The government is convinced that making its presence felt in social media will reap dividends. On their own, though, such efforts will probably fail. Increased communicativeness will be more persuasive only if the context – the communication environment – changes. The element in the communication environment that is critically lacking, without which any additional communicativeness would be futile, is trust. That trust cannot grow if the media are forced to side with public policy against public opinion 100% of the time, if we lack independent institutions to scrutinise the work of the executive, and if the government continues to conflate party interests with national interests. Full Story

The Seng Han Thong controversy has produced a flash flood of protest in the midst of a climate already fouled by the SMRT debacle. Many readers disagreed with what I had to say. Some of that disagreement is fundamental, and in those cases I don’t expect any meeting of minds. For other readers, though, let me address three separate issues in what, I hope, is my final contribution to this particular debate. Full Story

Opinion shapers should reserve their racism allegations for slam-dunk openings: where the perpetrator has no plausible defence. The Choo Wee Khiang incident in 1992 was one such case. Alternative online media, if they had existed then, would have kept the issue alive, making it far more difficult for the government to sweep it under the carpet. But they can only play their role effectively if they are seen as credible. Full Story