MDA wants to expand the Broadcast Act next year

OMFG, are these jokers for real? Get this: the MDA wants to expand the Broadcast Act. Minister for Communications and Information Yaacob Ibrahim told reporters yesterday, "We will amend the Broadcasting Act next year, with a view to ensure that any other sites which are hosted overseas but reporting on Singapore news, are also brought into the licensing framework." At the moment, the Act does not empower the government to take action against any entity that is based overseas. "But, if they are transmitting news to Singaporeans and Singapore is their target market, then we will have to do something about it," said Dr Yaacob.

Yaacob, did you pause for a moment and think about what you just said? Are you actually serious? These other websites hosted overseas, people like BBC News, CNN, Sky News, ABC, Russia Today, Reuters, CNBC, ITN, Fox, France24, Al-Jazeera etc - yeah those people, you think you are going to make them pay a bond of $50,000 and they're going to do whatever you tell them to do, such as take down a news report about how corrupt the PAP is? As if that is going to work. Why would they do that? Because you said so? LMFAO.

Let's look at the BBC News for instance, they have written negative reports on countries with poor human rights records, like North Korea, Zimbabwe and Burma all these years. There are plenty of BBC news reports to make the regimes in these country look utterly corrupt and despicable. What if Robert Mugabe or Kim Jong Un confronted the BBC and told them to stop writing negative reports of their countries - what do you think the BBC would do? They would laugh at these dictators at their attempts to influence the media outside their country and continue to report the truth from these countries. In fact, Robert Mugabe hates the BBC so much that he has unceremoniously banned them from Zimbabwe for many years and during that period when the BBC was banned from Zimbabwe, they continued to report from neighbouring South Africa whilst still sneaking over the border, often posing as tourists or businessmen to secretly film conditions in Zimbabwe and interview Zimbabweans.

Likewise, the BBC is not allowed into North Korea - but they still secretly enter North Korea and film there anyway and cover stories about North Korea from their bases South Korea and China. Do you think they care if Kim Jong Un said to them, "stop writing negative stuff about North Korea! I want you to take down all those negative stories on the BBC News website about North Korea!" It doesn't work like that.

So if it came to that, the MDA could threaten the BBC, "unless you comply with our laws, you will be banned from Singapore". The BBC would not cave in to such demands - they would simply shift their Singaporean operations to neighbouring Malaysia and report from there, still covering stories from Singapore. We would then have BBC journalists posing as tourists or businessmen coming to Singapore and sneakily reporting from Singapore, just like they did in Zimbabwe after being banned from Zimbabwe.

This boils down to enforcement. Can the MDA (or any other arm of the Singaporean government) coerce a foreign media organization to behave a certain way? No. But what if they wrote something that was inaccurate, misleading or factually incorrect? The fact is there are already libel laws that do cover the news outlets in the media and these laws should be adequate to cover the reporting of stories in Singapore by foreign media organizations.

So take for example, if the BBC wrote a story on their news website about the Singaporean government that is misleading and untrue, then the Singaporean government will have the right to hold BBC news to account in the UK (where they are headquartered) and the authorities in the UK will then hear the case the Singaporean government brings against the BBC. There are formal channels to address issues like that in the legal channels - which is identical to the one in Singapore since most of the laws in Singapore were inherited from the UK anyway, as Singapore is an ex-British colony. If a crime (such as libel) has been committed, the crime has to be trialed in the country where the crime is committed, not where the 'victim' resides. So it is not like the news reporting in the media in the UK is not regulated at the moment - it has always been regulated here in the UK and there are already plenty of laws protecting our press freedom in the UK at least. We don't need or want the MDA to tell us here in London what we can or cannot say about Singapore or anyone and I'd like to see you try MDA, go on, I dare you. I challenge you to have the guts to try.

If the BBC had a Singaporean entity 'BBC Singapore' based in Singapore with studios producing local content for the local market, then this 'BBC Singapore' entity would come under the remit of the MDA and it would have to play by the local rules. However, the BBC only has a small BBC Worldwide Channels Asia office in Singapore at 700 Beach Road, #08-08, Singapore 199598. This is not a production office, rather it is a sales office. According to their website:

"BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC, is a fast-growing media and entertainment company. Our mission is to maximise profits on behalf of the BBC by creating, acquiring, developing and exploiting media content and media brands around the world. We are self-funded and return profits to the BBC to be reinvested in programmes and services to help keep the UK licence fee as low as possible. "

Oh yeah, the BBC does a lot more than report the news - they make loads of entertainment programmes and documentaries like Dr Who, Planet Earth and Top Gear which BBC Worldwide sells around the world for a lot of profit. This is the only BBC Worldwide office in all of South East Asia, so they are handling the BBC's business (ie. selling their programmes) to networks in Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand ec. So clearly, given that they are dealing with TV programmes rather than online news content - their commercial activities are not directly relevant to the MDA's Broadcast Act . Really, you're after the news team, whilst there are journalists and correspondents all over the world, the news is all managed centrally in London. So I'd like to see the MDA try to dictate to the BBC in London as to what they can or cannot report about Singapore. What are they going to do? What can they do to the BBC?

They may threaten, "We'll stop buying your BBC programmes! We'll  stop Singaporeans from watching Top Gear! We'll close down your BBC Worldwide office in Singapore if you don't comply!" To which the BBC would probably reply, "Go ahead, we don't care. We'll just move our BBC Worldwide office in Kuala Lumpur then."

Let me know if they succeed - because I'm sure Kim Jong Un and Robert Mugabe would love to know how you stop the BBC and all these other journalists around the world from writing negative stories about their country. Yaacob, you didn't think this one through, did you? There's an old saying, engage brain before mouth. I suggest you try that when you are trying to legislate on the issue of internet media.

You know whom I blame for this? The 60.14% who voted for this bullshit. Enough already. Sudah cukup lah! If you know of a family member, relative, friend or colleague who is part of the 60.14% who voted for the PAP, tell them it is all their fault that this is happening. You have such total idiots who have no freaking clue how the media or the internet works making laws about it and this would've been funny if it wasn't the law. This shit just got real bitch, so there's no point in being paiseh or polite about the issue - if you know someone who is amongst the 60.14%, you must take action and engage them today. As usual, please feel free to leave a comment below. Stand up for press freedom, defend your freedom of speech and tell the PAP bastards in white to kindly go fuck themselves with a big durian.