How would one describe the relationship between journalists and politicians and activists?

Between journalists and politicians, there should really be an arm’s length relationship of equals. But this is not always the case for media-GOVERMENT relations. The Government is pretty sophisticated at fashioning a media system to ensure that its agenda is fulfilled. Civil servants are also not beyond hectoring the media. By activists, I assume you mean civil society activists? I believe they should be treated like any newsmaker. Journalists should cultivate relationships with everyone regardless of political affiliation.

 

For many years there has been talk of OB markers and their ambiguities. Do you think POFMA has changed things - and how?

This is interesting! Just some background for you: I started a module on OB Markers as a general education course in NUS a few years. I was quite happy doing it until talk about fake news law knocked me off my stride. So I asked for a respite to get my head wrapped around the fake news law and its implications.  I am doing the module again in January. I see OB Markers as lines that separate appropriate and inappropriate comment, and when pushing it further might lead someone to run afoul of the law. You can see POFMA as a scalpel to weed out untruths, but which doesn’t inflict too much pain. That it is not the Sedition Act or crimes under the Penal Code, which is the sledgehammer in the tool box. But the same ambiguities still apply with or without POFMA. It centres on the definition of truth and the power dynamics on who decides on the truth. So far, POFMA has been so inconsistently applied that it has been described as a “bad’’ law. I would like to believe that the community, or a group of independent citizens, would be much better than the authorities at policing speech. It might be idealistic but it could also be better in the long-run lest we start inadvertently building up a Ministry of Truth. I had a chapter in my book on the use of POFMA during election time. I found it quite ridiculous to have civil servants decide on what is true during the election. Even if we believe that the Government is the only one who can POFMA most of the time, the elections actually give us an ideal period to have POFMA moved into citizens’ hands.

 

What struck me about this GE was how the Internet subjected stories on the ground to scrutiny. The pace of the transformation from rumour to something of substantial public interest is quite a spectacle. How does professional journalism deal with this new trend?

The internet has always subjected stories to scrutiny, except it gets more intense during election time! There might be less need for this is if professional media do a better job of say, checking the credentials of candidates. Some of the new “facts’’ unearthed are actually already in the public domain, like one candidate’s “name change’’ (he had been in the media with another name) or how another held so many directorships and whether a third was really responsible for setting up an institute. With some due diligence, the media could have done some level of scrutiny instead of imbibing whatever they have been told.

As for “rumours’’, professional journalists shouldn’t report them. Unless, there is some verification or truth to the rumours and the source is willing to put his/her name to it, they would do well to stay away. This would be at some risk to their credibility, because they would be perceived as not reporting “talking points’’ on the Internet. I suppose they can give a shot at debunking rumours, but I believe that they should be focused more on truth-telling and new information.

Professional journalism has been grappling with the new trend since the Internet surfaced! What worries me is how so much reporting these days is based on what has been said on the Internet, rather than original reporting. It makes journalists lazy. I would prefer that they treated the Internet as a “source’’ or a “news idea’’ that should be checked and followed up on, rather than as a press release.

 

How deeply does the media investigate the background of candidates and their resumes? For example, character issues regarding one candidate surfaced after complaints by netizens.

Please see earlier answer. I think some aspects can be easily fact-checked and researched for veracity. But in the case of “opinions’’ about a person, one key factor would be whether these “opinions’’ would influence a candidate’s suitability for election. Also the person who complains must be willing to stand up and say so.  The media can’t go deeply into the background of candidates for a simple reason: They are announced too late and in a rush. Journalists covering an election know how quickly they have to move onto the next thing to stay up-to-date. Perhaps, the media would badger all the political parties to reveal their candidates earlier, so that they can do a proper job of reporting rather than merely covering walkabouts or getting soundbites from the candidate.

One interesting outcome of Internet scrutiny is how the political parties and candidates respond. I think it also says a lot about whether they have clear principles and policies over how they pick their candidates.

 

Looking at GE2020, one might argue that the tactics used (or not used, such as  a poor web presence), suggested that it was the 3G leadership who ran the elections, not the 4G. When so much has been said about a leadership transition, why was the campaign run so “traditionally’’?

Beats me! But I noticed that the PAP itself never really said who had been put in charge of the campaign, unlike in other elections. I think Covid-19 threw a curve ball in the works. It might have been a total 4G show if the disease didn’t come here and we would have had a manifesto that was more forward-looking and even visionary, rather than jobs, jobs, jobs! It looked like something had been patched together to highlight the PAP’s best feature - a technocracy that can crunch numbers and churn out jobs. Like you, I had also expected it to be a 4G show, but it looked like a joint endeavour.

There were questions regarding increasing populism a la Trump, youth engagement in politics and voting trends in the future. I am no clairvoyant but I do want to make a point about the (previous) election of Donald Trump. Some people view the Trump presidency with disdain and congratulate ourselves that our system militates against a populist getting into power. I see it quite differently.

There is no guarantee that we won’t have such a person in charge or that the present leaders won’t turn rogue. If you think about it, if Trump, or a person like him gained power in some way, freakish or not, he would have access to a whole range of instruments and institutions to cow both politicians and the people. But you can also see the resilience and stability of the American electoral system, which enabled voters to turf him out despite his many attempts to establish executive control.

One way to guard the system is, of course, to get good people into politics. But the best way is to have a strong and robust electoral system to ensure that the will of the people is carried out. The electoral changes I proposed in my book were to ensure that there is as little interference from vested interests, no matter how good, able or noble they are.

 

Majulah Singapura!