarks and the Singapore Government gets blamed.' Perhaps he had in mind a recent column in The Straits Times that provoked protests from Malaysia.
It provocatively noted that, after the election of a new president to succeed Lee Teng-hui in Taiwan, Kuala Lumpur is now the only elected government in Asia with no change at the top in the past decade. To add insult to injury, columnist Chua Lee Hoong described Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad as 'top dog', a term offensive to the nation's Muslims, as dogs are considered anathema in Islam.
Mr Goh might also have been thinking of a Straits Times editorial two years ago, which caused bad feeling in the SAR administration, by questioning Hong Kong's commitment to the rule of law, following a series of controversies involving Secretary for Justice Elsie Leung Oi-sie.
Either way, he seemed resigned to the reality that in today's more open world, his government cannot tightly control the media, even if it wishes to do so.
