The Media and Political Change in Southeast Asia: Karaoke Culture and the Evolution of Personality Politics

The Media and Political Change in Southeast Asia Dedicated to the memory of Roger Woodier ‘Whose heart hath ne’er wit...

Author: Jonathan Woodier

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The Media and Political Change in Southeast Asia

Dedicated to the memory of Roger Woodier ‘Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d, As home his footsteps he hath turn’d, From wandering on a foreign strand!’

The Media and Political Change in Southeast Asia Karaoke Culture and the Evolution of Personality Politics

Jonathan Woodier

Edward Elgar Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Jonathan Woodier 2008 The work is the sole responsibility of the author and does not represent the views of Citi Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2008937110

ISBN 978 1 84844 178 1 Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall

Contents List of tables Acknowledgements

vi vii

1 Introduction: disruptive technologies – change, conflict and breakdown 2 The growth of the media and entertainment industry: the move to centre stage 3 The Southeast Asian context 4 Please do not adjust your set: international information flows, the media and security in Malaysia 5 From propaganda to pop culture: the Philippines and the rise of the Southeast Asia media stars 6 Perning in the gyre: Indonesia, the globalized media and the ‘war on terror’ 7 The rise and fall of the media dictator: Thailand and the continued influence of the military in Southeast Asia 8 The Singapore grip: putting the squeeze on a globalized media post 9/11 9 Managing perceptions – from shooting the messenger to dodging the questions: the role of PR in Southeast Asia 10 Subverting the media: piracy, surveillance and the battle for control in Southeast Asia 11 Conclusion

271 297

References Index

304 351

v

1 27 55 87 115 140 175 217 242

Tables 2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8

Asia – number of Internet service providers per country (2000) Asia – computer penetration and Internet use (2003) Cable in Asia – comparative costs (2004) Asia Pacific broadband Internet penetration of total households (%) Asia Pacific multichannel pay-TV penetration of TV homes (%) Asia Pacific cable TV penetration of TV homes (%) Asia Pacific digital DTH satellite penetration of TV homes (%) Asia Pacific IPTV penetration of TV homes (%) Asia pay-TV, broadband and telecoms data (latest subscriber data) Asia – country IT investment (US$ per inhabitant)

vi

53 53 69 70 72 73 74 75 76 78

Acknowledgements This work would not have been possible without the patience of my family, my wife Dina and son Ben, the support of my employer Citi, the input from academics, journalists, fellow travellers and the people I met during the 20 years I lived in the Asia Pacific region. Finally, many thanks for the invaluable advice, editing and friendship of Dr David Martin Jones.

vii

1. Introduction: disruptive technologies – change, conﬂict and breakdown In Beijing, on 22 October 2001, Gerald Levin, the chief executive of AOL Time Warner, toasted China’s media regulator and director of the Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party, Xu Guangchun. The toast recognized the fact that the American giant had become the ﬁrst western media company licensed to broadcast directly to the Chinese people (The Economist 27 October 2001, p. 66). Elsewhere, in South Asia, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan was beginning his afternoon brieﬁng to the gathered international media corps in Islamabad, detailing the regime’s latest take on the American bombing of Afghanistan. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, as the old century faded, families in Banda Aceh, Sumatra, watched coverage of the English FA Cup ﬁnal on Malaysian television, beamed via satellite to their homes in the Indonesian province. The increasing ease with which the global news and entertainment products crossed national borders, the embrace of the media by one of the most archaic regimes in the region and AOL’s move into the China market, represented only the latest in a long line of events underlining the growing importance and impact of the mass communication media in Asia. By the end of the twentieth century, governments across Southeast Asia, their legitimacy undermined by the Asian Financial Crisis, were being challenged by emerging opposition voices given full range by this new, aggressive and robust media. In the Philippines, The Center for Investigative Journalism, established in 1989 by Sheila Coronel, challenged corruption and cronyism in that country, and threatened to play a major role in unseating the country’s President (Coronel 1999a). In Thailand, as elections approached in November 2000, a constitutionally mandated new National Broadcasting Commission threatened to unpick the Thai military’s tight grip on the country’s broadcasting industry (Crispin 2000), as traditional political elites witnessed their monopolistic hold on power threatened in a new global economy. In Indonesia, new media outlets ﬂourished as the 32-year reign of President Suharto came to an end, and the coherence of the state was threatened by internecine violence and separatist movements 1

2

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

seeking independence from the post-colonial arrangement. In Malaysia, intra-elite disputes saw a growth of support for the Islamic PAS party, and even the longevity of the Singapore government seemed to face new voices of opposition, enabled and emboldened by the changes that modernity and new technology brought to the region. It was a very diﬀerent situation from that just ten years earlier, when the Asian economic miracle was being lauded for its extraordinary growth enabled by ‘selective intervention’ and a market cultivated by an Asian model of governance (World Bank 1993, p. vi). Indeed, it looked as if Southeast Asia would be the latest region swept by a new wave of democratization (Huntington 1991), encouraged by globalization and the emergence of a vocal middle class demanding their interests be met. These interests, moreover, would be fed by the growing international media network. But, whilst classical liberal theory suggests the globalized media would help democratize societies, this has proved incorrect in Southeast Asia. If anything, ten years after the Asian Financial Crisis, local political elites have proved remarkably adept at dealing with these challenges and have been reconstructing elite control. This book, then, considers what impact the media has upon the democratizing process in Southeast Asia. Has the media had a liberalizing eﬀect or become subject to elite control in Southeast Asia and, if so, why? What role does the global media play in this process, particularly given its conglomerization and commoditization? Ironically, the international media has become an important regional player, given the Southeast Asian state elites seeming inability to agree on cross-border mergers and acquisitions which might allow the creation of regional champions to compete with the global players. Yet, examination of a number of case studies of media and political change in Southeast Asia between 1996 and 2006 will show that the media in Southeast Asia has not become globalized, nor has it or the local political elites proved defenceless in the face of the powerful international players. Rather they have manufactured ways to continue their control policies, with interesting political repercussions both domestically, and for our understanding of the role of the globalized and local media in the politics of the developing world.

THEORIZING THE MEDIA IN SOUTHEAST ASIA Technological developments and the current round of global economic integration have ensured that the mass communication media and its connected apparatus have become increasingly central to daily life in Asia. And yet, despite the growing importance of the communication media in

Disruptive technologies – change, conflict and breakdown

3

Southeast Asia, the industry’s role in political change is an area that remains misunderstood. The literature on the media in the region, while growing, tends to be both country-speciﬁc and dominated by distinct political agendas. From early studies which looked at the media and its developmental role in Asia (Lerner and Schramm, 1967), through the descriptive and proscriptive (Goonasekera and Lee 2001; Gunaratne 2000; Hueval and Dennis 1993; Mehra 1989), to more critical studies which see the media as a tool of capital (Rodan 1997, 1998), they tend to obscure a more useful narrative revolving around the diﬀerent interest groups competing for access to the media space. By examining the communications media and its relationship to political change in Southeast Asia, this study will endeavour both to provide a regional comparative analysis and oﬀer a more nuanced and balanced interpretation of the mass communication media and its relationship to political institutions in Southeast Asia post 9/11. Southeast Asian states are trying to make sense of the impact of globalization on their political and economic shape. This blend of modernity and speed forces its societies to grapple with issues of governance, the shape of institutions like the media, and the possible ramiﬁcations of some of globalization’s general trappings that are seen to be western. Particularly, they face a confusing clamour of voices calling for an array of options that range from democratic liberalization to accommodate growing opposition, to tighter control in the face of violent, radical neo-fundamentalist and separatist challenges. Giddens has argued that globalization, along with the technological developments that have given the process life and reach, has led to ‘the intensiﬁcation of world-wide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa’ (Giddens 1990, p. 64). From satellite television and ﬁnancial data to the ‘emoticons’ beloved of the oyayubizoku, the thumb tribes of Japan, the communications media is globalization incarnate, showing little respect for national boundaries or any ideological hegemony. Carried by telecommunications technology, there has been an explosion of news and entertainment products, bursting across porous national borders with political and economic implications for governments in the region. As Atkins (2002) argues, where once control of the media and the dissemination of information served as an integral part of political control, the unfettered ﬂow of global media products is now perceived as posing a challenge to established elites in the region. Commentators describe local political elites as ‘losing control’ (Williams and Rich 2000), although growing local audiences seemed to have an increasingly voracious appetite for the latest entertainment products served up as normal fare by the global

4

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

giants just as they do for similar products produced by the newlyenfranchised local media. Strategies of commoditization and celebriﬁcation of the media, however, have the political eﬀect in the Southeast Asian context of reducing the threat to illiberal governments through a diet of gossip and conspicuous consumption. Further exacerbating the concerns of Southeast Asia’s political elites was the fact that the more ubiquitous media organizations were controlled by global corporations. Moreover, interests that straddled national borders raised questions of intended or unintended inﬂuence, often leaving the nation state looking like a weak competitor in the global information power play (Williams 1995). Media magnate Rupert Murdoch’s $US60-billion empire includes Fox Entertainment group (45 per cent of US homes), and DirectTV (a provider of digital television services and multi-channel video programming distribution to 15.4 million Americans), in the US, as well as Star TV (300 million viewers across 53 countries from Australia to the UK), and Phoenix Satellite Television (42 million households or 140 million viewers in China), in Asia (Shah 2004, p. 2). MTV, owned by Fox competitor, Viacom, proudly claims to be available in 481.5m households in 179 countries (Gibson 2006a). Indeed, the pace and depth of the change being unleashed by this process, and its impact on the media industry, has had major implications for national sovereignty and political change, with particular resonance for Southeast Asia as it worked to recover from the ﬁnancial crisis of the late 1990s. Governments in the region opened up their economies at the behest of international ﬁnancial institutions, keen to reap some of the ﬁnancial beneﬁts of being part of the global information economy. Regional economies from Indonesia to Korea enjoyed growth rates of between 8 per cent and 12 per cent in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but they exposed themselves to forces of change that had serious social and political ramiﬁcations. These have been brought into heightened relief. Further, in the wake of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on 11 September, 2001, these forces have intensiﬁed. As the character of ﬁnancial capital has changed it has created remarkable wealth, with the ratio of global ﬁnancial assets to annual world output soaring from 109 per cent in 1980, to 316 per cent in 2005. In 2005, the global stock of core ﬁnancial assets reached $US140 trillion. This new capitalism is ever more global. The sum of the international ﬁnancial assets and liabilities owned (and owed), by residents of high-income countries jumped from 50 per cent of aggregate gross domestic product (GDP) in 1970, to 100 per cent in the mid-1980s, and about 330 per cent in 2004. Further, these new concentrations of wealth and income have created new elites, providing a challenge to the traditional rulers, such that this ‘modern mutation of

Disruptive technologies – change, conflict and breakdown

5

capitalism has loyal friends and ﬁerce foes. But both can agree that its emergence is among the most signiﬁcant events of our time’ (Wolf 2007). What, however, is the role of the mass communication media in this fast changing environment? Is it still a watchdog, scrutinizing the excesses of the powerful through ‘public deliberation’ (Page 1996, p. 5), or a propaganda tool ensuring their ideological domination? Or is it something else, promoting image and celebriﬁcation? Is it a market place in which citizens can ﬁnd the information they need to guide their democratic decisions, or a hegemonic weapon of imperial cultures? Perhaps, in a world of instant information and access, is it an audacious disintermediator; a modern-day Robin Hood, supposed enemy of monopolistic dictatorships and friend to the ordinary consumer, encouraging social change as a forum for grass roots expression and technology of opposition. As this work will show, the mass communications media provides a public space to which powerful actors in society can secure access by complex negotiation. From here they can attempt to inform, inﬂuence and persuade. Indeed, one area of particular focus for this thesis is the growing use of public relations (PR) consultants in Southeast Asia by the traditional elites in this process, and representing an area of study that is both relatively new and on which there currently is a dearth of research, particularly where Southeast Asia is concerned. Thus, where the media and its role in political change is concerned, the diﬀering weight and inﬂuence of those using the media impacts the competition for access, reﬂecting the relevant power relations, political economy, commercial imperatives and knowledge of the medium. As a result, the interplay between the communication media and political change is complex and often confusing. It is no surprise, then, that the extent of the communication media’s inﬂuence continues to be debated at length (BBC 29 March 2002). This reveals an obsession which, itself, implies we suspect the communications media for its reach and its impact. Even though the research on the impact remains undecided and the available evidence seems to imply its eﬀects are ambiguous and inconclusive, from the earliest days of its analysis, the media has been perceived as powerful (Curran et al. 1995). Let us ﬁrst examine, then, theorizing about the role of the media as it has evolved over the twentieth century.

THEORIZING THE MEDIA AND ITS POLITICAL ROLE The centrality of the mass media in modern society has long been recognized, even if not completely explained. In 1828, British politician Lord

6

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

Macaulay coined the term, ‘the fourth estate’, in recognition of the signiﬁcance the mass media played both as a social institution and a political forum for debate. Today, a market-oriented media culture entwined with technological innovation has put the media industry centre stage in any consideration of political change. This work will draw on the understandings of the media developed by Kellner (1990) in his hegemony model, the structural theories of Thompson (1995) and his work on the central role of the media and how it is part of the political process, and Giddens (1991) view of its social role, as well as the political theories of Di Palma (1990), and Friedman (1994) which look at elite paction, thus creating a lens through which it is possible to present media development in Southeast Asia. It will also test these theoretical understandings in the context of Southeast Asia allowing, ﬁnally, for their review and an assessment of their strengths and weaknesses and modiﬁcation to ﬁt into a Southeast Asian context. In order to do this, these ideas, themselves, need to be put into a theoretical context, examining the communications media, what it does, how it does it and how it is changing, by reviewing the classic interpretations of the media and its role in society, as well as providing an analysis of its links to political change and democratization. This chapter will thus provide the theoretical framework against which the behaviour of developing Southeast Asian states will be explored. It will also examine the various theoretical attempts to understand the media. It will consider the development of thinking about the media, and examine the interplay between the communications media and its audience in the light of the use of the media as a political resource. In doing so it will suggest that the development of the relationship between the media and political change in Southeast Asia is unique. This chapter will provide a theoretical framework for evaluating the inﬂuences informing the media’s impact on society and its role in democratization and political change, and oﬀer an assessment of the potential evolution of the media on post-industrial society. The chapter will subsequently examine how the media is structured, owned and controlled, and who has access to the space that the media creates. It will demonstrate that competing interests within media organizations means political inﬂuence is mixed at best and that, while the strongest voices revolve around proﬁt-oriented ownership, this has not stopped other groups gaining access to the media, nor deterred political elites from using the media to seek to inﬂuence audiences. Indeed, as McLuhan (1964) ﬁrst demonstrated, the media is a technology and, as such, is neutral. Technologies, however, become politicized by the messages they communicate and the inﬂuence they seek to eﬀect. To that end, politics

Disruptive technologies – change, conflict and breakdown

7

has adapted to the media, with industry trends dictating the form and fashion of political message delivery. For Thompson, the mass communications media involves the institutionalized production and mechanized diﬀusion of symbolic goods (Thompson 1997, 2001). It necessarily involves a technology of production and an audience and, as Golding and Murdoch (1996, p. 11) observe, is increasingly ‘integrated into the industrial structure’. The battle for inﬂuence within and around the media organizations is, therefore, key to the understanding of media production. The input of the diﬀerent actors must be considered. In this context, those who work in the industry like journalists, editors and managers, can have a diﬀerent focus and agenda than that of the transnational companies that own the means of news production. And, at a global level, the role of shareholders – the de facto owners of many of these companies listed on global stock exchanges – cannot be ignored. Even those dependent on private ﬁnance and more centralized control without the inﬂuence of public ownership, understand the vital consideration of commercial revenue from advertising. And the technology, itself, steps into the theoretical interplay, as an important player. This still leaves the ongoing relationship between those who create the media products and the audience that receives them. Therefore, it is important to position this argument against the intellectual arguments about the mass communications media and political change, and to understand where the arguments in this work are situated.

THE MASS COMMUNICATIONS MEDIA: A THEORETICAL HISTORY The role and impact of the communication media has been a source of disagreement since the early nineteenth century, when both John Stuart Mill and his father James Mill, ﬁrst described the media as a critical government watchdog. By contrast, the Marxist and radical alternative explanations, synthesized by the Frankfurt School and others in the 1920s and 1930s, and carried on through the 1960s into the current day, saw the media as a culture industry rendering individuals ‘less capable of autonomous judgement and more dependant on social processes over which they have little control’ (Thompson 2001, p. 176). Indeed, since the 1980s and the emergence of critical media studies, the media, and news production in particular, has been subject to ongoing academic scrutiny. While there has been little agreement on the industry and its eﬀects, it is generally agreed that it plays a pivotal role in organizing the images and discourses through which people make sense of the world

8

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

(Golding and Murdoch 1996, p. 11). That is where the agreement ends and two theoretical camps have emerged. These two, competing understandings reﬂect the epistemic diﬀerence between a liberal view of the media and its radical counterpart, the Marxist or neo Marxist interpretation of the role of communications. Both theoretical traditions see the media as central to modern politics. The liberal sees it as providing a market place for the open debate of ideas over which the consumer exercises power of choice. By contrast, the Marxist or neo-Marxist critical perspective focuses on the procedures and relationships underpinning the media and its development, explaining the media as ideological agencies that play a role in maintaining class or elite domination. The many strands of these approaches go some way in tracing the fabric of media control, production and reception, providing separate elements of a complex picture of the ways in which media messages are produced and shaped, and some insight into the diﬀerent inﬂuences that inform this process (Curran et al. 1982). The idea that the media is a conduit for information about the world forms an important thread in classical liberalism and the ‘heroic ﬁght of the individual against political power’ (Keane 1991, p. 37). The positive relationship between media freedom and democratic practice was subsequently developed by modernization theorists after the Second World War. For these theorists, trying to understand the nature of political power and economic development as the end of liberalism, and contemplating both the rebuilding of Europe and the construction of new post-colonial identities in Europe’s old empires, modernity was seen as a cybernetic order with social communication as central to the structural organization of politics and society (Deutsch 1953). The relationship between the news media and democracy has been central to this area of communication research. In this context, the function of the news media is seen as providing citizens with reliable information on which they can make political choices, vital to a healthy democracy (Gans 2003; Kovach and Rosenstiel 2001; Schudson 1995). This is an important consideration given that ‘modern political practices are made possible through mediated political communication in most democratic societies’ (Kim and Johnson 2006, p. 4). There have, of course, been detractors who suggest the media performs poorly in this role and that election coverage is superﬁcial and overdramatized. This, alongside negative campaign advertising, they suggest is responsible for falling voter turnouts (McChesney 1999). Yet the link between the media and politics is unshakeable. Voters in modern societies ﬁnd political information from the media (Graber 2004; Zaller 2003), and the news media have a direct impact on political activity

Disruptive technologies – change, conflict and breakdown

9

and participation, being closely connected to political knowledge (McLeod and MacDonald 1985; Miller and Reese 1982). Indeed, power is played out in the media, as all modern politics is media politics. It ‘has to exist in the media space, and has to adopt the language of the media . . . the existence in the media is the pre-condition for political projects or images to reach people’s minds, and thus citizen’s votes’ (Castells 2004, p. 8). Political power becomes dependent on the control of, or the inﬂuence on, the apparatus of communication and persuasion – primarily the information and communications technology that is central to what we call the media and, thus, the materials they convey. This is because culture is ‘by and large embedded in the process of communication . . . with the media and Internet at its core’ (ibid. p. 15). The second strand of analysis, therefore, is concerned with the environment in which the production takes place and the power relations involved, particularly on an economic basis. It recognizes the importance of the loci of power within the institutions processing and producing news and entertainment products: ‘who uses it, who controls it, what it is used for, how it ﬁts into the power structure, how widely it is distributed’ (Finnegan 1988, p. 41). From a somewhat diﬀerent and more critical perspective, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Jurgen Habermas (Dialectic of the Enlightenment, 1947) and the Frankfurt School oﬀer a modiﬁed Marxist analysis that had previously dismissed the media as merely a tool of bourgeois propaganda and false awareness. For the Frankfurt School, the mass media had become an instrument of domination, impeding the development of social consciousness among the proletariat, and facilitating, even hastening, a decline into the barbarism of totalitarianism. For Habermas, rather than contributing to the increase of pluralism and democracy, the market has constrained the public space which once was home to civic debate, deliberation, agreement and action (Habermas 1989). The approach of the Frankfurt school has been inﬂuential, and has led to the analysis of the nature of media organisations and their internal practices, hierarchies and roles. As the British sociologist Stuart Hall argued ‘the media reproduce the structure of domination/subordination which characterises the [social] system as a whole’.1 The emphasis on the importance of the loci of power in media organizations has included ‘gatekeeper’ studies, which examined the ﬂow of news material through stages of the selection and editing process, the examination of formal and peer control in media organizations, and considerations of the professional ideologies and work practices of journalists who have a professional ethos or ideology which deﬁnes the beliefs and values of their profession, and lays down guidelines for accepted and proper behaviour.

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This approach questions journalists’ declaration of professional autonomy, placing the control of the production process by media professionals elsewhere within the dominant culture, so that the journalists are hot-wired with views by their class and education. For, while journalists argue professional autonomy derived from democratic tenets of freedom of expression and the ‘public’s right to know’, as well as a commitment to values such as objectivity, impartiality and fairness, these claims are often questioned for being at best limited and societal, masking the journalists subservience to the dominant liberal ideology. This suggests the control of the production process by media professionals is conﬁned to the production of messages, the meaning of which is primarily determined elsewhere. Thus, journalists might believe they remain objective, even as they ‘faithfully echo the established political vocabularies and the prevailing politico-economic orthodoxy. Since they do not cross any forbidden lines, they are not reigned in. So they are likely to have no awareness they are on an ideological leash’.2 To this end, consideration of the political economy of media institutions has provided a useful analysis of the structures of ownership and control, as well as scrutiny of where journalists get their information, and which sources and commentators they favour. Although this approach has come in for criticism for its economic determinism, there have been useful eﬀorts to incorporate an element of ﬂexibility in the argument. Of particular note in considering Southeast Asia, Kellner, in his use of the work of Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci, suggests the media is not a monolithic tool of capitalist ideology, but ‘a synthesis of capitalist and democratic structures and imperatives and is therefore full of structural conﬂicts and tensions’ (Kellner 1990, p. 15). The media, in other words, is highly ambiguous, particularly in the generation of its messages and their impact. Interestingly, Tester’s study of the way political elites work to assert their control over new technologies that new groups have also claimed for their own forms of expression provides a useful contribution to the discussion on the role of ICT in political change. The cooption of modern culture expressed through communication technologies reﬂects, at the very least, the compelling nature of capital. It also reveals a recognition of the perceptions of the political and economic elites that the mass media is an important instrument of communication for inﬂuence and persuasion which can be dominated by various social groups as part of a struggle to inﬂuence public thinking (Tester 1994). Political economists, therefore, have played an important role in charting developments such as the growth of the media, the extension of corporate control, and convergence within the industry. They have also made a useful contribution to understanding the process of commodiﬁcation of the

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media. This includes the reduction in the overall diversity of programming as these companies converge and follow commercial strategies built around synergies between their media and other interests, and the changing relationship between the media, the government and the state (Golding and Murdoch 1996, p. 16). For many of these observers, the media and entertainment industry are at the centre of ‘new modes of image production and cultural hegemony, the political struggles of various groups and the restructuring of capitalist society’ (Kellner 1990, p. 129). In analysing the Southeast Asian context, and the political developments around the region, this study will attempt to show that control of the media is a crucial resource in local power struggles, both for the political elites and those who challenge them. While both the liberal democratic and critical studies perspectives have a useful contribution to make, they have, however, traditionally ignored the media audience and the technology itself although, it would seem, analysing the way that ‘meaning is made and remade through the concrete activities of producers and consumers is . . . essential’ (Golding and Murdoch 1996, p. 15). Those who are being inﬂuenced and persuaded are not without voice, and the audience has made an appearance centre stage, pushed into the limelight by thinkers in areas such as cultural studies. This theoretical approach is ‘centrally concerned with the construction of meaning – how it is produced in and through particular expressive forms and how it is continually negotiated and deconstructed through the practices of everyday life’ (Murdock 1989, p. 436). Here, the audience is not passive, and life experiences shape media consumption (Fiske 1992). Indeed, audiences receive and use media content in diﬀerent ways. And, as we shall show subsequently, the latest developments of Information Communications Technology (ICT), are enabling a far more active role for the media audiences. This ‘collective celebration’ (Sorlin 1994, p. 81), when we watch a particular programme or read a particular magazine helps to mark other communities. These become increasingly fragmented and less geographically deﬁned as the media moves to create diﬀerentiation: no more just a Straits Times or a South China Morning Post audience, but a Computer Times, Angling News or Mother’s World. Thus newly-imagined groups are challenging nations. In this way, the communications media is playing an important social role: a useful institution that satisﬁes our desire to observe others and allows us to maintain links on a small scale with a local newspaper or radio station, while providing information as a frame of reference on a large scale, helping us to make sense of the world while helping to deﬁne our relations to others (Sorlin 1994, p. 80). While nation states and their political elites are economically and politically powerful with their ‘mass media image-makers’ to help them attempt

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to manage reality, people ‘creatively and ambitiously negotiate their cultural (including symbolic) worlds’ (Lull 1995, p. 114). Indeed, given that social organizations like the mass media are human constructs, the social construction of reality then, ‘must be understood as a process which applies as much to the nature of institutions as it does to the dynamics of daily life’ (ibid., p. 122). The work of analysts like Fiske and de Certeau in L’Invention du Quotidian (1998), decodes media texts in ways which are related to their social and cultural circumstances. As a consequence, a New Audience Research approach, based on in-depth interviews rather than questionnaire techniques, and focusing on the audience’s ‘situatedness’ within a particular socio-historical context, has evolved from a combination of traditional qualitative research strategies in sociology with some of the ideas of reader response theory in literary criticism. But, while the audience does play an important role as ‘situated interpreters’ (Keane 1991, p. 38), it is equally important to understand that the persuaders are becoming increasingly sophisticated (The Economist, 2 May 2002). The communication media embodies a bias in terms of the organization and control of information, pre-structuring the reception of opinion. Due to this unique ability to inﬂuence the daily construction of reality and the assumptions that underpin it, those who might proﬁt from its economic, political and cultural inﬂuence will seek to control it (Innis 1951). In order to clarify the context in which the media operates in Southeast Asian development, we shall additionally evaluate the structural and functional accounts of the media in modernity as developed initially by Innis and consolidated by Thompson (1991) and Giddens (1995). Innis’s thoughts on the social history of the communication media in his work The Bias of Communication (1951), in particular, inﬂuenced a number of theoretical approaches that pull the technology of the mass communications media into the conceptual foreground. Innis believed that the key to social change is found in the development of communication media, and he claimed that each medium embodied a bias in terms of the organization and control of information. Innis saw the communication media as being used to create political control, but he also believed that change came from the margins of society, since people on the margins invariably developed their own media. From Innis’s work, Marshall McLuhan developed a technological determinist view that the medium is the message, and maintained a ‘technologyled theory of social change . . . where communication technologies such as television, radio, printing and writing profoundly transformed society and “the human psyche” ’.

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McLuhan’s global village is a virtual extension of the human nervous system expressed as an electronic web. An ‘electric implosion’ has linked up the world and created an Age of Anxiety as lives are interlinked through knowledge and awareness. Yet, for McLuhan, it is a technology the eﬀects of which ‘do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance’ (McLuhan 1964, p. 19). At the other end of the spectrum is the lighter touch of the cultivation theory of Professor George Gerbner, Dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, which argues that television has long-term, but gradual and indirect behavioural inﬂuence (Chandler 1995). For those who reject the more determinist view, the idea of the media as inﬂuencer has been at the centre of the debate. One of the most powerful eﬀects models of communications is agenda-setting theory. Agenda setting was a term coined by McCombs and Shaw who, in a 1972 study of the US presidential campaigns (McCombs and Shaw 1972), showed a correspondence between the order of importance given in the media to issues and the order of signiﬁcance attached to the same issues by the public and politicians (McQuail 1994, p. 256). This theory suggests that through repeated news coverage, the media are able to set the importance of certain issues in the public’s mind, and that while the media might not directly aﬀect how the public thinks about political matters, it does aﬀect what subjects people think about, thereby establishing what political issues people consider important (Severin and Tankard 1997, p. 252). This, then, has raised the question that if the media shape the public agenda, what or who shapes the media’s agenda? McCombs and others suggest that only about one-third of the stories in the mass media are clearly of an objective importance to the public. These include natural disasters or other public catastrophes. The remaining editorial content exists because they ﬁt the conventions of journalism: they ﬁll the need for drama, controversy, or human interest; they come from established and ‘reliable’ sources; or they have been deemed worthy of coverage by leading news organizations. Equally important, the conventions of journalism – the choice of experts, the search for drama, ‘balance’, or controversy – shape the way an issue is framed in the public mind. The mass media tell us not only what to think about, McCombs observes, but also how to think about it. This critical strand questions the market liberal approach with its ideas of a ‘Free Press’. It, notably, underlines market failures where cost of entry and cost of production make access uneven, creating both informationpoor and information-rich societies (Garnham 1990, pp. 20–55). This

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notwithstanding, the links drawn by modernization theorists between capitalist market development, the free ﬂow of information and the development of liberal institutions received further prominence as a ‘third wave’ of democratization swept the world, beginning in Portugal in 1974, and culminating in the end of the Soviet Empire in 1989 (Huntington 1991). As capitalism reigned supreme from the cash registers to the ballot boxes, a plural media became one of the central tenets of a ‘ruling social science paradigm of an inexorable liberal-democratic end of history [where] economic progress inevitably presaged eventual liberalization and democratization’ (Jones and Smith 2001, p. 855). However, as we will see from the analysis of the role of the globalized media in Southeast Asia, the liberal thesis is inadequate to explain the role of the media in political change. A more sophisticated approach is needed; an approach that recognizes the importance of the media in modern society, bringing in understandings borrowed from McCombs and others from the media as inﬂuencer school, and applied to the Southeast Asia context. In this way, a more nuanced explanation of the complex interplay between the media and its audience is possible. It must also take into account the media as both a business and a technology that enables eﬀective communication and persuasion and is, therefore, an important political resource fought over by competing elites. In this context, Giddens and Thompson have attempted a synthesis of the arguments that counters more liberal market views. Giddens develops the theory that the media help us make sense of our lives (Giddens 1991). The media scares us while providing the balm to soothe our fears, from expert advice to stories of how others tackle their reality. Research continues to be done that reinforces this position. The British government, considering why Britain had become a risk-averse nation that ‘over-protects, over-regulates and needs to rediscover self-reliance and a spirit of adventure’,3 was told by Professor George Gaskell, a risk expert from the London School of Economics, that: The mass media could be largely to blame. Virtually everything we eat, for example, has at some point been associated [in the media] with carcinogens. But people seem to want to read about new dangers. Maybe we just have a collective interest in ﬁnding things to be anxious about. (Brindle and Lewis 2006)

Further, Giddens (1979) provides something of a theoretical compromise between liberal and critical views of the media via his Structuration Theory, suggesting that we act into a system and that system biases the type of interaction but, as we work within a system, we change the system. Giddens also assumes that there are always unintended consequences of technologies and their use and redesign.

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For Thompson, as the media has become central to modern life and politics, so media consumption has become ‘a routine, practical activity which individuals carry out as an integral part of their everyday lives’ (Thompson 1995, p. 38). The outcome of this process is that the mass media now serves as both a producer and mirror of our ‘self-fashioning’ (ibid., p. 43). For each of these authors, the mass media have become both a cause and outcome of modern society, and this thesis will draw on their ideas in its analysis. Thus, the various organizations that make up this institution have become a source of information that people use to make sense of their lives, as well as a tool for those in power to control their constituents. The media are polysemous (for example, Gamson et al. 1992), and life experiences shape media consumption as much as the media shapes our life experiences (for example, Fiske 1992). The various technologies which have facilitated the development of the communication media, the printing press, the computer and the television must be seen as having an important role in framing the social construction of reality. McLuhan’s (1964) contribution is valuable because he underlined the fact that these are not simply machines which convey information. Their inﬂuence goes much deeper as they become: metaphors through which we conceptualise reality in one way or another. They . . . classify the world for us, sequence it, frame it, enlarge it, reduce it, and argue a case for what it is like. Through these media metaphors, we do not see the world as it is. We see it as our coding systems are. Such is the power of the form of information. (Postman 1979, p. 39)

The interplay between society and its technology is clearly a complex and subtle one. Technology and, in particular, technological change scores society deeply, as it does the human psyche, becoming intricately embedded in our neuroses and anxieties, particularly so when technological change is rapid and, therefore, turbulent and disruptive. These scars are reﬂected in many of our most celebrated literary texts. Joyce Cary’s road slices through Mister Johnson’s traditional African society, dismembering the fabric of village life abruptly and violently. Similarly, the development of the railway left its indelible mark on the nineteenth century and fatally on its ﬁctional heroes and heroines, with a number of them, including Anna Karenina, dying under its wheels. Even more disruptively, television impacted life at the end of the twentieth century just as the Information Superhighway and information and communication technology (ICT) look set to do the same in the twenty-ﬁrst. Their inﬂuence has been given cultural reference in works from Poltergeist to William Gibson’s Idoru.

16

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

Thus, the mass communication industry is intricately interwoven with the technology which gives it form. From the printing press to the digital electronic signal, its inﬂuence on us is subtle but often profound. However, the social context in which these technologies are used, and the competition to control access to what is rightly perceived to be an inﬂuential medium, is crucial. And while technological determinism is to be avoided, it oﬀers some useful insights for our study into the impact of the mass communications media on politics and political change, particularly the inﬂuence of television on politics. So, as with his counterparts from across the Atlantic, Kellner (1990) puts an extra polish on the lens through which to view the developments in Southeast Asia. Kellner allows us, the audience, to be more than just instruments, mute, pliant, able to be pushed hither and thither. Rather, we interpret the media’s messages in ways which suit us. Dismissing the more popular theories of instrumentality (including structural Marxism), and post-modern imagery as inadequate, Kellner, with his Hegemonic or Gramscian perspective, has the advantage of embracing both the social institutions and the human interaction within this world view, such that the conﬂict and contestation are natural modes of interacting. Kellner also recognizes the importance of the technology, producing a theory that properly situates television amongst all the important social institutions, while interweaving the inﬂuence of dominant ideologies: expressions of elite interests rooted in the economic system. The ubiquitous nature of television, with its use of satellite technology to ﬂood signals around the world, puts it in the theoretical spotlight, illuminating its particular limitations. Kellner’s hegemony model is particularly useful when considering the political developments in Southeast Asia and the role of the media. As we will see, while the media furthers the perceived interests of the ruling elite, it does not do so in a monolithic way. There is conﬂict and contestation, particularly in the face of the growing challenges of modernity and globalization. Of particular note for any consideration of developments in Southeast Asia, Kellner maintains that local elites, however, have been able to reassert their control strategies by being ﬂexible enough to forge new alliances among ‘transnational corporations, the capitalist state, and communications technologies in the era of technocapitalism’ (Kellner 1990, p. 90). In this way, Kellner, combined with the structural understanding of the growing role of the media in modern society provided by Thompson and Giddens, will form the theoretical basis of this consideration of the role of the media in political change in Southeast Asia. This work, then, will test these theoretical understandings in the context of Southeast Asia, thus facilitating, in the conclusion, a review and assessment of the strengths and

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weaknesses of these theories, and modiﬁcations necessary to address the Southeast Asian context, ultimately demonstrating that while the global media is not liberalizing, nor has the media in Southeast Asia, as some like Rodan assert, become a simple tool of capital. Kellner, like Thompson and Giddens, places the media, and television in particular, at the centre of society. Southeast Asia is no exception, and this analysis will oﬀer a summary of the latest developments in the mass communication media industry, as well as situating the historical position of the media in the evolution of post-colonial communities in Asia, illustrating that the media is no longer merely a tool of national government, but is now increasingly accessible to the ordinary citizen, with dramatic consequences for the political and social fabric of Southeast Asia. It will also provide a survey of the existing literature on the communications media and its eﬀects, and consider the implications of the impact of the information age and its attendant communications technology on Southeast Asia, drawing, in particular, on the work of media theorists Kellner and Thompson.

METHODOLOGY This book will analyse media development in Southeast Asia via a case study methodology. These case studies will elaborate the distinctively diﬀerent media approaches developing in Southeast Asia, as well as the occasional emergence of alternative voices, and the varying place and impact of the international media within these systems, critically examining Rupert Murdoch’s 1993 declaration to a London audience after News Corporation’s purchase of Star TV, that satellite television constituted an ‘unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere’.4 Murdoch reﬂected the hopes of those who wished to see the spread of democratic pluralism, but did little to enamour those regimes to his group of companies (at least initially), nor to the new global media of which he boasted. The results of this ongoing and evolving competition for control of the ﬂow of information within and across the states of the region that comprise the case studies, provides useful insights into the development and impact of the communications media, and how it is perceived in Southeast Asia. In order to develop the case study model, we must ﬁrst examine the emergence of the global media from the 1990s. Chapter 2 considers how the media has become central to the modern condition, underlining the latest developments in the media industry, the growing importance of television and the development of Information Communications Technology (ICT). It examines the growth of the global media giants, as part of a number of important trends impacting the industry: globalization, conglomeration

18

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

and commodiﬁcation. This includes an examination of how the media is structured, owned and controlled, and the competition for the media spaces. It considers how the media is developing and changing, including the rapid globalization of the decades since the 1980s, and the introduction of technologies that have enhanced and deepened the changes, as well as the growth of the global entertainment giants. It looks at the creation of the mediated world and the ‘entertainment economy’ (Wolf 1999), with the increasing commercialization of the media and entertainment industry. Chapter 2 also examines two developments contiguous to the growth of the media industry: the emergence of the perception industries and the role of celebrity in modern society. The history of the communications media in Asia is unique, and uniquely diﬀerent as the case studies will demonstrate, so an exposition is necessary on the development of the communications media in Asia, its control and ownership, and the inﬂux of the international media and their impact, if any, on the local players. Chapter 3 examines how these developments play out in the major developed states of Southeast Asia, namely Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, The Philippines and Indonesia, and the battle to control the globalized media in the face of technological change. It throws some light on how international industry trends are playing out in the region, the impact of new technology and developments like the Internet, as well as assessing the growing importance of the media in Southeast Asia, and the local competition for media space. While there is not a monolinear connection between democracy and the media, it does raise a set of issues that, as the local political elites deal with them, have implications for both media development and democracy. Southeast Asia’s elites have perceived the media to be linked with regime change and, as they attempt to ensure their own legitimacy through national development, they have been subject to security dilemmas, both from the impact of the inﬂux of international media and other global inﬂuences, and a growing insecurity connected to this and to the rise of the Internet and new, ‘disruptive’ communications technologies. Chapter 2 further examines the question of whether the local political elites are helpless in the face of modernity, and shows how historical expertise linked with modern techniques and understanding is allowing Southeast Asia’s political elites to maintain their strategy of control, ensuring that the media remains a resource in elite paction. It also discusses the role of the mass communication media in the ongoing political crafting within these relatively new states, drawing on the work of Friedman (1994), and Di Palma (1990), and the use of the mass communication media by the diﬀerent political actors as they create alliances and negotiate political development. It also examines how the celebriﬁcation of the media plays into the hands of both the illiberal state and actors.

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Chapter 3 explores the development of the media in Asia as a vehicle for persuasion rather than one of control as it was in the newly-independent states, the role of the western media in Asian political and social development and the failure of international liberal media to provide a lead. It includes a look at the massive growth in cross-border information ﬂow and the extent of US cultural hegemony (for example, the dominance of Dow Jones Inc. in the area of quality, business-orientated English language product – AWSJ, Wire, CNBC, The Far Eastern Economic Review), and discusses the way globalization has been particularly exacerbated in Southeast Asia, where it was generally assumed by Asian elites (and liberal democratic theorists) that a globalizing media meant both Westernization and democratization. This is proving not to be the case, as our case studies will demonstrate, because Western media adapts both to popular culture and the needs of political elites in order to protect their distribution. The role of the media and its impact on politics in Southeast Asia is examined by means of a series of case studies, looking at the main states in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the role the media has played in the development of the nation, how it has developed, the inﬂuence of the international media, and the strategies used by local political elites to maintain control. All the case studies show the importance of the Asian Financial Crisis in undermining the legitimacy of the developmental state model embraced by the Southeast Asian political elites, and how coalitions are being remade with the US ‘war on terror’ and the use of professional image makers helping restore their grip on power. By using a variety of research methods, including interviews, personal experience and observation to provide primary data, as well as secondary sources including news reports, oﬃcial statistics and other documentary evidence, the case studies provide ‘illuminating insights into cultural practices and social meanings’ (McNeill and Chapman 1985, p. 159). To this end, the ﬁve countries that have been chosen for these case studies are also ones which can provide useful insights into the role of the media in political change, in particular the role of the global media companies. Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and The Philippines are not only the major economies of Southeast Asia, but they are the countries in the region which have also opened themselves up, as this book will show, to the global economy, allowing the interplay with the global media industry which is at the centre of the book. All ﬁve are also regarded as sitting beside internationally strategic shipping lanes, and are also seen by the international community as important in the global security power play, particularly around the US ‘war on terror’. In total, this means that the countries are seen as having an important role in the ﬂow of global trade and ﬁnance and are, therefore, players on the stage of international relations.

20

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

The ﬁrst case study, in Chapter 4, examines the control model of Malaysia, and how the government’s hold on power and over the means of communication was threatened as it sought to link to the global economy in order to encourage economic growth – key to continued regime legitimacy. It examines how the ruling party has tried to meet the challenges of interelite tensions resulting from the Asian Financial Crisis and the rise of an Islamist party appealing to the many Malaysians who had not beneﬁted from the global economy. This is contrasted with the case of The Philippines in Chapter 5, where a media free-for-all after the fall of the authoritarian Marcos regime, combined with Asia’s general obsession with celebrity, has resulted in the ultimate in personality politics, but no meaningful democratic pluralism, as elites seek to suppress dissent expressed through the media helped by its celebriﬁcation. In between these extremes lie Thailand and Indonesia, where the role of the military in the political system, the ongoing search for political solutions and the inﬂuence of business interests makes for a more ﬂuid media industry, ﬂirting with pluralism while subject to commercial and political strictures. In Chapter 6, the Indonesian case study shows how one of the few examples of a Muslim state with a nascent democratic political system is struggling to create a democratic political culture after the introduction of a democratic political system. All the while, traditional elites regroup and coalesce to form a revived and reﬁned political unit, keen to restore their control strategy with the tacit, if not deliberate, support of western democratic governments looking to establish alliances with Muslim elites in a strategically important region. Likewise, in Chapter 7, Thailand provides a useful example of how any suggestion that there is a natural progression to liberal democracy looks ill-considered, as politics oscillates between a democratic electoral system, single party dominance and enduring inﬂuence of the military and royal autocracy, and how the media rather than encouraging liberalism can, in the hands of a business elite, provide support to an illiberal government backed by a military–royal coalition with the support of an urban middle class which imagines that an authoritarian coalition is more likely to represent its interests than a popularlyelected government. The book then examines the case of the Singapore model of control and how it developed, followed by an analysis of its latest evolution as a case study in how local political elites have embraced spin in their attempt to control the messages in an increasingly complex media environment. In Chapter 8, we show how the People’s Action Party (PAP) and its leader, Lee Kuan Yew, established a control model that both its neighbours and others in the Asian region attempt to mirror, and how even they have been shaken by the emerging opposition voices enabled by the developments in ICT. It

Disruptive technologies – change, conflict and breakdown

21

then examines how, with a unique combination of legalism and ownership, the PAP maintained its gatekeeper status. Chapter 9 subsequently reviews, from the consideration of these case studies, the rise of the perception industries and the art of persuasion in the Asian media. This involves a consideration of the spin doctors behind the scenes and their roles in a Southeast Asian context, and whether or not they are having an impact in terms of changing the engagement between media and politics. It also considers how the new communications technology is shaping politics in Southeast Asia, and how parties, governments and other groups use the new technologies, thereby attempting an assessment of the political role of the communications media. Using Singapore as a case study, the book examines the latest manifestation of a regionally attractive, illiberal control strategy. This is a sophisticated approach to securing access to the media space whilst minimizing liberal controversy and in support of its own eﬀorts to become a regional media hub such that, where traditional inﬂuence alone is not enough, by the use of the perception industries the Singapore government has successfully maintained a technocratically enforced ‘Fortress Singapore’. In Chapter 10, we examine the most recent developments in the media industry and what they mean for Southeast Asia’s political elites. We chart the eﬀorts of alternative voices to be heard in the new media space, subverting the communications technology to the ends of pluralism, terror or just commercial gain, oﬀering a new challenge to the illiberal regimes of Southeast Asia, forcing a countervailing reaction from the likes of Singapore’s surveillance state, and the projection of control into virtual spaces. In conclusion, in Chapter 11, the book examines the nature of a Southeast Asian model of media development in the close embrace of local elites who feel keenly the threat, perceived or real, of a media that is growing in importance in information-sensitive, young states. In this model, the media is an institution rooted in the development of the state: the voice of nationalism, independence and development. The turn of the century marked a clampdown on the media across the Southeast Asian region (Freedom House 2005). When considering the countries included in this thesis, Freedom House put the Philippines as the freest of the countries in Southeast Asia, with a measure of 75 (partly free), down from 77 in 2004. Then comes Thailand 95 (partly free), down from 88, Indonesia 119 (partly free), down from 117, Singapore 139 (not free), down from 135 and, ﬁnally, Malaysia 152 (not free), down from 154.5 While it is important to question the relative position of countries in this study – for example, is Malaysia less free than Singapore – the importance of the Freedom House illustration is to outline that of the countries examined in

22

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

this book, all were downgraded in the 2005 study from that of the previous year. The inﬂuence of the media has not been lost on the ruling elites of Asia. Information has traditionally been their jealously protected ward and the mass communication media a central ﬁgure in nation building. Yet the depth and pace of the changes swept in by the cultural ﬁrestorm linked to the ﬂow of global news and entertainment products has had many of the ruling elites in damage limitation mode. The wider governments in the region opened the doors to their economies in an attempt to reap some of the ﬁnancial beneﬁts of being part of the global information economy, the more they seemed to fan the ﬂames of modernity licking at the social and political foundations of their societies. Southeast Asia, in particular, is an information-sensitive region. It comprises relatively young and porous states, lacking in autonomy and obsessed with internal security due to the ﬁssures that slice through their societies. Be they ethnic, religious, or economic, these ﬁssures often coincide, further deepening division and resulting in low regime legitimacy. These states are increasingly subject to the dramatic social changes wrought by globalization, and the ruling regimes, therefore, are particularly sensitive to outside inﬂuences. Where once they seemed to control the communications media (halcyon days in a real or imagined past), their hegemony was threatened. Cross-border information ﬂows increased as disruptive technology from satellites to mobile phones dissolved the sanctity of national boundaries, and the pursuit of economic development was seen to have dissipated the once centralized ownership and control of the communications media, sometimes even to foreign interests. As a result, the ruling elites were forced to compete with other groups, as well as amongst themselves, for access to the media and its audiences. Certainly, any attempt to analyse the communications media and its eﬀects, political or otherwise, raises a number of questions and many contradictions, both on the side of the producers and the receivers. Any argument for consolidation of the mass communications market as the dominant business trend takes place against a background of the development of the Internet and associated technology which has not only increased the amount of media space but also reduced the cost of entry, thus easing mass communications from out of governmental or corporate control. Any suggestions by Barnett (1998) and others of a general increase in sensationalism and a ‘dumbing-down’ of media products must reﬂect the fact there is more news and more journalists digging around than ever before. Indeed, in Asia, some suggest that there exists a more critical media as niche channels and the use of communications technology has created

Disruptive technologies – change, conflict and breakdown

23

an audience which is forcing mainstream media to provide better coverage (Coronel 1999b). Likewise, if there is an increasingly sophisticated audience, why is there a seemingly pallid demand for quality? Perhaps this can be put down to the breakneck pace at which we live our lives, and the amount of information which ﬂows into it – as a result of which we tend to choose to consume our news and politics like our food, fast, insubstantial and heavy handed on the sugar. Cultural imperialism and the growing dominance of the transnational media corporations is another trend which is often countered in the global versus the local debate. The Chinese community in London and Manchester can now watch Hong Kong-produced Cantonese-language content piped to them at home by TVB, or fans of the BBC’s awardwinning Top Gear motoring programme can watch their English ﬁlmed hot-rods in Delhi, Beijing and Manila. Besides, although local elites rail against the impact of the ‘Western media’, hegemony in their own national culture and communications system might falter, but it is questionable whether the loss of national cohesion and identity need result (Collins 1995, p. 181). Yet the strong local reactions to the cross-border ﬂow of content would suggest that consolidation not only remains the major factor in the business, but that this process is dominated by what are perceived to be Western and, predominantly, American-controlled organizations (Chadhu and Kaviori 2000). While it is clear that global entertainment companies have understood the importance of providing local ﬂavours alongside their global blockbusters, whether it be local-language music shows or locallyproduced soaps or the local versions of their big hits like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, these media giants own content that has the widest reach: Disney’s Lion King and AOL’s Harry Potter tapped into the pockets of children from Beijing to Jakarta. Even the mass access Internet may well look like a mere blip in the development of the technology as companies and governments move to regain control of its space. Perhaps this is why other strategies of opposition have developed in the periphery, amongst the dispossessed and the displaced, from piracy to fundamentalist-inspired violence. So, while Southeast Asia’s ruling elites no longer have the control over the media they might once have enjoyed, this thesis will show that there is a growing awareness of the globalization of infotainment and an understanding that politicians can use, or ‘spin’ the media in Asia to maintain and even extend elite control. This has strong links back to the inﬂuences of the developmental, nation-building media of the early days of independence, and possibly to the media’s roots in Western colonial rule. So, whilst it

24

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

reﬂects a developing western phenomenon, it has taken on distinctive characteristics in Southeast Asia. This work will address the developments above and attempt to shed a distinctive Asian light on the mediatization of politics. The model developed in Southeast Asia, as this book shall further show, also includes a popular response, where the communications media and associated technology is being used to challenge elites locally, whether through new channels like the Internet or use of video technology or text messaging, and globally through a growing response to US/Western hegemony. The latter includes a noticeable increase in the contempt amongst some of the Asian media for most aspects of the West apart from its technology – this is a worldview that interestingly coincides with some Asian autocrats, even NGOs. Thus, the media is more ambivalent than much of the literature assumes and can itself be used by ‘media-savvy’ politicians in a way that secures the continuing nation-building agendas of elite driven politics. In addition, with the rise of media stars, popular obsession with celebrity allows name recognition to be turned into votes, allowing for the success of celebrity rather than the embrace of issues. In conclusion, then, this study will suggest that, as media and entertainment products ﬂood across porous national borders around the region, wary local elites are also ﬁnding support from formerly critical western liberals keen to pursue the US-led ‘war on terror’. As this work attempts to place the mass communications media and its relationship to liberal democracy in the current era of global commercial operations and how this plays out in Southeast Asia with distinctive regional characteristics, it will also conclude that the ‘war against terror’ gives authoritarian governments in the region the renewed hope that they can successfully have economic growth without loosening their control. This is disconcerting given the development needs of Southeast Asia: ‘Tyranny, corruption and suppression of the media go hand in hand in far too many countries. Indeed, the chronic misgovernment which is creating a growing list of “failed states” world wide can only really ﬂourish when it is free from detection and exposure by a free press and broadcast media’ (Tait 2002). And, while Tait’s assertion may be seen as simplistic, empirically observable political phenomena in countries such as Burma and North Korea would suggest he has a point. Likewise, as we shall see in this book, Southeast Asian states like Indonesia and the Philippines, which are fraying at the edges, also display similar characteristics in areas where the central state no longer holds sway, and local military and business interests often violently silence any opposition, including that expressed through the media. But it also has worrying implications given the importance of the region which not only includes the world’s most populous Muslim nation, but

Disruptive technologies – change, conflict and breakdown

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borders the Malacca Straits (a piece of water that carries about 40 per cent of the world’s trade, more than 50 000 merchant ships every year, including 80 per cent of the energy supplies of Japan and China) – a choke point where global trade and geopolitics meet in a lawless sea that, in 2005, Lloyds of London described as a ‘war risk zone’ (removed from the list of vulnerable areas in 2006, following an improvement in security).6 This is one reason why this book places a particular emphasis on the ‘Lion City’ of Singapore, which is such an important focus for global international relations by virtue of its position at the heart of the strategically important zone. Singapore is also a leader in the region. A leader in economic development, with many characteristics of a developed western economy, and a model of control that many Asian nations both in the region and further aﬁeld, aspire to copy. Singapore is also, as we shall see, Southeast Asia’s media hub: the country’s remarkable infrastructure and ‘ﬁrst world’ standard of living, attracting the global media, despite its stance on human rights and a free Press. Finally, this book will show that the modern Southeast Asian state demonstrates how, in late developing states, understandings of a western provenance assume entirely diﬀerent meanings in a developmental political context. Ideas like democracy, accountability, rule of law, parties, voting and the media all get ﬁltered through an indigenous cultural lens or lenses, moulded and remoulded to ﬁt with ongoing political negotiations. The communications media, in particular when combined with an increasing use of PR by local political elites and a growing sophistication of their understanding of how to get their messages across in a complicated communications environment, plays an important role in this fashioning. Indeed it can be an important political resource as we see the development of possible political models for the post-modern expression of democracy and the authoritarian state in the capitalist, net speed, globalized economic reality. It is the modern state interpreted within a karaoke culture. It is plastic pastiche politics that reﬂect the social craze which ﬁrst emerged in postWWII Japan, comprising the endless recycling and re-consumption of cultural products, like bland pop songs that were not that good to begin with and yet are rich with escapist fantasies; it is an obsession with performance that has touched politics, history and pop culture throughout global society. As punk impresario Malcolm McLaren explained: We live in a karaoke culture. The Japanese word means ‘empty orchestra’ – a lifeless musical form unencumbered by creativity and free of responsibility. Simple, clean fun for the millennial nuclear family. You can’t fail in a karaoke world. It’s life by proxy, liberated by hindsight. (McLaren 2003)

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It is a world where ‘democratisation fosters a culture which values participation over ability . . . popularity over excellence’(Bremner 1998). First of all, then, we will examine the growth of the media industry, illustrating how the mass communications media has moved to a central position in modern society, the spread of the global entertainment giants and the growth of the entertainment economy enabled by technological change and the dominance of television, as well as the major trends impacting the development of the media industry and its products.

NOTES 1. Quoted in Ruth Finnegan (1975, p. 75). 2. Michael Parenti, ‘Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media’, 1986, 35, cited Pilger (1998, p. 4). 3. The Better Regulation Commission (2006). 4. Quoted in William Atkins (2002, p. 119). 5. See http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/pressurvey/pfs 2005.pdf. 6. See Lloyds of London, ‘Market removes Malacca Straight from the List’, 11 August, 2006, http://www.lloyds.com/News_Centre/Features_from_Lloyds/Market_removes_ Malacca_Straits_from_the_List.htm.

2. The growth of the media and entertainment industry: the move to centre stage However one perceives its eﬀects, there is no ignoring the mass communications media in the modern world. Worldwide, technological innovations have given a huge boost to the media and entertainment industry. In 2006, analysts suggested that the global entertainment and media industry had entered a solid growth phase and was set to increase at a 6.6 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to $1.8 trillion in 2010, with new revenue streams growing rapidly, the growth of physical formats slowing, while the availability of licensed digital distribution looks likely to provide consumers with alternatives to piracy (PriceWaterhouseCoopers 2006). Digital technologies, chieﬂy broadband Internet and mobile, are becoming established as increasingly lucrative distribution channels, changing the way consumers acquire entertainment and media content. Global spending via online and wireless channels reached $19 billion in 2005, and was predicted to increase to $67 billion by 2010. Across the board, the entertainment and media industry has been shifting from the physical distribution to the digital distribution of content. As this shift continued, it created both more growth and more revenue opportunities. Asia Paciﬁc was set to remain the fastest-growing region for the industry, reﬂecting both the underlying economic growth and local developments and initiatives. The growth was led by double-digit increases in Internet, TV distribution, casino and other regulated gaming and video games. As part of these developments, the People’s Republic of China was predicted to pass Japan by 2009, and to become the largest market in Asia Paciﬁc. India has been the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world. In May, 2007, 6.5 million new subscribers brought the country’s total to 218 million (Yee 2007, p. 12). In addition, global advertising was predicted to increase at a 6.2 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), during the forecast period, to $521 billion in 2010 from $385 billion in 2005. The Internet was set to remain the fastest-growing advertising medium, at an 18.1 per cent CAGR to $52 billion in 2010. The Internet would constitute nearly 10 per 27

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cent of global advertising in 2010, compared with less than 3 per cent in 2002. Moreover, the continued expansion in household broadband use was set to be a major growth driver, whilst wireless subscriber growth and rollout of next generation handsets and high-speed wireless networks would stimulate mobile markets. In 2005, the broadband universe totalled 187 million households, up from only 30 million in 2001. By 2010, PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PWC) predicted there would be an additional 246 million broadband households, bringing the total to 433 million globally. The number of people with a wireless telephone subscription was also growing rapidly, with a total of 1.8 billion globally in 2005. That ﬁgure will rise to 2.8 billion by 2010, adding one billion potential customers to mobile content during the next ﬁve years. The growing Internet, computer and phone use had also driven a growth in the amount of information people generate and use. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, estimated that, in the early part of the new century, 800Mb of information was being produced, annually, for every person on the planet. Their study found that, in 2002, about ﬁve exabytes of new information was generated by the world’s print, ﬁlm, magnetic and optical storage systems equivalent to 500 000 Libraries of Congress. But even this ﬁgure was dwarfed by the gargantuan amount of information ﬂowing through electronic channels such as the telephone, radio, television and Internet. The study estimated that in 2002, 18 exabytes of new information ﬂowed through these channels. The vast majority of this (98 per cent), was in the form of person-to-person phone calls. Ironically, it also found that most of the information transmitted via radio and TV was not new programming, rather the vast majority were repeats. Of the 320 million hours of radio shows only 70 million hours are actually original shows. On TV, only 31 million hours of the total 123 million hours of broadcast programmes counted as new information (Lyman and Varian 2003). Of course, no growth follows a straight-line trajectory. The adverse economic environment following in the wake of the ‘tech bubble collapse’, the resulting slowdown in the US economy and the attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001, contributed to the industry’s worst advertising slump in 30 years. US television groups lost more than US$300m in combined advertising revenue during the week of the attacks on New York and Washington (Grimes 2001a, 2001b). The world’s largest media company, AOL Time Warner, said only the strong box oﬃce performance of one of its ﬁlms helped to blunt the impact of a 13 per cent decrease in advertising revenue, as the company reported a massive net loss of US$54.2bn for the ﬁrst quarter 2002 (Grimes 2002).

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But the industry is seen as resilient as the PWC research showed. Indeed, despite its revenue concerns, AOL received support in the ﬁnancial markets. The conglomerate dominated issuance in the primary US corporate bond markets in April 2002, increasing the amount of paper it sold from US$4bn to US$6bn in response to demand, a reﬂection of the faith investors still had for the entertainment economy.

TELEVISION RULES OK? Television continues to enjoy a robust hold on the popular imagination: there are few social phenomena, pernicious or benign, for which television is not being held responsible by someone or other: the stiﬂing of children’s imagination, the increase in obesity, the decline of the family meal, the erosion of morality, the vulgarization of taste, the worship of celebrity, the promotion of violence, the undermining of authority, the maintenance of American hegemony – and the spread of democracy. (The Economist 13 April 2002, p. 4)

As the global industry has developed, the growth of the Internet has received much of the attention. However, at the turn of the century, television remained the dominant technology, something which has important ramiﬁcations for both Southeast Asia and the consumption of media products. As the new century began, more people than ever turned to their televisions to ﬁnd out what was going on in the world, while the number who read newspapers for international, national and regional news continued to fall. When the events of 9/11 put a global spin on terror, the television was the medium of choice for those who wanted to follow the developments.1 Thus, as a business, television dwarfed most other forms of media, with a total turnover of $US100 billion (The Economist 13 April 2002, p. 3). Its almost universal presence, with the use of satellite technology to ﬂash content around the world, also put it in the theoretical spotlight, illuminating its particular limitations. The revolution in technology was seen as liberating, changing the dynamics between the newsrooms and those in the ﬁeld. Digital technology transformed television news production in the same way that computerized production methods changed newspapers for the previous generation. Desktop editing gave journalists complete control of their material – text, wires and video – and allowed them to produce complete packages on their personal computers. In the ﬁeld, the last great constraint on newsgathering – getting the pictures back to the studio – was disappearing. The ﬁrst wars of the new century in Afghanistan and Iraq saw the use of video and satellite phone technology, allowing journalists to deliver reasonable quality pictures without being tied to large satellite broadcasters – either

30

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television stations or satellite trucks – to send their reports, with all the delays and risks of censorship or interference that involved. As the technology continued to improve the picture quality, commentators were expecting ‘another quantum leap in the immediacy and directness with which television can write that ﬁrst draft of history’ (Tait 2002). And yet, television, of all sectors of the media industry, is a poor medium for such a grand ambition. By its very nature television is selective: ‘ephemeral, sensational, over dramatic, simplistic, lacking in depth and interpretation’ (Kellner 1990, p 110). It is particularly subject to industry trends, reinforcing its limitations as a medium that ‘is not about analysing . . . [but] about perceptions’ (MacGregor 1997, p. 214). Indeed, when it comes to the production of news and current aﬀairs, rather than liberating those who supply the material, they are often bound to the technology, from live broadcasts to the necessary satellite bookings that enable reporters to appear ‘in the ﬁeld’. MacGregor’s analysis of the television coverage of the al-Amarya Incident during the Gulf War, when the Western forces, led by the Americans, bombed a civilian shelter in Baghdad, provides evidence of how television journalists, in particular, are enslaved by technology and the increased commodiﬁcation of news, like the media as a whole, due to corporate control of news organizations and convergence (MacGregor 1997, pp. 191–2). Although reporters in the ﬁeld had lightweight satellite technology, the expense of television news production and logistical considerations still determined what was covered and how. Satellite time and the demands of every-more hungry news rooms and multi-platform operations, as well as cosmetic contrivances such as stand-ups, sought to reinforce the fact that ‘we are there’, tying journalists to a location, and helping encourage the trend of reporters as celebrity (ibid., pp. 186–7). And technology is only part of a wider picture. Other elements of television news production, such as reporting conventions, logistical considerations, national standards in questions of taste and decency in the reporting of death and injury, as well as the role of those back at base, from tape editors, to managers, are all susceptible to pressure. Resource constraints increase the susceptibility to pressure of those involved in the production process. From tape editors to copy editors, the young, the inexperienced and the overworked, are the staple of increasingly understaﬀed and underresourced newsrooms. Yet its inﬂuence is undisputed. Perhaps, the ‘most powerful cultural force since Gutenberg ran oﬀ the ﬁrst printed copy of the bible’ (Humphrys 1999, p. 154), television has altered the reality of events. The division between the real and the image seems to be dissolving, as events are changed by the presence of the camera. The way people behave and conduct themselves is

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televisual. From refugees crossing a border, through anti-globalization protestors, to the participants of televised debates in parliament or on camera courtroom considerations: ‘had there been no television, [the event] would be diﬀerent. Their reality [includes] their televisuality’ (Fiske 1994, p. 2). Despite its distortions, television has become our reality.2 The ‘TV eﬀect’ – an image problem created by international television clips that distort the daily reality is created by the tendency noted by Fred Cate, Professor at the Indiana University School of Law, that ‘news is comprised largely of negative stories, especially when it concerns developing countries’.3 Television is also seen to have a divisive social eﬀect, contributing to the fragmented and anomic nature of modern society. Where once common experience held societies together television has contributed to the insularity of today’s atomized existence, as the BBC’s John Humphrys suggests: ‘The more time you spend staring at the screen in the corner, the less time there is for anything outside’ (Humphrys 1999, p. 51). In fact, as ﬁrst VCRs enabled home recording, then television programming became possible, and now the emergence of digital television and the ability to set ‘record’ via mobile phone, even shared viewing seems to be disappearing. Television seems a poor substitute for the real thing, cheapening our emotional responses by allowing them no time to take root: ‘the things that television invites us to get emotional about pass ﬂeetingly. We are moved, the images shift to something quite diﬀerent, our feelings pass and we’re engrossed in something else’ (Humphrys 1999, p. 51). Broadcast culture, moreover, has been dumbed down, and information presented as drama or entertainment, such that broadcast journalism increasingly promotes itself not so much on what it talks about but on the method it uses: Broadcasting 24 hours a day, correspondents in over 50 capital cities, giving you all the headlines every 15 minutes, up to six generations of journalists gathered in one newsroom, making you feel all the news you want to feel, even on Christmas Day. Hi-tech software and speedy transmission makes everything instant news, but we lose sight of the skilled individuals who can process this random unstoppable ﬂow of information and somehow construct a meaningful examination of it. (Ianucci 2006)

It is these limitations and this structure that are, subsequently, superimposed on the political sphere. The mass media, as a whole, has had a profound impact on the political process and political institutions, altering the election practices of candidates and political parties, even ‘replacing churches, political parties and trade unions as a means of forming and representing opinions’ (Keane 1991, p. x). Elections have become media

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events, ‘increasingly fought on the terrain of the media as candidates and parties rely increasingly on media coverage . . . in order to present themselves and their policies to the electorate’ (Thompson 2001, p. 178). Television has taken the political process and shaped it in its own image. It is the image of the extreme close-up and the sound bite: the personal and conversational style of radio has, through television, intensiﬁed into the ‘mediated intimacy’ of political leaders as ‘the management of visibility and self-presentation through the media has become an integral and increasingly professionalized feature of government’ (Thompson 2001, p. 180). Indeed, there is a strange symbiosis between politicians and journalists: for their part, politicians start to think, speak and behave like journalists – a tendency epitomised by presidential statements containing one-liners designed to guide and ease the work of newspaper headline writers and to give television reporters pithy ten-second sound bites. For their part, journalists, despite their professional values, may be reduced to virtual channels of propaganda. (Gurevitch and Blumler 1991, p. 279)

Not only do we get our news, entertainment, education, information and even our socialization through the television, several empirical studies,4 have shown that, in Western democracies, television is the most popular medium for political communication in general and election communication in particular both as a primary battleground for politicians and a source of information for voters, particularly the ﬂoating kind.5 The sound bite, this hyperactive ﬁlament of the television era, is playing directly to the limitations of the medium. Sculpted by the communications professional employed by the modern political party, it is a ‘lethal result of vapid reaction units . . . a safe substitute for argument instead of a prelude to it . . . insulting the intelligence of voters, and encouraging them to tune out’ (The Economist 12 May 2001, p. 60). Television has suﬀused the political process with the trends and techniques of ‘political marketing’ (Thompson 2001, p. 178). From psychology and commercial advertising to opinion polls and political campaigning, the multimedia strategies employed to get elected seem to ‘aim more and more overtly as forms of “subliminal” persuasion’ (Zolo 2001, p. 415).

GROWTH IN PERCEPTION INDUSTRIES Alongside the growth of information-hungry media companies, has come the development of the publicity apparatus. Partly fuelled by media demand for content and partly by the need of commercial and political

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operators to communicate to stakeholders, the public relations industry, worldwide, has seen a massive expansion in recent years. Despite the troubles of 2001, from the end of the technology bubble to September 11, The US-based Council of Public Relations Firms said 2001 worldwide revenues were $US4.3 billion, down 2.7 per cent from 2000, but up 19.5 per cent over 1999. 2001 US revenues for the industry were $US2.9 billion, down 7 per cent from 2000. The industry could only be described as resilient (Council of Public Relations Firms 2002). While similar ﬁgures have only recently been compiled for Asia as a whole, and are still not independently audited, sources within the industry suggest that business in the region has seen comparable growth. The PR industry in the region represents only a small proportion of global business, with Asia including Japan probably accounting for between 10 per cent and 15 per cent of worldwide income. The events of 2001 adversely aﬀected the PR business in Asia, bringing about consolidation and job losses. Nevertheless, the industry cleaved to the bosom of political elites across the region, eager to hone their public image. The industry in Asia proved tenacious in the face of the global diﬃculties: the top ﬁve companies earning a total of almost $US90 million in 2001 (PRWeek 2002). As we will see in Chapter 9, the PR industry, like the communications media it feeds, is here to stay. Together, they are leaving an indelible impression on Asia and Asian politics as politicians become ‘increasingly sophisticated at manipulating their public images, [while making] politics more open and accessible than ever before’ (Thompson 2001, p. 173). The move to central stage of the mass communications media aﬀords the misen-scene to this growth in the importance of the perception industries and their increasing role in society. And, as the media environment becomes increasingly complicated and the physical barriers to communication dissolve, so these developments are heightened. It is to these developments we now turn.

MEDIA TRENDS: GLOBALIZATION, CONGLOMERATION AND COMMODIFICATION Nothing ventured, nothing gained. . . . After all, we are in the entertainment business. Circulation went up and it stayed up. We didn’t lose money or anything like that.6

Despite the shortcomings of television, by the beginning of the twenty-ﬁrst century, a rectangular, electronic viewing screen – television or computer (the technologies are merging), large or miniature – had become an

34

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indelible symbol of globalization and the new media that had grown alongside it. Indeed, it was the symbol of the mediated world. And, given convergence strategies, the Internet, television’s natural sibling, was underlining, even reinforcing the dominance of the television as the symbol of global media growth and inﬂuence. And, the limitations of television are further compounded by wider industry trends. As the media and entertainment industry has grown, and major media organizations extended their global reach, the tendency toward commodiﬁciation and commercialization, corporate conglomeration and the concentration of ownership, have intensiﬁed, fuelled by deregulation and technological development. As governments around the world embraced the free market, media conglomerates were able to extend their global reach. The move into China at the turn of the century by AOL, had its roots in a merger frenzy ﬁred by US industry deregulation in the early 1980s, a process which continued through into the new century. The $US350-billion merger in 2000, between Time Warner and Internet giant America On Line (AOL) created, at the time, the world’s largest media company, yet was just one milestone in the growth and spread of the global entertainment giants. The growth and changes in the ownership of the media have gone hand in hand with its globalization. Indeed, fuelled by deregulation and technological development the media, in particular television, has been one of the most visible signs of this process. Just 15 years ago, many of the global television networks were in their infancy, some barely a twinkle in the eyes of their shareholders. News Ltd’s Sky Television, and what became its Asian subsidiary, Star TV, the BBC’s global television operation, BBC World, and business news operation CNBC had not been formed, and the adolescent CNN was still a few years from the Desert Storm conﬂict in the Middle East, the coverage of which marked its coming of age. By the turn of the century, the creation of the global media giant was secured. Following a decision in the District of Columbia, US Federal Appeals Court in February 2002, industry consolidation looked set to continue unabated, allowing the ‘concentration of media capital through competition’ (Keane 1991, p. 71). The Court decision removed the block on media companies owning both cable systems and local broadcasters in the same market, thereby accelerating global media mergers by allowing ‘new value to be extracted from local [US] TV station operations’ (Wolf 2002). By the turn of the century, the three major owners of cable channels in the US – Time Warner Inc., Viacom and Disney – accounted for two-thirds of all cable advertising revenues, and a similar process was happening in Europe. In the ﬁrst half of 2000, the volume of mergers in global media, Internet and telecommunications totalled US$300bn, triple the ﬁgure for

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the ﬁrst six months of 1999. It is these sort of numbers that leave the nation state wondering how long it can remain relevant, particularly with governments around the world embracing the litany of the free market, allowing media conglomerates to extend their global reach (Golding and Murdoch 1996, p. 21). The major media conglomerates like Walt Disney Co. (ABC, ESPN – 2005 annual revenues $US32 billion), Viacom (CBS, MTV – 2005 revenues $US10 billion), News Corp (Fox, Harper Collins Weekly Standard London Times Direct TV – 2005 revenues $US26 billion), GE (NBC, Universal, Vivendi Universal Entertainment – 2005 annual revenue $US150 billion, but not a pure media play, NBC Universal 2005 revenues were about $US15 billion), Comcast (the biggest cable ﬁrm – 2005 revenues $US22.3 billion), Sony (2005 revenues $US64 billion, again not a pure media play – revenues for games, ﬁlms and music amounted to about $US19 billion in 2005), and Bertlesmann (2005 revenues €18 billion), were among those scrambling to match up to Time Warner’s size and reach (2005 revenues $US44 billion). The smaller media companies were less able to survive a slump in advertising revenues, making easy pickings for the media giants. The future for independents looked particularly shaky. Consolidation, therefore, has been a key characteristic of the media industry. The ﬂurry of media mergers that took place in the 1980s and 1990s, as essentially a defensive response, borne out of fear of uncontrolled competition, became a process where ‘more and more assets are falling into fewer and fewer hands’ (The Economist 13 April 2002, p. 11). In the media business, size does matter. The hefty costs and risks involved, particularly in television, mean scale is vital. Consolidation allows vertical integration, something which is important to media groups as a whole: ‘by owning both a TV show and the means to distribute it, an operator can become a forceful promoter of its own programming – and gatekeeper for others’ (The Economist 13 April 2002, p. 11). As Peter Chernin, president and CEO of NewsCorp, explained: ‘There are great arguments about whether content is king or distribution is king. At the end of the day, scale is king’ (McChesney 2001b). The winners in the new entertainment reality will be the big companies that have ‘the economic power to make the huge, increasingly expensive movies that the crowds prefer, they are best positioned to distribute and promote their content, and can easily stick out from the crowd’ (The Economist 23 May 2002, p. 63). The Big Six (Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, News Corp, GE and Comcast), have not had the hunting grounds all to themselves. New competitors have emerged on the scene. Many were new players – from Google to YouTube – and, even the world’s most valuable company, Microsoft, was keen to move into the media world. ‘Microsoft executives want the

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entertainment industry to view it as indispensable . . . Microsoft doesn’t plan to be a typical media company. It intends to become a media company by supplying the software that will deliver all forms of entertainment to any playback device’ (La Franco 2001, p. 42). Microsoft’s strategy was for its products to provide the software platform that executives use to view digital dailies of movies they were funding, that directors used to create demo reels, and that consumers used to watch video on demand, or used to listen to downloaded music. And, Microsoft continued to nudge its way into the business proper. Eager to stake its own claim on Europe’s Internet, the software giant took a $US333 million, 6 per cent stake in United Pan-Europe Communications (UPC). UPC, a small Dutch cable company controlled by US cable-mogul John Malone and his Liberty Media Corp, which had bought cable companies in France and Sweden, and with more than $US3 billion dollars in its pocket, was positioned to take its part in any industry consolidation (Baker 2001). In the US, Microsoft made agreements with three US telecom groups to reach 90 per cent of households capable of receiving broadband digital subscriber line (DSL) connections. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the agreements with Verizon, BellSouth and SBC Communications, to provide the services. Microsoft had already announced an extensive comarketing agreement with Qwest Communications, another US telecom provider. Ballmer also said the group would continue to bolster its Internet news operation, MSN’s oﬀering, by forging alliances aggressively with content providers. It already had such agreements with CNBC, the ﬁnancial news television network, ESPN, the sports service, and Disney, as well as the music operations of Sony and Vivendi (Abrahams 2001). Conglomeration was not a one way process. As companies looked for the most proﬁtable solution, there was an ebb and ﬂow in the strategy. Where Murdoch had been working to add the Internet to his global media empire, in 2005, Viacom announced plans to separate into two companies (the fast growing companies like MTV cable networks and the more mature businesses like CBS). The mature businesses, such as television and radio, were ﬁnding revenue from advertising was growing slowly and these were separated from those that were growing faster: advertising on the Internet, video games, satellite radio and selling content to people on their mobile phones. The latter was a much smaller part of the group’s operation, but Sumner Redstone, the controlling shareholder, hoped that it would extract value (The Economist 18 June 2005). John Malone made similar moves at Liberty Media, searching for value as well as a coherent story for investors – growth or value. Richard Parsons, the CEO of Time Warner, outlined a diﬀerent strategy as the company

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announced its partnership with Google in December 2005: ‘as digital technologies continue to drive industries together, the great value and opportunity inherent in Time Warner’s structure and array of premier businesses becomes increasingly clear’.7 Television’s poorer cousin, radio, also witnessed a huge consolidation in the United States. Clear Channel Communications, a San Antonio-based broadcaster topped oﬀ an acquisition spree in August 2000, with a $US23.8-billion purchase of radio station and billboard giant AMFM Inc., and a $US4 billion buyout of promotions and venue holding company, SFX Entertainment Inc. By 2001, Clear had become America’s number one radio chain, billboard owner, venue operator and concert promoter. The company had $US5.3 billion in annual revenues, operations in 64 countries from the US to Australia and New Zealand, including some 1200 radio stations, 19 television stations, 770 000 outdoor ad displays and 135 live entertainment venues. Its nearest rival had only 183 stations. Questions were raised about the company’s reach and leverage. A Denver concert promoter sued Clear in a US federal court in August 2001, accusing the media giant of monopolistic and predatory practices, including claiming that Clear Channel’s promotion arm blocked other concert promoters from publicizing their shows on Clear Channel’s radio stations. Clear Channel’s CEO, L. Lowry Mays, in a Business Week article defended Clear’s strategy: ‘Big is not bad. Our interest is not in squeezing the little guy out, but we want to expand our business the best we can’ (Forest 2001, pp. 77–8). The consolidation process in the US did not unroll without some resistance. Despite the Appeals Court Rulings in early 2002, and the seeming deregulatory bent of Federal Communications Committee (FCC) Chairman Michael Powell, some powerful lawmakers in the US were pushing back. They had become alarmed at the possibility of ownership rules being dropped completely – rules which were in place to ensure diversity and prevent individual companies from amassing too much control over the US media – and they were demanding the FCC preserve the rules or give a good reason for weakening or abandoning them. As a result the FCC ordered a review of nearly all the media ownership rules, but this was seen as only likely to delay the inevitable (Dreazen 2002, p. A6). The wrangling continued as arguments swirled around the FCC and its eﬀorts to deregulate the industry, with political interest groups like the NRA trying to get content regulated, as the four big networks continued to push to be allowed to own local stations and allowing a single ﬁrm to own both a TV station and a newspaper in the same market. Republicans lowered the proposed limits for media ownership concentration from 45 per

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cent to 39 per cent, up from the historical 35 per cent. The FCC also lifted a restriction preventing a company from owning both a newspaper and TV station in all but the smallest markets, and relaxed ownership rules to allow a single company to own up to three TV stations in the largest cities. But Democrats criticized the proposals noting that the practical eﬀect of the changes demanded by the White House is to protect Rupert Murdoch’s Fox network and CBS-Viacom from having to comply with the lower 35 per cent cap.8 The argument continued when News Corp’s move to acquire a controlling stake in DirectTV parent Hughes Electronics Corp for US$6.6 billion – more than doubling its worldwide satellite TV presence to 22 million subscribers – was approved by the Republican-dominated FCC in December 2003, despite claims it would result in beneﬁcial changes in content, technology and pricing (Pasztor and Squeo 2003, p. A8). Even the New York Times – Noam Chomsky’s lead ‘agenda-setting’ newspaper for corporate America (Chomsky 1997) – was critical of the spate of media mergers, particularly the unquestioning way the media covered them. The paper’s columnist William Saﬁre claimed these mergers were covered as ‘gee whiz, which personality will be top dog, how will shareholders proﬁt, which giant will go bust’. While the NY Times was protecting its own position, Saﬁre raised an important point: how do we better protect the competition that keeps us free and diﬀerent? He said that those who claimed the Internet kept variety and competition were wrong. Much of the Internet was controlled by the giants too, leading to a ‘headlong concentration of media power in the US’ (Saﬁre 2004, p. 9). Ironically, however, media conglomerates were still, ultimately, answerable to their company shareholders, something Rupert Murdoch attested to at a News Corporation shareholders meeting in October 2006. When questioned by representatives of the conservative Parent’s TV Council and Accuracy in the Media about News Corp’s television output, Murdoch revealed that he had intervened at the personal request of a leading shareholder, the Saudi prince al-Waleed bin Talal, to query Fox News’s description of riots in Paris the previous year as led by Muslims. Murdoch said that he was concerned because he understood that many of the rioters were from an Algerian Catholic background. ‘All I said [to Fox] was “you ought to look at that and see if it’s right. If it isn’t you ought to change it” ’(Clarke 2006, p. 35).

THE MEDIA AND GLOBALIZATION While the ownership and control of these media giants might be subject to some discussion, their growing reach is not. Although this book will

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not consider in detail the massive technological advances, from analogue to digital, from coaxial cable to optical ﬁbre, from broad beam satellite to K Band, it is these technological developments that have helped the global conglomerates reach out around the world. And it is the impact of this reach that is the central concern of this book. Technological change has allowed the creation of the global media industry and, as the tyranny of distance crumbles, creating communities without boundaries in the global ﬂow of mass media products, there are political and social consequences. For, the global spread of the media conglomerates has been remarkable, creating concerns about transnational inﬂuence and widespread fears of US cultural imperialism. Despite falling numbers of hours of US television in countries like UK, Spain, Germany and Italy, and a strategy to, as CNN’s Chris Cramer described it, ‘de-Americanize’ the content, and make MTV-style-programming with ‘local content creation’ (The Economist 5 April 2003, p. 59), there was a worldwide pattern emerging – as a TV market or broadcaster matured, it tended to spend more on domestic productions or local remakes of imported formats – nevertheless the British Television Distributors Association estimated that more than 60 per cent of global trade in television exports, worth approximately $US4 billion, was controlled by the US. They may have been less visible in a country’s mainstream content due to a rise in US co-productions and the growth in the number of TV stations, but in the multi-channel world that needed cheap, long-running series ‘overall inﬂuence [was] undimmed’ (Financial Times 24 July 2003, p. 6). As a result, changes in information communication which technology has made possible are ﬁrst on the list of what Barrie Axford calls the complex and multidimensional character of globalization, and questions are raised about the shape of global society, the role of the state, and what membership means in the globalized world (Axford 1995, 1999). Transnational networks from NGOs to Islamists, combined with increasingly porous borders, have created a paradox for open societies as to governance and identity, as well as aiding both the creation of transnational identities and the disintegration of imagined communities from the Balkans to Southeast Asia. As we shall see below, instant global communications has traditional authorities talking of media imperialism and national security, in a world that is ‘more complex, increasingly centre less, and featuring a multiplication of interacting parts that are increasingly fragmented and unstable’ (Buell 1994, p. 10). To compete eﬀectively, these media companies have opted to become colossal conglomerates through mergers and acquisitions. They are increasingly criticized as cartels, operating globally with little regulation or

40

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

social responsibility, and strongly inﬂuencing governments with their content. Surprisingly, perhaps, as globalization restructures both national economies and changes the media industry, there is less, not more, coverage of global trends. There is half as much international coverage on the broadcast networks as there was ten years ago according to Stephen Hess, author of International News and Foreign Correspondent. Hess surveyed 404 foreign correspondents, and concluded that coverage has declined in newspapers too: two-thirds of the largest 1900 newspapers have no foreign correspondents at all. Indeed, where there is coverage, it is the violent image that dominates half the stories in what is often called ‘bang bang’ coverage. It is about pictures not analysis and explanation. Writer Neil Hickey in the Columbia Journalism Review recounts a conversation with one Gulf War journalist who spoke of: getting a ‘rocket from New York’ – a missive telling him what competing networks were airing – ordering him to ﬁle more on various ﬁreﬁghts, regardless of their military signiﬁcance. ‘New York wants John Wayne movies,’ he said, ‘not talking heads’. (Schechter 1997)

And, truth is as much a casualty in this media war as in any other. Intentional or not, one eﬀect of what is called the information age is the continuing under-informing of the larger public, while an elite sector is inundated with more news and information than it can possibly absorb. And it is not just the media corporations that have merged: There has been a merging of business and journalistic values as well, such that the diﬀerent companies have become practically indistinguishable from one other. As the companies grow, often by taking on vast loads of debt, the inevitable downsizing and scaling back of news divisions has contributed to this sameness. (Schechter 1997)

During the run up to the war in Iraq, every major media company, Time Warner (CNN), Viacom (CBS), Disney (ABC), GE, (NBC), News Corp (FOX) and the New York Times with its new multi-platform, global ambitions was petitioning the FCC to change the regulations to allow these companies to make acquisitions that would create billions of dollars of new equity value. As public-listed companies, ‘at some level the decisions of the parent company – in this case the obvious need to avoid bitter acrimony with the Bush administration, if not to curry outright favour – became engaged with what the rest of the company is doing (if not, hello, shareholder suits)’ (Wolf 2004, p. 100).

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Critics suggest that another impact of consolidation is that alternative voices are kept out of the mainstream. Concentration of ownership ‘threatens diversity in news and other programming . . . most people still rely on a handful of media sources which are being absorbed into giant conglomerates willing to ﬂex their muscles’ (BusinessWeek 23 February 2004, p. 96). The latest round of mergers may look like good business, but they also mean fewer voices, as the concentration of media continues to ‘hurt’ the variety and quality of programs (Lowry et al. 2004, p. 38). In Asia, concerns to protect distribution have led to the sanitization of media products. Former Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten accused News Corp controlled Harper Collins of reneging on an agreement to publish his book East and West, when it looked likely to oﬀend Beijing (BBC 27 February 1998). And, Murdoch’s apparent decision on Patten’s book was echoed in the comments of Sumner Redstone, Chairman and CEO of Viacom who, when discussing eﬀorts to get MTV shown in China, was quoted as saying: ‘Of course we don’t want to oﬀend the Chinese government or the people unnecessarily . . . we try to stay away from the three T’s: Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen Square’ (Thal Larsen and Dickie 2004, p. 8). Other products, popular in Asia, stand out because they are not controversial: ‘Discovery is unique in that our content tends to be governmentfriendly’ according to the travel and nature channel’s founder, chairman and Chief Executive John Hendricks (Financial Times 25 September 2003). Increased commercialization means audiences are viewed as consumers rather than citizens, with a concomitant increase in entertainment programming, and apparent abundance oﬀering little genuine diversity and no real contribution to the creation of a meaningful public sphere, all of which are developments that are ‘bound to have serious consequences for nationstates with fragile and unstable policies’ (Chadhu and Kaviori 2000, pp. 428–9). So while new communications technology like the Internet oﬀers more space at lower entry costs, and there is programming plurality in numerical terms, what is particularly relevant to this book is that there is little genuine diversity of programming in Asia: ‘the emergence of the US-style commercialized model of broadcasting which is limited in terms of programme innovation and diversity and which contributes little to the creation of a meaningful public sphere’ (Chadhu and Kaviori 2000, p. 429). And, if Asia continues to mirror the highly competitive American TV news market where the four big broadcast networks continue to jostle with three big 24-hour cable news channels, what hope for the meaningful democratic debate? It is ‘angled, high-octane, opinionated news – not sober objectivitythat sells best’ (The Economist 3 May 2003, p. 60).

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DUMBING DOWN: CREATING A MEDIA FOR THE MASSES For, growth in size has not meant an increase in quality of content and programming. Wherever you look in the communication media, there is a feeling that content has become dumber and weaker as a pragmatic choice of publishers and broadcasters who have consciously selected quantity of readers over quality of content. Content looks formulaic, driven by audience research, enslaved to populism and the ‘dull conformity’ of sensationalism (Humphrys 1999, 18). Even editorial decisions in newsrooms seem to be made on the premise all too familiar in the television world: B.L.T. – ‘bright, light and trite’ – as ‘more emphasis is placed on entertainment, show business, scandal and prurience at the expense of more serious, challenging material like current aﬀairs, policy issues, or foreign aﬀairs’ (Barnett 1998, p. 76). Market-driven media narrows the scope of what it is possible to say publicly – appealing only to ‘those tastes that show the largest proﬁt’ (Garnham 1990, p. 120), and advertising ‘encourages a general shift away from diversity of coverage towards the packaging of “product lines” into “light entertainment” ’ (Keane 1991, p. 81). It is increasingly diﬃcult to distinguish between entertainment and information in the media (Sorlin 1994, p. 81). As media marketing executives have adopted modern techniques to create and identify an audience for their products through customer segmentation, credit scoring and feedback, seeking the ability to know their market/audience to sell to advertisers, technology, and the Internet in particular, have allowed great advances towards the Shangri La of one-to-one marketing. Thus, programming and editorial decisions are increasingly based on market research. In a world where the popular mantras revolve around branding, product placement and packaging, programming is driven by a focus-group mentality. Technological change and the proliferation of media outlets has transformed deadlines and altered the logistics of the communications media, putting journalists on a production line of content delivery. They are caught up in a seemingly never-ending circle of self promotion, cross promotion and product promotion, increasing the reliance on secondary sources like the PR profession, and changing the way stories are covered, the way they evolve, and the way they are delivered. These trends add to the apparent sophistication of the persuasion industries, and for governments in Asia and around the world, therefore, familiar with the use of advertising, their ability to get their messages across in the increasingly complicated communications environment is likely to grow in conjunction with their use of industry consultants and the latest marketing techniques.

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With ownership and news values of proprietors and major shareholders permeating the media, and the increasing role of government patronage again supplying material to overworked, information-hungry journalists, the communication revolution has not produced the much vaunted information society; rather it is dominated by a media within which independent journalism is increasingly quashed by the vested interests of the ruling elites, through a vocabulary dictated by the state, political and ﬁnancial authority. The ‘satellite slush’ (Keane 1991, p. 82), dished out by companies from Disney’s ABC News to Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV, is further denuded when the expanding transnational entertainment companies ﬁnd themselves faced by restrictive market practices laid down by authoritarian local elites. Their position is clear: when serious news threatens to muddy otherwise clear commercial waters, the pursuit of proﬁt always takes ﬁrst place. Murdoch once hailed the globalized media as sounding the death knell for dictators worldwide, and leading Internet company, Google, the motto of which is ‘Don’t do Evil’, censored its search services in order to gain greater access to China’s fast-growing market (BBC 25 January 2006). Leading media analyst James Curran, in an Internet debate in 2002, maintained that the pattern of domination in the media industry must be a source of concern to supporters of democratic pluralism. He suggested that the private concentration of symbolic power potentially distorts the democratic process: the power potentially at the disposal of media moguls tends to be exerted in a one-sided way . . . it is power that can stiﬂe competition . . . and while the abuse of state power over the media has us on a constant alert, we do not seem to be as vigilant against the abuse of shareholder power over the media. (Curran 2002)

When these media moguls look to increase market share, their ﬁduciary duties are not hostage to political scruples. Shareholder returns come ﬁrst. This was particularly obvious in the competition for access to the vitally important China market, where all international companies were expected to have a growth strategy. Yet the authoritarian state maintained a tight control over both entry to the market and over the media industry. The corporate media enthusiasm for this massive market ‘locked in by a police state’ has seen global media giants like News Corporation, Disney, Viacom and Google: trade in their scruples for a crack at the jackpot . . . [using] their market power to advance their interests and the wealth of their shareholders, and to preclude any public involvement in democratic media policy making. It is a poison pill for democracy. (McChesney 2001a)

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The media and political change in Southeast Asia

The companies like News Corp’s Star TV, that have made headway into markets like The People’s Republic of China, provide a bland diet of docudramas (TV Court), reality TV (Wanted! In China), and quiz shows (Extreme Intelligence). President of Star China, Jamie Davis, explained its new Chinese language station oﬀered ‘cool, hip, fun entertainment’, others suggest it is ‘mass market spice’ (Lee 2002, p. 22). This is a global trend. The 2001 overhaul of CNN was a classic case in point. The relaunch in August 2001 of a revamped CNN Headline News came as a reaction to falling audience numbers. 2001 second quarter numbers saw CNN’s audience down 2 per cent from the same period in 2000, while Fox News saw its audience grow 62 per cent and MSNBC, up 25 per cent. The competition had become racier, and CNN, led by Jamie Kellner, an import from Hollywood, and anchored by actress and former prime time drama face, Andrea Thompson, had been forced to move ‘unapologetically down market, broadcasting high-decibel talk shows and dressing up gossip and entertainment as news’ (The Economist 4 August 2001, p. 54). When one looks at the trends in the US, the mainstream media are ‘invading the tabloid’s territory with gossipy entertainment channels and endless chat shows that blur the distinction between speculation and news’ (The Economist 7 July 2001, p. 37). This has resulted in falling circulation and forced further consolidation of the industry. For the media giants, it has meant ‘news without facts, fame without achievement and glamour without substance . . . socially disengaged, culturally uninterested, intellectually under stretched. In short, tragically ﬂippant’ (Schoﬁeld 2002, p. 113). Dwindling resources are contributing to a change in the perspective of news coverage. Huge amounts of manpower and huge costs are involved in making of news programming. This has led to a focus on particular events that are deemed particularly newsworthy. Reuters sent more people to Iraq than to cover the US elections – some 70 staﬀ, with more than that again in the neighbouring countries (total 150). Reuters sent 160 to the Olympics in Athens in 2004. The BBC sent 200 staﬀ to Iraq and 400 to the Olympics (Burt 2004, p. 8). Serious current aﬀairs is also seen as facing its demise. Large media companies are not prepared to commit the resources necessary, and there are very few independent producers who commit to current aﬀairs. This is because these are programmes unlikely to be sold on, they are not formats which make series and, sometimes, the investigations have to be scrapped. In short, it is not an attractive commercial genre, which is why for companies like the BBC, it has been a public service core commitment. So, whether due to dwindling institutional will or dwindling public interest, this type of

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45

programming is being replaced from Sydney to Stockport by shows like Australian Channel Nine’s A Current Aﬀairs or the ‘£100 and your name on air’ story push from Channel 5 News in the UK; tabloid fare which, like newspapers, have agendas of their own and an interest in exaggeration and shock to drive up viewer numbers. Of course there are no reasons why news and current aﬀairs should be immune from the general trends within the industry. Even in the once hallowed halls of British television, producers say they are under pressure to create exciting, controversial or entertaining programmes, even if that means distorting the truth or misrepresenting views (Humphrys 1999, p. 190). Yet, in a mediated world, the news media gains particular importance as the ‘pivot between the rulers and the ruled’ (Tiﬃn 1981, p. 28). After all, ‘to make sense of the world is to exert power over it, and to circulate that sense socially is to exert power over those who use that sense as a way of coping with their daily lives’ (Fiske 1994, p. 3). With diminishing checks and balances on content, the communications media might entertain, but it increasingly does little to educate or inform. As a result, audiences looking for information on which to make considered decisions, those who might use it as a channel to register their dissent, and even the elites who could use the communications media to monitor the pulse of their community, all ﬁnd themselves poorly served. Editor-at-large and former CEO of United Press International, Arnaud de Borchgrave, suggests that the US media’s taste for domestic melodramas has blinded Americans to the new forces shaping the rest of the world. A post-9/11 poll of opinion leaders conducted by the International Herald Tribune and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press highlighted the large gap between the way Americans believe they were seen abroad and the way others saw the United States (Knowlton 2001, p. 12). De Borchgrave pointed to the lack of international coverage in the domestic American media, driven out by the slavish pursuit of proﬁt which leaves any idea of the public good as a ‘quaint concept relegated to academic debates . . . the dumbing down of the media was the slippery slope that led to the dumbing down of America’ (de Borchgrave, 2001, p. 31). With little scope for complex ideas, Asian countries are also portrayed in simple, often negative, stories, conforming to stereotypes and using international television clips that distort reality. Asia is seen in the US as a ‘risky place, the common explanation was television news images of anti-US protests and Islamic extremists with guns’ (Pesek 2003, p. B2). This is something Asian governments are aware of, and are often critical of foreign reporters for providing a poor image of their country, particularly as they compete for foreign direct investment and look to international ‘hot’ money to drive the local stock markets.

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The media and political change in Southeast Asia

Today, the combination of these factors, concentration, commodiﬁcation and globalization, means that the products of giant transnational media and entertainment companies instantaneously traverse the globe, knowing no boundaries, penetrating every realm of life in every region of the world (Cvetkovich and Kellner 1995, p. 3). There is little evidence, then, that the new wave of media ﬂowing over the global information superhighway is to be celebrated for its liberalizing, even democratizing, inﬂuence.9 As culture becomes an increasingly commodiﬁed product and the industry increasingly dominated by Western, in particular American, exports, the global media is, instead, perceived to be a steamroller, laying a path for the juggernaut of cultural imperialism. Warnings abound of ‘the destruction of traditional culture and values (under the code of modernization), and [the imposition of] a new kind of transnational, global consumer culture’ (Kellner 1990, p. 88). What has changed in today’s proﬁt-driven media industry is that even ‘quality’ products are moving downmarket, trying to build an audience. This move has been given a helping hand by the relaxation of regulatory regimes which once laid down strict criteria for the balance of programming on commercial channels, the increasing power of advertisers to determine the nature of editorial content and the extension of commercial or corporate values onto the media, partly through the inﬂuence of public relations. Historically, tabloid journalism had a long and reasonably honourable history of making the complicated accessible. Today, however, the content decisions are clearly being made on the basis that ‘more emphasis is placed on entertainment, show business, scandal and prurience at the expense of more serious, challenging material like current aﬀairs, policy issues, or foreign aﬀairs’ (Barnett 1998, p. 76).Barnett recognizes that it is diﬃcult to deﬁne and measure the process, but suggests that while the shift downmarket is linked to competition for audiences, there are other contributing factors. These, he suggests, include a relaxation of regulatory regimes which once laid down strict criteria for balance of programming on commercial channels; the increasing power of advertisers to determine content; and the extension of commercial or corporate values (including the inﬂuence of public relations) into the media. As even the serious media falls to the drive for proﬁt, there is an obsession with stars, with ratings and an ‘adoration of the on-screen talent’ (Morris 2002). This is celebrity news. Technological change and the proliferation of media outlets, transforming deadlines and changing the logistics of media products means journalists have to work much faster and with greater productivity (another reason why they become so reliant on PR).

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This has changed the way in which journalists work, the way stories are covered, and the way they evolve. Those who believe a plural media is central to the functioning of democracy maintain that issues of integrity rather than commercial imperatives should provide the foundations for any journalistic professional code of practice, while the unfettered pursuit of proﬁt in the cultural industries is ‘unlikely to produce the opportunities for knowledge and understanding that an informed, eﬀective, participatory democracy requires’ (Barnett 1998, p. 89). This seems a vain hope given the importance placed on corporate revenues.

THE ROLE OF CELEBRITY IN SOCIETY: ‘ALL IS TELEVISUAL’10 Part of that unfettered pursuit of proﬁt has led to the focus on celebrity, from the use of celebrity news and gossip to ﬁll pages and broadcast minutes, to the rise of the celebrity news anchor. This element of the commercialization of the mass media has also had a knock-on impact on the development of political visibility and, as we shall see, Southeast Asia is no exception. The result is the emergence of not only media-savvy politicians, but the personalization of politics and the emergence of the celebrity politician. It is here, then, that we should examine the nature of celebrity so as to ensure a clearer understanding of the media and political developments in Southeast Asia. The rise of the celebrity in modern society has gone hand in hand with the growth of the mass media. Symbiotically, they cohabit the entertainment economy. Entertainment and brand marketing have been grafted together, thus increasing the importance of fame. Everything from banking to religion and politics has become entertainment, as ‘the fun-focused consumer pays well to be entertained in their leisure time, and entertainment becomes, ﬁrst and foremost, the way to build image by enhancing customer experience’ (Wolf 1999, pp. 80–81). Early interpretations by Boorstin (1992) and others linked these public personalities to the growth of consumer culture, emphasizing their superﬁciality and lack of consequence. More recently, however, the work of Dyer (2004), Gamson et al. (1992), Marshall (1997), and others, has taken a diﬀerent tack. They trace the meaning of the public individual and the nature of celebrity as a constructed, but unstable, marketable commodity. In these analyses, celebrity is created by a complex negotiation between cultural producers (the media, the publicity apparatus and the celebrity) and the audience, and provides a fulcrum legitimizing the individual roles in modern consumer society/capitalist democracy.

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The attentive public forms a vital third element in a triple pillared world of media and entertainment. Audiences are ambivalent towards these ‘popularly elected gods and goddesses’ (Gamson et al. 1992, p. 265). Envy drives adoration in a tainted fantasy world where the audience longs for the adventurous and incredible lives of the celebrities, desires the fame and fortune which accompany it, and is fed by an endless pageant of novelty, excitement and gossip. And yet, the same audience reveals an almost perverse enjoyment of the fallibility of these idols. They celebrate the fall from grace revealing that: Even though these celebrities enjoy near limitless wealth, worldwide fame, and command indulgence on a scale that would make such as Cleopatra and Josephine De Beauharnais blush, they are just as subject to human frailties as the rest of us. (Foulkes 2001, p. XXVI)

A clear link emerges between the growth of the publicity apparatus and the birth of modern American consumer culture, and its roots in the newlyexpanding urban markets and the leisure business boom, with show business, the ﬁlm industry, and the star system at its heart (Gamson 1999, p. 262). The changing editorial culture means that there is a profusion of news and entertainment media available to disseminate these celebrity images. Television has developed a pervasive inﬂuence as ‘our existential emptiness sends us on a desperate quest to bring meaning to our lives . . . (that) drives us to conspicuous consumerism’ (Dixon 1999, pp. 35–6). As a result, television has emerged as the most signiﬁcant new outlet for image creation, as ‘areas traditionally perceived as non-entertainment (news in particular), come to depend on the practices of the entertainment industry, and celebrity in particular’ (Gamson 1999, p. 271). As we have already seen, in the desperate search for proﬁt, spectacle has replaced substance: [Information is] tightly controlled, channeled, and manipulated by a few giant conglomerates; what we receive at the end of the ‘news ﬁlter’ is a pre-censored, pre-digested chaﬀ . . . titillation and gossip, lacking both the style and substance of empirical factual reportage. (Dixon 1999, p. 3)

Thus the rise of infotainment in the media serves to further reinforce a cult of personality in the industry. The images mean huge sales for television, as well as for the more traditional outlets of magazines and ‘fanzines’. Television’s selective nature plays to the trend, and the increasing dominance of technology and the trend towards the commodiﬁ-

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cation of news due to corporate control of news organizations and convergence within the industry has meant the production of its own star system. The costs and logistical demands of the technology of collection and dissemination, the demands of ever-more hungry news rooms, as well as cosmetic contrivances such as ‘stand-ups’, themselves seeking to reinforce the fact that ‘we are there’, encourage the trend of reporters as celebrities (MacGregor 1997, pp. 186–7). Along with the increasingly celebrated faces that front the news reports, these media stars have become the fodder of marketing departments, promoting particular channels and media products. In the celebrity culture, where the borders between politics and entertainment dissolve, and the celebritization of politics poses complex and important questions regarding image and reality. Political leaders are, themselves, little more than celebrity endorsements for powerful elite groups and party political machinery. Public relations, media agencies and opinion polling, which themselves developed as part of the entertainment industry, now ‘provide models and mediating discourses for the organisation of contemporary political culture, in which the political leader attempts to embody the mass public aﬀectively’ (Marshall 1997, p. 240). The role of the media, and television in particular, is key in allowing politicians to create an intimacy with their public, a careful construction of political characters, avoiding the articulation of ideology or political position, so as not to alienate any elements of the electorate. ‘Television news provides the material for establishing a narrative of politics. Political leaders in this reconstruction, become leading characters in a continuously unfolding drama’ (Marshall 1997, p. 229). Political leaders are often juxtaposed with television personalities, particularly news anchors. These anchors are already familiar faces to viewers, guiding them through life’s daily confusion of information and events, inserted into the ‘construction of signiﬁcant moments’, showing control, interpreting events, and providing security in a chaotic world (ibid., 1997, p. 124). It is no surprise, then, when these personalities slip easily across the already frail frontier between entertainment and politics as we shall see they do in the Philippines. The combination of the generally enthusiastic embrace of consumer culture by the citizens of most of Southeast Asia, and where there is broad participation in the political system, has meant that competing elites use media celebrities to secure public support. Democracy is increasingly driven by celebrity culture and becomes its tool as the ‘celebriﬁcation process, pervades politics as well as star-making through image manipulation’ (Rojek 2001, pp. 184–6).

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The media and political change in Southeast Asia

DEMOCRACY AND THE NEW ICTS There is one further development in the media industry which has ramiﬁcations for politics in Southeast Asia, and it is an area in which Asia leads the world as an early adopter of technology. The ‘New Media’, the Internet and other ICT, is seen as central to the new democratic process in developing states in Asia. Therefore, some consideration of the immense changes being wrought by ICT developments is important. Almost 400 years after the ﬁrst English language private newspaper, the Corante, was published in London, dwindling revenue has analysts predicting their imminent demise as we become a digital world. In his book, The Vanishing Newspaper, Philip Meyer (2005) suggests that the last reader will recycle the last newspaper in April 2040. Certainly the global newspaper industry is in a ‘perfect storm’. ‘The State of the News Media’, an annual American research project, reports that the industry has laid oﬀ 3500 newsroom professionals since 2000, about 7 per cent of the total, and the trends in advertising make the prospects look ‘even bleaker’ (The Economist 22 April 2006, p. 8). While global newspaper sales are up by 2.1 per cent in 2004, in developed economies like the UK, sales are falling – in the UK down 4.4 per cent on 2003, as consumers look to digital communications for their information and entertainment (BBC 14 September 2005). Carat Digital, the online arm of Europe’s largest media buyer predicts 80 per cent of media consumption will be digital within three to four years. A study on advertising in the UK by GroupM, a global media buyer, shows that online advertising has grown from 1 per cent of all media advertising at the turn of the century, to more than 13 per cent in 2006 (Milmo 2006, p. 22). The upheaval in news and current aﬀairs we have already seen is about to be eclipsed by a second, bigger force for change: the demands of dealing with the new digital on-demand world, where channels will diminish in importance, while commissioning and programming by the ‘editor brands’ will grow ever more important (Brown and Wells 2006). The democratization of the media, where everybody with a computer or mobile communications device can enjoy access, not only 24/7, but able to input their own material and decide how they use the technology – the blogs, vlogs, pod casting, wikis and folkonomies or people’s journalism, is a logical extension of political and technological change and only a short step from polls, pressure groups and talk-back radio. But, it is a trend that is having farreaching eﬀects on the media industry. It is changing the interaction between the media giants and their audiences, quickening the dissipation of their audiences – gone are the days when almost all the US TV audience turned to I love Lucy or, in the UK, The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special.

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This seems to ﬂy in the face of those who suggest independent journalism is silenced by vested interests. When access to these public spaces is so easily achieved, and an obvious explosion of material is available at the touch of a keyboard button, it would seem the falling cost of computer ownership is the only barrier to producers and audience. However, while the importance of this trend should not be underplayed, the weight of impact still remains with those with the resources – including the control of major brands. Driving large volumes of traﬃc to a website is a complex marketing challenge demanding huge resources. Likewise, with time and money, it remains possible to create sizeable audiences whether at football matches, World Cups, Olympics, Hollywood, or through the ‘editor brands’ which were able to attract audiences to view major news events from elections to terrorist attacks like 9/11 and the June 2005 bombings of London Transport (Hunt 2001). Even newspapers still remain very proﬁtable despite their dwindling appeal. According to Goldman Sachs, America’s 12 biggest newspaper publishers in 2004 enjoyed a proﬁt margin of 24 per cent – double the average of Fortune 500 companies (The Economist 22 April 2006, p. 9). Bloggers and Internet pundits do seem, however, to exert a disproportionately large inﬂuence on society, as the Internet reached, ‘a tipping point in its evolutionary path . . . [with] a shift in the balance of power between consumer and provider’ (Smith 2006). While ‘active’ web users make up only a small proportion of the online population, they are increasingly dominating public conversations and creating business trends. More than half of Internet users are passive and do not contribute to the web at all, and a further 23 per cent only respond when prompted, the remainder who do engage with the net – through message boards, websites and blogs – are being heralded with helping change national conversations.11 By 2006, there were more than 35 million blogs on the Internet (Clark 2006). The number was doubling every six months with a new weblog created every second of every day (Sifry 2006). And while most bloggers only write for small audiences and many quickly lose interest, they focus attention on issues and draw coverage from established media, becoming what Glenn Reynolds, author of An Army of Davids (2006), describes as ‘inﬂuentials’. Like many of these vocal activists, they are attracting the notice of the authorities from politicians and government to large corporates, many of whom view bloggers as an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective: No target is too mighty, or too obscure, for this new and virulent strain of oratory. Microsoft has been hammered by bloggers; so have CBS, CNN and ABC News, two research boutiques that criticized IBM’s Notes software, the maker of Kryptonite bike locks, a Virginia congressman outed as a homosexual

52

The media and political change in Southeast Asia and dozens of other victims – even a right-wing blogger who dared defend a blog-mob scapegoat. (Lyons 2005, p. 128)

Where ICT development is concerned, the West, occasionally, lingers behind some of its Asian counterparts. Asia was a global leader in broadband roll-out, and it had one of the earliest examples of citizen journalism. South Korean OhmyNews was founded in 2000 as a corrective to the otherwise state-inﬂuenced press in Seoul. It made a huge splash in 2002, when its unique brand of participatory journalism by amateur writers played a critical role in the South Korea presidential race. By 2006, the company had 90 full-time staﬀers – 65 of them journalists – and some 44 000 citizen contributors. Together, they produced around 150 articles a day. Revenues in 2006 were expected to be about $US6 million, 60 per cent of which would come from online ads and the rest from the sale of the company’s news product to Internet portals, and from miscellaneous services (Moon 2006). Indeed, South Korea also led the way in rolling out broadband services to users. In 2001, the number of broadband subscribers in the country grew by 58.7 per cent from 4.1 million subscribers in 2000, to 6.5 million in 2001. As OhmyNews indicated, Koreans were fast adopters of the ‘broadband lifestyle’ spending an average of 13 hours on the Internet each week. Japan was also successful in its broadband rollout, with Taiwan seen as the next big market for broadband services, as household penetration reached approximately 20 per cent by 2001 (Internet News.com 2002). Singapore has also developed this capacity. In 2002, it was 12th out of the 53 top-wired nations according to the International Data Corp (IDC) Information Society Index (ISI), with 2 in 5 Singaporeans logged onto the Internet via broadband. The Singapore government expected that number to increase to 50 per cent of households to have broadband by 2006 (Chellam 2003, p. 1). With Internet access rapidly moving from dial-up to broadband access, Asia also claimed the world’s largest regional Internet market. With an estimated 375 million Internet users (a user penetration of 11 per cent ) by the end of 2004, Asia was maintaining its lead over Europe (292 million) and North America (227 million). Internet application in Asia continued to be led by the developed economies of the region – Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. This group has been joined by China. With a penetration of 8.5 per cent, China had a massive 111 million Internet users by the end of 2005. Driven by the continued expansion of broadband and IP services and a growing mobile sector, the Asian telecommunications market was estimated to be worth around US$300 billion in 2006. In the area of broadband

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Table 2.1 Asia – number of Internet service providers per country(2000)

China Hong Kong Indonesia Japan Malaysia Philippines Singapore South Korea Taiwan Thailand UK US

Population

No. of ISP providers

1.27 billion 7.2 million 229 million 127 million 22 million 83 million 4.3 million 48 million 22.4 million 62 million 60 million 279 million

3 17 24 73 7 33 9 11 8 15 245 7800

Source: Kawamoto (2002).

Table 2.2 Asia – computer penetration and Internet use (2003)

China Hong Kong Indonesia Japan Malaysia Philippines Singapore South Korea Taiwan Thailand US

Computers per 1000 people

Internet use per 10 000 people

16 347 10 315 105 20 483 190 n.a. 24 315

176 3359 68 3044 1505 266 2987 4025 2813 266 3466

Source: World Bank, ADB (quoted in Adams 2003).

Internet access, South Korea continued to be a world and regional leader with 70 per cent of households having a broadband connection by 2006. The two major technologies supporting broadband in Asia were Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and cable modem. By March 2006, there were 153 million DSL subscribers and 76 million cable modem subscribers across the region. China had become the biggest mobile market in the world, with 400 million mobile subscribers by April 2006, and the sector continued to

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expand at a rate of almost 20 per cent per annum. Japan also continued its reputation for innovation to maintain its global and regional telecommunications leadership, with its citizens embracing the application of wireless Internet access. By 2006, Japan had more than 79 million mobile subscribers using either NTT DoCoMo’s i-Mode or one of the other proprietary products by early 2006 (Paul Budde Communication Ltd 2006). User-generated content marks a sea change in the way ICT is being used. People are increasingly moving once more to control the technology for their own use, moving away from being passive consumers and realizing the disruptive capacity of the technology. It represents just one of the latest trends in the growth of the globalized media industry that has political ramiﬁcations. As we have seen, as the media companies have grown and technology has allowed them to extend their reach around the world, from issues of media imperialism and national security through to increasing conglomeration, commodiﬁcation and celebriﬁcation, and as Southeast Asia’s economies follow Singapore’s moves ‘on line’, the challenges to traditional elites are increasing as will be examined in the next chapter.

NOTES 1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

See Julie Tomlin (2001) and TVSpy.com (2001). The rise of reconstruction works – docudramas that restage historical events – which are increasingly popular are making it hard to determine the boundaries between fact and ﬁction. Television has always claimed to ‘enjoy a special, privileged status because of its ability to show us things minute by minute. Do we doubt what we see is “real”? . . . With age, television has become more skilful in steering the unwary away from such questions’ (Fraser 2005). Quoted in William Jr. Pesek (2003). See Frederick J. Fletcher (1991). For a summary of research see Thompson (2001). Rupert Murdoch, reported comments on the fact that the Hitler diaries published in his UK ‘quality’ newspaper The Sunday Times were forgeries; cit. Robert Harris (1986). Quoted in Joshua Chaﬃn (2005). See Business Times (2003) and The Economist (13 September 2003, p. 53). See for example Williams and Rich (2000). From Dixon (1999, pp. 47–8). Jupiter Research quoted in Bobbie Johnson (2006).

3. The Southeast Asian context The conglomeration of media ownership into the hands of transnational corporations which lack distinctive national identities and neither neither ‘reﬂect nor respect nationhood as an organizing or a regulative principle’ (Barber 1995, p. 13), oﬀers a major challenge for national governments. This encroachment is an issue which has been consistently raised by the states of Southeast Asia, particularly vulnerable to external pressure given that their economies are so dependent on foreign trade and investment. This chapter, then, examines the issues that the globalization of the media, and the ongoing technological developments that have made that globalization possible, raise for the political elites of Southeast Asia. It considers the question of whether Southeast Asia is subject to the encroachment of the global media, what eﬀect that has had on the local media industry and how any developments have impacted the perception of the challenges to regime survival. Despite the erosion of national sovereignty by the growth of global markets, the media is not simply an avenue down which march the imperial legions of cultural change (Blumler and Gurevitch 1996, pp. 132–3). While the media has a role in cultural transformation, the process is both complicated and unpredictable (Thompson 1995, p. 190). Being able to watch the ‘silicone-enhanced imperial master race’ cavort, bikini-clad, on America’s Bay Watch beaches probably does stimulate the capacity of its audience around the world to imagine alternative ways of life, but they absorb these messages in culturally particular ways. A UNESCO-sponsored study of the media trade in 1974, which showed a one-way ﬂow from the developed to the developing world had a marked impact on media studies in the 1970s, giving rise to the media imperialism approach. However, it is one that has been criticized for being simplistic. We are not witnessing the straightforward Americanizing of the global TV industry. The ‘be global, think local’ was a very successful mantra for the transnational media giants. From MTV through CNN to Disney Channel, commercial sense dictated that products were attuned to local preferences. By the turn of the century, Business Week had seven foreign language editions as part of its eﬀorts to localize the publication, with online versions customized for Europe and Asia by publisher McGraw Hill (van Duyn 2006, p. 25). 55

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In addition, around Southeast Asia, American television exports rub shoulders with home-grown output, and the domination of the Asian media is made diﬃcult, if not impossible, by a ‘complex combination of counter forces ranging from national gate-keeping policies and the dynamics of audience preference to competition from local media’ (Chadhu and Kaviori 2000, pp. 417–18). Also, local voices have developed a long reach. Since the 1990s, the region has witnessed the emergence of non-western satellite news operations like Al Jazeera and Al Monar (the Hizbollah satellite channel), as well as a few niche Asian brands. India’s ZeeTV can now be seen by the large South Asian community in Britain, and Hong Kong TVB’s library of Cantonese-language programming is standard fare in China towns from Manchester to San Francisco. The Singapore Government’s promotional television product, Channel News Asia, can be seen by Europeans on their cable television. Americans themselves have enthusiastically embraced their local versions of European reality TV shows like Survivor, Big Brother, The Weakest Link and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (The Economist 13 April 2002, p. 13). What we can see develop in Southeast Asia is a localized media industry, with localized models for ownership and control, challenged by the globalized media and other external forces, which have both helped shape the industry, the way it operates and the policies adopted by local political elites as they attempt to control access to the media space and aﬀect public perceptions.

THE ASIAN FINANCIAL CRISIS AND THE MEDIA AND THE POLITICAL FALL OUT Any consideration of the media industry and its role in political change in Southeast Asia between 1996 and 2006 must be set against the background of the Asia Financial Crisis and the impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Like the American ‘war on terror’ launched after 9/11, the impact of the Asian Financial Crisis is key to this book. The economic fallout undermined the model of the developmentalist state, associated with the successful development of Japan and describing a politico-economic system of those developing nations to which the state-led industrialization had priority, to the shaping of the society over liberal democratic ideals (Murakami 1996, p. 5f). These notions had brought remarkable economic growth to many of the countries in East Asia, such that the World Bank hailed their success as a miracle (World Bank, 1993). The success had provided legitimacy to illiberal regimes through the region.

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It also had a profound eﬀect on a local media industry which had enjoyed growth in both distribution and conﬁdence during the economic expansion of the 1980s. Increasing competition for dwindling resources meant a drive for strong headlines to move media products, while its middle class audience found its circumstances severely reduced, in some cases to levels of the 1960s, making business and business news political. International business news organizations from Bloomberg to the Dow Jones media stable, once courted by governments keen to attract investment and of the opinion they provided non-threatening programming genres, became controversial. Both the local and international media in many countries in Southeast Asia were providing relatively unfettered and often critical information to the local population of the region as the Crisis ensued, challenging the ‘sophisticated structural involvement in media business relationships and strategic manipulation of the information industry’ (Atkins 2002, p. 179). This energized Southeast Asia’s political elites and set them on a path to strengthening their policies of control which is evident almost ten years later. The Crisis was initiated by two rounds of currency depreciation in the early summer of 1997. The ﬁrst round was a precipitous drop in the value of the Thai baht, Malaysian ringgit, Philippine peso and Indonesian rupiah. As these currencies stabilized, the second round began with downward pressures hitting the Taiwan dollar, South Korean won, Brazilian real, Singaporean dollar and Hong Kong dollar. The Asian ﬁnancial crisis, which spread from Thailand to other countries in the region during the second half of 1997, plunged the countries aﬀected into deep recessions that brought rising unemployment, poverty, and social dislocation. The outbreak, spread, and persistence of the crisis also challenged some basic assumptions: the countries most strongly aﬀected were ‘tiger economies’ that had few of the weaknesses usually associated with countries that turn to the IMF for help. They had ﬁscal surpluses, high private saving rates, and low inﬂation; and in most cases their exchange rates did not seem out of line. (Lane 1999)1

At its low point the Indonesian rupiah had fallen by 86 per cent against the dollar. The currencies of Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines were all down between 40 per cent and 60 per cent. Stock markets suﬀered losses of at least 75 per cent in dollar terms. In 1998, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand saw their real GDP per head shrink by an average of 11 per cent. Thailand and Indonesia, the two worst hit, suﬀered a slump in GDP during the 1997–2002 period of around 35 per cent relative to their potential output – as bad as America’s output loss during the Great Depression in the early 1930s (The Economist 30 June 2007, pp. 83–5). As asset prices plummeted, governments countered the weakness in their currencies by selling foreign exchange reserves and raising interest rates

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which, in turn, slowed economic growth. The International Monetary Fund arranged support packages for Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea. The packages included an initial infusion of funds with conditions that had to be met for additional loans to be made available. This led, increasingly, to calls for more transparency, further challenging illiberal governments as they perceived their control under threat.

THE MEDIA AS A SECURITY DILEMMA However ambiguous the inﬂuence of media, and ﬂimsy their connections with democracy (Rodan 1998), the media and its electronic forms, in particular, are perceived to extend their inﬂuence into the national political sphere. In Thailand in 1992, the international media fuelled democracy riots, as a ‘global video howl’ (MacGregor 1997, p. 3), wailed complaint around the world, and satellite allowed BBC pictures of the riots to be back onto Bangkok streets within minutes of them being recorded. Southeast Asian governments, with a keen eye on such events, saw the relatively onedirectional ﬂow of information, analysis and interpretation from dominant political cultures as a threat to security and demanding of a policy response. Identiﬁed as a key variable in driving regional political upheaval (Atkins 1999, p. 420), these governments have been keen to quarantine what many see as the source of a contagion of internal instability (Ayoob 1995, p. 196). Security is an overriding concern for the elites in many Asian countries, and a key consideration when explaining their behaviour (Ayoob 1995, p. 191 and Job 1992, p. 66). State building is still an ongoing process in many of these states, many of which only became independent in the 1950s and 1960s. Internal security has been an obsession. So, not only have the perceptions of the elites and the regimes involved in the state-building been important in deﬁning security problems (Ayoob 1995, p. 191), but there has also been a blurring of the lines between state and regime security, and a ‘predisposition to conceive national security as regime security’ (Samudavanija and Paribata 1987, p. 12). These elites faced a colonial inheritance of ‘discontinuities and distortions’ (Job 1992, p. 69), that often resulted in low regime legitimacy (ibid. pp. 17–18), and deep ﬁssures in the social fabric of their new state, causing ‘domestic insecurity’ (Ayoob 1995, p. 190). These ﬁssures can be ethnic, religious or economic, and they often coincide, further deepening division. These new states are also vulnerable to external pressures due to their relatively weak position on the global stage. Institutions, as well as ideas and

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values, particularly those bound up in the process of modernization, have further destabilizing eﬀects (Ayoob 1995, p. 37). The global asymmetry in the terms of interaction between North and South, produced by a combination of economic and technological weakness with military and political inferiority on the part of the Third World not only adds to the psychological insecurity of the Third World State elites, but also makes Third World state structures and regimes highly permeable to a large number of external actors, ranging from international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (both dominated by the major industrial powers), through the advanced industrialized states, to the multinational corporations. (Job 1992, p. 75)

So security can be deﬁned in relation to the ‘challenges to the sustainability and eﬀectiveness of states and regimes’ (Ayoob 1995, p. 11), challenges that are both internal and external, and can extend to ‘other types of vulnerability, whether economic or ecological . . . if they become acute enough to acquire political dimensions and threaten state boundaries, state institutions, or regime survival’ (ibid.). The expansion of the media and entertainment industry, and the growing reach of international media companies during the 1980s and 1990s were seen as oﬀering a challenge to the ‘sustainability and eﬀectiveness of states and regimes’ (ibid.), in the region. The spread of the communication media and the perceived loss of state control over the ‘technologies of social circulation by which [the region’s elites] ﬁght to promote and defend the interests of their respective social formations’ (Fiske 1994, p. 4), acquired political dimensions. It was, and is, perceived as threatening state boundaries, state institutions, or regime survival and leads to what Job (1992) and others suggest is a reworking of the classic international relations deﬁnition of a security dilemma. The lack of autonomy and the permeability of these states create an environment of insecurity, preoccupying the elites trying to counter these pressures (Job 1992, p. 36). This is exacerbated when regime legitimacy is linked to overall security and prosperity. The pursuit of economic development creates further instability: cross-border information ﬂows must be weighed against information control, global advertising and consumerism against national ﬁnancial needs, foreign ideas and values against traditional mores and beliefs. The porosity of the state also increases, further diminishing its autonomy, as it becomes a part of the global economy (Samudavanija and Paribata 1987, p. 12; Job 1992, pp. 4–5). And just as global economic development is uneven, so diﬀerent groups within the state prove more able and more prepared to embrace the changes this development entails. The social transformation results in challenges for

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the regime, from the emergence of new interest groups, internal migration, and a younger, more demanding, literate, educated and increasingly urban population. Many also feel dislocated and disenfranchised by the changes around them: uncomfortable and unsuccessful in the new and the modern, they turn back to traditional value systems, causing further conﬂict (Samudavanija and Paribata 1987, pp. 6–9). Likewise, some groups are better at accessing the spaces provided by the media than others. The media is a political resource for competing political forces. The domestic media develops within the political culture, that set of attitudes, beliefs and sentiments that give order and meaning to a political process and that provide the underlying assumptions and rules that govern behaviour in the political system. It encompasses both the political ideals and the operating norms of a polity. ‘Political culture is thus the manifestation in aggregate form of the psychological and subjective dimensions of politics’ (Pye 1966, pp. 104–5). The domestic media enjoys a similar relationship to the domestic political culture as to the social culture more generally: as it is impacted by the environment and attitudes and beliefs present in a culture in which it exists so, in turn, it impacts that environment. And the media, as we have seen, is also subject to many external inﬂuences, not least an awareness of the practices and professions within the globalized media industry. Political elites and those who challenge their authority fully understand the inﬂuence of the communications media. In many places in the developing world, the media has been used to invent or imagine nations (Anderson 1991; Gellner 1983). Thus, it is fought over by those who understand that it is one of the technologies of power, oﬀering the ability to control political messaging and, therefore, perceptions.

THE MEDIA AND POLITICAL CHANGE In Southeast Asia, governments view information communications technology as an important element in political change. From the dusk of colonial power, when newspapers expanded the public sphere allowing space for the ﬂow of ideas of nationalism and independence, the media and other communications technology has been a resource to be fought over by competing political elites. The move towards democracy, however, is not as straightforward as it is made out to be by those who support the argument that economic development in the form of industrialization creates the conditions for the transition to, and the consolidation of, democracy. Democracy is most obviously demonstrated through elections in which citizens choose their representatives. However, it is clear that, from a

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Southeast Asian perspective, ‘democracy’ is not a clear-cut category. Regular elections, by themselves, are not enough for a country to be ‘democratic’, as countries like Singapore and Malaysia show. Instead, a state’s democratic credentials involve assessing many, if not all, aspects of governance and the political system. Classically, Robert Dahl (1971) maintained democracy requires not only free, fair and competitive elections, but also the freedoms that make elections meaningful (such as freedom of organization and freedom of expression), alternative sources of information and institutions to ensure that government policies depend on the votes and preferences of citizens. Thus, democracy is not just about majority rule, but requires political freedoms so there can be debate and independent decision making, as well as limitations on power and the independence of institutions such as the judiciary and the media. Commonly recognized essential components of democracy include: multi-party electoral competition, freedom of association, freedom of movement, independent media, and the rule of law. Achieving such freedoms may be an evolutionary process which aﬀords diﬀerent patterns of democracy. Thus Diamond (2002) draws a distinction between electoral democracy and electoral authoritarianism, suggesting that what separates them is the freedom, fairness, inclusiveness and meaningfulness of their elections. Explanations for the evident waves of democratization in the late twentieth century that implied an inevitable development must be seen as simplistic (Huntington 1991). Studies by Cardoso and Faletto (1980), O’Donnell (1973), and others have demonstrated that economic development is as easily compatible with authoritarian regimes as it is with democratic ones. Huntington (1991), suggests that democratic consolidation is facilitated under conditions of an expanding economic system, such that it generates necessary surplus resources that can be used for redistribution, thereby legitimizing the democratic process. Yet, countries such as Singapore and Malaysia are authoritarian systems that maintain legitimacy by the relatively equitable distribution of resources from their expanding economies. Similarly, any suggestion that there is a natural expansion of democracy looks ill-considered as democracy, as we shall see illustrated particularly well in the Thailand case (Chapter 7), ebbs and ﬂows, and may be lost completely. Nor does it seem that the ideals of democracy are necessarily universal, and could rather be a result of the eﬀective export of these ideas through the political and cultural dominance of Western liberal democracies. In particular, questions have been raised as to the disproportionately low number of Muslim states with democratic government. Whitehead (2002) suggests

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democratization is a complex, long-term process, the outcome of which is not certain – more than just the creation of democratic institutions, it is a social construction informed by past experiences which govern behaviour such that competing actors do not always have the incentive to behave ‘civilly’. He suggests the success of democracy is not just about quantiﬁable terms like the Freedom House indices, but what people think of its performance. This, he maintains, is a function of whether the government meets the popular expectations, plus the society’s political culture which inﬂuences the expectations people bring to the new democracy. Another useful analysis is that provided by Di Palma (1990). Di Palma suggests that by focusing on the objective conditions that make democracy probable, sociological and historical theories of democracy often lose sight of what is possible. He explores those conciliatory political undertakings that political actors engage in to make the improbable possible. His emphasis is on political crafting: in regard to constitutional choices, to alliances and convergences between contestants, to trade-oﬀs, to the pacing of the transitions. Di Palma also examines the reasons – stalemate, the high cost of repression, a loss of goals, international constraints and inducements – that may motivate incumbents and non-democratic political actors to accept democracy. Di Palma suggests that, as we can see in post-Suharto Indonesia (Chapter 6), ‘what starts as an eﬀort by members of the old elite to rescue the status quo may take an unintended direction as the members of the elite with more innovative dispositions join in’ (Di Palma 1990, p. 34). Nor is the development of democracy only suited to particular conditions, as modernist developmental theory suggests. Friedman (1994), recognizes that democracy is one of many political possibilities, and one which demands a broad consensus between a number of political contenders: The myth of either-or tyranny or freedom, authoritarianism or democracy, the terror or the old order, the ‘outs’ replacing the ‘ins’, all obscure the reality of democratization as a process of broad coalitions that cut across the antagonistic opposites of established elites and new challengers and thereby facilitates peaceful institutionalization, legitimating democracy by involving much of the old in the new. (Friedman 1994, p. 43)

Friedman further maintains that the evidence of East Asia, with its cultural diversity, proves the ability of democratic norms to take root in many diﬀerent types of cultural traditions. He suggests that Taiwan and South Korea are particularly good examples, underlining the fact that democracy is not a regionally distinct phenomenon that can only develop in Western Europe. After all, political change does not occur in a national vacuum. Increasingly, in the context of globalization, there are external inﬂuences:

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‘foreign factors – defeat in war, conquest, allies, foreign pressure, foreign models – often have large impacts on democratization’ (Friedman 1994, p. 33). Moreover, with democratization in Asia best understood as part of a global process, there is a subliminal role for global communications. As Friedman suggests, democratic aspirations have become a common belief, if not a common understanding, and the beginning of a process of building a democratic political culture. Thus democratic ideals can be the consequence rather than the cause of democratization, and the democratization of East Asia is ‘best understood as part of the global process’ (Friedman 1994, p. 23). One needs only to look at the signiﬁcant increase in the public understanding of democracy brought in Indonesia by the voter education programmes to see that, for many, democratic principles ‘can only be internalized by actually working within the democratic process’ (Dalton and Shin 2003, p. 19). The ebb and ﬂow of political change becomes more easily understood when democracy is seen as a ‘matter of rules for mediating plural and conﬂicting interests’ (Di Palma 1990, p. 258). The comparative speed with which it has been introduced in many developing countries means they lack the necessary institutions or these institutions, newly established, are not tested. As a result, when democracy is introduced abruptly and against the wishes of some players, ‘the “losers” will resist it, and the “winners”, will be less than fully at ease with its methods. Thus consolidation is placed in doubt, while backsliding is an ever-present possibility’ (ibid.). What this book underlines, however, is the central part the media plays in this political process as it unfolds in Southeast Asia. As we shall see in each of the case studies from Southeast Asia, local elites craft expectations via the media. They also face pressure for change through the conscious and unconscious spread of ideas through the globalized media, but they are becoming increasingly adept at using the communications media as a resource to inﬂuence and persuade as they indulge in political crafting. So, as we will see, while there is also an increasing use of information communication technology for the expression and coalescing of opposition pressure, the role of the media remains ambiguous but important as the political elites meet the growing demands of pressure groups emerging within society.

ASIA RESPONDS: COMPETING FOR ACCESS Most Southeast Asian governments have been used to controlling the ﬂow of news and information across and within the borders of their own countries. Identiﬁed as a key variable in driving regional political upheaval

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(Atkins 1999, p. 420), these governments in the twentieth century have been keen to quarantine the source of the contagion of internal instability. Close associations with media organizations created during the rise of nationalism and the struggle for independence was further cemented by commercial and legal means in the post-colonial era. And among many journalists around the region, helping their country develop became a priority as opposed to scrutinizing those leading the development. In Malaysia and Singapore, in particular, coverage was seen as subject to ‘public good’,2 as opposed to the ‘libertarian’ position of the Western media (Siebert 1956). The post-colonial state’s nation-building ambitions and control strategies have made Southeast Asia one of the world’s most informationsensitive regions (Atkins 1999, p. i). The 1980s saw some loosening of these controls. Hectic economic growth sprouted new local media operations, and the emerging middle classes became a target for an inﬂux of foreign media companies keen to tap the potential market. With governments in the region as keen to reap the beneﬁts of being part of the global economy as they were to continue to control the ﬂow of information across and within their borders, policy confusion led to general growth in the industry in Asia. As well as the inﬂow of international print titles to Asia seeking advertising revenue on the back of economic growth (Rodan 1998, p. 127; Wong 2000, p. 127), the 1980s were also marked by a major structural shift in electronic media in Asia. Developments in technology, including international satellite television services and later networked computer systems (resulting in the creation of the Internet), meant it was possible to circumvent oﬃcial state television systems. Global broadcasters like the BBC, CNN and CNBC threw down a challenge to the monopoly of domestic statecontrolled information sources. With the resulting radical changes, the media increasingly became a ‘political battleground – an important contested space for conﬂicting forces and aspirations’ (Atkins 1999, p. 4). In an eﬀort to attract foreign investment and create the infrastructure which would make them players in the new global economy, Asian states went head to head to become the region’s telecommunications and ﬁnance hub. Satellites became the must have on the Asian developmental agenda; symbols of a new, Asian age. Indonesia’s Palapa which carried CNN, and Asia Sat which carried regional Star Television (established by Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka Shing’s son Richard in 1989, and sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News empire in 1993), spurred regional governments into commissioning new satellite and cable systems by either state agencies or compliant national companies. Before the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997–98, commentators saw a pattern of surging economies bringing sweeping changes to the media in

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the region, with a generation of middle-class consumers driving a boom in media products, and a proliferation of new media channels, both print and broadcast. This was particularly evident in the region’s largest economies. In Korea, the number of daily newspapers had grown to 125, from 60 in 1988. Over that same period, the number of television channels grew from three to four terrestrials, plus 26 cable services and one satellite broadcaster. In Taiwan, 278 newspapers had been registered since 1988. More than 150 new radio stations joined the 33 broadcasting in 1993. Cable TV, ‘legalized’ in 1993, was reaching about 60 per cent of households, which could select programmes from more than 50 channels. And Japan, the largest market, gained more than 200 new television channels, with the government forecasting an additional 200 by 2005. And, in Asia, the growth of TV had not eclipsed newspapers and magazines. Almost 30 000 consumer magazines and more than 2000 newspapers were being published in Asia, and more titles were launched each year. Even so, it is undoubtedly the rise of regional satellite broadcasters, whose programmes could be distributed either direct to homes or via cable, that had the greatest impact. Star Television’s service grew to more than 50 Asian countries and 300 million homes, and many of Asia’s TV networks were trying to become regional broadcasters. Hong Kong’s leading station, TVB, is one example. Successful in Taiwan, it announced deals in Thailand and the UK. Even formerly torpid broadcasters, like China’s CCTV and India’s Doordarshan, were becoming satellite services and trying to compete with more modern programming. Of course, the Asian Financial Crisis had its casualties in the media industry. One symbol of tightening revenues was the merger of business news operations ABN and CNBC Asia in December 1997, in an eﬀort to ‘cut losses and share the costs of increasing their global operations’ (Shrikhande 2001, p. 22). But it was early in the new century, as the global economic reverse deepened the problems in Asia, that the local media industry really felt the pinch. Already weakened by the Asian Financial Crisis and now having to contend with the impact of 9/11 and the need to rationalize some of the expansion associated with the Internet and technology bubble, there was a shakeout, particularly in the region’s two major media hubs, Singapore and Hong Kong. By the beginning of 2002, regional advertising expenditure on regional print titles was down almost 20 per cent from the similar period in 2001 (Oliver 2001). In Hong Kong, Next Media, the publisher of Next Magazine and Apple Daily announced redundancies, as did the South China Morning Post and the Hong Kong iMail, the two English-language dailies. In Singapore, Singapore Press Holdings cut staﬀ in its television and Internet operations, rebranding its English-language channel in the face of poor

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ratings, and closing one of its newspapers, newly-born out of government liberalization of the industry (Project Eyeball).3 And it was a similar story around the rest of the region. For example, UBC, Thailand’s monopoly pay television provider, reduced its staﬀ by 25 per cent in 2001, as part of a broader cost-cutting eﬀort in the face of the weakening baht (Kazmin 2001). Moreover, the big international media names in Asia did not escape unscathed. Time Inc. and Dow Jones Inc. were forced to make cuts. Dow Jones reorganized its various publications in Asia in order to share resources, while Time’s Asiaweek, which closed in November 2001, was the most high proﬁle casualty of the slump in advertising (Tan 2001, p. 2). Despite these problems there was still some positive news for shareholders. By April 2002, News Corporation’s Star TV, the pan-Asian broadcaster, announced an operating proﬁt for the ﬁrst time (Jacob 2002). Star TV was able to reverse a 10-year losing streak by extending its reach into ‘every nook of India’s broadcast sector, from local language production to old-fashioned free-to-air TV’ (Prystay 2004b). In addition, adspend in Asia rose annually from 2002, to more than $US90 billion by 2006, with predictions it would reach $US106 billion by 2008 (Zenith Optimedia 2006). And, Asia was still seen as the most likely source of growth for the global media giants. Cathleen Black, President of Hearst Magazines ‘asked where future growth at Hearst will come from, Black has one word: “Asia”. She pointed to the size of the potential market in China where Hearst had a joint venture with IDG, the technology publisher’ (Grande 2003, p. 11). So, while the short-term numbers had to be revisited in the wake of the events on 11 September, 2001, in the long term, the worldwide appetite for the output of the communications media was set to continue with Asia leading the way. International news publications, for example, showed they could generate strong revenue streams from the region. Advertising revenues for Time Asia for 2000 were almost $US65 million dollars, up more than 31 per cent from the previous year. For the Asian Wall Street Journal, the number was slightly more than $US63 million for the same period, up almost 38 per cent. The total revenue for the 18 publications named came to more than $US362 million, a rise of more than 22 per cent over 1999 (MEDIA 2001, p. 21). Despite the serious ﬁnancial crisis, Asia’s appetite for media and entertainment products did not diminish after 1997. Indeed, in May 2002, a new media battle was brewing between international heavyweight brands, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and the International Herald Tribune, both globally and for the Asian market. The FT launched an Asian version, Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones had plans to beef up its regional operation and, when the New York Times acquired full

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ownership of the International Herald Tribune, it expected to turn it into a global newspaper capable of competing with both the FT and the WSJ (Cassy 2003). Meanwhile, Asia, with its 472 million television households and 180 million homes passed by cable, in broadcasting terms, compared very favourably with both the US (101 million and 98 million), and Western Europe (145 million and 87 million) (Hansen 2001, p. 34). In South Korea, alone, broadband subscribers grew from 800 000 in 1999 to 4 million in 2000 (Rohwer 2001, p. 54). By the turn of the century, Hong Kong, Beijing and Singapore, were beginning broadband experiments, often ahead of many European markets and, as deregulation continued across Asia, the growth continued.

TELEVISION IN ASIA Asian media trends, moreover, are not unlike those in the West. Media researchers, Nielsen, have demonstrated the ubiquitous move away from newspapers and towards television. Among aﬄuent business people, 15 per cent fewer are reading a daily newspaper. The research also showed the boom in penetration of pay-TV around the region in recent years, and in the huge increase in localized content and local-language channels in Asia. Asia’s elite are watching cable TV more often and for longer. In a study of viewing habits, 42.7 per cent of those surveyed said they had watched some cable or satellite television the previous day, up from 31.4 per cent in 2000. More than 73 per cent said they had watched in the last month, up from 57.7 per cent at the time of the previous survey. Average time watching over the past seven days had risen from 54 minutes to 59 (Bowman 2003, p. 3). Whether watched at home or in more communal settings, in the Asia Paciﬁc, television dominated media consumption. James Lull’s reﬂection on television’s impact in cramped living conditions in Mainland China, in what he calls the ‘public home space’, can be seen in Asia more broadly. Here television is: ‘necessarily immense, aﬀecting the most basic assumptions and practices of daily life’ (Lull 1995, p. 29). NFO World Group’s audience research done in 2001 indicated that viewers in the region spent approximately twice as much time in front of ‘the box’ compared to reading newspapers and magazines. The research found the allocation of leisure time to television and the print media was generally consistent across Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia. Viewers in Hong Kong and Singapore, for example, spent an average of 2.5 hours per day watching television, and an average of 1.4 hours reading newspapers and magazines.

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The citizens of Taiwan and the Philippines spent the least time reading print publications – only 1.2 hours (Philippines daily television consumption was 2.8 hours, slightly higher than Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia). Thailand topped the television watchers charts with 3.2 hours of television viewing a day, although the residents of the three major Chinese cities, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, were fast catching up, with an average of 2.4 hours of television a day, and a signiﬁcantly low 1.3 hours of newspaper reading (MEDIA 6 July 2001, p. 4). By comparison, the average American adult spent 16.17 hours on the phone a month, listened to 90 hours of radio and watched 131 hours of TV (4.2 hours a day). The 53 per cent of the US population that used the net spent more than 25 hours online a month at home and more than 74 hours on the net at work (Lyman and Varian 2003). In this environment, Asia’s pay-television industry has also enjoyed a boom. By the end of 2004, there were 205 million subscribers according to Fusion Consulting,4 with a total of more than $US25 billion in revenues. Dominating consumption are the large economies of Japan, India and China, with content localization a key driver of the recent upturn in fortunes of pay TV (AMCB September–October 2005, p. 16). Indeed, despite the lingering economic problems caused by the triple-play of the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997, the bursting of the Tech Bubble in 2000, and the market volatility after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the industry analysis by Asian Market Intelligence showed renewed growth in ownership of telecommunications and IT products in the ﬁrst decade of the twenty-ﬁrst century, as well as in technology products among aﬄuent adults in the region. There was also a growth in Internet access and use, as well as growth in penetration and use of cable and satellite television (see Tables 3.1–3.8).5 Even allowing for investor’s licence these were big numbers, and media companies worldwide are chasing the increasing number of Asian subscribers. Not only were the leading international publications ﬂourishing, other media businesses were looking to grow their Asian footprint, reﬂecting the pull the potential regional market presented. In 2000, electronic information service Reuters, mapped out an Asian growth strategy. It had taken on 200 journalists in the region that year, putting more than 10 per cent of the company’s total staﬀ in Asia, contributing about 15 per cent of global proﬁts. Reuters said further expansion was planned, much of it focused on the Internet (Lee 2000). Analysts were very bullish about the growth of that medium. In 2001, the number of Internet users in China was forecast by Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs to reach 330 million by 2005 (Rohwer 2001, pp. 54–5).

The Southeast Asian context

69

Table 3.1 Cable in Asia – comparative costs (2004) Singapore – Starhub – $S35 pcm Malaysia – Astro – RM49.95 ($S22) Thailand – UBC – TB1412.97 ($S57.90) 29 channels HK – I cable – $HK308 ($S59.3839) UK – Sky – $S100.80 100 channels US $S66.50 Source: Local research.

The late 1990s, however, also marked moves by some Southeast Asian governments to try to reign in this ﬂow of cross border information. This was done often by the familiar methods of commercial inﬂuence and legal controls, but also the adoption of new strategies such as diluting what was deemed unacceptable by drowning it in uncontroversial competition. There was a growth in local programming and content, much of it as bland and uncontroversial as that produced by its international counterparts, neutered by global industry trends. The agenda of governments around the region was clear – to reassert their gate keeping strategies: The development of information, social communication and mass media under Repelita VI is important for the realization of a conducive climate to support the expansion and progress of the people in their participation in and responsibility for the national development, the socialization of Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution in all aspects of the people’s life. It is also aimed at a healthy, free and responsible press.6

By 2002, Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), the journalists’ pressure group, described Asia in its Annual Report (2002a) as the World’s Largest Prison for Journalists. RSF said that, in 2001, the Asia-Paciﬁc region had the worst results in the world for press freedom violations: the largest number of journalists killed, imprisoned, threatened and attacked, and the largest number of countries where the right to pluralist information was not guaranteed. The report stated that even in the three Southeast Asian countries where press freedom was respected, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia, the situation had deteriorated. In Thailand, Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, and those close to power, renewed state interventionism in the media. Journalists of both the private and public press have been under direct and indirect pressure from the government of this ‘Asian Berlusconi’, known for not accepting criticism. Violence against journalists had increased with two Thai journalists killed that year.

70

2000

0.81 0.03 19.32 – 0.01 1.36 25.95 0.02 0.85 0.03 7.70 2.60 0.01 0.76

Market

Australia China Hong Kong India Indonesia Japan Korea Malaysia New Zealand Philippines Singapore Taiwan Thailand A-P Pen/HH

2.76 0.19 30.01 0.002 0.02 6.06 49.56 0.18 2.01 0.07 13.67 15.29 0.02 1.83

2001 4.84 0.89 46.62 0.01 0.03 16.21 64.62 0.38 3.98 0.15 22.52 29.53 0.05 3.35

2002 9.21 2.89 56.78 0.02 0.05 28.96 67.96 2.09 6.48 0.26 36.91 38.44 0.12 5.39

2003 19.66 6.02 67.04 0.06 0.08 39.35 70.72 5.08 11.67 0.42 45.59 47.63 0.96 7.92

2004

Table 3.2 Asia Paciﬁc broadband Internet penetration of total households (%)

34.61 9.26 73.06 0.42 0.11 46.87 71.07 9.09 23.24 0.73 54.64 56.03 1.95 10.37

2005

47.68 12.63 75.95 1.00 0.22 54.66 80.78 15.35 35.06 1.34 63.98 60.56 2.96 13.12

2006

57.33 15.66 78.40 1.78 0.43 60.97 83.52 22.27 44.42 2.11 70.92 64.62 4.01 15.49

2007

71

65.32 19.06 80.28 2.76 0.72 65.01 84.93 29.33 51.46 2.83 76.58 68.13 5.12 17.94

Australia China Hong Kong India Indonesia Japan Korea Malaysia New Zealand Philippines Singapore Taiwan Thailand A-P Pen/HH

Source: Media Partners Asia (2006).

2008

Market 70.70 21.97 81.54 3.84 1.06 68.79 85.63 35.18 56.87 3.63 80.79 70.81 6.35 20.10

2009 74.36 24.92 82.47 4.98 1.44 71.77 86.11 39.77 60.85 4.46 83.89 73.27 7.66 22.24

2010 76.54 27.58 83.21 6.15 1.82 73.63 86.44 43.28 63.96 5.32 86.66 76.12 8.94 24.16

2011 77.37 30.19 83.55 7.33 2.15 75.21 86.48 45.67 67.54 6.19 88.63 79.25 9.99 26.03

2012 77.79 32.72 83.77 8.50 2.41 76.38 86.50 47.05 69.75 6.95 90.08 81.57 10.84 27.80

2013 77.88 34.86 83.86 9.65 2.63 77.10 86.56 47.82 70.97 7.45 90.94 83.34 11.61 29.33

2014

77.91 36.65 83.87 10.62 2.80 77.60 86.65 48.31 71.64 7.76 91.38 84.46 12.30 30.61

2015

72

26.18 36.69 66.33 60.79 1.52 21.67 92.79 36.52 47.87 7.73 42.95 87.42 3.35 38.97

Australia China Hong Kong India Indonesia Japan Korea Malaysia New Zealand Philippines Singapore Taiwan Thailand A-P Pen/TVHH

2007

27.71 38.49 71.51 64.93 2.26 23.12 92.86 39.26 50.34 7.74 47.18 90.01 3.75 41.23

Source: Media Partners Asia (2006).

2006

Market 29.15 40.14 73.43 70.22 3.14 24.77 94.39 42.09 54.02 8.22 53.51 92.88 4.27 43.71

2008 30.55 41.77 74.13 75.10 4.15 26.49 95.90 45.11 57.92 9.07 59.10 94.98 4.83 46.15

2009 32.00 43.18 75.12 79.82 5.28 28.24 97.60 48.20 61.60 10.22 64.60 96.41 5.51 48.46

2010 33.26 44.36 75.94 83.61 6.34 30.01 98.62 51.32 65.29 11.43 69.80 97.21 6.19 50.43

2011

Table 3.3 Asia Paciﬁc multichannel pay-TV penetration of TV homes (%)

34.17 45.29 76.59 86.39 7.21 31.83 99.19 53.57 68.13 12.34 73.61 97.68 6.70 51.99

2012 34.71 46.13 77.19 88.24 7.83 33.46 99.59 55.11 69.76 12.93 76.13 97.93 7.12 53.23

2013

34.95 46.69 77.42 89.19 8.24 34.78 99.74 56.00 70.46 13.24 78.11 98.07 7.44 54.03

2014

35.09 47.01 77.51 89.44 8.48 35.82 99.93 56.46 70.71 13.38 79.49 98.16 7.67 54.48

2015

73

11.89 36.62 34.50 59.19 0.59 13.26 81.42 – 2.65 7.18 42.95 83.60 0.82 36.88

Australia China Hong Kong India Indonesia Japan Korea Malaysia New Zealand Philippines Singapore Taiwan Thailand A-P Pen/TVHH

2007

12.37 38.31 32.41 61.16 0.69 14.01 81.29 – 2.74 7.07 45.45 83.69 0.83 38.49

Source: Media Partners Asia (2006).

2006

Market 12.74 39.66 29.29 62.95 0.81 14.69 80.98 – 2.85 7.03 48.37 83.72 0.84 39.86

2008 13.02 40.83 26.88 64.52 0.94 15.30 80.21 – 2.94 7.07 50.55 83.74 0.85 41.07

2009 13.18 41.67 25.62 65.75 1.08 15.84 79.30 – 3.03 7.16 52.85 83.77 0.85 42.02

2010

Table 3.4 Asia Paciﬁc cable TV penetration of TV homes (%)

13.24 42.19 25.08 66.75 1.20 16.33 78.34 – 3.05 7.29 54.41 83.82 0.86 42.72

2011 13.28 42.45 24.72 67.50 1.29 16.77 77.58 – 3.08 7.36 55.33 83.89 0.86 43.20

2012 13.29 42.58 24.46 67.96 1.36 17.19 77.17 – 3.11 7.40 55.88 83.98 0.87 43.53

2013

13.28 42.38 24.18 68.16 1.41 17.56 76.99 – 3.14 7.38 56.80 84.04 0.87 43.60

2014

13.28 42.07 23.97 68.19 1.44 17.87 77.00 – 3.17 7.32 57.35 84.09 0.87 43.54

2015

74

14.23 – 3.42 1.60 0.93 7.47 11.37 36.42 41.38 0.55 – 0.25 2.50 1.84

Australia China Hong Kong India Indonesia Japan Korea Malaysia New Zealand Philippines Singapore Taiwan Thailand A-P Pen/TVHH

2007

15.21 – 4.01 3.74 1.57 7.57 11.58 39.14 44.47 0.59 – 0.26 2.78 2.32

Source: Media Partners Asia (2006).

2006

Market 15.90 0.11 4.38 7.19 2.29 7.70 11.68 41.58 47.42 0.89 – 0.29 3.09 3.14

2008 16.38 0.32 4.53 10.40 3.12 7.86 11.62 43.79 49.75 1.35 – 0.31 3.33 4.02

2009 16.68 0.61 4.60 13.73 4.03 7.98 11.47 45.69 51.51 1.87 – 0.34 3.60 4.99

2010 16.84 0.97 4.63 16.34 4.90 8.07 11.28 47.33 52.45 2.40 – 0.35 3.79 5.86

2011

Table 3.5 Asia Paciﬁc digital DTH satellite penetration of TV homes (%)

16.93 1.40 4.67 18.23 5.60 8.12 11.04 48.45 52.97 2.85 – 0.36 3.89 6.61

2012 16.94 1.93 4.67 19.51 6.07 8.15 10.89 49.17 53.18 3.15 – 0.37 3.95 7.28

2013

16.89 2.55 4.67 20.20 6.37 8.16 10.81 49.45 53.13 3.36 – 0.38 3.98 7.85

2014

16.85 3.09 4.68 20.36 6.54 8.15 10.81 49.56 52.94 3.51 – 0.40 4.00 8.24

2015

75

0.07 0.07 28.40 0.001 – 0.94 – 0.09 – – – 3.57 0.02 0.25

Australia China Hong Kong India Indonesia Japan Korea Malaysia New Zealand Philippines Singapore Taiwan Thailand A-P Pen/TVHH

2007

0.13 0.18 35.09 0.03 – 1.54 – 0.12 0.33 0.08 1.73 6.06 0.14 0.41

Source: Media Partners Asia (2006).

2006

Market 0.52 0.37 39.75 0.08 0.04 2.37 1.74 0.52 1.94 0.30 5.14 8.87 0.34 0.70

2008 1.15 0.62 42.73 0.18 0.09 3.33 4.07 1.32 4.47 0.65 8.55 10.93 0.66 1.05

2009

Table 3.6 Asia Paciﬁc IPTV penetration of TV homes (%)

2.15 0.90 44.90 0.33 0.16 4.42 6.83 2.51 7.06 1.19 11.74 12.30 1.06 1.45

2010 3.18 1.20 46.23 0.52 0.24 5.61 9.01 3.99 9.78 1.74 15.39 13.04 1.54 1.84

2011 3.97 1.44 47.20 0.66 0.33 6.95 10.57 5.12 12.07 2.14 18.28 13.43 1.95 2.17

2012 4.48 1.63 48.07 0.77 0.40 8.13 11.54 5.94 13.48 2.37 20.25 13.58 2.30 2.42

2013

4.78 1.76 48.56 0.84 0.45 9.07 11.93 6.55 14.19 2.50 21.31 13.65 2.59 2.59

2014

4.96 1.85 48.86 0.89 0.49 9.80 12.13 6.90 14.60 2.55 22.14 13.68 2.80 2.70

2015

76

Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia

Malaysia

Indovision

Kabelvision

Direct Vision

ASTRO #

Salim Gp, Media Nusantara Citra Across Asia Ltd (Lippo Gp.) Astro All Asia Netwks, Lippo Gp. Usaha Tegas, Khazanah Khazanah Nasional

Major Ownership

Telekom Malaysia Malaysia # Philippines Philippines First Paciﬁc; NTT Long Distance TelC# Beyond Cable Philippines Benpres Holdings, Philippine Long Distance Co. Global Destiny Philippines Solid Group Cable Dream Philippines Philippine Multimedia Broadcasting System StarHub # Singapore ST Telemedia, NTT, Media Corp.

Market

Company

75 000

25 000

285 000

Digital Video

71 000 496 000

DTH Cable

334 000

78 000

Cable

342 000

4 000

450 000

Cable

1 066 000

19 000

20 000

1 819 000

4 450 000

Broadband Tele/VOIP

422 000

71 000

2 081 613*** 2 081 613***

75 000

132 000

285 000

Video (Pay TV)

ADSL

ADSL

DTH

DTH

Cable

DTH

Platform

Table 3.7 Asia pay-TV, broadband and telecoms data (latest subscriber data)

1 633 000

########

6 404 000

Mobile

77

CP Group; Thai Trust ADSL, Fund VDSL, Cable, DTH Advanced Info ADSL Services; TOT Corp.

Thailand

Source: MPA research estimates.

Notes: Type in bold represents updated information; # denotes listed companies *** Residential subs only

ADSL

Temasek Hldgs

Singapore

Advanced Thailand Data Network Comms

Singapore Telecom # True Corp.#

5 000

568 000

5 000

400 000

7 500

489 000

421 000 1 988 000

1 775 000 8 140 000

1 822 000

78

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

Table 3.8 Asia – country IT investment (US$ per inhabitant) Japan Singapore Australia Hong Kong Taiwan Korea New Zealand Malaysia Sri Lanka PR of China The Philippines Indonesia Pakistan Thailand India Vietnam Myanmar Bangladesh

188.1 121.5 100 89.7 84.2 81.8 75.1 62.5 12.3 6.7 5.7 5.4 4.6 3.2 1.8 1.3 1.2 1.0

Notes: Investments in telecommunications in selected Asian and Paciﬁc countries, per capita in US$ (1993). Source: ITU, Geneva, 1994, http://www.interasia.org/background/asean_tab1.html

In the Philippines, which had long been a dangerous country for those in the media, state-sponsored violence continued, while in Indonesia, journalists were targeted by radical political activists, separatist movements and the army, with the new President, Megawati Sukarnoputri, showing an increased intolerance for press freedoms. Nevertheless, the situation for journalists in those three countries was not as serious as it was in the rest of ASEAN. The RSF report highlighted that, in Burma, Laos and Vietnam, there was no pluralism. In the two Communist dictatorships of Hanoi and Vientiane, all media belong to the state. In 2001, these two regimes even reinforced their laws to better repress the press. In Burma, while there were some 100 private publications, they were closely watched by the censorship oﬃce. Newspapers, radio and television were owned by the military. Finally, in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, the RSF said that the authoritarian regimes and restrictive press laws prevented the emergence of independent media. All this was done in the name of ‘Asian values’, a popular idea in the 1990s to explain the remarkable economic growth whilst challenging the universalization of liberal social ideas and revelling in higher growth levels

The Southeast Asian context

79

than their former colonial overlords.7 These, supposedly, shared values, which were often given a Confucianist patina and included ideas such as the subjugation of individual rights to broader communal values and a predisposition towards strong and stable leadership rather than political pluralism, was said to be unique to the Asian region. They provided a handy excuse for the authoritarian policies of political elites in countries like Singapore and Malaysia, but have proved something of a chimera as ﬁrst the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s and then the emergence of global radical Islamic movements, highlighted the competing rather than aligned interests of the countries of Southeast Asia. In addition, the concept of ‘Asian values’ rested upon a number of presumptions which had serious methodological problems, including the implications that the social, economic and political characteristics of certain Asian countries are based upon a shared value system which is identiﬁable and distinct, and which transcends national, religious and ideological diﬀerences: Governments emphasize the need for ‘an environment of social and political order’, but this conception of the ‘common good’ is always in the interest of particular groups. However, this perennial democratic paradox is complicated and enlivened in East Asia by rapid change and the controversial relationship between economic development and political liberalization. (Inoguchi and Newman 1997)

By 2004, the media remained one thing on which most Southeast Asian governments saw eye to eye. RSF suggested that the region’s elites demonstrated increasing impatience with a vibrant free press in Southeast Asia. In its survey of global press freedom in 166 nations, Reporters Sans Frontières ranked Southeast Asia’s media as follows: Cambodia (81), Thailand (82), Malaysia (104), Indonesia (110), the Philippines (118), Singapore (144), Vietnam (159), Laos (163) and Burma (164). Signiﬁcantly, dangerous restrictions faced journalists in Southeast Asia. A former Vietnamese journalist, Nguyen Vu Binh, who used the Internet to criticize his country’s government was sentenced to seven years in a trial closed to foreigners. Zaw Thet Htwe, the editor-in-chief of Burma’s First Eleven Sports Journal was sentenced to death for alleged treason after he published a story about the reported misuse of an international donation to promote football in the military-run nation. In 2005, Amnesty’s Secretary General, Irene Khan observed of the regional media controls: Governments are betraying their promises on human rights. A new agenda is in the making with the language of freedom and justice being used to pursue

80

The media and political change in Southeast Asia policies of fear and insecurity. This includes cynical attempts to redeﬁne and sanitise torture. (Amnesty 2005)

This is a far cry from the optimism of the late 1990s, when the Asian Financial Crisis seemed a harbinger of democratic change and media liberalization. Most signiﬁcantly, the crisis prompted a sweeping liberalization of the press in Indonesia and signiﬁcant moves elsewhere. By the middle of the ﬁrst decade of the new century, this momentum, however, had dissipated, as ‘the open window that allowed a fresh wind to blow through the region’s media [was] being steadily closed’ (Aglionby 2004). Nevertheless, at the same time, technological change and the democratization of the digital world seemed to be opening new possibilities, and giving new hope to opposition groups around the region. Communities of interest (COIs), collections of entities that share a common goal or environment, were beginning to coalesce around ICT. Whether it be the advocacy groups which were eﬀecting corporate strategy, local political groups which had gained a voice due to the diﬃculties political elites found they had in controlling the ﬂow of information on the Internet, or newly-imagined, transnational communities looking to shake traditional authorities from their seats of power, the changes in information communication technologies had also got the attention of Southeast Asia’s political governments.

‘CELEBRITY BIG BALLOT’: CELEBRIFICATION AND MEDIA POLITICS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA One further global media trend resonates throughout the major economies of Southeast Asia is that of celebriﬁcation. In Southeast Asia, as with many western countries, media products have become dumber as the competition for audience has pushed content towards the mass market. The competition for advertising serves further to narrow the scope of what it is possible to say publicly, allowing only dwindling space for analysis and political discussion (Garnham 1990; Keane 1991). Commercial concerns also mean media owners seek to placate concerned governments – and it is easier to ensure entertainment products are bland and uncontroversial. It is a criticism that is heard around Asia, particularly where the mass media is seen as an important element of democratic pluralism, and even the new media – heralded as uncontrollable and, thus, important for democratic development in Southeast Asia – seems subject to elite control (Gomez 2004). The more lively the local media industry is, the more the poignant the debate. In Indonesia, local media have been criticized for shirking their role

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81

as a governmental control to focus on populist topics. Yopie Hidayat, chief editor of Kontan business tabloid, speaking at a seminar held by the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) in 2006, said the media were now focused ﬁrmly on satisfying market tastes for proﬁt: ‘Take the rampant blood and violence we now see on TV. But print media is no diﬀerent, either. Take a look at the high number of gossip and lifestyle or sex-themed tabloids’ (Diani 2006). In Thailand, as network television has taken a bigger and bigger share of revenue from media advertising accounts, and competition intensiﬁed in the 2000s under the aggressive capitalism ushered in by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, network television started to expand its news programmes, essentially by employing the technique of mixing news with entertainment, which was popular with both advertisers and audiences who seemed to be satisﬁed with ‘superﬁcial news presented through the medium of empty chit-chat programme formats on network television’ (Boonyaketmala 2007). The local providers have a keen teacher in global media owner Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch’s entry into the Asian media market, which began with the creation in 1991 of STAR (Satellite Television Asian Region), ‘redeﬁned the viewing experience for millions, and inﬂuenced news and current aﬀairs television across the Asia region with a shift from a serious to a more popular news agenda, driven by the logic of maximizing proﬁt’ (Thussu 2004). It is the link between the mass media and politics in Southeast Asia that has highlighted the process of celebriﬁcation. Southeast Asian states comprise overlapping cultural elements, both modern and traditional, where rulers like Soekarno, the ﬁrst president of post colonial Indonesia, looked to traditional symbols to reinforce his authority. Technology serves to mediate their reputations, as ‘culturally recognized symbols of authority become implicated in new forms and media agencies act as ampliﬁers’ (Hughes-Freeland 2007, p. 194). These elements combine and are produced as celebrity through the print and broadcast media, performing a style of populism that creates an overlap, either between traditional and rational institutions, or between authoritarian and democratic polities, as sacral and secular symbols engage with celebrity to be exploited in personality cults (ibid., p. 193). Against this background, the celebriﬁcation of the Southeast Asian media is inevitable and reaches its zenith, as we will see in Chapter 5, in the ‘celebrity big ballot’ that is the elections in the Philippines. In the Philippines, a Hollywood culture infuses the elections, encouraged by a media free-for-all, such that political campaigning is a celebrity battle for name recognition in an ‘all-singing, all-dancing sideshow, more concerned

82

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

with parading the candidate’s personalities than discussing the country’s many problems’ (The Economist 28 April 2007).

CONCLUSION Despite a double-digit decline in advertising in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 11 September, 2001, which forced many media companies in Southeast Asia either to reorganize or close down operations completely, recent research indicates that the Asia Paciﬁc media and entertainment market will remain the fastest-growing region during the next ﬁve years, increasing to $432 billion in 2009, led by powerful growth in China, which is on track to overtake Japan as the region’s biggest market by 2008 (PWC, 2005). Information was, once, the jealously protected ward of the local elites, as the local mass communication media, in particular the nascent broadcast industry, was closely controlled by the newly-independent governments and accorded a central role in nation building. Today, the international media giants, seeking proﬁtability through scale, have taken their place alongside local producers. They have extended their reach across Asia, eroding monolithic state ownership in an apparent profusion of choice and ownership, but representing the concentration of ownership and control. There is a paradox here: many Southeast Asian governments fear the links drawn by the modernization theorists between capitalist market development, the free ﬂow of information, and the development of liberal institutions (Diamond and Plattner 1993). Yet their worries in this area are largely unfounded. The elites in Southeast Asia regularly rail against the international media but, as we shall see in subsequent chapters, they can respond eﬀectively (Atkins 2002; Rodan 1998), retaining a high degree of control over, or manipulating the ﬂow of information ﬂooding across their borders. Global industry trends such as commodiﬁcation and commercialization have helped to ensure that the content provided by these transnational media giants has little impact upon the region’s authoritarian regimes. Thus, rather than inspiring democratic ideals in an informed and educated public, the media tends to be locked in its own battle of competing commercial interests. Only very occasionally does it reﬂect the political aspirations of its audience and their call for political change, rarely sowing the seeds of political conﬂict (McCargo 1999). These media giants are not here to ﬁght for democracy, they have ‘other priorities such as entertaining the people and making money’ (Merrill 2000, p. 215). Yet, this does not mean that the mass media, together with the technological infrastructure down the wires of which it ﬂows, do not have a huge

The Southeast Asian context

83

impact on politics in Southeast Asia. Here, as with much of the rest of the world, the communication media, as well as the perception industries so closely connected with it, are altering the fabric of politics and political communication, changing the ways in which political leaders relate to those over whom they rule. Consequently, the region’s elites are becoming more aware of manipulating and projecting their public image (Thompson 2001). As we shall show, even in Singapore, a model of media control, the government must get its messages across in a modern and complex media environment, and one which grows ever more challenging given digital technology. Hand-in-hand with the growth of information-hungry media companies in Southeast Asia, therefore, has come the development of the publicity apparatus. Despite the recent economic downturn, the top ﬁve public relations companies in Asia earned a total of almost $US90 million in 2001 (PRWeek 2002, p. 11), and the industry, as a whole, continues to ﬂourish (Sudhaman 2004). It is, however, the depth and pace of the changes in communications, presaged in part by the explosion in the number and reach of international media products, that has had many governments in the region having to remodel themselves in order to adjust to the new environment. The more they opened their economies in an attempt to share in the ﬁnancial beneﬁts of being part of the global information economy, the more they exposed themselves to the process of modernity threatening the social and political foundations of their societies. They clearly perceived the increased ﬂow of informational and entertainment materials across increasingly ﬂimsy national borders via the global communications system as threatening, politically and culturally. This ﬂow was also critically connected to issues of sovereignty and the impact of transnational companies (Williams 1995, p. 47). And, even though the transnational content providers might be careful to ensure political pitfalls do not aﬀect their proﬁts, these remain products that come with an inbuilt bias. This is particularly obvious in mass media products. As public spaces in Asian cities like Singapore see a proliferation of skateboarding youth in their baseball caps and baggies, it is clear that the message from the global media giants is McWorld and deﬁnitely not Jihad (Barber 1995). However, in the converging currents of media reception it is not a matter of McWorld or Jihad: a member of Jemaah Islamiah is just as likely to pick up a McDonalds, while the fringes of the burqhua often hide a Nike ‘swoosh’. These contradictory challenges face Asia’s political elites as they seek to protect their interests, maintain their grip on power, and sustain economic growth. Media production and reception is a process of constant negotiation. Its role in cultural transformation is both complicated and unpredictable.

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Audiences have become ‘nomadic gatherers’ (McLuhan 1964, p. 310) of information, taking what they want and discarding the rest. There is a hightech mobilization of radical constituencies, whose voices often speak in opposition to globalization, fed by ‘its major discontents, nationalism, regionalism, localism and revivalism’ (Majod 1999, p. 81). The voices challenge the authority of the centre, as culture becomes a factor in both national security and international relations (Majod 1999, pp. 61–2). With the modern global information economy, technological development and the current integration of the world’s economies, it is clear that the media has moved to become increasingly central in daily life, and a focus in the complex relations between nation states and the global economy. Satellite broadcasting and the ﬂow of political news and opinion, often in opposition to the ideas and opinions of national political authorities, has led to controversy over the sources and control of this information. But, the general trends in the mass media industry are doing little to oﬀer mainstream outlets for opposition and discontent. Increased commercialization and the tendency to view the audiences as consumers not citizens, has seen deterioration in public broadcasting and a growth in entertainment programming. As the case studies in the following chapters will show, despite the challenges to traditional forms of power and authority, the unbalanced ﬂow of information and the unequal distribution of the products provides the local political elites with an upper hand in their eﬀort to reinforce their control strategies. This might, as some commentators suggest, have ‘serious consequences for nation-states with fragile and unstable policies’ (Chadhu and Kaviori 2000, pp. 428–9). However, while it has been generally assumed by Asian elites (and liberal democrat theorists), that a globalizing media meant both Westernization and democratization, this has proved not to be the case. As we shall see in the following Southeast Asian case studies, Western media organizations tend not only to adapt to both popular culture but also meet the needs of local political elites in order to protect its distribution. What is clear, however, is that in Southeast Asia, as with the rest of the world, the media is an intricate part of everybody’s day, and challenges to traditional forms of power and authority have emerged as the audience becomes less constrained by the precedents of tradition, yet the media can also be used to extend and consolidate traditional values, nourishing a sense of identity and sense of belonging (Thompson 1995, p. 194). This is the ambivalent aspect of the media as a technology. Southeast Asia is a good example of where the media has been used as a unifying political force, to create and reinforce common visions. In Indonesia, for example,

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as we will see in Chapter 6, the media, and television in particular, helped to create a nation where diversity of geography, religion and culture would have seemed to have conspired against such an imagined community. Likewise, inequalities in terms of access to the global networks of communications have not prevented the emergence of local strategies of opposition, from local cultural production to piracy, providing a ‘complex syncopation of voices’ (Sreberny-Mohammadi 1996, p. 180): Ideological discontinuities and social disruptions are especially evident in today’s fast-paced, contradictory, conﬂictive world. Although social institutions and information technology clearly serve their managers and backers in certain ways, they can also combine to shake dominant political visions and cultural traditions to the core. (Lull 1995, p. 114)

In this context, the traditional sovereignty of the Southeast Asian nation state is being threatened by global communications, as national borders are dissolved by the broadcast of foreign news, entertainment, educational and advertising programmes. The eﬀect is, however, ambiguous. These new technologies support both a concentration and a dispersion of power. It is ironic that, in the face of the persuasive inﬂuence of the Coca-Cola culture (Majod 1999), and MacWorld (Barber 1995), smaller groups in these communities have found their voice as new media ‘allow those on the periphery to develop and consolidate power, and ultimately to challenge the authority of the centre’ (Soules 2007). These alternative views are often expressed through NGOs and interactive technologies, some through the established mass media where access is won through improved communications techniques, many more in the use of technologies like mobile telephone text messaging to organize protests. In this way, they are challenging the centres of power. These voices often speak in opposition to globalization, fed by ‘its major discontents, nationalism, regionalism, localism and revivalism’ (Majod 1999, p. 81). Thus culture has become a new factor in both national security and international relations (ibid., pp. 61–62). Media production and reception is clearly complex. ‘It is a process of constant negotiation between personal, professional, audience, organization, and resources’ (MacGregor 1997, p. 53). The media is a contested space, subject to various pressures, from the inﬂuence of corporate ownership and advertising censorship, through the input of staﬀ and consumer, to the socio-political environment in which the production and reception goes on (Curran 1996, pp. 145–6). In this battle for control, the division of power and resources is unequal, weighed towards ownership of the means of production. But other groups can negotiate access to media spaces, and are becoming increasingly good at it.

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The media and political change in Southeast Asia The power to create and distribute meaning still resides with centers of material and political power, both within the state and amongst the higher reaches of corporate and ﬁnancial authority. But this power is exercised dynamically. It is fought over, challenged, and abused, both within and without. (Deacon and Golding 1994, p. 203)

Despite this, the avalanche of information and entertainment materials bursting through increasingly ﬂimsy national borders over the global communications system is understandably perceived by many on the receiving end as threatening, politically and culturally. Television has become a spectre that now haunts the world (McChesney 1999, p. 39). Controlled by a small number of powerful, mostly US-based transnational media corporations, it is seen to be at the centre of ‘new modes of image production and cultural hegemony, the political struggles of various groups and the restructuring of capitalist society’ (Kellner 1990, p. 129). As we shall see from the following chapters dealing with the major economies of Southeast Asia, there is a heightened awareness that the import and export of cultural products and inﬂuence is critically connected to issues of sovereignty and the activities of transnational companies (Williams 1995, p. 47). However, these issues that the globalization of the media has created do not intimate a monolinear connection between democracy and the media. It does raise a set of issues that, as the local elites deal with them, have implications for both media development and democracy, and ushers in its own questions about the role of the media and its impact on politics in Southeast Asia which will now be exampled in the following case studies.

NOTES 1. For more detailed information on the economic impact of the crisis and the IMF’s bail out eﬀorts see The IMF’s Response to the Asian Crisis, September 1999 http://www.imf. org/external/np/exr/facts/asia.pdf. 2. Malaysian PM Mahathir quoted on the social responsibility of the press, in Mehra (1989, p. 116). 3. See Granitas and Pottinger (2002), Oliver (2001) and Francis (2002), among others. 4. www.fusionc.com. 5. Asia Market Intelligence (2001). 6. Indonesia 1999: Oﬃcial Handbook, Directorate of Foreign Information Services, Department of Information, Republic of Indonesia. 7. See ‘Asian Values’ and Democracy in Asia, Proceedings of a Conference Held on 28 March 1997 at Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan, http://www.unu.edu/unupress/asian-values.html.

4. Please do not adjust your set: international information ﬂows, the media and security in Malaysia INTRODUCTION At the beginning of September, 2005, at a public lecture organized by Suhakam, the Malaysian Human Rights Commission, the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, was criticizing the United States and Britain for invading Iraq, describing their military action as ‘acts of terror’. In protest, the diplomats and oﬃcers of the two countries on the receiving end of Mahathir’s diatribe left the ballroom of the Le Meridien Hotel in Budapest, where the speech took place. Mahathir’s passing comment: ‘So can we accept that these big powers alone have a right to determine when to interfere in the internal aﬀairs of other countries to protect human rights?’ The people of Malaysia, he said, ‘seemed to be quite happy’, adding his country did not need foreign powers to ensure there was no abuse of human rights (Megan 2005). Both sides of this argument occupied familiar territory: Dr Mahathir had long been a critic of the Western governments; his targets familiar with their role as Mahathir’s neo-colonial whipping boys. It was a game Mahathir played well as Prime Minister of Malaysia as he worked to modernize his country as the head of a multi-ethnic alliance, leading a one party developmental state along what he saw as a secular Islamic model, yet faced by growing fundamentalist and democratization pressures. Mahathir was always on message. The problem was the mass communication media that carried those messages did not always seem reliable, especially the western media. In the case study in this chapter we will examine how the media – in particular the Western business media – became the focus of a Malaysian political elite showing signs of internal frictions as the Asian Financial Crisis crucially undermined the legitimacy of the Malaysian developmental model, threatening to unpick the multi-ethnic alliance constructed by Prime Minister Mahathir around the ruling UMNO party, and push its popular Malay support towards fundamentalist Islamists and an urban democratic movement. 87

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Malaysia, as with many of its neighbours, was ﬁnding that, at the end of the twentieth century, with the development of modern information communications technology and the latest round of integration of the world’s economies, the media had moved to become increasingly central in the daily life of its citizens. Mahathir had begun to open the country’s economy not long after becoming Prime Minister in 1981, introducing market-oriented reforms and unpicking trade tariﬀs. As a result, as with many other relatively new states, the media had become a focus in Malaysia’s complex relations with the global economy. As a consequence, the Mahathir government led the way amongst the developing economies of the region in criticizing not only the unfettered ﬂow of political news and opinion across the borders of Malaysia, often in opposition to its own ideas and opinions, but also broader entertainment products that it saw were seen as having a critical cultural and political impact. On 29 November, 1999, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad took the country to the polls at the head of the ruling Barisal Nasional Coalition. After what many saw as the dirtiest election campaign in Malaysia’s short history, Mahathir and his ruling coalition appeared to have achieved a sweeping victory, securing the two-thirds majority in parliament that Mahathir had insisted would be the measure of the government’s popularity. It was not to be so simple, however. Despite support from the Chinese and Indian communities, secured by the government’s campaign strategy of insinuating that a vote for the opposition would unleash the forces of internecine race riots like those in neighbouring Indonesia, the Malay heartland in the north of the country deserted the ruling coalition. The Muslim opposition Party Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) more than tripled its parliamentary seats to 27 in the 29 November elections, retained control of northern Kelantan state and captured neighbouring Terengganu, while the ruling coalition’s popular vote fell from 65 to 56.5 per cent (Agence France Presse 13 December 1999). This can be explained as not only symptomatic of internal divisions within the Prime Minister’s party and the treatment of his one time deputy and ﬁnance minister, Anwar Ibrahim, but also of the move toward the fundamentalist Islamic opposition by those increasingly disillusioned and disenfranchised by the changes within Malaysia. The last time Mahathir had faced such a serious challenge was in 1987, when his position at the head of the UMNO coalition was threatened by former ﬁnance minister Tunku Razaleigh Hamzah. It was then that the use of the Internal Security Act (ISA) was ﬁrmly cemented into the ruling elite’s armoury, and Malaysia’s strong tradition of legal and judicial independence was shattered, as Mahathir became the subject of a court battle over accusations of electoral misconduct. More than 100 politicians from the

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Democratic Action Party, PAS and UMNO, as well as human rights activists, were made as part of an operation codenamed Lalang (a type of weed); and section 8b of the ISA, drafted during this period, was introduced, forbidding judicial review of ISA detentions, including those brought as habeas corpus petitions, as Mahathir ‘relied on the ISA to end the incipient political crisis’ (Human Rights Watch 2004a). The scare tactics of the ruling coalition during the 1999 campaign were not new. Nor were the attacks on the interference of foreign interests, particularly the foreign media. However, when the Prime Minister, a regular detractor of the foreign media, launched yet another attack on the inﬂuence of outside forces, with the international or ‘foreign’ media at their head, Mahathir was underlining the growing concerns of the political elites of Southeast Asia that they were losing control in an increasingly complicated communications environment. Mahathir was to continue to claim throughout the campaign that the international media was biased, and supportive of the Malaysian opposition, giving the government no positive coverage. The inﬂuence of the international media was a theme to which the Malaysian Prime Minister regularly returned, not least during and in the wake of his battle with Anwar and as he looked to ﬁnd scapegoats for the Asian Financial Crisis. The troubles engendered by the Asian Financial Crisis cannot be ignored when discussing the inter-elite tensions prior to the 1999 elections, for while Malaysia was not aﬀected as badly as Thailand and Indonesia, the impact was still severe. Pre-crisis, Malaysia was one of the major Southeast Asian destinations for foreign investment, reﬂected in the high turnover on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE), which sometimes exceeded that of more mature and higher capitalized markets such as the New York Stock Exchange. Expectations at the time were that the growth rate would continue, propelling Malaysia into developed status by 2020, a government policy articulated in Wawasan 2020. As at start of 1997, the KLSE Composite Index was above 1200, the ringgit was trading above 2.50 to the dollar, and the overnight rate was below 7 per cent. In July 1997, within days of the devaluation of the Thai baht, the Malaysian ringgit came under pressure from currency traders. The overnight rate jumped from under 8 per cent to over 40 per cent. This led to rating downgrades and a general sell oﬀ on the stock and currency markets. By the end of 1997, the KLSE had lost more than 50 per cent from above 1200 to fewer than 600, and the ringgit had lost 50 per cent of its value, falling from above 2.50 to under 3.80 to the dollar. In 1998, the output of the real economy declined, plunging the country into recession and forcing the country’s central bank, Bank Negara, to

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adopt a ﬁxed exchange rate mechanism as the country’s gross domestic product plunged 6.2 per cent and the ringgit continued to lose value falling below 4.7 and the KLSE fell below 270 points. Not only did this shake Malaysia’s political and business elites, but it also, crucially, undermined the developmental Asian state concept Mahathir championed with Japan as its model (Lee and Tham 2007). It was against this background that, in October 1998, CNBC Asia, the Asian joint venture of US media giants NBC and Dow Jones, made the decision to show excerpts of a video tape made by the deposed Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, just before his arrest. The decision set the television network against the Malaysian authorities, and led to an almost ritual circling of CNBC Asia by the strong man of Malaysian politics, snapping at the heels of the regional broadcaster as it scrambled to ensure it did not lose its rights to broadcast into Malaysia. It was a conﬂict that lasted throughout the election campaign and, although it was partly intended for a domestic audience, it allowed the Prime Minister, indirectly, to inﬂuence CNBC Asia’s output during the election campaign. Malaysia is a relatively new state where the government not only faces the enduring concerns of internal racial strife – termed communalism, locally – but also, rooted in its attempts to modernize, the emergence of religious fundamentalism among those uncomfortable with modernization and the values it entails. These religious radicals were proving to be a rallying point around which the dispossessed, disaﬀected and the disillusioned gathered. Nominally, at least, a constitutional monarchy, with multi-party elections and universal suﬀrage, the government in Malaysia has been seen by many commentators as authoritarian.1 By 1999, Dr Mahathir Mohamad had run the government since he became Prime Minister in 1981. He sat at the head of the Barisan National (National Front), a coalition led by his party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), a version of which had dominated the government since independence in 1957. Malaysia’s political culture and racial and religious mix was partly a legacy of British colonial rule, and partly cultural diﬀusion. The former left the government preoccupied with national integration, the latter Islam (the state religion), as the ‘dominant value framework guiding Malaysia’s internal politics . . . [but leaving a] contested discursive terrain where other non-Islamic and un-Islamic values and beliefs compete for ascendancy as well’ (Noor 1999, p. 163). At the time of the confrontation with CNBC, internal stability was perceived as being dependent on eradicating poverty through economic development led by the state, and policies that attempted to balance the interests

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of the diﬀerent ethnic groups, particularly the small Malay majority, which dominated the military and civilian elite despite Chinese economic dominance (Lukman 1997, pp. 124–34). But the regime was facing mounting political and security problems that revolved around ‘Malay issues’ like Islamic fundamentalism – a radical, political Islam, that sought to move away from the moderate, secular Muslim vision of UMNO – and Mahathir’s succession (he was 75 years of age), rather than from interracial violence (Zakaria 1987, p. 133).

THE CREATION OF THE MAHATHIR-MODEL STATE As we will see in all the following chapters, any analysis of the media in Southeast Asia must take into account the history of the particular country in which it developed, the make-up of the population, government policy, economic development and the political and legal systems. Likewise, it is impossible to ignore questions concerning ethnicity and national unity. The Malaysia of the 1990s comprised the tip of Peninsular Southeast Asia and the eastern states of Sabah and Sarawak on the Island of Borneo, plus numerous smaller islands that form part of the Southeast Asian archipelago. The country had a land area of 329 750 square kilometres, and a population of 21.4 million. A history of colonial rule had left its mark on the make up of the population, with Malay and other indigenous peoples comprising 58 per cent, Chinese 26 per cent, Indian 7 per cent, others 9 per cent.2 After the Second World War, Malays viewed these minorities as ‘sojourners with external loyalties’ (Steinberg 1987, p. 406), and attempts in 1946 to create a Malayan Union broke down because of concerns about a loss of Malay sovereignty. The resulting formation of a new Federation of Malaya, the story of the move towards independence from British rule and Malaysia’s struggle into life was one of racial tension and periodic conﬂict – notably the Malay Emergency which left an enduring legacy of the ISA and other Emergency laws for the deployment of the post-colonial state. It is with this inheritance that independent Malaya and its coalition government began its rule, with UMNO at its head. Ten years of peace and successful economic development broke down when these tensions came to the fore. In August 1965, after internal wrangling and accelerated by the Indonesian policy of ‘confrontation’ with Malaya, the compact between the Malay and Chinese members of the Alliance broke up, and Kuala Lumpur asked Singapore to leave the Federation. The next few years of political agitation, culminating with the demonstrations in May 1969, which left some 200 dead in communal riots, left the

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psyche of Malaysians and their government deeply scarred. The shock created conditions for a developmentalist administrative arrangement that counteracted any possibility of communalism raising itself again. To this end, there were major changes in the constitutional, ideological, economic and political arenas in Malaysia, and the government, still run by an UMNO-dominated coalition, introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP). The central elements of this state-led economic plan, which included the eradication of poverty across all communities, but also the redistribution of the ownership and control of the Malaysian economy away from the Chinese community towards the Malays and other Bumiputera (son of the soil), had a direct resonance in the 1990s. It is also easy to see how television, coming into being alongside these developments, became a critical avenue for government messages. And, like many of its neighbours, the Malaysian government fought to maintain its sovereignty not just over the broadcast media, but over the media industry as a whole. In common with many of its neighbours in Southeast Asia, Malaysia’s political elite have seen themselves as battling to shore up their fragile political culture against an ‘overwhelming tide of diﬀerent ideas and values in an increasingly integrated global environment’ (Hitchcock 1995, p. 167). Malays had never lived in isolation from the rest of the world, and the debate over values and ideas, of tradition and modernity, have been going on since the formation of the nascent local media industry and the creation of Malay newspapers well before independence (Milner 1995). But that internal debate increasingly eﬀected Malaysia’s external relations (Noor 1999, p. 163). A commitment to development and economic liberalization in Malaysia in the 1980s led to the opening of borders, not only physical and commercial but also cultural, with an attendant clash of values and an uneven reaction to the challenges of globalization. By the late 1990s, those that were increasingly sidelined in the country’s eﬀorts to develop, reasserted religious beliefs and traditional values: ‘markers of identity as part of an attempt to react against the incursion of yet another wave of ideas and values that have landed on the discursive and ideological shores of the Malay world’ (Prasso et al. 1998). This is a theme that will repeat itself throughout the following case studies in this book. The opposition forces coalesced around the religious revivalism associated with PAS (Islamic Party of Malaysia), after Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim, once Mahathir’s anointed successor and an UMNO touchstone for religious opposition, fell from power in 1998. In the competitive environment of non-Islamic and un-Islamic values and beliefs, particularly from external sources, the ﬁght between Mahathir and Anwar exacerbated internal division, and posed a serious threat to the UMNO-led government (Noor 1999, p. 163). This coincided with

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heightened economic disparities which undermined the legitimacy of UMNO’s developmental model, at least in the short term. The Asian Financial Crisis caused a rift in the Muslim Malay community. Accusations of corruption and cronyism leant support to both PAS in rural areas and to the party started by Anwar’s wife, ‘Keadilan’ (justice), not only because of the jailing of Anwar, but with a feeling that Mahathir and former ﬁnance Minister Daim were looking after their friends and supporters with the September 1997 RM60 billion bailout facility they engineered and their refusal to accept IMF solutions with their attendant demands for transparency and an end to corruption. Within UMNO, after Anwar’s prosecution, the party elites lined up behind. Mahathir. Some Anwar-linked businesses like Hong Leong bank had to do some manoeuvring after 1998 to avoid economic repercussions from backing the losing politician. A number of Anwar supporters in the media were not so fortunate, as pro-Anwar editors were ‘purged’ (Bowring 1999). The debate over modernity and Western values in Malaysia showed no signs of diminishing – Mahathir continued to upbraid the West. At the G-15 summit in May 1998, Mahathir left the meeting with Suharto speaking of ‘foreign parties trying to unseat us both’ (Prasso et al. 1998). The changes in the media environment exacerbated these tensions. Identiﬁed as a key variable in driving regional political upheaval (Atkins 1999, p. 420), the government in Malaysia sought to quarantine what it saw as a source of the contagion of internal instability, although the government’s threat to use repressive measures against commentators making unfavourable reports about the Malaysian economy ‘strengthened the impression that the government had a lot to hide from public scrutiny’ (Jomo 2002, pp. 6–7).

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MEDIA IN MALAYSIA Set against a background of nation-building ambitions and control strategies, and the resultant sensitivity of the Southeast Asian post-colonial states (Atkins 1999), Malaysian political development in the context of the evolution of one party dominant models, or semi-democratic as Milner and others term them (Diamond 2002, pp. 22–3), is key in any understanding of the growth and the trends in the Malaysian media (Sued 1989, p. 44). From the country’s ﬁrst newspaper, The Prince of Wales, established under British rule in 1805, the media has had close links to the establishment. The role that the Malay newspapers played in fostering Malay nationalism before independence in 1957, and the natural link they then formed with the formation of political parties, further cemented such ties, leaving a ‘tame media environment, in which government inﬂuence and

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self-censorship inhibit probing, critical journalism’ (Heuvel and Dennis 1993, p. 149). Electronic broadcasting has been an even more direct tool of the Malaysian authorities. Radio, in the early days of its development, was a government information service, and was used to ‘prepare the hearts and minds of the people’ for independence (Sued 1989, p. 45). The birth of television in Malaysia coincided with the creation of the new post-colonial state, and television quickly assumed radio’s role, becoming a vital part of the government’s eﬀorts to forge national unity or imagine the new nation along the lines described by Gellner (1983) and Anderson (1983). It was both an achievable goal and a widely embraced developmental programme, at least for a time. Television and radio, until 1983, and the award of the ﬁrst private broadcast licence, were a direct part of the government information system through public broadcaster Radio Television Malaysia (RTM).3 Moreover, while print companies were privately owned, they had gained a reputation for self-censorship and an emphasis on developmental journalism. Many remained linked to political parties, as they were at the birth of the nation, and this economic inﬂuence was reinforced over time. In 1972, for example, UMNO investment vehicle Fleet Holdings bought a controlling share in the country’s largest media company, New Straits Times Press Bhd (NSTP). This gave it a seemingly unshakable grip on the popular English language daily, the New Straits Times, and Malay language broadsheet Berita Harian, as well as three Sunday papers, book publishing operations, industrial transport and other commercial interests (Wong 2000, p. 125). To commercial control were added legal constraints. The ISA, the Sedition Act, and the Oﬃcial Secrets Act (all inherited from the British colonial period and the Emergency of 1953–1956), were tools of control which were sharpened and brandished over an increasingly compliant media, as were new acts introduced during the 1980s: The Printing, Presses and Publications Act (PPPA) 1989, which covers the licensing of newspapers and magazines, and the Broadcasting Act of 1988, under which the Minister of Information controls the licensing of broadcast media.4 What developed in post-colonial Malaysia was a western-style media in form but not content. It was a ‘sophisticated combination of legislation and ownership concentration ensured the media remained under tight control’ (Williams 2000, p. 2). But, over the last decade of the twentieth century, the global media giants threatened this monopolistic position. Keen to encourage economic development to maintain its legitimacy and ensure racial harmony and internal stability, by the 1990s Malaysia had opened its doors to the information industries and their attendant possibilities and problems. With a keen eye on similar developments in

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Singapore, Mahathir introduced his Vision 2020, a centralist attempt to move Malaysia from being a manufacturing-based economy to one based on technology. Malaysia East Asia Satellite (Measat-1) was launched in 1996, and the Cyberjaya Multimedia Super Corridor, a high-tech zone near Kuala Lumpur, was created to attract the major players in the global electronic economy, and move Malaysia into the information era (Rodan 1998, p. 138). With the launch of Measat, Malaysian satellite broadcaster Astro took its place alongside RTM, TV3, Metro Vision and NTV 7 in the Malaysian broadcast media family. The smallest electronic media in terms of audience, Astro had about 2.7 per cent of the viewing audience in 1999 (Wong 2000, pp. 127–31). By March 2000, this number totalled about 380 000 subscribers in Malaysia and Brunei. It had 29 television channels and ﬁve radio stations. It produced one Malay language channel, and showed CNN, Bloomberg and, most important here, CNBC Asia. At the time, Ananda Krishnan, a Mahathir sponsored businessman, owned and controlled Astro. A Harvard Business School graduate, Krishnan had been handpicked to lead the information revolution and the development of Cyberjaya. Alongside state investment companies, and through his stake holding in Measat Broadcast Network Systems Ltd, the satellite broadcasting operation, he worked to develop multimedia, interactive services and new applications for mobile communications. Ananda also had commercial interests in the US among other countries, and helped to develop one of the most potent symbols of the new Malaysia, the 88story, twin tower Petronas Centre (Gomez and Jomo, 1997, pp. 159–165 and Lopez 2000, pp. 1–2). Despite this developmentalist approach, the attitude of the Malaysian government to the control of information had not changed materially. Mahathir had followed a policy of ‘Asian values’, rejecting the universality of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, and the right to freedom of opinion and expression. By the turn of the century, Mahathir still insisted economic and social rights were more important than civil and political rights (Wong 2000, p. 117). The threat mounted by the forces of political liberalization apparently unleashed by the unfettered ﬂow of media information into the region only reinforced this perception. The role of the local and international media in Thailand’s domestic political crisis in May 1992, together with the racial and religious unrest in Indonesia and the fall of long-time President Suharto in May 1998, did not go unnoticed by the Mahathir Government. The Malaysian government reacted against the perceived threat posed by the free ﬂow of information. Using the familiar tools of ownership and patronage as well as legislation and commercial imperatives, the Mahathir

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administration attempted to put in place an operational framework to maintain signiﬁcant gatekeeping power. The government took on both the international media and a local media which felt it was operating in a more relaxed environment, by means of a ‘series of complex responses to the perceived threat to the political information order in the region’ (Atkins 1999, p. i). Where the government had control, it limited the coverage of political opposition. Mainstream local journalists were co-opted into the system: increasingly well rewarded ﬁnancially, and encouraged to believe their role was to act in their country’s interests and keep the peace and maintain the UMNO-led developmental pact (Wong 2000, p. 135). Alongside state holdings in the satellite and broadband cable systems, or at least close political relationships with owners of communications infrastructure and content, the government introduced the ‘politics of prohibition’ (Atkins 1999, p. 147), in its attempt to limit local distribution. In 1992, satellite dishes were banned. Later this was amended to allow only Astro dishes. New technological developments helped to reduce the opportunities for reception. Astro could delay the rebroadcast of both CNN and CNBC (by approximately two minutes in order to vet content). Likewise, the rise of paytelevision models that limited new information services to a small proportion of the population, with expensive equipment for decoding the digitized satellite signal, and new satellite technology (KU Band), which allowed more focused footprints, further aided government eﬀorts at control. The government also sharply increased channel choice, with the aim of diluting exposure of international information services to the mass audience, and encouraged local and international media partners to provide non-threatening programming trying to ‘marginalize the eﬀectiveness of politically-oriented international programming which challenged state power’ (Atkins 1999, p. 5). The continued use of the potent mix of legal and commercial pressure to stiﬂe the media is well documented.5 By the end of the twentieth century, Contempt of Court and defamatory laws were added to this legal arsenal, further discouraging debate and silencing critics. US media group Dow Jones had been subject to a number of these legal challenges, including the trial and imprisonment of journalist Murray Hiebert.6 As we shall also see in the Singapore case study, for many media operations and their journalists (both local and foreign), the costs of defending and paying damages in these suits were particularly onerous. But while the government attempts to reassert control over the mainstream media seem to have been fairly successful, there was one space that remained contested as the challenges of globalization continued to alert the

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Mahathir government: the Internet was increasingly perceived to be a serious threat.7

THE RISE OF INTERNET OPPOSITION AND THE FLOW OF FOREIGN MATERIAL: THE BATTLE CONTINUES The practice of censorship by the government was ‘frustrating’ for many in Malaysia, disturbed by the thought that much of the practice was for political purposes (Karthigesu 1998, p. 77). But the technological development of the second half of the 1990s and, in particular, the development of the Internet provided additional and less controllable space for political expression not sanctioned by the government. Here the government faced a notable paradox. On the one hand is the government’s desire to encourage the development of its information industries and attract foreign players to the Multimedia Super Corridor, while, on the other is its desire to silence dissenting ideologies. This further cemented its media security dilemma. To align itself with international practices, Mahathir’s government promised not to censor the Internet. Yet this medium was increasingly the focus of those dissatisﬁed with the bias and control of the local traditional media. As Anwar took on Mahathir in the context of the AFC, the sales of cassettes, videos, VCRs and camcorders rocketed and this technology was used to deliver pictures of pro-Anwar demonstrations to audiences outside Kuala Lumpur, while the Internet spawned more than 50 websites in the early hours of the political crisis.8 Thus, the election in November 1999 was the ﬁrst to be fought in cyberspace, with all sides taking to the Internet, including the newspaper of the opposition Islamist Parti Islam Se-Malaysia’s (PAS),9 and the Democratic Action Party (DAP).10 In May, that year, PAS also launched Malaysia’s ﬁrst Net TV (Harakah Web TV). The move represented an attempt to circumvent government restrictions on sales of the party’s newspaper, Harakah, put in place in March (Harakah was accused of violating the law by selling to non-members, the party paper – said, at the time, to have a readership of 1.4 million in a nation of 22 million – was restricted to twice a month from twice a week). But the Internet was a space for more than serious political information. It became an arena for salacious tittle-tattle designed to satiate increasingly voracious appetites, from the half a million subscribers to Malaysia’s three Internet Service Providers, through those sitting in the growing number of cyber cafes or able to logon at work or education centres, to those being

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handed the circulating printouts and copies. The new media became home to opinion, rumour and, as political discourse seemed to go through a process of ‘dumbing down’, often inaccurate news savaging Mahathir and his government (Wong 2000, p. 135). In order to address these developments, in 1999, the Government established an Internet surveillance team to monitor opposition use of the Internet in the run up to the elections. But, despite one well-publicized court case, Mahathir’s 1996 commitment not to censor the Internet, for all appearances, held true.11 This allowed many of those who published on line to slip through the cracks in the strict media laws of the country. Despite the government’s best eﬀorts, foreign material also continued to ﬂow into Malaysia. A study done before the advent of cable and satellite television showed an ‘abundance of supply of foreign, particularly western, entertainment material’ (Karthigesu 1998, p. 36). The foreign media had had a mostly urban audience, but remained a ‘small though inﬂuential part of the Malaysian media diet’ (Wong 2000, p. 136). It is important to note for the purpose of this book that, in October 1998, wary of such inﬂuence, the government formed a public relations team speciﬁcally to counteract what was described as negative foreign reporting.12 Malaysia continued to take an extremely sceptical view of the open skies question, citing concerns over ‘cultural chaos’.13 But control of at least the traditional media, seemed to ﬂuctuate depending on the government’s own feelings of security, ‘notably Mahathir’s more secure position within the ruling United Malay National Organisation’ (Rodan 1998, p. 138). And where the large international corporates were concerned, there were indications that state patronage, oﬀering proﬁt to commercial players in return for not challenging state power, seemed to have provided the Malaysian government with a relatively eﬀective control strategy. There were a number of obvious cases where ‘sections of the international press [were] prepared to work adjustments at the editorial levels in an attempt to advance broader commercial interests’ (Rodan 1998, p. 139). This did not always hold true, however. As with the case of CNBC Asia, within the globalized media, local producers could act in ways that were not in line with the broader corporate agenda, if only for a short time. As the Asian Financial Crisis unfolded and the business news channels began to provide content which Southeast Asia’s illiberal governments perceived as threatening, Malaysia was a key example of how the political elites reacted. We will now examine a case study outlining the CNBC Asia confrontation with the Malaysian government, indicating how well the Mahathir government was able to play the international media to its own political ends.

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CNBC ASIA AND MALAYSIA FALL OUT The television station CNBC Asia was born out of the merger in 1998 of two business television satellite operations competing in Asia, CNBC Asia (owned by the American network NBC), based in Hong Kong, and Asia Business News (ABN) in Singapore. Dow Jones, TVNZ (Television New Zealand) and Temasek Holdings Group, an investment arm of the Singapore government, had established ABN in 1993. The company was seen as something of a pioneer in the media industry for establishing its headquarters in Singapore, but with business news the main product, ABN hoped that it would do little to disturb the governments in and around the region. The founding Managing Editor, Chris Graves, suggested that the tradition of investigative journalism in Asia was rare, and ‘instead of browbeating people to change their ways, (ABN) decided to play ball’ (Rodan 1998, p. 136). CNBC Asia was set up in Hong Kong in 1995, an arm of the increasingly popular, US-based CNBC business news franchise. Less than three years later, in December 1997, the shareholders of CNBC and ABN decided that going head to head was not proﬁtable to either. The Asian Financial Crisis reduced advertising revenues. The result was a merger, with NBC and Dow Jones sole shareholders of the new company, CNBC Asia, based subsequently in Singapore. CNBC Asia, by 1999, had bureaus in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Shanghai and Taipei, as well as partners in Japan, Australia, India and Pakistan. There were also regular stringers (reporters who work on a piece-by-piece basis), based around the region in cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Sydney, Jakarta and Seoul. CNBC Asia was also able to link up with CNBC’s studios in Europe and the US, as well as with Dow Jones Group reporters around the world. By the turn of the century, its audience also demonstrated new growth after the fallow years of Asia’s economic turmoil and, although no oﬃcial statistics on viewer numbers were made available, CNBC Asia claimed to be in 18 million homes in the Asian region.14 Access to Malaysia was provided through Astro. Like ABN, the new CNBC was strictly interesting in maintaining the status quo. It is true to say, however, that in the early days of the merger, US corporate ﬁngerprints were not that obvious on the tiller. At least for a time, editorial and reporting staﬀ had a substantial amount of inﬂuence, probably due to weak newsroom management. Besides, in the newsrooms of these media houses, journalists and management might diﬀer in their news agendas, but neither advocated radical political change (Pilger 1998, pp. 486–7). As for the background of the company, there can be little doubt that commercial realities would hold sway over editorial preference in the long run. While Dow Jones can be seen as more of the ‘old school’, where

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journalistic ethics appeared to hold weight, it is diﬃcult to see the CNBC business news machine as so ethically concerned. CNBC, as part of the NBC operation, is owned by US transnational giant GE, itself a stalwart of the American military–industrial complex. NBC is the largest and probably most conservative US television network, with a record of decisions supporting corporate goals (Kellner, 1980). It is these commercial buttons which the Malaysian government managed to push in the wake of the arrest and trial of Anwar Ibrahim, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Malaysia, and the following subsequent election campaign. In September 1998, Anwar Ibrahim was sacked from his positions in the Mahathir government, and later arrested under the ISA. In the days following his arrest, CNBC Asia received a video tape, believed to have been made by Anwar just prior to his arrest.15 In the tape, Anwar refuted the charges made against him, and made his own charges of corruption and moral turpitude within the very highest ranks of the Malaysian government. CNBC editorial management decided to show extracts from the tape – ﬁrst broadcast on Thursday 24 September, 1998 – and also ran interviews with Anwar and his wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, who promised to take up his call for political reform, receiving global coverage.16 Initially, Astro censored these broadcasts using the delay it put on foreign programming. A later show playing excerpts from the tape was, however, shown in full, as was the repeat a couple of hours later. At the time, Astro denied blocking any of the broadcasts, instead blaming (and reiterating the fact to CNBC management after the event), technical problems. The Malaysian government refused to comment on the tape and its contents, and refused to appear on CNBC Asia. However, at a news conference arranged to comment on Anwar’s arrest, Mahathir angrily answered a question on the tape put by a CNBC Asia reporter, saying there was nothing they could do to stop the western press from lying. CNBC coverage of the demonstrations by Anwar’s supporters continued. A Singapore-based reporter was sent to join the KL-based stringer. While satellite and studio time from Malaysia was available, editors at the television stations with playout facilities had to approve the broadcast. Given the subject matter, nobody was prepared authorize the go ahead. As a result, reports back to Singapore were provided either by telephone or video pieces that were ﬂown into Singapore by CNBC employees (‘pigeons’).

MALAYSIA’S RESPONSE The government’s response to the coverage of the Anwar crisis was threepronged: legislative warnings from the judiciary with regard to coverage of

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the trial, constant attacks by government ministers and others against external interference, both from the foreign media, foreign governments and international market speculators and, most eﬀective of all, playing on the commercial imperatives of international broadcasters like CNBC Asia. On the legal side, a number of incidents set the pattern of remaining attacks. One was a visit to CNBC’s Singapore oﬃce on 1 October 1998, by police oﬃcers from the Royal Malaysia Police (RMP) in Johor. With the agreement of CNBC, two oﬃcers interviewed Vice President News and Programming Chris Blackman, and anchors Lynnette Lythgow, Sydney Kohara and Rico Hizon with regard to the Anwar tape and associated interviews. The visit was not popular with the Singapore Police Force, which had not been contacted about the meeting.17 The other event was associated with Anwar’s trial, and comprised a letter dated 14 May, 1999, from Astro’s Director of Business Aﬀairs and General Counsel, Jeﬀrey Blatt, to CNBC’s Blackman, attacking Bernama (Malaysia’s government-controlled news agency) and Star Online articles about reporting restrictions, and the presiding judge’s ‘gag order’ on the trial. It was also salient that CNBC Asia’s parent, Dow Jones, was involved in the ongoing legal wrangle with the Malaysian judiciary over a critical article written by Far Eastern Economic Review journalist Murray Hiebert. In an article on the growing litigiousness of Malaysia society, Hiebert had mentioned a case in which the wife of an appeals court judge ﬁled a $2.4 million suit against her son’s school, claiming that he had been unfairly dropped from the school debating team. Finding Hiebert guilty of contempt, a Malaysian high court judge said he had written the article to misinform the general public and to intimidate and pressure the court. Hiebert was jailed (Fuller 1999). More readily apparent were the attacks in the Malaysian media on CNBC and other foreign media operations. These attacks from government ministers and others, continued through the APEC summit in KL in November 1998, to the elections one year later.18 At one point, Malaysia’s government even felt it had to ease censorship fears. Information Minister Mohamed Rahmat was quoted by state-run Radio Televisyen Malaysia (RTM) as saying: ‘The government has no intention of withdrawing the broadcasting rights of the station (CNN) for fear of being accused of blocking media freedom’ (Reuters 14 October 1998). In the same statement, Mohamed also noted that reports by CNBC had become more balanced since he voiced his concerns to its Singapore-based chief executive, Paul France. This comment drew an internal memo from France, stating that other than an editorial agreement that the continuous use of library footage of demonstrations and riots should be monitored so that it did not create an out of context impression, CNBC had not amended

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its coverage of events of Malaysia in any way as a result of the meeting with the Minister. The government’s attacks were backed up by articles, editorials and printed letters in the local press. From the time CNBC played the Anwar Tape, accusations appeared suggesting the foreign media were pro-Anwar, that they ﬁled partial reports that would jeopardize Malaysia’s global image and interests, and that the foreign media and some foreign governments were involved in a conspiracy to undermine the country.19 On 10 October, 1998, New Straits Times columnist Abdullah Tan, in an article on the foreign media, accused CNBC of being pro-Anwar, and provided a misleading portrayal of what were small demonstrations by Anwar’s followers. He suggested the Malaysian government should heed the lessons of Singapore, ‘which has a history of enforcing strict discipline against the foreign media for writing untruths and being irresponsible’ urging the government to sue and ban their operation in Malaysia (Tan 1998, p. 5).

CNBC CLEANS UP ITS ACT These attacks drew an immediate response from CNBC Asia. CNBC Asia President Paul France’s meeting with the Malaysian Minister of Information, on 26 September, 1998, was the ﬁrst. France even met with Mahathir to discuss CNBC’s future in Malaysia. Pressure was subsequently brought to bear on CNBC Asia editorial staﬀ to ensure that all reports on Malaysia were scrutinized for fair coverage. CNBC Asia management even suggested that it was time to do some positive stories. Astro’s ‘channel manager’ for CNBC, who often contacted editorial staﬀ with complaints about CNBC content, also increased his input. Coverage for a time, however, remained somewhat skewed towards the opposition and Anwar, if for no other reason than they were always available for comment. The government and its supporters were rarely available despite constant requests from CNBC (on 10 November, 1998, in what looked like a calculated snub to CNBC, Mahathir gave CNN an interview, and only did a CNBC interview on 8 June, 1999 – aired 9 June – following a May meeting with France – he also appeared on CNN again, one week later). There was also a lot of critical input from overseas observers, including a rather inﬂammatory comment from US economist Paul Krugman, played on CNBC on 29 September, 1998, saying Mahathir was ‘crazy’, and that international speculators were not responsible for Malaysia’s currency problems, instead local investors were just as guilty. The scramble by senior management at CNBC to try to repair relations with the Malaysian authorities continued. This included further visits to

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Malaysia by senior management, special programming insisting coverage by CNBC and other international media was fair, the sponsorship and coverage of non-controversial events in Malaysia (notably the international golf tournament at the Mines Resort) and other attempts to ‘improve’ CNBC’s coverage of Malaysia. 20 Moreover, senior editorial staﬀ were regularly requested to provide details of positive programming on Malaysia. Pressure was bought to bear on editorial staﬀ to interview ‘appropriate’ – that is, pro-government – Malaysian guests. A deal was also signed with Astro for the use of satellite facilities to broadcast economic and ﬁnancial news on Malaysia from Astro studios whereby, under written arrangement, Astro was allowed to approve all potential interviewees. The pressure from senior management was met with resistance from journalists and editors within the newsroom, most of whom saw any form of interference as a breach of their journalistic practice. It soon became clear, however, that management would come out on top in any dispute. Further problems surfaced due to errors in judgment in the newsroom. Like the mislabelling of the riot footage, many of these mistakes can be put down to budget limitations, which meant staﬀ tended to be young, inexperienced and overworked. As a result, there were too few of them, trying to get too much content out, too quickly. But, the errors did little to endear CNBC Asia to the Malaysian Prime Minister, resulting in a letter from Mahathir’s private secretary in November 1998, complaining this was a set up to ridicule the Prime Minister. CNBC Asia was back where it started. The conﬂict between CNBC Asia and the Malaysia government continued into 1999, and the run up to the Malaysian elections (Mahathir announced the expected election in ﬁrst week of November, 1999, with a polling date of 29 November). It resulted in increased pressure from CNBC Asia management and from Astro on already jumpy editorial staﬀ with regard to following a ‘careful’ approach towards coverage of Malaysia. The ensuing editorial caution led to constant discussion over stories and, in some cases, decisions not to do stories that might appear critical of Malaysia or its government – in other words, the Mahathir-led pressure coupled with management measures led to a practice of self-censorship.

A CHANGE OF HEART? It was clear, however, by the middle of 1999, that editorial control had swung away from the editors in the newsroom, to senior management. An NBC lawyer was now on board, bringing a harder, conservative line to vetting potentially troublesome stories. On these occasions, there was no

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argument from newsroom management on behalf of editors trying to get permission to run stories. By January 2000, although the relationship between CNBC Asia and Malaysia was still not exactly amiable, it was on its way to repair. The commercial rewards of improved relations were apparent. Astro, with which CNBC Asia has an exclusive contract, was enjoying a dramatic pick-up in business, registering probably the fastest growth in new business of any cable operator in the region. Despite earlier concerns that it did not have enough set-top boxes, and renegotiating agreements with many content suppliers (including CNBC Asia), more investment and the improving economic climate led to an increase of subscribers in late 1999. In addition, Astro had been investing in new technology, and had set up joint ventures in Hong Kong, The Philippines and Brunei. As of 24 January, 2000, CNBC Asia was made available once more in Brunei (on Crystal Astro, an Astro joint venture), where it had previously lost its distributor after the Anwar tape incident. Signiﬁcantly, Malaysia had represented the most important revenue source in the region for CNBC Asia at the time of its confrontation with the Mahathir government. Revenue from Malaysia is reported to have amounted to half a million US dollars annually, and expectations in 2000 were that the growth in Astro-distributed business would increase to threequarters of a million dollars. The obvious disapproval of the Malaysian authorities to the showing by CNBC of the Anwar tape threatened this market and its growth potential. But improving relations did not mean that everything was back to normal, and it was still diﬃcult for CNBC Asia to sell advertising time in Malaysia. Sources reported in 2000, that association with CNBC Asia was still not seen as politically sensible. It does not require too much imagination to link the commercial pressure applied by Astro on CNBC Asia to the close connections between senior management of Astro (Ananda Krishnan) and Mahathir (Gomez and Jomo 1997, pp. 159–65). In the wake of the Anwar tape episode, Astro played on CNBC Asia’s commercial imperatives by appearing, at least, to threaten distribution in Malaysia. Moving CNBC Asia ‘down the dial’, from channel number 11 to channel number 25, taking oﬀ the ﬁnancial ticker (a CNBC trademark) and giving Bloomberg CNBC Asia’s channel space can only have been interpreted in one way: CNBC Asia’s distribution in Malaysia was at risk as it had been in Brunei in January, 1999, in the wake of the Anwar crisis, when Sat Con and Datastream decided to scramble their signals and CNBC Asia was no longer able to get distribution. Consequently, senior CNBC Asia management were forced into action in order to protect the channel’s distribution in Malaysia, leading to subdued and uncontroversial coverage of events in the country right up to and past November’s general election.

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CNBC AND THE MEDIA IDEOLOGY OF DR MAHATHIR The Prime Minister of Malaysia, however, played down this success. Dr Mahathir said his government had realized that it has lost control of the ﬂow of information across Malaysia’s borders: In the case of CNBC, and its coverage, maybe it crossed our minds to ban it, but we realized we really were not able to. We know that we are always badly represented in the media. It has come to the stage where I can do nothing right, despite the fact that we have done extremely well as a multi-racial country, that we have recovered from the economic crisis much faster than other developing countries, and that we have been able to defend ourselves against the attacks of the global currency traders. The foreign media depict Malaysia as undemocratic, despite the elections. They say it is unstable and that I control the media and the judiciary. They depict me as some kind of Hitler. We can only hope that people come to Malaysia and see for themselves that what the media says is not true. Even the economic coverage, which should not have a political bias, focuses on what it says are racial tensions simmering just under the surface, ready to break out at any minute. This is plainly untrue. There have been no race riots for 20 or 30 years. 21

Dr Mahathir agreed that there was a role for the media, what he suggested was ‘good media’, in being a check and balance against corruption and political deceit, but maintained that this was rarely what happened. Mahathir’s diagnosis instead contended: If the media really did its job, few people would read it. The media plays to an audience that wants scurrilous stories, because it is primarily concerned with commercial priorities, circulation, selling advertising, making money and its own inﬂuence. The media has its own interpretation, its own agenda. It is no longer satisﬁed with just reporting stories, it wants to be an agent of change, change in the direction the media determines.

For the Malaysian Prime Minister, the agenda the media followed was that of its owners, who he said had been seen to remove those in their employ who did not follow their instructions, as well the agenda of the countries the media came from, and even that of the journalists themselves. He emphasized that eﬀorts to manage the ﬂow of information, the process of change, were diﬃcult, if not impossible: We have accepted we have lost control, even of the local media. There are, of course, newspapers and other media that are favourable towards the government, this happens in Western countries as well, but here it is always seen as government control. As for the Internet, it is impossible to control it. All we can do is try to put a balanced picture, we can put our own truth on the Internet. Western governments and Western companies tell me we can not censor the

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Internet, yet half of the transactions on the Internet are pornography, and we can not complain? What can we do to protect our children, our society? It is much easier to control this at the source, but then that would be contrary to Western conceptions of freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom to spread ﬁlth, deemed to be inalienable rights, even if they are destroying our morality, freedom of the press is more important?

Dr Mahathir also maintained that the security implications of this free ﬂow of information were obvious: In Malaysia we are careful not to discuss what we call sensitive issues, for example about race, due to our concerns to promote internal stability. But, now we have lost control of the media, they will be said, and of course this can cause a rise in internal tensions, which could erupt into conﬂict, ﬁghting.

The Prime Minister also said his government was very aware that the Internet, as an uncontrolled space, had become a focus of the political opposition in Malaysia, as well as being a source of cultural discontent which was inspiring a rise in Islamic fundamentalism and the growing popularity of Malaysia’s Islamic opposition party, PAS. He said that the government saw all too clearly the role of the media in the political unrest in neighbouring countries like Thailand and Indonesia, but he hoped Malaysia would survive the changes. It is not only the international media that has been having a dangerous inﬂuence, but also the local media which is unused to the freedom it now has. There is something wrong here: the media is not democratically elected, the owners of these large corporations are not democratically elected, yet the media can do no wrong. If you have the money, you can control these large media organizations, there is nothing democratic about that. Malaysia has always been an open culture, and I believe we will win most of our struggles to ensure Malaysia, remains Malaysian. There will be cultural changes, there will be some conﬂicts, but we will manage them. We have been successful so far, and we will continue to be so.

Mahathir’s comments bring into sharp focus the developmental state view and the view of the independent media and their accountability to shareholders. Within two years, however, a new element had entered the equation. One that only his most staunch supporters could have thought Mahathir could have survived in the face of the cultural and religious conﬂicts Malaysia was facing.

9/11 AND THE ‘WAR ON TERROR’ In the wake of 9/11 and the attacks on the World Trade Center, the work of Malaysia’s ruling political elite, to keep the country on a moderate,

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secular footing, became increasingly fraught. The emergence of an international radical Islamist agenda, led by al Qaeda, brought the conﬂict between Mahathir’s secular Islamic state and its radicalized Muslim opposition into heightened relief. This was heightened, more speciﬁcally, by the fact that key movers behind 9/11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Moussawi and Hambali had Malaysian links and had made repeated visits to the region. Thus, rather than being attached to struggling parochial nationalist movements, the disillusioned and dispossessed threatened to unite behind an international Islamic Jihad with a media-savvy leadership at the head of eﬀective suicide bombers. However, the ruling political elite in Malaysia received a signiﬁcant boost from America’s ‘war on terror’, although the details would not become clear until a 2005 US lobbying scandal involving Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoﬀ. A US Senate Ethics Committee probe into the activities of Republican House leader Tom DeLay and his connection to Abramoﬀ revealed a secret meeting between Mahathir and Bush in May 2002, as Mahathir worked to shore up relations with Washington, soured by the jailing of his former deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, and Mahathir’s attacks on Jews. Before the 2002 meeting, more damage had been done by Mahathir’s criticism of Bush for his reaction to the 9/11 attacks. Details of the investigation by the Ethics Committee, published in The Washington Post, revealed how the US– Malaysia Exchange Foundation (USMEA) and Hong Kong-based Belle Haven Consultants ‘spearheaded a US$1.4 million (S$2.3 million) lobbying campaign, using the platform of the (US-based, conservative policy think-tank) Heritage Foundation’, to ‘create a favorable climate for a controversial country through careful targeting of Washington elites’ (Edsall 2005). At the time, USMEA was chaired by Tan Sri Megat Junid Megat Ayob, a Mahathir conﬁdant and former minister. Its joint deputies were Datuk Jamaluddin Jarjis, then Malaysia’s Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, and retired US senator Malcolm Wallop. Hong Kong-based Belle Haven was a for-proﬁt ﬁrm linked to the Malaysian government. Belle Haven paid four US lobbying groups a total of US$1.26 million over the two years that they were hired, and a heritage sponsored trip for Delay to visit Mahathir in Malaysia in August 2001, the upshot of which was the May 2002 meeting with Bush, seen as instrumental in repairing relations with Washington. Open US criticism of the Muslim-dominated country became more muted after the arrest of more than 100 Islamic extremists with suspected terrorists links in Southeast Asia. In early 2004, KL was selected by the US as the home for a regional anti-terrorism centre, ‘testament to the

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signiﬁcant erosions in respect for international human rights norms since the September 11 attacks’ (Burton 26 May 2004). The Bush administration even supported Malaysia’s use of the ISA to detain terrorist suspects without charge or trial, according to Human Rights Watch. This marked a dramatic turnaround in US policy, and a signiﬁcant shift in position by the administration in Washington ending previous pressure for Malaysia to democratize symbolized in 1998 by Vice President Al Gore’s call for ‘Reformasi’ at the Asia Paciﬁc Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Malaysia. Previously, the United States was extremely critical of ISA detentions and the use of what Gore described as ‘authoritarian rule’ in a time of economic crisis (Fuller 1998b). After the September 11 attacks on the United States, senior US oﬃcials praised the detentions and referred to Malaysia as a ‘beacon of stability’ (Human Rights Watch 2004b). Human Rights Watch also suggested that the US government had beneﬁted from human rights abuses by the Malaysian government. It highlighted the case of the so-called ‘Karachi 13’ when, in October 2003, US counterterrorism oﬃcials extensively interrogated Malaysian and Indonesian students detained in Karachi, Pakistan. Thirteen Malaysian students, some of whom were under 18, were detained in Karachi without charge for nearly two months before being returned to Kuala Lumpur. Five remained in detention in Malaysia under the Internal Security Act. Human Rights Watch also detailed how the US practices at Guantanamo inﬂuenced the treatment of ISA detainees in Malaysia. Malaysian oﬃcials regularly claimed that the abuses at Guantanamo gave them licence to engage in similar practices under ISA. At the same time, Malaysian interrogators used Guantanamo as a threat: detainees who refused to ‘cooperate’ with Malaysian security oﬃcials were told they could be transferred to US custody at Guantanamo. Sam Zariﬁ, deputy director for Asia at Human Rights Watch said: ‘The Malaysian government uses Guantanamo as both a sword and a shield. Abuses by US authorities in the “war on terror” aﬀord cover to governments that abuse their own citizens’ (Human Rights Watch 2004b). Meanwhile, the conﬂict with the international media continued as Mahathir played to the local audience. Before stepping down in 2004, he again attacked the western press for its coverage of the war in Iraq and the situation in the Muslim countries. The government sent 30 Malaysian journalists to Iraq in April 2003, at its own expense, to counter ‘western propaganda’. Foreign minister Syed Hamid Albar said: ‘We don’t want to depend on the foreign media because their news reports are not based on neutrality’. The journalists were accompanied by representatives from several ministries. The opposition press had to cope with additional harassment by

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interior ministry agents who regularly put pressure on printers, distributors and advertisers.22 The ‘war on terror’ did not ease Malaysia’s relations with its neighbours, however. Malaysia joined Indonesia and New Zealand in criticizing Australia for threatening the sovereignty of its neighbours when it announced plans to closely monitor ships far beyond its territorial waters to boost the country’s defences against possible terror attacks on its soil and its oﬀshore oil and gas facilities (Straits Times 18 December 2004). Relations with Indonesia and Thailand also soured. Warships from Malaysia and Indonesia had a confrontation, as tensions rose over a disputed oil-rich maritime area (Agence France Presse 12 April 2005). Thailand also questioned its ASEAN neighbour for giving support to separatist demands among the Muslim population of its southern states. Malaysia was quick to deny involvement. Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar said the government did not ﬁnance separatist movements or groups that use violence to achieve their ends after allegations that the Kelantan branch of Perkim had channelled funds to an outlawed separatist movement. Kelantan Umno liaison chief, Datuk Annuar Musa, had alleged that the Kelantan branch of the Malaysian Islamic Welfare Organization had given money from the sale of a timber concession to the Pattani United Liberation Organization movement (Pulo). He said the money was part of RM1.2 million in proceeds which had gone missing after Perkim Kelantan had sold the timber concession for RM2.4 million (New Straits Times 9 December 2004). On a more positive note, Mahathir’s successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, did move closer to good relations with Singapore after 2004. During Mahathir’s long tenure, relations had always been somewhat strained. Both Umno and the PAP leadership in Singapore now found a common interest in promoting the moderate Islamic philosophy of Badawi’s Barisan Nasional (BN) Islam Hadhari (Civilizational Islam) which was contrasted with the ‘hard-line alternative’ of Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS). Both governments suggested Badawi’s election victory in 2004 reﬂected the support of the majority of Malay-Muslim voters and a ‘complete route for PAS’ (Yeoh and Ming 2004). Badawi was portrayed as a moderate in the style of Singapore’s Goh Chok Tong. Badawi struck a more moderate tone in economic development, freezing costly infrastructure projects, including a $US3.75 billion railway to be built by a Mahathir crony, launched an inquiry into police brutality and corruption, gave more authority to the bureaucrats and less to their ‘tainted political masters’, paid more attention to the rural communities and less to the wealthy urban elite, and even annulled Anwar’s sentence. As a result, the 2004 election victory was UMNO’s largest (Mallet 2005).

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With the election secured, however, Badawi began a clamp down on what were described as extreme, ‘deviant’ groups (Lau, 6 April 2004), whilst the ﬁght against corruption seemed to fade, and even the election victory was tarnished by allegations of vote-rigging and the shameless pro-government bias of the media. Indeed, Badawi appeared ‘caught in a party that is highly corrupt and factionalized . . . a system of authoritarian rule cloaked in democratic trappings and reliant for its legitimacy on perpetual economic growth’ (Mallet 2005). It was a system that continued to be locked in the politics of patronage and power. Despite his moderate credentials, Badawi eventually followed the UMNO way on media control. The new prime minister moved his own people into positions of control at the mainstream media, most of which was still owned by supporters of the ruling party, while the most critical news outlet, the website Malaysiakini, endured an unresolved year-long police investigation (Aglionby 2004). In 2005, the consolidation of local free-to-air television stations continued under the ownership of Malaysia’s largest media corporation, Media Prima Bhd. In October of that year, Media Prima, a company linked to UMNO, completed its 100 per cent acquisition of the ntv7 Group. This also gave it control of the defunct WaFM radio station under the group. Media Prima also controlled the New Straits Times publishing group as well as private television stations TV3, 8TV and the defunct Channel 9, which was expected to resume operations by 2005. By the end of 2005, Media Prima controlled approximately 48 per cent of Malaysia television viewership, with its closest rival the pay-television satellite operator, Astro, enjoying a market share of roughly 20–30 per cent (Puah 2005). Badawi, like Mahathir, was also prepared to silence those who spoke out against him. A Malaysian political science professor who frequently criticized government leaders and policies was sacked from the public university where he worked without being given a reason. Ramasamy Palanisamy, a minority ethnic Indian, who had worked at the government-funded National University of Malaysia for 25 years, said he was victimized for being outspoken: ‘I speculate that my public role in writing and speaking on political and social issues, such as the lack of democratic space [and] the plight of the Indian community, led to the dismissal’ (Associated Press 5 August 2005). At the same time, the shift to Badawi caused intra-elite tensions that had media consequences. Mahathir continued to wield his inﬂuence behind the scenes, as a battle of words continued to rage between the former Prime Minister and the international press. He also accused the foreign media of continuing to ‘hate’ him, in the wake of an AWSJ report which suggested,

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after the resignation of Proton’s chairman when Mahathir reportedly blocked the removal of the company’s CEO, ‘the Proton ﬂap shows how the strong-willed Tun Dr Mahathir continues to wield inﬂuence on Malaysia’s political and corporate landscape’, and how he caused ‘headaches’ for his successor. Similar comments were made in the Financial Times (Ahmad 2005). UMNO leaders rushed to scorn an Economist article critical of Mahathir (Yeoh 2003), and BusinessWeek was also forced to apologize to Dr Mahathir after he accused it of sending him a threatening letter – the apology came from managing editor Robert Dowling. Mahathir said he received a letter asking him for an interview and giving him less than 48 hours to respond, threatening to write about cronyism, oppression and dictatorship if he refused (Agence France Presse 18 September 2003). In these circumstances, Malaysia’s diﬃcult relationship with the mass media and communications technology continued. Approximately 6.5 million people in Malaysia used text messaging services, which generate about one billion ringgit ($US263 million) in revenue for telecoms companies as of 2003 according to IDC Paciﬁc, and were increasingly used by the marketing industry. Having seen the enthusiasm with which people vote in TV talent competitions, Malaysia’s science minister, Jamaluddin Jarjis, oﬀered Malaysians the chance to vote by mobile phone short-messaging service (sms) to choose the country’s ﬁrst astronaut (Kent 2005), yet Malaysia’s inﬂuential national Fatwa Council put the domestic marketing industry into a spin with a ruling that taking part in sms contests was a sin. The contests it said were akin to gambling, which is a sin in Islamic law (Prystay 2004a). The UMNO leadership, itself, was sending confused messages. A Toyota Altis advertisement featuring Hollywood star Brad Pitt was banned citing that the use of western faces in advertisement would create an inferiority complex among Asians. Deputy information Minister Zainuddin Maidin argued: ‘Why do we need to use their faces in our advertisements, are our own people not handsome? We barred the advertisement as it appeared as a humiliation against Asians’ (Asian Media and Communication Bulletin November–December 2002, p. 16). But, when Kelantan Menteri Besar Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat blamed the print and electronic media for the increase in the country’s crime rate, suggesting negative reporting contributed to the moral decay among youths, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi added his voice to women’s groups and NGOs saying society should be the one to decide whether the media had played their role well, adding there was no need for any party to blame the media for writing and publishing the truth: ‘The role of the media is to disseminate news and information to the masses. In the process,

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they would have to follow the stipulated guidelines and regulations governing their work – I personally do not think the media have brought about negative eﬀects to the society’.23 Much was also made by the Malaysian government of plans to relax guidelines for ﬁlm censorship to keep up with the times. In particular, a new ‘PG13’ rating was suggested to allow children of that age to watch the ﬁlms if accompanied by their parents or adult guardians. While the local ﬁlm industry and moviegoers who have long regarded the country’s ﬁlm censorship codes, in use since 1963, as being too restrictive, viewed this as a good thing, the government still sought to maintain control over content, albeit indirectly, by providing guidance to local-ﬁlm makers at a ‘meeting of minds’ between the government and representatives of the industry. The ministry’s ﬁlm control division secretary, Abdul Aziz Yusak, said the new guidelines would allow ﬁlm-makers ﬂexibility, with fewer restrictions, as long as they use themes consistent and acceptable in multi-racial Malaysia with regard to race and religion (Samad 2005). Thus, it was clear that despite being seen, initially, as a more liberal, reformist leader, Badawi has continued the media policies of control which were the hallmark of the Mahathir era. These policies have, however, been embraced in the context of growing inter-elite tensions, encouraged by Mahathir suﬀering from what Musa Hitam termed the ‘post primeminister syndrome’ (Jaafar and Muhammad 2006), and the complicated network of interlinking relationships created by the long-term Malaysian leader in the political culture of patronage.

CONCLUSION While the Mahathir government was clearly conscious of playing to a local audience with its attacks on the international media, the ﬂow of information into the country accompanying the process of globalization and technological change was perceived by the government as a threat to state and regime security. This was particularly clear during the political crisis associated with the downfall of Anwar, itself symbolic of the internal struggle within the ruling UMNO party, as the Asian Financial Crisis undermined the legitimacy of the developmental state model. All the while, the ruling elite watched as Indonesia underwent regime change, amidst concerns of a possible regional contagion of instability (Ayoob 1995, p. 196). Yet, the control structures put in place by the government seemed to have been eﬀective in the case of CNBC Asia. The increasing sensitivity of these large media organizations to commercial imperatives played into the hands

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of governments, like that of Malaysia, concerned to maintain control of at least the content, if not the ﬂow, of information across their borders. Indeed, Mahathir and UMNO have proved remarkably resilient even as the government’s grip seemed to be slipping in other areas of new technology, and the Internet, in particular, had become a space in which challenges to the government were mounted, threatening to corrode central control (Phar 2000, p. 49). But while liberal theorists would suggest the changes wrought by globalization should bring about the breakdown of the illiberal state, this has not happened in Malaysia. Mahathir and his successor, Badawi, at the head of UMNO, have been fairly successful in managing the new media environment through both the trying circumstances of the Asian Financial Crisis and with technological developments threatening their monopoly of the mass communications industry. Malaysia’s hegemony in its own national culture and communications system might falter, but it is questionable whether the loss of national cohesion and identity need result (Collins 1995, p. 181). Indeed, pressures to liberalize the media and Malaysia’s politics from the international arena have diminished in the face of the threat posed by radical Islam. Western leaders no longer call for reformasi. In the search for support in the ‘war on terror’ rather stability and secularism, even if it means autocratic illiberal government, is once more the rallying cry. Should the issue of human rights be raised in criticism, Malaysians can point to American policies to prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, which has undermined any coherent western vision for a free media and a plural state in the eyes of many in Southeast Asia. Of course, Malaysia is not alone in experiencing the rending tremors caused by the rapidly accelerating forces of change that accompany globalization and technological development. Similar parallels can be found around the region, as governments ﬁght to maintain their grip over the ﬂow of information they deem a risk to the security of state and regime. In the ebb and ﬂow of the battle between the ancienne regimes and the forces for reform, however, even local voices which were raised against corruption and cronyism seem to have been silenced in the desire for political and economic stability in the face of rising Islamic fundamentalism. But, in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis, across ASEAN there was a similar to and fro, as governments attempted to re-assert their control policies as the mass media and information and entertainment sources tried to stretch previously claustrophobic borders. In the next chapter we will examine how the political culture and history of the Philippines has seen the development of a very diﬀerent media model. It is also a model which the traditional political elites ﬁnd uncomfortable.

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NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

See Gomez and Jomo (1997, p. 2), and Wong (2000, p. 118). See http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html. Karthigesu (1998, p. 36) and Wong (2000, p. 127). Gomez and Jomo (1997) and Wong (2000, pp. 115–37). See Atkins, Rodan, Wong, et al. See Far Eastern Economic Review, 23 September, 1999, 162: 38, various articles: ‘Hiebert Imprisoned for Contempt of Court’, p. 17, ‘The article that landed Hiebert in Jail’, p. 18, and ‘The trial judges point of view’, p. 19. Presentation by Keane Wong at The Media and Democratization in the Asia-Paciﬁc, International Conference, Sydney, February, 2000. See Nuttall (1998), Chen (1999) and Hiebert (1998). http://www.parti-pas.org/harakah. http://www.malaysia.net/dap. See Ibrahim and Kaur (1998). See Reuters 9 October, 1998. See Karthigesu (1998, p. 36) and Wong (2000, p. 76). http://www.cnbcasia.com.sg/aboutcnbcasia/aboutcnbcasia.htm. The details were recorded by the author, then Senior News Editor at CNBC Asia. Fuller (1998a). A release from the Singapore Police Force (SPF) on 6 October, 1998, explained that the matter had been discussed between senior CID oﬃcers and the RMP assured the SPF that ‘they recognise the longstanding practice of keeping each other informed of such interviews so as to avoid such actions being misconstrued as the exercise of police powers of investigation outside of jurisdiction. They added that such an incident would not happen again.’ There are a number of examples from wire stories at the time, including Ueno (1998), Reuters (20 October 1998), Agence France Presse (24 November 1998), and Reuters (19 April 1999). For example, Kadir (1998) and Khan (1998, p. 13). CNBC, Asia in Crisis, broadcast 6 and 7 October, 1998. The Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, was speaking in an interview with the author on the Malaysia island of Langkawi on 12 August, 2000. See RSF Malaysia 2004 Annual Report, http://www.rsf.org/article.php 3?id_article= 10201. Quoted in The Sunday Star (2005) and Lau (13 May 2004, p. A1).

5. From propaganda to pop culture: the Philippines and the rise of the Southeast Asia media stars INTRODUCTION Southeast Asia’s changing political landscape and the technological developments that have come hand-in-hand with globalization, have led to a sea change in mass media and communications in the region. No longer merely a tool of national government, the media in much of Southeast Asia is enjoying a period of burgeoning growth, emerging self conﬁdence and gathering power. Even before 9/11 and the Bali bombs of October 2002, these developments were not lost on the elites in the region. They contest and claim the media space, with a resulting boom in the public relations industry, and celebrity status for increasingly inﬂuential media faces. It is this celebrity status that, as the domains of politics and entertainment converge and the citizen becomes political consumer, is being turned into votes, as name recall by the public becomes a major key to electoral oﬃce. This chapter examines these changes with a particular focus on the Philippines, and what they might mean for democratic pluralism in Southeast Asia more generally. Asia is in thrall to celebrity. Across the region, from Bollywood to Canton, from The Ginza to Ramsey Street, there is an obsession with the image that revels in an escape from the humdrum drudgery of modern urban existence. Caught up in the world’s embrace of mass media and entertainment, screens and their images are now the places where we not only access aspects of the real world, but also escape and ignore it. In Asia’s entertainment economies, celebrity is the ultimate asset. In a frantic age of nanosecond attention spans, fame is fortune – not just for the pampered stars but also for the businesses that bank on them. Today, as the modern Asian decides how to spend her leisure time and the malls and shopping arcades are our sacred places, those we admire are the brand names for the consumption of cultural commodities; commercial saints that guide us through ‘the myriad of diversions and monetary escapes from the artiﬁce of our existence’ (Dixon 1999, p. 46). 115

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In Southeast Asia, this forms one of the many and varied responses to the challenges of modernity and the net speed of the global economy. There might be a suspicion of the West, but many still rejoice in cultural elements that seem to symbolize its decadence. Thus a growing embrace of celebrity culture is not without opposition as Jihad sits side-by-side with MacWorld (Barber 1995). Where there is clearly a realization around the region that the media industry and those involved with it are growing in inﬂuence, the Philippines provides a test case of a growing trend that exists at the cusp of politics and the media in a distinctly Southeast Asian context. The region’s politicians and corporate leaders learn from the West, and from the US in particular, that the media plays a vital role in providing an avenue of communication to increasingly expectant stakeholders. And, as companies and political leaders try to diﬀerentiate themselves in a market place where there are no longer compelling ways to be heard against the white noise of competing products, vogue becomes an indispensable mediator (Wolf 1999, p. 225). In the battle for attention in Asia, politics uses the same public relations and marketing tricks used in the entertainment business, as fame equates to recognition in the market place albeit with a distinctive cultural adaptation (Marshall 1997, p. 204). In the Philippines, where the media industry has remained determinedly under private control, and a history of US inﬂuence has helped to encourage a competitive, commercial environment, the country has enthusiastically embraced a media culture which underpins the political system in a way which would be recognized on the other side of the Paciﬁc, although as a mirror image. Filipinos have done more than copy the state of California, where movie stars and celebrities like Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Clint Eastwood have slipped easily onto the political stage. In a system where power has traditionally been held by a few wealthy families, with a short interval of military-supported dictatorship, they have embraced the celebrity politician as their own, distinctive, popular political form. By examining the media in the Philippines, this chapter will illustrate how one country in Southeast Asia has been grappling with the forces of change whipped up by globalization, and technological development. It will show how, in the wake of these changes, the media, with television in its vanguard, is slowly moving from crude government pamphleteer to sophisticated commercial promoter; from advocate of nationalism to elevator of cultural icon and celebrity politics under People Power. And, as the agencies of mass communication become increasingly inﬂuential in public life, political celebrities have emerged, whose adoring entertainment audience easily transforms into a voting public, and whose inﬂuence is turned into political power. This phenomenon has important ramiﬁcations for the

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development of pluralism in Southeast Asia, as the power of name recognition turns Southeast Asian politics from ideology to personality.

THE GROWTH OF ASIA’S PERCEPTION INDUSTRIES As ICT developments helped sanctify the celebrity image, carried by news and entertainment products bursting across increasingly porous national borders and bombarding a growing local audience, in much of Southeast Asia television is taking over where the cinema once ruled. In the early 1990s, there were only a few million cable-television households in the AsiaPaciﬁc. By 2004, multi-channel TV subscriptions had grown to 192.4 million, and were expected to reach almost 300 million by 2015. In 2005, the number of digital pay TV subscribers rose 37 per cent year-to-year, to 14.4 million, led by aggressive deployment in Australia, Japan and Singapore and robust growth in Malaysia and Hong Kong. Asia’s pay television revenues were expected to reach $30 billion by 2010 and more than $40 billion by 2015, up from revenues of $18 billion in 2005.1 By the end of the twentieth century, News Corp-owned satellite broadcaster Star TV pumped out 40 channels in eight languages to, it claimed, 300 million viewers in 53 countries (Alkman 2002, p. 43). And, despite a double-digit decline in advertising in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 11 September, 2001, which forced many media companies in Southeast Asia either to reorganize or close down operations completely,2 the Asia Paciﬁc media and entertainment market continued to grow. As we have seen in earlier chapters, the global entertainment and media (E&M) industry, as a whole, had entered a solid growth phase and was set to increase at a 6.6 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to $1.8 trillion by 2010. New revenue streams grew rapidly, the growth of physical formats had slowed, and the availability of licensed digital distribution provided consumers with alternatives to piracy. Asia Paciﬁc remained the fastest-growing region, reﬂecting both the underlying economic growth and local initiatives. The growth was being led by double-digit increases in Internet, TV distribution and gaming, with annual compound growth in spending projected to average 9.2 per cent – the highest of all of the regions – reaching $425 billion in 2010 (PWC 2006). At the heart of this growth is television. Despite being condemned by its critics for its lack of substance, and being a medium of impression, television dominated media consumption in Asia Paciﬁc in the 1990s, where it had become ‘immense, aﬀecting the most basic assumptions and practices of daily life’ (Lull 1995, p. 29). Southeast Asians watched more than twice as much television as they read print media, with Thailand topping the

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TV charts with an average of 3.2 hours of television viewing a day. The Philippines daily television consumption was 3 hours, Indonesia 2.8, slightly higher than Singapore and Malaysia at around 2.5 hours (NOP 2006). Half of all television homes were in Asia (Hansen 2001, p. 211). In Asia, consequently, the communications media, as well as the perception industries so closely connected with it, were altering the very nature of politics and the ways in which political leaders relate to those over whom they rule, such that their behaviours are modiﬁed to ensure the management of their visibility over the media and communication planning is increasingly part of professional government (Thompson 2001). The traditional elites of Asia have long understood that to interpret the world is to have power over it, and ‘to circulate that sense socially is to exert power over those who use that sense as a way of coping with their daily lives’ (Fiske 1994, p. 3). In the new mediated world, the manipulation of public image has become increasingly important, but more of a challenge. The mass media enables political elites to reach a wide audience, but the media is a ﬁlter, providing its own interpretation and, therefore, demanding increased skill and sophistication from the political elites. Thus, as we will see in Chapter 9, hand in hand with the growth of information-hungry media companies came the development of the publicity apparatus, such that the PR industry, like the communication media it fed, was well established in the region, and set to leave an indelible impression on Asia and Asian politics (Thompson 2001, p. 178). The ﬂood of cultural products, particularly from the US, as well as the impact of global media developments such as the extension of corporate control and convergence within the industry, and the domination of commercial considerations, also meant content was increasingly oriented around entertainment considerations. Even the provision of news and information was being warped into infotainment by the considerations of politics and proﬁt, as spectacle replaced substance, and the media audience was presented with unchallenging clichés and stereotypes. In this new media world, information was tightly controlled, channelled, and manipulated by a few giant conglomerates, such that: ‘what we receive at the end of the “news ﬁlter” is a precensored, predigested chaﬀ . . . titillation and gossip, lacking both the style and substance of empirical factual reportage’ (Dixon 1999, p. 3). Media celebrities, whose role it is, increasingly, to endorse the various industry brand names, front these pasteurised media products. As with movie stars from Hollywood to Bollywood, they allow the audience to diﬀerentiate between the otherwise undistinguished and indistinguishable. The rise of the celebrity in modern society has gone hand in hand with the growth of the mass media. They cohabit the entertainment economy, where

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entertainment and brand marketing have been grafted together, increasing the importance of fame. Everything from banking, to religion and politics has become entertainment, as ‘the fun-focused consumer pays well to be entertained in their leisure time, and entertainment becomes, ﬁrst and foremost, the way to build image by enhancing customer experience’ (Wolf 1999, pp. 80–81). As we have already seen, theoretical attempts to explain the phenomenon ranged from early interpretations by Boorstin (1992) and others, which sought to show how the growth in consumer culture had led to a decline in values and standards, emphasizing the superﬁciality and lack of consequence of these public personalities, through to the works of Dyer (2004), Gamson et al. (1992), Marshall (1997), and others, who trace the meaning of the public individual and the nature of celebrity as a constructed, but unstable, marketable commodity. In these analyses, celebrity is created from a complex negotiation between cultural producers (the media, the publicity apparatus and the celebrity) and the audience, and provides a fulcrum legitimizing the individual’s role in modern consumer society/capitalist democracy. Nor should we forget an ambivalent public, that plays an important role in the triumvirate of audience, media and celebrity. Fed by an endless pageant of novelty, excitement and gossip, they are envious for the adventurous and incredible lives of the celebrities and desirous of the fame and fortune that accompanies it. And yet, in a search for what is seen to be ‘real’ and a lust for titillating scandal, the same audience reveals an almost perverse enjoyment at any evidence of the fallibility of these ‘popularly-elected gods and goddesses’ (Gamson 2001, p. 265). The emphasis on the creation of celebrity places it ﬁrmly alongside the media, the institutions that produce the famous, and the development of the mechanisms available for garnering attention. A clear link is established, then, between the growth of the publicity apparatus and the birth of modern consumer culture, and its roots in the newly-expanding urban markets and the leisure business boom, with show business, the ﬁlm industry, and the star system at its heart (ibid., p. 262). In Southeast Asia by the beginning of the twenty-ﬁrst century, as with much of the world, there was a profusion of news and entertainment media available to disseminate these celebrity images. Television had developed a pervasive inﬂuence as, disaﬀected by the human lot, people hungered for stories of misfortune and death as ‘our existential emptiness send us on a desperate quest to bring meaning to our lives . . . (that) drives us to conspicuous consumerism’ (Dixon 1999, pp. 35–6). As a result, television had emerged as the most signiﬁcant new outlet for image creation, as ‘areas traditionally perceived as non-entertainment (news in particular), come to

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depend on the practices of the entertainment industry, and celebrity in particular’ (Gamson 2001, p. 271). The rise of infotainment has served to further reinforce the cult of personality in the industry. Celebrity images have meant huge sales for television, as well as for the more traditional outlets of magazines and fanzines (Dixon 1999, pp. 10–12). Even the increasing dominance of technology in the television business and the trend towards the commodiﬁcation of news due to corporate control of news organizations and convergence within the industry has meant the production of its own star system. The cost and logistical demands of the technology of collection and dissemination, the needs of ever-more hungry news rooms, as well as cosmetic contrivances such as ‘stand ups’, themselves seeking to reinforce the fact that ‘we are there’, encourage the trend of reporters as celebrity (MacGregor 1997, 186–7). Along with the celebrated faces that front the news reports, these media stars have become the fodder of marketing departments, promoting particular channels and media products. In the celebrity culture, where the borders between politics and entertainment are increasingly vague, the celebritization of politics poses complex questions regarding image and reality. Political leaders, themselves, often seem to be little more than celebrity endorsements for powerful elite groups and party political machinery. The areas of public relations, media agencies and opinion polling, which themselves developed as part of the entertainment industries, now ‘provide models and mediating discourses for the organisation of contemporary political culture, in which the political leader attempts to embody the mass public aﬀectively’ (Marshall 1997, p. 240). The role of the media, and television in particular, is key in allowing politicians to create an intimacy with their public, a careful construction of political characters, avoiding the articulation of ideology or political position so as not to alienate any elements of the electorate. ‘Television news provides the material for establishing a narrative of politics. Political leaders in this reconstruction, become leading characters in a continuously unfolding drama’ (ibid., p. 229). These political leaders are often juxtaposed with television personalities, particularly news anchors – the media stars in the political narrative. These anchors are already familiar faces to viewers, guiding them through life’s daily confusion of information and events, showing control, interpreting events, and providing security in a chaotic world as they are inserted into the ‘construction of signiﬁcant moments’ (ibid., p. 124). Is it no surprise, then, that these personalities slip easily across the already frail frontier between entertainment and politics as they have in the Philippines. While the political elites in Malaysia moved to control the ﬂow

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of information across and within their borders as the global media companies extended their reach across Asia, eroding monolithic state ownership, as competition forced the concentration of media capital, in the Philippines, the emergence of People Power after 1989, more participatory democratic reforms and a tradition of privately-controlled media, meant an enthusiastic local industry continued to blossom largely unencumbered; increasingly a ‘political battleground – an important contested space for conﬂicting forces and aspirations’ (Atkins 1999, p. 4).

THE PHILIPPINES AND THE ‘ERAPIZATION’ OF POLITICS Politics and political power, as practised in the Philippines, are among the roots of the inequities that characterise our national problem. To achieve reforms, we need to outgrow politics based on patronage and personality.3

The Philippine’s movie star president may have been deposed in January 2001, but the appearance of Joseph Estrada, more fondly known as ‘Erap’, on the political stage led to a ﬂood of celebrities looking to get their share of the electoral limelight. Thus, the Philippines can be seen as providing a unique model of a media future, a movie determined world that does not ﬁt with classical views of pluralism and rational citizenship. It is a political culture determined by accountability to the public as ﬁckle followers of fashion: the dumbing-down or ‘Erapization’ of politics (Raslan 2000). There was not much of the John Wayne swagger about Estrada when he left the Malacalang palace in January 2001, for what was the last time. The former B movie actor and darling of the Philippine poor was driven out of town by a hanging mob, backed by the cavalry and with ‘Sheriﬀ’ Arroyo at its head. Drunk and confused, two adjectives that could also summate his term as President, this was a far cry from his swashbuckling Robin Hood image that jumped from the silver screen into the limelight of the People Power revolution. But the former President left an enduring legacy. His stellar political career reinforced a fact local analysts suggest that Filipinos have long known, that show business and politics were the same thing: ‘Having a household name, however, remains a movie or TV personality’s most enviable asset’ (Rimban 2002). From his early days as city mayor, and then his election to Vice President in 1992, Estrada symbolized politics as entertainment, where ‘nothing is real, everything is for show . . . (and) politics is seen as the natural next step for movie and TV stars’ (Zafra 2000, p. 69). With the increase in the importance of the media in the Philippines, and its ability to manufacture fame and fortune, Estrada is unlikely to be the last of his ilk.

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His successor, President Gloria Arroyo, did not shun the ‘system’. In fact, she had a ‘crack media team’ working on her image as advisors attempted to market a trained economist to a country reared on ‘strongman populists, and hard on the heels of movie star Estrada’ (Hookway 2002, p. 14). In 1995, with former radio talent, advertising boss, broadcast station executive and publisher, Dante Arevalo Ang, by her side, she used a ‘movie star’ strategy that likened her to veteran actress and Estrada co-star, Nora Aunor, to help her draw attention to her campaign. It worked so well that Arroyo topped the 1995 senatorial contest with 16 million votes. Well known in political and media circles as one of the country’s ‘savviest and slickest spinmeisters’, Ang has been associated, in his time, with both Marcos and Estrada. When Arroyo became president, he became her personal publicist. From this cabinet position, he oﬀered his media savvy in making recommendations for various positions in media organizations run or owned by the government, as well as facilitating the appointments of at least ﬁve journalists as directors in either sequestered or governmentcontrolled non-media corporations (Tordesillas 2001). Reworking Arroyo’s image as movie-star President went a step too far, perhaps, when Arroyo and her top oﬃcials controversially appeared on the cover of Philippine Tatler magazine dressed like the Men in Black – complete with black suits and sunglasses. The editor of the magazine said it proved Arroyo was ‘accessible to the public and she’s game . . . wanted to show her fun side’ (Straits Times 16 September 2002, p. 1). But not everyone liked the idea: radio stations had a ﬁeld day discussing the picture, and one listener suggested it was highly inappropriate, given Arroyo’s failure to curb crime and kidnapping. The international media also raised questions as to whether or not Arroyo was taking the Philippines’ economic and security problems seriously enough (The Nation 17 September 2002). However, Arroyo also had turned to international image make-over artists. When foreign investors said the Philippines needed a capable manager, Manila hired global PR giant Burson-Marsteller, on a $US800 000 contract to promote Arroyo and the Philippines as she toured Britain, Canada and the US in January 2002. Arroyo told a gathering of foreign businessmen, that ‘the fate of the nation [would] not unfold on the silver screen’ but seems all too aware that there is an important link, and that voters in the Philippines don’t judge politicians on economic management, but rather ‘they want charisma . . . pomp and grandeur, not a president as CEO’ (Hookway 2002, p. 14). This is how Arroyo relates to Philippine culture as opposed to the Singapore example which, as we will see in a later chapter, prefers the image of leader as corporate chief executive oﬃcer (CEO). Founder of the crusading Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), Sheila Coronel dubs the Philippine media ‘kingmaker’ (Coronel

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1999a, p. 91), and Estrada the precursor of a new trend: the ‘personiﬁcation of the power of the media over memory, of mass appeal over muddled, middle-class idealism . . . [and] . . . the shape of things to come’ (ibid., p. 89). Inextricably linked to the country’s politics of patronage and personality decried by incoming President Arroyo, this process is rooted in the country’s political culture, itself an interplay between indigenous local norms, western norms and Philippine Catholicism (Sidle 1995, p. 138). This has important ramiﬁcations for how the media shapes politics in the Philippines, and how diﬀerent views of what democracy is can shape politics and the media.

THE POLITICS AND POLITICAL CULTURE: PERSONAL AND PARTICULAR An archipelago marking a natural border in South-eastern Asia, sitting between the Philippine Sea and the South China Sea, east of Vietnam, at the turn of the century, the Republic of the Philippines had a population of 81 159 644 (July 2000 est.). They were scattered around some 7000 islands of which 900 were inhabited (Wong 1994, p. 249). It is a population that was young, predominantly Roman Catholic Malay, with two oﬃcial languages, Filipino (based on Tagalog, a widely spoken local dialect) and English, and a literacy rate of 94.6 per cent (CIA, 2000). The country’s political history has been glibly described as ‘350 years in a Spanish convent, 50 years in Hollywood and 4 years in a Japanese concentration camp, before they gained independence’ (Masalog 2000, p. 373). The country was a Spanish colony from the sixteenth century until the early twentieth century, until the US annexed the country between 1902 and independence in 1945. US rule was interrupted by a period of Japanese occupation during the Second World War. Where the Spanish left their religion, the Americans left a legacy of public education, the English language, and a system of government. Filipinos were described by one US analyst in the 1940s as being ‘swayed, even captivated, by American culture’ (Wong 1994, pp. 255–66). But, we can also look at a more distant past for some clues for the development of the political culture of the Philippines. In traditional Southeast Asian society, kinship ties provided primary loyalties and deﬁned place in the village society, as well as outside the family, the patron–client relationships by which the ‘client received protection and assistance in return for his support, service and respect’ (Steinberg 1987, p. 18). In the Philippines, the inﬂuence of the patriarchal family was seen as assuring social survival when the state was weak. It meant a prominent

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role for patronage and paternalism in the legitimization of political leadership that ﬁltered through the entire social order and system of governance, resulting in ‘eﬀorts to legitimise political and economic power on a personal basis’ (Sidle 1995, p. 138). Pre-colonial political authority in the Philippines was based around Datus – big men – who were endowed with what is known in Tagalog as kapangyarihan (a special personal power – some females also had this power, usually shamans or catalona). It was ‘entirely personal and charismatic . . . based on the belief in power located in certain innate qualities of certain individuals’ magical powers, oratorical skills, spiritual reﬁnement, [and] bravery in battle’ (Sidle 1995, p. 150). The Spanish built their administration on this essentially Malay system of village organization, whereby the Datu was renamed cabaza de barangay (village headman). Thus empowered by the Spanish, his allegiance to the colonial regime was ‘co-opted by increasing his privileges and guaranteeing his status’ (Steinberg 1987, p. 27). American rule introduced a bureaucratic state of national proportions through which centralized personal power could be exercised. Also under the Americans, capitalism provided another basis for the exercise of power – the ‘accumulation of economic, social and ultimately political power’ (Sidle 1995, p. 151). In addition, the inﬂuence of Chinese mestizo (mixed blood) on the Indio (indigenous) community included transmission of values like, ‘wealth as a social arbiter (and) the appeal of ostentation as proof of social status’ (Steinberg 1987, p. 168). As a result, Philippine political culture values a high degree of personalization and particularism as elsewhere in Asia; the latter ‘reinforces the expectation of special or preferential treatment for a family member or friend’ (Timberman 1991, p. 23) and the belief that the ‘decisions and events that shape their lives are determined more by particular individuals than by impersonal systems and institutions’ (ibid., p. 22). There is little concern with institutions and ideologies on the part of leaders or the public, and a blurring of the line between private and public resources. Even modern political parties ‘revolve around personality factions rather than ideological concerns’ (Wong 1994, p. 269). In modern Philippine society, patrons are able to project the indigenous notion of authority based on personal power on a national level. The development of national media networks alongside political institutions like the bureaucratic state, were key in changing the terms for the legitimization of national power (Sidle 1995, p. 161). The distribution of patronage, with family and kinship politics providing the ‘ﬂesh of the patron-client factional framework of Philippine politics . . . operating as the politics of the pork barrel, inﬂuence peddling and

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vote trading, reached its zenith in the Marcos regime’ (David 1999). In a country accustomed to frequent and peaceful alternation of power among competing political groups, Marcos and his followers changed the mould, using corruption, violence and fraud to entrench themselves as a permanent ruling group. Marcos created personality politics in the independent Philippines as he sought to become the Amos, or godfather, not only to the people of the Philippines, but also to the institutions of government in a ‘presidentially dominated system of rule . . . a self-serving autocracy’ (Lande and Hooley 1986, p. 1). To this end, Marcos used the national media and the ‘politics of spectacle’ (Sidle 1995, p. 161). He was a television president, from his public duets with his wife, to the ‘media side-show’ (Steinberg 1987, p. 441) that ensued in the February 1986 elections, which led to his eventual downfall and to the emergence of People Power in 1988/1999.

MARCOS: AN ERA OF AUTHORITARIAN GUIDANCE The media has its roots in the colonial past of the Philippines, and the ﬁrst Spanish-language newsletter in 1637. It is a legacy that is seen to connect the development of the Filipino media to European newspapers via the emergence of Philippine nationalism in the late nineteenth century, and the country’s independence movement, providing an anti-colonial press (Coronel 2000, p. 149). America also had a strong inﬂuence on the press during its occupation of the Philippines, and introduced movies, television and the radio, the latter in 1922. This left Filipinos with a legacy of private ownership of the broadcast media, a trend which continued when television was introduced by American engineer James Lindenberg in the 1950s, and a ‘penchant for following American cultural fare’ (Zubri 1993, p. 188). Given the spread of the Filipino people across so many islands, the broadcast media was an eﬀective means of communication. Radio quickly grew to 213 stations by 1968, 40 in Greater Manila alone. By 1966, there were 18 privately-owned television channels (Masalog 2000, p. 377). The growth of the local industry has been remarkable given the attempt by President Marcos to silence the country’s ‘potent mass media’ (Zubri 1993, p. 188). When he declared martial law in 1972, Marcos ordered all mass media closed except for the government radio and TV stations in Manila. For a while, the media that was allowed to operate was either under direct control of the government, or put under Roberto Benedicto, a Marcos crony. The pronouncement by Marcos in 1977, that anyone who

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acts or speaks against the government was subversive, served as a clear guide to the regime’s attitude to the media (Youngblood, 1977). The period between 1972 and Marcos’s overthrow in 1986 represented an authoritarian break to the traditional elite consensus, as the State sought to control an increasingly restive populace and Marcos sought to destroy the traditional elite who were against him, and reward those who gave him support. The nationalistic ideals heralding the redistribution of monopolies that were traditionally owned by Chinese and Mestizo oligarchs to Filipino businessmen – Marcos cronies – represented little more than an excuse for graft and corruption. Marcos alienated many of the illustrado, the oligarchy created by the US colonial power, which remained critical of his administration. The sugar magnates, the Lopez Family, found their businesses conﬁscated after continuing to rail against the corruption of the Marcos Regime, and President of ABS-CBN (Asia’s ﬁrst commercial television broadcaster), Eugenio Lopez Jr, was imprisoned in 1972. He escaped in 1977, and ﬂed abroad, as did many of the old political elite (Owen 2005, p. 455). So while Marcos brought a short period of economic stability and growth under the aegis of US-sponsored ‘structural adjustment programmes’ and development aid, it did not last. The Marcos dictatorship degenerated into crony capitalism buﬀeted by a volatile global economy. It was also a particularly traumatic era in Philippine politics as it politicized the military. The Philippines military grew dramatically in size under Marcos, and heightened areas of political tension creating many of the conﬂicts, such as Muslim secessionism, which continued into the twentyﬁrst century, in the Southern Province of Mindanao (Tuano and Alegre, 2005). It is also notable that the 1970s saw the emergence of the trend of developmental journalism, with its early development beginning in the Philippines. The Press Foundation for Asia – led by Juan Mercado, Alan Chalkley, Jose Luna Castro and Romeo Abundo – was founded in 1967, at a meeting of Asian editors and publishers in Manila. The Foundation worked in parallel with the Los Baños College of Development Communication at the University of the Philippines. The Los Baños School evolved from the practices of what began as the Oﬃce of Extension and Publications of the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture in 1954, under which some staﬀ members began to practice and study how communication could be used to address problems of agricultural and rural development.4 It represented a professional position on the creation of content and the role of the media that continued into the twenty-ﬁrst century, and was seen as the favoured alternative by many of Asia’s political elite to the western media model.

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The Foundation, along with the Philippine Press Institute, the Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication, the Asian Mass Communication Research and Information Centre, the United Nations Development Programme’s Development Communication Support Service, the International Institute for Rural Reconstruction, the Universities of Singapore and Malaysia and the Manila-based Communication Foundation for Asia, highlighted issues and events related to population, science and technology, health, nutrition and education. By the 1980s, however, the Philippine media did begin to reﬂect the discontent with the Marcos regime. As the coalition that supported Marcos began to break up, it began to encounter opposition from diﬀerent elements in society, both urban, around LABAN, based in the Manila area and including Benigno Aquino, and in the rural areas where rebel movements like The Communist Party of the Philippines (oﬃcially banned) and its military wing, the New People’s Army, and the Muslim secessionist movement, especially the Moro Nationalist Liberation Front (MNLF) in Mindanao, were increasingly active. Of particular note for this book is that the media played an important role in the emergence of political opposition to Marcos. The alternative press and its use of communications technology in the form of Xerox journalism and cassette journalism made it impossible for the Marcos regime to suppress information on the assassination, in 1983, of Senator Benigno Aquino – an event which, itself, took place in front of the television cameras. Campus publications took an activist stand on social issues. The Philippine Daily Inquirer founded on 9 December, 1985, became the leading newspaper after the EDSA Revolution in 1986 (Media Museum 2006). Radio also became an instrument of change as the Marcos support base began to crumble, something that still resonated in the twenty-ﬁrst century, as local radio reporters remained outspoken and represented the main target of violence against journalists in the Philippines some 20 years later. On 23 February, 1986, the Head of the Catholic Church in the Philippines, Cardinal Sin, speaking on the Church radio, Radio Veritas, asked the people to support those rebelling against Marcos. When this station was closed by Marcos, pirate radio stations like Radyo Bandido were used, as groups like the Catholic Church encouraged popular demonstrations and reform groups within the army undermined the military consensus which had backed Marcos, with retired military oﬃcers speaking out against the assassination of Benigno Aquino, arguing that the regime, not the military itself, was at fault (Casper 1995, p. 110). Marcos also came in for growing criticism from the foreign media. In February 1973, ﬁve months after Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines, The Bangkok Post in Thailand ran a series of articles that gave

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the international community a diﬀerent account of what was happening in the Philippines. The articles, written by opposition senator, Benigno ‘Ninoy’ Aquino Jr, from his prison cell, were smuggled to Thailand to become The Bangkok Post’s ‘world-exclusive’ (Go 2003). Further aﬁeld, the media was even more critical of the Marcos regime. Lewis Simon of US newspaper group Knight Ridder won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 1985, following a series which began with coverage of the assassination of Benigno Aquino. As the international media began to show the excesses of the Marcos regime, Marcos lost the support of a critical ally, the United States, and was ﬁnally toppled by the EDSA revolution in 1986, as allies like Fidel Ramos and Juan Ponce Enrile turned against him (Casper 1995, p. 109). Clearly, the media had proved a useful resource for the coalition which toppled Marcos, from the use of the broadcast media to simpler ICT such as Xeroxed copies of speeches and mobile telephony to organize demonstrations. As ICT developed further, the Internet also became a space for opposition voices to wage their propaganda war, something at which they have become more adept. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front maintained its own website,5 that carried daily news and photographs about the rebel group. Eid Kabalu, the MILF spokesman, was always available for media interviews, unlike many of the military generals and their public aﬀairs spokesmen. This was also the same for Gregorio Rosal, the CPP (Communist Party of the Philippines) spokesman, and other rebel leaders in Mindanao were as active as Kabalu: ‘They regularly speak on radio programs and occasionally grant clandestine interviews in their hideouts for selected journalists’ (Zamboanga Journal 2006). The outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), had a website, but it had disappeared by 2006.6 The site, which previously posted news and photographs of war victories against the military and police and anti-government propaganda became home to travel and tourism portals. Gone was the red hammer and sickle ﬂag, and in its place was an image of a clear blue sky and the headline: ‘Welcome to the Philippinerevolution.Org’.7

THE POST MARCOS MEDIA WORLD: BATTLE RESUMED As the new century arrived, the media in the Philippines was, overall, one of the freest in the world (Zubri 1993, p. 187). After the fall of Marcos, it had seen a dramatic expansion in size and inﬂuence, feeding an increasingly urban population with expanding access (Coronel 1999b, p. 90).

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Discussion of the issues facing the Filipino media range from the overriding inﬂuence of the media and the scrutiny of the control of newspaper proprietors aﬀecting editorial decisions to the beneﬁt of business interests, through the murder and imprisonment of crusading journalists and poor quality work and petty corruption, to sex selling the media and television news being repackaged as entertainment, with ratings driving production. But these discussions also tend to mention the general health of the media, and positives such as the use of the Internet to continue the experiment with libertarian and community journalism, and political debate. The West has heavily inﬂuenced the country’s mainstream media (Masalog 2000, p. 389). Television, in particular, where the United States provided the model, has been accused of ‘dumbing down’ politics to an alarming degree (David 2002). This trend towards infotainment has also led to the aggrandizement of television personalities. News anchors have become superheroes, courageous crusaders against corruption and social iniquity (Rimbau 1999, p. 94), and the growth of an orientation of the media towards these personalities is seen as key to the political ambitions of many of them: ‘name recall by the public . . . [is now] a major key to getting elected’ (Mercado 1991, p. 43). After his ouster, the ownership of many of the major private mass media outlets and telecom companies which Marcos had managed to wrest control of, returned to their original owners, including the Lopez family. The industry returned to a form familiar in the days before Marcos, concentrated in the hands of wealthy families with substantial cross-ownership between media outlets. This is the contemporary position. By the beginning of the new century, the most widely read newspapers were the Manila Bulletin, Philippine Star, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Manila Times and Business World. By 2004, the country had 225 television stations, 369 AM radio broadcast stations, 583 FM radio broadcast stations and 5 shortwave stations. Although some media outlets, such as IBC (television) and the Philippine Broadcasting Service (radio), were government-run, most were privately owned. Consequently, some reports tended to be onesided presentations favouring special interests.8 Family-owned conglomerates also continued to operate the major telecommunications companies, including Globe Communications (owned by the Ayala family together with Singapore Telecommunications), Philippine Long Distance Telephone (owned by the Indonesian Salim family through their First Paciﬁc Holdings and the Filipino Cojuangco family), Bayantel (owned by the Lopez family – critics of the Marcos Regime – through First Philippine Holdings) and Digitel Communications (owned by the Gokongwei family through their J.G. Summit Holding Company). The Cojuangco family – a Marcos ally – also owned the Associated Broadcasting

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Company, which managed the Channel 5 television station in Metro Manila and several aﬃliate television stations in other cities in the country; it also owned a direct-to-home satellite company. The Lopez family, through ownership of the ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation, managed the Channel 2 television station and two top radio stations in Metro Manila, more than 20 other television stations and numerous radio stations in other provinces in the country. Three families controlled the Greater Media Arts Company that owned the Channel 7 television station in Metro Manila, and several other television and radio stations. Family ownership existed among other major radio networks such as the Manila Broadcasting Company (Elizalde), Radio Mindanao Network (Canoy), Nation Broadcasting Company (owned by the PLDT) and the national broadsheets media such as the Philippine Daily Inquirer (Romualdez), Manila Bulletin (Yap) and Philippine Star (Belmonte). The industry was also centralized: Globe Telecommunications and Smart Communications had almost a 90 per cent share of total cellular phone line subscribers nationwide. This resulted in enormous proﬁts for both. Local radio and television aﬃliates of the ABS-CBN and GMA networks dominated the major provincial centres. Manila-based newspapers, such as the Philippine Daily Inquirer, started publishing editions in the provincial centres. Families also controlled companies cross industry. The Lopez family controlled Bayan Telecoms and ABS-CBN, but also had interests in power generation and distribution, highway management. The Ayalas had a stake in Globe Telecoms as well as various interests in banking, real estate, semiconductor manufacturing, and automotive retail. The Gokongwei’s 47.5 per cent control of Digital Telecoms and Summit Media came alongside various interests in retail, real estate, transportation, banking, petrochemicals and textile. Cojuangco (Antonio Jr) had stakes in PLDT (15.4 per cent), Associated Broadcasting (n.a.) and Dream Satellite (n.a.) as well as interests in the banking industry.9 ICT absorption was dependent on cost and physical availability. By the turn of the century, the Philippines had good television and mobile distribution although other ICT were relatively underdeveloped due to the state of the economy. With approximately 15 million households, the Philippines had a television penetration of about 73 per cent (10.86 million), setting it behind its ASEAN neighbours: Singapore, 99 per cent; Malaysia, 97 per cent; and Thailand, 94 per cent, but ahead of Indonesia with 61 per cent. Of the television channels, ABS-CBN 2 dominated, with 45 per cent of viewers in 1998, while its nearest competitor GMA-7 had 21 per cent. There were three cable operators servicing Manila and, with current cable subscriptions rates remaining competitive at between US$7 and $US11 per

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month, there were believed to be one million subscribers out of the 12 million population in the Metro Manila area (Lucero 2001, p. 25). VCR penetration was 30 per cent (as compared to Singapore 80, Malaysia 53 and Thailand 40). Cinema admissions to the 950 screens nationwide have been on the decline: from a peak of 141 million in 1994, down to 105 million in 1998. Computer penetration was relatively low at about 1.3 per 100 people, and the number of Internet users was about 200 000 in 2000, with an annual growth of about 40 per cent (Masalog 2000, p. 388). Mobile phone use had become one of the highest in Asia, with a penetration of more than more than 27 per 100 – compared to India with 9 – Filipinos send an average of 200 million messages daily (Bulos, 2004). Computer and Internet penetration by 2004 was 4.46 per 100 and 5.32 per 100, respectively. This compared to 6 and 11.25 for Thailand, 1.36 and 6.52 for Indonesia and 19.16 and 38.62 for Malaysia (International Telecommunications Union 2006). What is noticeable, however, is that despite investments like that of Singapore Telecom in the Ayala family’s Globe Communications, a broader, integrated Southeast Asian media market has not emerged. Despite the attempt to show regional unity through institutions like ASEAN, this has not allowed the corporate elites to form intra-regional media brands of any note. As we shall see in the case study of Thailand, most of Southeast Asia’s political elites are wary about sharing their control of media and ICT resources. In the Philippines, there have been few constraints on the media post Marcos, so the 1990s saw rapid growth, intense competition and an embrace of the sensational that left ‘scant space for the serious and sensible’ (Coronel 1999b, p. 92). No licence was needed to publish, although foreign ownership of the media was not allowed. There were three monitoring bodies, the Press Council of the Philippine Press Institute, the ethics Committee of the National Press Club, and the Center for Press Freedom and Responsibility. None, however, had legal or statutory basis, and existed on the strength of a ‘fragile consensus within the journalistic community’ (Masalog 2000, p. 380). Unlike elsewhere in Southeast Asia, even the foreign media wrote with impunity about the Philippines, and foreign journalists were not required to have a permit to report from within the country. Foreign media, from Time to the Review were popular with the English-speaking elite, and US television programming was eagerly devoured (Coronel 2000, p. 151). Press freedom was enshrined in the constitutions, and laws of libel, national security, privacy and obscenity, which impacted journalists, were ‘interpreted liberally by Philippine courts’ (Masalog 2000, p. 380). The

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popular media became dominated by ‘rip-roaring tabloids published in Filipino – rambunctious, sensational, freewheeling and irresponsible’ (ibid., p. 389). The Philippine broadcast media was also commercially orientated, and was subject to three regulatory bodies: licences for radio and television are issued by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), the Kapisanan ng mya Brodkaster sa Pilipinas (KBP or the Association of Filipino Broadcasters), and the Movie and Television Review Classiﬁcation Board (Masalog 2000, p. 384). This set the tone for even more mainstream broadcast media. By way of example, in early 2005, ABS-CBN Channel 2 sent a formal letter of complaint to the Professional Artist Managers Inc. (Pami), protesting what the network said was ‘irresponsible journalism’ practiced by rival network GMA 7. In a letter to Pami president, June Ruﬁno of the Kapamilya network said GMA 7’s showbiz show ‘StarTalk’ aired parts of a sex video and ‘blatantly named’ ABS-CBN contract star Piolo Pascual as one of the participants (Velasqez 2005). This focus on the salacious and scandalous meant Philippine presidents and other politicians were ‘subjected to vigorous and sometimes libellous criticism’ (David 2002).

TESTING THE TENDENCY OF ELITE MEDIA GUIDANCE Such criticism does not sit easily with the Philippines elites. Even in the post-Marcos, democratic era, the local media has not escaped the regional tendency of elite guidance. The use of similar techniques of legalism and ﬁnancial pressure is apparent, but less eﬀective than is apparent in many of its neighbours as the elites struggle to impose themselves on a competitive and diﬀused industry without control over the courts. As with many of its neighbours, the political elite of the Philippines rails against the irresponsible media, and has called for it to be, if not curbed, more positive in its coverage. President Arroyo, herself, asked for a media that was less sensational and critical, and inspired the founding of a new tabloid. Pasa’yo (For You), aimed to carry ‘only positive news’ and was published by supporters of Arroyo including retiring military chief of staﬀ and long-time critic of the Philippine media General Narciso Abaya (AMICB January–February 2005). The ﬁrst family also learned from Singapore’s example. Arroyo’s husband Jose Miguel (Mike), took a page out of the Lee family’s book of media relations and waged a legal campaign against his critics. By September 2006, Arroyo had sued more than 40 journalists and media

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executives over slights ranging from ‘accusations of graft and fraud to irreverent references to his weight’ (Ramzy 2006). In 2006, President of The International Federation of Journalists, Mike Warren, observed that at least 42 journalists were facing libel charges ﬁled by ‘Mike’ Arroyo. Warren said: ‘It is deeply concerning that the husband of the President, a man of considerable inﬂuence and power, can try and hinder free speech by suing journalists into submission’ (GMANews.TV 2006). Arroyo was also prepared to clamp down on media freedoms when she deemed necessary. The President declared a state of national emergency on 25 February, 2006, after an attempted coup to counter what she said was an alliance of communist rebels and ‘military adventurists’ aimed at toppling her (Agence France Presse 2 March 2006). Under General Order 5 implementing Proclamation 1017, Arroyo invoked Section 17, Article 12 of the Philippine Constitution, with the eﬀect that the President has the power to ‘temporarily takeover or direct the operation of privately-owned utility or business aﬀected with public interest’ in times of national emergency. In the wake of the declaration, police raided the oﬃces of The Daily Tribune, a small newspaper which has been critical of the government. They conﬁscated documents and posted police at the door of its oﬃce (Agence France Presse 1 March 2006). Troops were also deployed around the compounds of the largest TV networks, ABS-CBN and GMA-7, ostensibly to guard against any attack by disgruntled troops (Gomez 2006a). But, commercial concerns were often enough to silence political dissent, at least in the large Philippine media groups. Broadcasters were marked out as ‘oriented towards growth of proﬁts and [produced], therefore, largely ﬂuﬀ and entertainment’ (Coronel 2000, p. 150). The trend towards infotainment was led by ABS-CBN which introduced TV Patrol in 1987, a programme highlighting police stories and entertainment news. GMA-7, its main competitor, soon followed suit. It is with these commercial drivers that the growing inﬂuence of media personalities developed – the TV networks were criticized for preferring them ‘younger and prettier, even if they [were] less cerebral’ (Rimbau 1999, p. 94). But, the blurring of the boundaries between politics and entertainment in the Philippines, and the proliferation of media personalities standing for public oﬃce, has left a system where suitability for public oﬃce is decided not by credentials or experience, but rather by media projection. Even deposed, President Joseph Estrada remained in the headlines, a ‘hyper-real’ man from the world of illusion: ‘Erap’s movies supplied the Filipino folk imagination with enduring proﬁles of dependability, strength, simplicity and generosity. It was the ﬁctional composite of the movie heroes he played that the masses voted as president’ (David 2000).

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THE RISE OF THE CELEBRITY POLITICIANS Philippine politicians have become heavily engaged in the mass media. Both Arroyo and her predecessor had weekly, prime-time television shows. Cabinet secretaries had daily radio programmes and one – Orlando Maercado – a weekly television programme. Senator Peruto Cayetano had a television programme and Senator Blas wrote a newspaper column. Joey Marquez, the mayor of Metro Manila, was in a weekly sitcom, and Governor Bong Revilla regularly made movies. The trend had analysts suggesting the ‘concentration of political as well as press power is unacceptable in a democracy’ (Masalog 2000, p. 391). It is a trend that has continued well into the ﬁrst decade of the new century, despite the fact that the myth of Asia’s ﬁrst democratically-elected celebrity president was laid bare. Before he lost power, Estrada was seen as corrupt and, clearly, not in command of the issues, even looking ‘bored and clueless’ as the host of his own weekly Jeep ni Erap television programme (David 2000). Yet, in the Philippines, television and the movies still became one of the surest routes to a political career. Signiﬁcantly, movie stars like Fernando Poe took centre stage in the elections of May 2004. The popular ﬁlm actor, known as the ‘John Wayne of the Philippines’, was a friend of the former president and fellow movie star Joseph Estrada (Reuters 23 December 2003). As well as Poe, the elections featured two former newsreaders from leading TV station ABS-CBN, who ran for Vice Presidency. In addition, three front runners for senate seats were movie actors including Estrada’s son. Even actress Kris Aquino, a fulltime artiste with ABS-CBN and daughter of Corazon, claimed it was her fate to enter politics (Kwok 2005). Filipino sociologist, Randolph David, suggested television had demystiﬁed government while intensifying the cult of celebrity. A mixture of fascination with politics yet a distrust of politicians has reduced electoral exercises in the Philippines to popularity contests, opening the door to a whole slew of celebrity candidates drawn from the movies and television whose only claim to fame is a recognizable name reﬂecting a notable change on Philippine society that has been triggered by the mass media, particularly by television: ‘Television presence in two-thirds of all households has diminished the role of the local elite who used to dictate whom people should vote for’ (Landingin 2004). In the Philippines, celebrity status therefore is sought after and nurtured. Where once Asian leaders were anointed by god, the military, or an outgoing colonial master, pressures for democratic change are increasingly putting the power in the hands of the masses and, as a result, the demarcation between popular leader and pop star is dissolving.

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As the general elections of 2004 indicated, media celebrities look certain to continue to dominate politics, as personalities rather than issues come to the fore, and where popularity rather than substance determines a candidate’s viability – ‘whoever can command attention will triumph’ (Raslan 2000). But at what cost, when television, like ﬁlm, is a manufacturer of illusion serving; creating artiﬁce only to ‘make talents look more delightful and discerning than they actually are’ (Coronel 1999b, p. 92). This was democracy – Philippines style. As the relationship between media and celebrity reaches an extreme, democracy becomes a form of fashion. Philippines’ political culture provided little balance, and the political elites, cynically, played court to a populous enthralled by the glitter and glamour that many could only dream of brought into their homes by the free-wheeling Philippine mass media.

9/11 AND GUN-TOTING REPORTERS Of course, there remained challenges to this free-wheeling media, particularly when it took advantage of the relative freedom it enjoyed to take on local power elites. While commercial concerns tended to reduce serious political discussion in the mainstream media, the voice of opposition was to be heard more often among the regional and local media, particularly radio, with its tradition of dissent. As a result, it was here that the broader ﬁght for media space was concentrated. It could be a violent and bloody battle, with journalists who criticized the powerful facing immense dangers. Away from Manila, the law of rule, rather than the rule of law, meant journalists who covered stories on local political corruption found they had little protection from the anger of those they criticized. Assassins targeted reporters in bloody reprisals for their work. In 2004, at least eight journalists, mostly rural radio reporters, were murdered in connection with their work, making it the deadliest year for the Philippine press since the 1980s and the days of Marcos. The death toll was surpassed only in Iraq, where journalists were covering a war. Philippine journalists attributed the rise in violence to a nationwide breakdown in law and order, the wide circulation of illegal arms, and the insidious eﬀect of the failure to convict a single person in the murders of 56 journalists since democracy was introduced there in 1986 (International Federation of Journalists 2005). And, despite government protests to the contrary, the killings continued through 2006, with the latest in June of that year in Mindanao (Committee for the Protection of Journalist – CPI 2006). As journalists carried out their work at the edges of the Philippine state, where the military and corrupt local politicians and businessmen formed

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the political elites, little was done to protect them. Indeed, except for two cases in the 1960s, by the new century nobody in the Philippines had ever been convicted of murdering a journalist. Most of the killings took place in the provinces, especially in Mindanao, the strife-torn southern region of the country. Journalist and writer, Sheila Coronel, said the tradition of settling scores by killing remained very strong: ‘In Manila, national newspapers can report critically, even carelessly sometimes, and that is tolerated. But in the provinces, there is a low level of tolerance for critical reporting’ (Baguioro 2003). Politicians and oﬃcials exposed by the local press also used other, less radical methods to silence their critics. In 2005, at least ﬁve journalists, including Raﬀy Tulfo, writer of the ‘Shoot to Kill’ section of a local newspaper, were given prison sentences for defamation. On Mindanao, four media outlets were closed, including dxVR FM radio, which had its licence withdrawn in July by the mayor of a town on the island (Reporters Sans Frontieres 2006). Lawlessness and the gun culture in the Philippines has reached such an extreme level, however, that in the wake of growing number of murders of reporters and editors, not only were journalists assigned police body guards, but reporters have begun to arm themselves (AMCB March–April 2005). The weak state creates major problems for the mass media as it addresses issues of separatism and its consequences. In the post 9/11 environment, the growing importance of the military has had an impact on media freedoms in the Philippines. The military’s central role in internal security is something that has changed little since Marcos’s day and was given a boost by the ‘war on terror’. As with many of its neighbours, the Philippines had to have one eye always on the United States, particularly when two of the most dangerous al-Qaida-linked groups in Southeast Asia were based in the Philippines and had been providing training to Muslim radicals, including Jemaah Islamiyah, in camps in the southern Philippines.10 In the wake of the Bali bombings, Indonesian oﬃcials suggested that some of the ﬁve suspects had undergone military training in the southern Philippines. This was oﬃcially denied by the Philippines security forces, which claimed to have overrun all major militant camps in the southern region of Mindanao in recent years, forcing the rebels to move their bases elsewhere. Security oﬃcials privately said that local Muslim guerrillas had sheltered foreign extremists in their camps despite a ceaseﬁre agreement with the government (Agence France Presse 5 October 2005). Arroyo was quick to congratulate the military and police for their ‘string of successes’ against terrorism, despite accusations that much of the apparent success in their battle against terrorist groups was merely public relations. Four men whom the Philippine National Police paraded before the

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media in early 2005 had been in PNP custody for two months already – recycled, critics said, to boost support for Arroyo. The President was seeking to increase state power after 13 people were killed and more than 100 others wounded in a trio of Valentine’s Day bombings that jolted Makati, the country’s premier ﬁnancial district, as well as two southern cities. Arroyo was bent on reviving a controversial proposal for a national system of identiﬁcation cards, and the wire-tapping of suspected terrorists under an Anti-Terrorism Bill she had been trying to get passed since the 2001 terrorist attacks in the US (Baguioro 2005). Before the press conference, Arroyo had told the military in an open speech that public safety was a component of economic progress as much as political stability and had ordered the launch of pre-emptive strikes to prevent ‘borderless’ terror groups from inﬂicting harm and sowing mayhem (Esguerra 2005). Whether the success was real or imaginary, as with many of its neighbours, the Philippine government was already reaping a bonanza from its status as Washington’s favoured terror-ﬁghting ally in Asia. US military aid increased from $2m (£1.25m) in 2001 to $80m a year, while US soldiers and special forces ﬂooded into Mindanao to launch oﬀensives against Abu Sayyaf, a group the White House saw as having links to al-Qaeda (Klein 2003). It served as a reminder of the resources available to the political elites in Southeast Asia who sided with Washington.

CONCLUSION Whether or not the Philippine model is one that reﬂects a shared future for its neighbours in Southeast Asia, remains to be seen. After all, the elements that comprise this example do not exist in exactly the same equation anywhere else in the region. The inﬂuence of Spanish and American colonial powers on the political culture of the Philippines have created a unique mix of family control within a democratic context, where a freewheeling, celebrity-ﬁlled media both grates on the local oligarchs who see themselves as born to rule, yet allows them to create huge constituencies for electoral validation. Besides, few would suggest it is a model to be encouraged. But, from the embrace of the cult of personality by a growing urban and anomic Asian audience, through the emergence of nascent democratic political institutions, to a media and publicity apparatus which is both growing in stature and embracing tabloid-style content due to commercial pressures, these are all elements which are emerging across Southeast Asia. Celebrity has an important psychological role as a brand in twenty-ﬁrst century democratic consumer culture. It is the existential prop in the

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bottomless pit of the ‘condition humaine’ of democratic consumer capitalism, providing familiar faces amongst the anonymity of modern life. And, given the energetic development of consumer capitalism in the region, the role of the publicity machine and of television, in particular, the promotion of these well-known faces and the democratization of fame leads, inevitably, to a celebration of the ephemeral: pushing personality in preference to ideas. It is a process Kellner (1990) sees as undermining democracy. After all, ‘where there is nothing else that binds – not platform or ideology . . . why not sheer popularity. Where no principles are at stake, elections are mere popularity contests’ (Coronel 1999b, p. 92). Of course, personality politics is nothing new for Asia. Personalities drove the creation of Asian nationalism, the push for independence, and then post-colonial development. The media amplify the personality cult under conditions of democracy as outlined particularly well in this case study. Under the spotlight of the modern media industry, few celebrity politicians live up to their hype. Certainly, if Erap was anything to go by, in the world of celebrity artiﬁce cutting a dashing ﬁgure on the silver screen does not mean you can do the same on the national political stage. The Philippine example also emphasizes important regional questions about cultural imperialism and the future of local cultural products given that the dominant Southeast Asian TV images have become those like MTV, World Wrestling Federation and Manchester United Football Club, which are clearly developed outside the Philippines – even if this is with a nod to localization through local language programming, or a trip to the ‘Far East’ to play exhibition matches. The increasingly hegemonic control of the media, and television in particular, by big business interests, means the increasing inﬂuence of US cultural images. Likewise, the Philippines’ tabloid-dominated media underlines the fading commitment to factual and serious content driven by audience demand combined with broader industry trends. Relentless commercialization drives programming towards reality television and tabloid journalism, bowing to local political sensitivities and compounding the tendency for personality to be elevated over the professional, image over discourse, style over substance and simplicity over complexity (Coronel 2000, pp. 159–62). Thus, the growth of access to television among the newly-enfranchised in Asia provides merely distracting ﬂickering shadows on the wall of the Platonic cave of political choice. It is easy to ignore the audience, and prurient public interest, the third party to this ‘uneasy Faustian marriage of media and celebrity . . . [with its] virtually endless thirst for intimate details about the lives of others that borders on the forensic’ (Foulkes 2001, p. xxvi). In the promotion of media and entertainment goods, the building of this audience is now as important

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as creating the product. Given the corresponding increase in the inﬂuence of the marketing department and the importance of audience research, it is clear that our media and entertainment products come to us ‘imbricated with theories of what we want’ (Frith 1996, pp. 169–70). So, as with our elected politicians, perhaps we also get the media and entertainment products we deserve. But even among those in the region’s mass media who are concerned about the directions the industry is taking, few would rather see its wings clipped. Sheila Coronel points out, she would ‘rather be a journalist in the rambunctious Manila press, than in the tame newspapers of the other, more sober, more stable societies, where government press releases and insipid developmental features are passed off as legitimate journalism’ (Coronel 1991, p. 52). However, the Philippines case study illustrates how an apparently free media does not necessarily mean the development of a pluralist political culture or the constitutionalizing of the rule of law. In fact, democratized mass media and politics Philippines style sees, ironically, the elevation of the cult of personality and machismo. Such cults are familiar in more authoritarian cultures, and the Philippine experience of people power seems to have, via the free media, volatized all the worst elements of celebriﬁcation and personality politics. This does little to support classical ideas of rational debate and consensus achieved by means of free and open pluralist debate. As we shall see in the next case study, Indonesia, even in a culture that looks more to Mecca than to Hollywood, the mass media has been central to both the creation of the state, the elevation of personality cults and legitimization of elite rule.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Media Partners Asia, www.media-partners-asia.com. See Alkman and Pottinger (2002, p. 18), Oliver (2000) and Francis (2002, p. 5) among others. BBC (20 January, 2001). See the Mazi articles, Communication for Social Change Consortium, http://www. communicationforsocialchange.org/mazi-articles.php?id=272. www.luwaran.com. www.philippinerevolution.org. Accessed November 2003. Mongbay Country Reports: The Philippines, March 2006, www.mongbay.com/ reference/ country_proﬁles/2005–2005/philippines.html, accessed April 2007. Firm ownership data taken from annual reports from the website of the Philippines Stock Exchange: www.pse.org.ph. See Associated Press (24 September 2004, p. 3) and Gomez (2005).

6. Perning in the gyre: Indonesia, the globalized media and the ‘war on terror’ INTRODUCTION At the end of the twentieth century, there was an explosion of new titles in Indonesia’s media industry that followed a lifetime of authoritarian control. The end of the Suharto New Order and the initial post-1998 enthusiasm for reform unleashed a variety of competing interests in the country. Attempts, moreover, to restore central political control over a mass communication media, seen as both boon and bane, were showing few signs of success as the ﬁrst decade of the new century drew to a close. The mass media oﬀered Indonesia’s political elite the possibility of reaching a huge and geographically disparate audience. Freedom, however, in the wake of the fall of Suharto and the New Order, was an unfamiliar state of aﬀairs, and they were turning to various methods both familiar and new, from corruption and violence to ownership and legal recourse, to try either to silence or control what the elite saw as unruly elements in the industry. Moreover, with the ‘war on terror’ adding weight to conservative forces seeking a more ‘responsible’ and controlled media, Indonesia looked set to follow some of its neighbours in resisting an open media and democratic pluralism. The chaos of competing interests left by the collapse of the Suharto regime transformed Indonesia, brieﬂy, into the most democratic country in Asia, accompanied by the ‘blossoming of a free and aggressive local media after decades of suppression under Mr. Suharto . . . aiding civic activism, such as the ﬁght against corruption’ (Mapes 2004). However, eﬀorts to inﬂuence and control the mass communication media continued, as powerful local ﬁgures refused to recognize the emergence of a plural industry, and political elites accustomed to unquestioned power struggled to convey their messages in an increasingly complex media environment. Signiﬁcantly, the sentencing in 2004 of Bambang Harymurti, the Editor of Tempo, the country’s most inﬂuential newsmagazine, to one year in prison in a libel case was one of a number of incidents that raised serious 140

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concerns about resurgent government control and the curtailment of press freedoms in Southeast Asia’s largest nation after a period of openness (Hudiono 2004). The growing number of libel cases was, however, only one of a number of strategies, including ownership, inﬂuence and violence, by which politicians, local strongmen, religious groups and sectors within the police and armed forces tried to reassert control over the media. These attempts to stem the free ﬂow of information and opinion in the country came amidst renewed eﬀorts by governments across the region to control the ﬂow of news and entertainment products in the face of the growing impact of cross-border, mass communication media in the Asian region and beyond. However, they also took place in an environment where political actors were making conciliatory moves and constitutional choices leading to the formation of alliances, convergence on issues and trade-oﬀs between contestants while aware of the pressures from an increasingly political, literate majority. This ‘political crafting’ (Di Palma 1990), was having an important impact on the pacing and direction of Indonesia’s political transition. In Indonesia, charismatic leaders have used the media to project their image across geography and time. Where charisma is combined with media to create celebrity, it becomes an increasingly important element in the political process, particularly in relation to the forces of physical power and regimes of terror. It, thus, remains relevant in the twenty-ﬁrst century in Indonesia and elsewhere as ‘the practice and imagination of the political economy of Indonesia, as in many post colonial states, is in crisis, or at the more predictable end of the usual low-level instability’ (Hughes-Freeland 2007, p. 192). Indonesia struggled to recover from the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis: estimates from 2003 indicated that GDP based on purchasing power parity came out at $US758.8 billion, or $3200 per capita, compared to Malaysia at $207.8 billion, approximately $9000 per capita, and Singapore at $109.4 billion, or $23 700 per capita (CIA 2004). Indeed, of all the Asian economies, ‘Indonesia’s experience in the wake of the economic crisis of 1997, has to be the most intense and destructive’ (Robison 2001, p. 104)1. By 2004, the World Bank was warning Indonesia to reinforce the country’s improving economic growth, pass fresh laws to boost investor conﬁdence and cut the country’s soaring fuel subsidies (Jakarta Post 2004b). This chapter will examine the problem of Indonesian democracy and the impact of the media freedom and media control, and how this dialectic has evolved since 1998, as Indonesian political elites have sought to force the media to further their perceived interests and attempt to restore their gatekeeping role over the ﬂow of news and information within their borders by forging their own alliances, as Kellner (1990) maintains, with transnational

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corporations, and communications technologies in the emerging era of technocapitalism. As with many of its neighbours, Indonesia’s political elites were aware of the centrality of the media to the lives of Indonesians. They were also well aware that they had a battle on their hands when it came to controlling the ﬂow of information, facilitated by the globalization of the media industry, across and within their borders. Recent history had shown them that this had clear consequences for their ability to maintain their grip on power. Again, like many of their ASEAN neighbours, Indonesia’s political elites used the pretext of the ‘war on terror’ to curb basic freedoms or to crack down on their domestic opponents. This led to what critics described as an ‘unprecedented abuse’ of individual rights and freedoms (RSF 2002a). This trend looked set to strengthen, supported by a conservative backlash among a middle class troubled by fears for stability as terrorists seemed able to attack the heart of the country’s business district with impunity. They smarted at the interference by international groups in national aﬀairs, and were impatient with the years of economic pain that followed the fall of Suharto and the onset of the Asian ﬁnancial crisis in 1997. The landslide success of former Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in the presidential elections of September 2004 was a sign that Indonesians, concerned about unemployment, rising costs and corruption, and restive after the bomb attacks in Bali and Jakarta, were only too happy for a former military general to restore law and order, even if it was to the detriment of some of their hard won democratic freedoms, including a plural media. There was, after all, little in the country’s political culture and in the history of the development of the media in Indonesia to suggest an instinctive support for democratic pluralism, and even the market looked set to conspire with traditional pressures to limit media titles and reduce diversity. Indonesia, however, is no Singapore, where natural geography and logistics allow for a realistic control of the media. Given the country’s disparate geography and cultural make up, and its competing political interests, it was not going to be simple to nail the lid back on the Pandora’s Box of Indonesia’s mass communication media. Indeed, in the wake of terrorist attacks in Bali and Jakarta, Indonesia’s political elites were concerned how they might contain internal unrest, particularly if economic troubles deepened amidst the turbulent sea of social change, raising the further question as to whether or not Southeast Asia’s political elites could adapt to the fast world of a globalized media culture. This chapter, then, examines the implications of the fast information age and its attendant communications technology on Indonesian development and democratization. It considers the new communication environment

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where the media no longer functions solely as a tool of national government, but is now increasingly accessible to the ordinary citizen, with consequences for the political and social fabric of Indonesia. Political activists are increasingly harnessing the power of information and networks. Despite the unequal distribution, falling costs mean that communications technology is both more generally accessible and used to challenge established structures of authority. It undermines traditional communities as it creates new ones, particularly where it articulates dissent, escalating the security dilemma of national political elites, and both accentuating and enabling their reactions.

IMAGINING A NATION: THE MEDIA AND THE CREATION OF THE INDONESIA STATE – STRICTLY ONE-WAY TRAFFIC The history of the development of the mass communication media in Indonesia is a story of the ongoing eﬀorts by the authorities to use the media as an instrument of state development, and to rein in the press each time it reﬂected or articulated popular dissent. As with the rest of Southeast Asia, the idea of mass media was a ‘tool, born, bred and developed in the West, transplanted to Indonesia’ (Anwar 1978, p. 261). Similar to the experience of its neighbours on the Malay Peninsula, the introduction of the printing press and the creation of newspapers was a radical departure from the communication processes of traditional rulers. They expanded the public sphere, often encouraging thought and debate as the newspaper, like the novel, provided the ‘technical means for re-presenting the kind of imagined community that is the nation’ (Anderson 2000, p. 422). Radio, in the early days of its development, was a government information service. Equally signiﬁcantly, it was often linked not only with independence from colonial rule, but also the attempt by central government in Jakarta to reach across diﬃcult geographies and cultural divisions. The world’s largest archipelago, Indonesia achieved independence from the Netherlands in 1949. By the turn of the century, Indonesia’s 238.5 million people (July 2004 estimate), made it the world’s fourth most populous nation, and the largest Muslim nation. A vast polyglot community, Indonesia’s population was spread over an area comprising 17 508 islands and islets, of which 6000 are inhabited, and stretching 5000 kilometres east to west and 1750 kilometres north to south, with 100 ethnic groups. Despite this, 87 per cent of Indonesians were Muslims, and the island of Java (home to Indonesia’s largest ethnic group, the Javanese), was one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with more than 107 million people

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living in an area the size of New York State. Indonesia also sits in a strategic location astride or along major sea lanes from the Indian Ocean to the Paciﬁc Ocean. The political system was a modern construct and the political culture had a modern veneer laid by early nationalist movements in the 1920s, but only really gaining roots after the Second World War and the creation of the modern independent state (Steinberg 1987). Naturally, the modern political culture had a more traditional context. Kingsbury, for example, used Wittfogel’s (1957) idea of hydraulic cultures to explain Indonesia’s inward looking and politically autocratic nature, as well as the domination by a military elite (Kingsbury and Aveling 2003, p. 114). What was clear was that the impact of structural considerations – social and physical factors: geography, economic and sociological structure – informed the institutional basis for the development of Indonesia’s mass media of communication and combined with the other objective elements that can be seen as having inhibited political participation, including cultural variables such as the traditional Javanese concept of self, ideal social behaviour, patronship and power (Jackson 1978, p. 23). Further, these were mingled with a strange cultural laminate of traditional, Islamic and modern ideas, all combining within a state ideology instituted at the time of independence – pancasila. In its preamble, the 1945 constitution set forth pancasila as the embodiment of basic principles of an independent Indonesian state. In brief, and in the order given in the constitution, the pancasila principles comprised a number of elements: a belief in one supreme God; humanitarianism; nationalism expressed in the unity of Indonesia; consultative democracy; and social justice. Designed by modern Indonesia’s founding father Sukarno, pancasila sought to meet the ideological needs of the new nation and, as with the adoption of Bahasa as the national language, represented part of the eﬀort to build a uniﬁed state. These elements existed in an ‘incongruous harmony’ (Lubis 1983, p. 7): a syncretic melange imposed on society where power is still informed by a feudal past where the King’s power was an extension of the power of the Gods, at the centre of society, like the head of the family. Criticism of those in power was not tolerated, and the ruling elite traditionally had very little communication with the common people – where they did, communication was always from the top downward, never the other way around: ‘the traﬃc [was] strictly one-way’ (ibid., p. 23). The birth of television in Southeast Asia coincided with the creation of the new post-colonial political state, and it quickly took radio’s place in building the Indonesian nation, as communications played a central role in government eﬀorts to forge a national identity. The widely held view that the media was inﬂuential meant it became caught between diﬀerent and

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competing interests – religious, political, ethnic – reﬂecting the complex structure of Indonesian society, the multi-layered nature of Indonesian identity and an ‘overvalued’ medium (Anwar 1978, p. 265). But, in Indonesia, the close connection between the media and the birth of nationalism – both modern ideas, transplanted from the West – created a tradition of freedom ﬁghters who were also writers who understood the power of media to spread the message of independence and national identity. These thorns in the side of the Dutch administration soon began to prick their post-colonial successors, with journalists like Mochtar Lubis and Pramoedya Ananta Toer banned and imprisoned by the post-independence regimes. Similar to Malaysia and, as we will see in later chapters, Singapore, the Indonesian post-colonial elite drew upon the illiberal legislation of colonialism for their own purpose. The post-colonial authorities were equipped with the tools of control set out by the Dutch, in particular a law introduced in 1931 (Pressbreidel Ordonantie), allowing the Governor General to ban a publication for up to eight days for ‘disrupting public order’, with a second ban of 30 days that could then be implemented. There was also the ‘notorious’ hate-sowing articles (Haatzaai Artikelen) of the Dutch Criminal Code which were regularly used to silence journalists. Indonesia’s ﬁrst postindependence President, Sukarno, and his successor, President Suharto, made some modiﬁcations in the language, but in eﬀect they were the same laws used widely in post-independence Indonesia, particularly by Suharto (Harsono 2000, pp. 79–80). Thus, control by the central government was a characteristic even of the early days of the development of the press in Indonesia. While the ﬁrst printed news in Indonesia, what was then known as the Dutch East Indies, was a bulletin for employees of the Dutch East India Company, Memorie Dex Nouvelles, published in 1615, the ﬁrst newspaper of general interest was the Bataviase Nouvelles, published in 1744 by a Dutch national in Batavia (Jakarta). It was closed by the Dutch administration concerned that it would provide space for criticism of the colonial administration. As a result, strict censorship was put in place and new publications were discouraged, ensuring that the country failed to possess newspapers with a ‘substantial history’ (Gunaratne 2000b, p. 268). This was reinforced during Japanese occupation (1942–1945), when the media was under the control of the Japanese, and used for propaganda purposes. No Dutch media were allowed. The Japanese closed all publications, allowing only a few to reopen. They introduced publishing licence procedures to control the media which were also ‘incorporated into the armoury of the independent Indonesian government’, and used particularly vigorously by Suharto (Harsono 2000, p. 80). This close control was continued by the Dutch,

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when they were uncertainly restored to Southeast Asia by the British after the surrender of the Japanese. In 1945, a third of Indonesia’s press disappeared. Early independence brought some freedoms: under the 1945 constitution, freedom of speech and of the press was guaranteed. When independence was granted in 1949, commentators suggested it ushered in ‘an era of press freedom plus western liberal democracy’ (Sinaga 1989, p. 30). However, this era of openness drew to a close in 1959, when independent Indonesia’s founding father, President Sukarno, introduced ‘Guided Democracy’, requiring publication permits under which the press was required to sign an agreement tying them to the government, the opposition press was banned and ANTARA, Indonesia’s wire news service, became government-controlled. This was an important move – under Suharto’s New Order, ANTARA became an oﬃcial mouthpiece for government activities, since all other media quoted ANTARA regarding public events and other oﬃcial activities. The use of ANTARA news meant that other Indonesian media could rely upon ANTARA’s accounts and so could also play it safe in not being critical toward the government (Haryanto 2006). The controls were part of Sukarno’s eﬀort to shore up power. Sukarno deﬁned the mass communication media as a vehicle for the creation of a ‘national culture’ (Sen and Hill 2000, p. 11). When television was ﬁrst introduced in 1962, in order to showcase the 4th Asian Games that year, it was clearly an arm of the government. Taking over where radio left oﬀ, Televesi Republik Indonesia (TVRI), was used to communicate government policies and build society (Gunaratne 2000b, p. 270). But, this period of ‘Guided Democracy’ was ‘characterized by . . . intense ideological debates’ (Sen and Hill 2000, p. 3). There were heated discussions, particularly in the Jakarta press, reﬂecting the growing divisions in society and Sukarno’s dwindling inﬂuence. Debate intensiﬁed until 1965, when the army seized power, ﬁnally replacing Sukarno with military general Suharto in March 1966, and communist papers, Chinese language papers (except one oﬃcial Chinese daily ‘Herian Indonesia’) and left-wing papers were banned (Gunaratne 2000b, p. 268).

THE NEW ORDER AND THE CONTROL OF INFORMATION The ‘control of information was central to Suharto’s hold on power’ (Harsono 2000, p. 78). And where radio had been the tool of the great orator, Sukarno, carrying the new common language across the nation,

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Suharto used television to create his Indonesia. Satellite served to carry his visual images to television sets around the nation. Although the ﬁrst Press Law passed by the parliament in 1966 provided for press freedoms, these were put into the context of the state ideology, pancasila. Suharto’s brutal suppression of student protests in 1974, and the closure of newspapers for their coverage of the uprising, underlined Suharto’s authoritarian attitudes to the ﬂow of information. Suharto’s ‘mantra’ was clear: stability and economic development ahead of democracy and transparency (Harsono 2000, p. 81). The New Order tried ‘relentlessly’ to make Jakarta the centre of the domestic culture and of the perception industries. This was part of the eﬀorts to centralize power under Suharto and the single-minded push to make Jakarta the epicentre not only politically, but also economically and culturally. Turning his will to uniting the country, and centralizing power, Suharto tried to prevent regional, ethnic, linguistic and religious diﬀerences from taking a political form, by seeking to ‘authorize’ them (Keeler 1987, p. 79). In addition, Suharto also created an ‘intricate web of relations between the press and the government’ (Anwar 1978, pp. 263–4). As Suharto sought to centralize power and maintain the physical integrity of the Indonesian state, much like his neighbours Singapore and Malaysia, he saw Indonesia’s diversity as problematic. Suharto sought to control any separatist tendencies through his SARA legislation (Suku, Agama dan Ras, meaning clan, religion and race) which, alongside the colonial legislation, also allowed him legal control over the media. This was further supported by the Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Social Aﬀairs which represented the propaganda machinery of the ruling GOLKAR party with General Suharto and his New Order at its head. Initially, Suharto’s family and close allies controlled the privately-owned media but, as the industry expanded, a more indirect control was necessary. By the 1990s, other groups moved in to control new media operations. Membership of this new family, however, depended on being prepared to operate under ‘the constraints imposed by the New Order government’ (Hill 1996, p. 86). Suharto’s time in power marked the growth in inﬂuence of powerful corporate conglomerates and the political and business inﬂuence of powerful families in the country – many connected to Suharto through his GOLKAR party. Indeed, concern about them internally and externally contributed to the fall of the New Order (Robison 2001, p. 109). But, Suharto also delivered remarkable economic change. During the 30 years between 1966 and 1996, the important economic and social indicators over this period ‘far exceeded the expectations of even the most optimistic observers at the beginning of the regime’ (Hill 1996, p. 255). An associated feature of the New Order was ‘the emergence of an aﬄuent

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urban middle class’ (Hooker 1993, p. 3), leading to an expansion in demand for the media: in the 1950s sales of newspapers were about 50 000 copies, by 1973 total circulation was 1.5 million (Suanto 1978, p. 230). Television was particularly easy to police. The state broadcaster, TVRI, provided a news monopoly from Jakarta. Even the independent television stations when they were started after 1995 were backed by inﬂuential conglomerates, and prepared to manipulate their coverage: choice of story, timing of reports, choice of perspective in pictures and quotes, reﬂected the status quo, producing ‘uncontroversial products’ (Sen and Hill 2000, pp. 126–31). The impact of satellite, however, was ambiguous. The same technology that was used to unite Indonesia around Suharto’s political and cultural capital, Jakarta, also provided avenues for alternative messages facilitating diversity and division. Satellite television, however, enabled Suharto to send out his unifying messages from Jakarta so, unlike Singapore, Indonesia did not ban satellite dishes. Suharto also perceived the ‘satellite slush’ (Keane 1991, p. 82), emanating from international broadcasters as uncontroversial products. Similar to the situation in Malaysia, business news like that conveyed by ABN/CNBC Asia, was seen to be a positive element helping develop the ‘tiger’ economies of Asia. The upshot, however, was that there could be no attempts to stop people watching foreign television broadcasts, increasing the relative porosity of the Indonesian state compared with Singapore. Just as, for many years, the Achenese could watch British football relayed on Malaysian television, they could also see and hear the messages conveyed by the more anti-western Malay channels beamed across the Straits of Malacca. What is important to note in the light of the issues discussed in this book is that these satellite broadcasts became central to the failure of Suharto to reassert his grip after the humiliation of the Asian Financial Crisis, and the consequent delegitimization of the New Order. In 1996, RTP International, a Portuguese satellite television service, began broadcasting into East Timor, using transponder space on the largely Chinese-owned AsiaSar 2. The Portuguese government encouraged East Timor’s struggle for selfdetermination, and the Indonesian authorities were helpless to control its broadcasts. Further, the entry of global news networks into Indonesia – CNN, Reuters, BBC, ABN/CNBC and TF-1 (France) – increased competition for local viewers, and it was these global media organizations that carried the pictures of chaos as the army battled protestors in 1998, into homes in Indonesia and around the world, leading to Suharto’s eventual resignation and reminding political elites around Southeast Asia of the importance of being the gatekeeper for the new media.

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THINGS FALL APART By the end of the 1990s, Suharto moved to suppress dissent, turning on the media that had the courage to speak the unease the middle class felt as a consequence of the Asian Financial Crisis. But, technological developments were to play a further role in undermining Suharto and the growing credibility of the movement against him. The growth of the Internet in the 1990s complicated Southeast Asia’s eﬀorts to control the ﬂow of information, and Indonesia provides a useful case study. Suharto was keen to continue to deliver economic growth for Indonesia, and being part of the IT revolution was seen as key to this goal. Indonesia had a sophisticated telecommunications system as a result of its early investments in satellite communications and, in 1997, as the Asian ﬁnancial crisis broke over the country, plans for a network and information system (Nusantara-21) were developed. Nusantara-21 represented the expression of Suharto’s vision for the continued development of Indonesia, and the growth in social prosperity engendered by the embrace of communications and information technology. What this vision did not entail, however, was the growing role the alternative media played in the expression of dissent and organization of opposition to the Suharto regime. The Internet played a role in both the fall of Suharto, by helping to coalesce the opposition through the expression of dissent on websites and, through its role both in the provision of information and on the voting process, as a tool for rebuilding democracy. Indeed, if radio was the communication medium of Indonesian independence, then the Internet might well ‘vie for top billing in the fall of Suharto’ (Sen and Hill 2000, p. 194). Under Suharto and unlike Malaysia and Singapore, the Internet, which became accessible in Indonesia from 1995, oﬀered an unscrutinized communication tool, permitting the relatively free ﬂow of information. Post Suharto, the Internet was used in the 1999 and the 2004 elections to provide transparency and credibility for the election process. Votes were monitored on the General Elections Commission’s Internet site. Those who had used the Internet in the information war against Suharto, saw it as a technology of democracy, and its further use in the election process authenticated the newly-emerging democracy (Hill 2002, p. 5). While Suharto’s regime found the Internet diﬃcult to contain, it was the impact of broader media coverage of the economic collapse in 1997 which led to his resignation. The crisis eﬀectively de-legitimated the New Order, founded as it was on the authoritarian pact to provide growth and development under conditions of elite guidance. As the currency collapsed, dropping from 2400 Rupiah to 17 000 Rupiah to one US dollar in January

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1998, demonstrators fought with soldiers in the streets of Jakarta. Even the mainstream media found commercial dictates distancing them from the oﬃcial position on the economy (Sen and Hill 2000, p. 132). Local television stations broadcast pictures of the protests. The usually conservative TVRI ran eulogies to dead students – ‘galvanizing public awareness of the tragedy in Jakarta, and indicating that those at the top were no longer in control’ (Harsono 2000, pp. 85–6). Government and military oﬃcials continued to harass and intimidate journalists up to Suharto’s resignation and beyond. But the events of May 1998 illustrated the ‘failure’of the Suharto regime to understand the international and local media, and the political impact of the media and information technology, as the ‘power to control communications became more and more impractical’ (Harsono 2000, p. 86).

HOLDING THE CENTRE: SECURITY IN THE AGE OF A GLOBALIZED MEDIA Like its neighbours, during the 1990s Indonesia was swept by global forces both economic and political. New technologies and transnational corporations were ‘colluding to make all national boundaries culturally permeable’ (Sen and Hill 2000, p. 2). The ﬁngers of the globalized media industry reached into the remotest parts of the dispersed archipelago, with consequences for national security in the post 9/11 world. Indonesia, as Benedict Anderson showed, is an imagined state, cobbled together from geographic proximity and colonial history. The Suharto government, keen to maintain its hold on power and hold the nation together, kept a tight grip on local media content forcing broadcasters, in particular, to turn to foreign providers to ﬁll their air time. As a result, more than half of the programming on Indonesian television was imported from the USA, Japan, Hong Kong and India, and a similar inﬂuence was apparent in cinema, music, magazines and literature such that it is impossible to draw a picture of the Indonesian media without reﬂecting on the world beyond national borders, and on theories about globalization which attempt to understand the ‘increasing interconnections between nations and media’ (Sen and Hill 2000, p. 13). As we have seen, this was a feature common to many of the states in Southeast Asia. National borders became increasingly permeable in the 1980s, as governments sought to be part of the global economy despite the political and policy contradictions. The development of the information superhighway further compounded the problem, upping the ante in the competition to be a winner in this global economy.

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Indonesia, like its ASEAN neighbours, perceived an increase in insecurity over its lack of autonomy. As Suharto’s power was extinguished, the discontinuities and distortions that were a legacy of the country’s colonial past and its geographical and cultural realities became increasingly evident. These ﬁssures, whether ethnic, religious, or economic, often coincided, and weakened already shaky national foundations. From separatist movements in Aceh and West Papua, to the Muslim–Christian inter-communal violence in regions like East Timor, the Molukus, Ambon and Sulawesi, after 1997 Indonesia was a national construct in diﬃculty. The pursuit of economic development created further instability: cross-border information ﬂows had to be weighed against information control, global advertising and consumerism against national ﬁnancial needs, foreign ideas and values against traditional mores and beliefs. The porosity of the state increased, further diminishing its autonomy, as it became a part of the global economy. Again, like its ASEAN neighbours, Indonesia was a relatively new state, vulnerable to external pressures due to its relatively weak position on the global stage. The Asian Financial Crisis hit Indonesians particularly hard, with the economy shrinking by an extraordinary 16 per cent in 1998, and inﬂation at 66 per cent from a modest 5.2 per cent two years earlier. For the Indonesian middle class in Jakarta, they were back to where they were in the 1960s, and the government was forced to turn to the IMF, as lender of last resort, in restructuring its debt. As a condition of the loan, Indonesia had to swallow a slew of tough economic measures, including the cancellation of a number of large infrastructure projects – some linked to the Suharto family. The IMF also oﬀered aid and structures to address the country’s endemic corruption. The interference from institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (both dominated by the major industrial powers), as well as from the advanced industrialized states and multinational corporations, added to the destabilizing eﬀects of the ideas and values bound up in the process of modernization and carried over the satellite ether (Ayoob 1995, p. 37). The economic record of the Suharto government up until 1995 was brought into question by the turmoil of the Asian Financial Crisis. A lack of strong and transparent institutions and endemic corruption were identiﬁed as key factors for Indonesian suﬀering: Governance issues and weak institutions became increasingly problematic as the economy became more sophisticated, they came to thwart the positive policy record, thus helping to create the vulnerabilities which would prove so devastating during the Asian crisis. (Boorman and Hume 2003)

The increased susceptibility to pressure from the international community led to international condemnation on issues from East Timor to the

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corruption surrounding the collapse, in early 1999, of Bank Bali (one of the country’s largest banks linked closely to the then ruling GOLKAR Party). It also underlined the weakness of the Indonesian state on the international stage and its dependence on international ﬁnancial institutions (BBC 10 September 1999). Diﬀerent groups within the state proved more able and more prepared to embrace the changes this development entailed. The social transformation resulted in challenges for the regime, from the emergence of new interest groups, internal migration, and a younger, more demanding, literate, educated and increasingly urban population. Many also felt dislocated and disenfranchised by the changes; uncomfortable and unsuccessful in the new and the modern, they turned back to traditional value systems, accelerating conﬂict (Samudavanija and Paribata 1987, pp. 6–9). It was the fall of Suharto, together with regime change in Thailand, that marked the global communication industry as an important cause of regional political upheaval, setting political elites around the region to the task of restoring their control strategies and to quarantine what many saw as the source of the contagion of internal instability (Ayoob 1995). In Indonesia, as with many of its neighbours, there were powerful forces arranged against the free media, which will be considered below. These were reinforced by the historical and cultural understandings that rejected claims for any right to the existence of a free and plural media.

THE MILITARY AND THE MEDIA Any consideration of the media environment in Indonesia must take into account the military and their place in the political culture of the country. The military played a central role in the struggle for independence. Given that the military by its very nature is neither an open nor liberal institution, it can only constrain the development of a free press. The army fought both the Dutch and the British to secure independence after the Second World War, and watched from the sidelines as Indonesia’s ﬁrst president, Sukarno, courted the PKI (communist party), seizing power with General Suharto at its head in 1965, when it decided things had gone too far. Well aware of the importance of the military, for much of Suharto’s New Order, politics was ‘centred on the oﬃcer class of the Indonesian armed forces’ (Steinberg 1987, p. 425). The military was given its dwi fungsi (dual function), as both a military and political force in Indonesian life, with its brief to maintain national integrity and uphold the state ideology of pancasila.

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Although the Indonesian military’s reputation foundered on the rocks of East Timor and other hot spots on the Indonesian archipelago, and it lost its 38 non-elected seats in the People’s Consultative Assembly in 2004, it remained politically inﬂuential into the twenty-ﬁrst century. With mounting international concern over Islamic radicals in the country, and the need of politicians to control secessionist movements, the military moved back into political life. The military is an institution obsessed by security and secrecy: two of the key elements to waging eﬀective war (Kasper 2001). There are also special characteristics of the military as a profession with its emphasis on discipline and hierarchy, and its belief in the magnitude of the potential dangers facing the community over which it stands guard (Blondel 1969). These are not characteristics that encourage debate, nor make the military conducive to an open, liberal environment. In Indonesia, then, the ongoing inﬂuence of the military remained a concern for those who supported the ideas of a Free Press. Moreover, as political power moved away from the centre, post Suharto, local politics increased in importance and provincial administrations became increasingly reliant on the military to underpin their authority, leading to ‘new alliances between regional commanders and regional powerholders’ (McBeth 26 September 2002). This was a military unlikely to act in a professional manner. When the IMF and the World Bank forced the military to open its books, they saw an organization running low on funding and relying on its own economic resources for half its annual spending. While the military had legal enterprises, many of these were struggling, forcing it to turn increasingly to illegal activities to ﬁnance operations: ‘it’s a political lobbying group and a business conglomerate with links to organized crime. Don’t look at it as an institution, but as a lobby group of individuals seeking tribute and money’ (McBeth 7 November 2002, p. 14).

MEGAWATI AND THE MILITARY While the fall of Suharto and the loss of East Timor saw a decline in the military’s reputation and status, it was President Megawati who marked its return to favour as she looked for support as her popularity waned. She had close ties to the Indonesian military and ‘repeatedly expressed her disagreement with the process that lead to East Timor’s overwhelming vote for independence in 1999 (Miller 2001). Further disintegration of the Indonesia state would not be permitted. The military, as protector, began a process of rehabilitation and eﬀorts were made to set up a cordon sanitaire around the country’s trouble spots.

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Signiﬁcantly, despite Indonesia’s new-found press freedom after 1997, the media were unable to cover the conﬂicts from Maluku to Aceh, impartially. As we saw in the Philippine case study, where states are disintegrating at the edges, threats to the safety of journalists from the parties to the conﬂicts become the main deterrent, and physical attacks upon them, generally, go unpunished as local power elites act with impunity to protect their perceived interests (AMCB September–October 2002, p. 12). The Indonesian military blocked media access to areas of civil conﬂict, whilst anti-government rebels also put pressure on journalists to get their side of the story out. Megawati gave the military hardliners a free hand in Aceh. The declaration of martial law there in May 2003 allowed the military to impose harsh restrictions on the press and eﬀectively silenced journalists trying to cover the war against the rebels of the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka – GAM). Human Rights Watch documented dozens of arrests, physical attacks and threats against journalists, as the Indonesian army did everything possible to keep the news media away. Two reporters were killed in the rebel zone and dozens of others were physically attacked or threatened (Human Rights Watch November 2003). Criticism of the ‘dirty war’ in Aceh in respected publications such as Kompas and Tempo met with disapproval from both the authorities and other media, especially the broadcast media, which took a position of support for the war against the GAM ‘terrorists’. This reﬂected the fact that the ownership of the broadcast media remained close to the military and conservative forces, particularly the Suharto family. Where reporters tried to act independently, they were ﬁred: Dandhy Dwi Laksono, of the independent television channel SCTV, was ﬁred in June 2003 as a result of pressure from the army, which objected to a 21 May report on torture in Aceh during the 1990s. Laksono told Human Rights Watch that his editors had made no attempt to resists the army’s pressure and had described him as an ‘anti-military journalist’ (Human Rights Watch November 2003). The central government in Jakarta cautioned the media against any lack of nationalism and failure to support the security forces. By June 2003, the military had achieved a virtual lockdown of the Aceh area, and the army announced the foreign ministry had given orders for all foreign and national journalists working for international news media to leave Aceh province (RSF 2004). For the main part, the Indonesian media did not play the Aceh conﬂict as an element of the ‘war on terror’, nor was it sympathetic to GAM’s arguments – a fact that is reﬂected in attempts by GAM to pressure reporters covering the conﬂict. Media criticism of the government purely focused on the abuses perpetrated by the military in the conduct of the war, and did not oﬀer wider support for the GAM cause (Jakarta Post 10 January 2005).

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The conﬂict in Aceh, however, played out in a very diﬀerent environment from that of East Timor when, in 1999, the Australian-led peacekeeping troops of the International Force for East Timor (INTERFET), wrested control of the territory from Indonesia. The ‘war on terror’ meant the West was prepared to support Jakarta’s eﬀorts to quell a separatist movement – particularly one which was led by Islamic radicals rather than the Catholics of East Timor. Realizing the crucial role that Indonesia could play in the war on terror, the US was eager to restore links with the Indonesian military. Washington pushed GAM towards accepting a political settlement based on autonomy within Indonesia, while assuring Jakarta that it supported Indonesian territorial integrity, providing counter-terrorism training for the TNI while continuing to pressure GAM to come to the table (MIPT 2005). By 2005, Aceh seemed to have been resolved by a process of paction between the Jakarta and Aceh elites (Radio Australia 2005). Thus, although the army formally withdrew from politics in 2004, surrendering its appointed positions in the Indonesian parliament and bringing an end to their formal dwi fungsi, it remained one of the most important institutions in the country, it continued to intervene in internal religious and ethnic conﬂicts through 2006 and beyond, and ‘in parliament or out, their commander remains one of the most powerful people in the country’ (The Economist 18 February 2006, p. 65). This, the separatist rebellions and the outbreaks of social unrest which became commonplace after the end of authoritarian rule, engendered an obsession with preserving the unitary state that made bedfellows of the nationalist-minded President Megawati Sukarnoputri and military conservatives like army chief General Ryamizard Ryacadu and Army Strategic Reserve commander Lt.-General Bibit Walayu, who wanted to retain inﬂuence over Indonesia’s 32 provinces (McBeth 26 September 2002). Indeed, a revival of the pancasila ideology occurred in response to fundamentalist moves to introduce Islamic law in Indonesia in line with the Jakarta Charter of 1945. The fourth president after the fall of Suharto, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), a former Suharto-era general, called for pancasila to be the basis for reform as the Indonesian nation was reconstructed. In 2006, in a televised speech marking the ideology’s 1 June birthday, he referred to ‘invisible hands which [were] trying to spread their ideas among us’, which was seen as a ‘rebuﬀ to Islamists, who after being suppressed by the Suharto regime, [were] a vocal force in a democratic Indonesia’ (Donnan 2006). The idea was endorsed by a number of inﬂuential ﬁgures. At its annual convention, Indonesia’s largest moderate Islamic group, the 40 million member Nahdlatul Ulama, endorsed pancasila and spoke out against local

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government eﬀorts to introduce Koranic bylaws. Meanwhile, Defence Minister Juwono Sudarsono argued that the military would never stand for the creation of a strictly Islamic state, even one achieved democratically, as it would see the secession of the Hindu island of Bali and the Christian islands of eastern Indonesia, thus violating the pancasila principle of unity. It would also, he argued, dismantle Indonesia’s ‘sublime blend’ of Islamism and secularism (Donnan 2006). When SBY became president in 2005, with similar internal concerns as well as a desire to please Western allies by silencing radical Islamic opposition, he looked set to further reinforce the military’s central role in Indonesian society. SBY was equally aware of the importance of the TNI. On his election to the position of president, he overturned a Megawati appointment made before she stepped down, to replace TNI chief General Endriartono Sutarto with Army chief General Ryamizard Ryacudu, known as a conservative and an ‘intense nationalist’ (Powell 2004). SBY asked Endriartono to stay on at the TNI’s helm, until he had consolidated his administration (Kurniawan 2004). SBY was attempting to deny Megawati continued inﬂuence with the military, as he continued to cement the TNI at the centre of the Indonesian state (Siboro 2005).

MEDIA LIFE AFTER SUHARTO: THE MEDIA EXPLOSION On 13 September, 1999, in the last days of the 17-month Habibie administration that followed the stepping down of Suharto, the Indonesian House of Representatives passed the 21-article 1999 Press Law, annulling the 1966 and 1982 Press Laws made under long-time President Suharto, and ushering in an unprecedented period of press freedom in Indonesia. The shackles were further dislodged when, following Habibie, the newly-elected President, Abdurrahman Wahid – or Gus Dur, as he is more familiarly known – abolished the feared Information Ministry, the state agency that had censored and controlled the communication media under the Suharto regime. The resulting media environment was reminiscent of that which brieﬂy emerged in Thailand in 1973, after the toppling of the military dictatorship of Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn. As in Thailand, Indonesia saw a media explosion. There were new print titles, new radio stations and dozens of new local television stations as well as four new nationwide broadcasters joined the existing seven. The number of radio stations grew from 798 to 1500 (radio reached 85 per cent of the archipelago, while television reached 68 per cent). Television stations in Jakarta doubled, from 5 to 10,

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in the same period. The number of newspapers grew from 79 to 172 between 1998 and 1999 (Djalal and Reen 2003). The world’s fourth largest population, ‘fascinated by the sudden free ﬂow of information, read, watched and listened in droves, fuelling a media boom when most of the economy was bust’ (The Economist 11 January 2003). According to the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA), by the end of 1999 there were some 299 newspapers, 886 tabloids, 491 magazines, 11 bulletins, 12 TV stations and 1110 radio stations, as well as an unknown number of media-related websites (Goodman 2000). And yet, despite the apparent health of the media industry, there were continuing concerns about interference. When RSF published its 2005 worldwide press freedom index, Indonesia sank to 117 out of 167 countries – slipping seven places from the previous year, and 60 places from the ﬁrst report in 2002, alongside a warning that press freedom in Indonesia remained ‘under serious threat due to the existence of outdated laws, and killings and physical attacks targeting journalists’ (Saraswati 2004). Indonesia’s elites were clearly uncomfortable with what they saw as an industry unfettered. At a time when Indonesia was being likened to the former Yugoslavia, and media discussion ranged around the possible ‘Balkanization’ (Bostock 2002) of the country, Major General Sudrajat, media advisor to then President Megawati (who succeeded Walid in 2000), speaking at Newsworld Asia in July 2002, expressed his concern over media freedom. Sudrajat explained that technological change was making the media increasingly diﬃcult to control. He maintained that although the industry’s lack of maturity impacted unfavourably on the reputation of the country, the media was the single institution in Indonesia that could not, he contended, be criticized. ‘The media needs to be more professional’, he told the conference. ‘The lack of control costs Indonesia in its bilateral relationships, for example with Singapore. Indonesian media ﬂows across the border are disturbing relations. Internally, the media, both local and international, has ramiﬁcations for stability, for example the problems in Timor’.1 Sudrajat clearly reﬂected his President’s unease with the media. During her time in oﬃce between 2000 and 2004, Megawati Sukanoputri developed a troubled relationship with the press. She reacted to criticism with the rejoinder that journalists lacked in professionalism and were ‘biased and irresponsible’. As we will see with Singapore, Megawati believed that the responsibility of the national press rested in ‘its ability to protect and promote national unity’ (RSF 2004). The daily newspaper, Rakyat Merdeka, which was particularly critical of the President, had its editor sentenced to six months in prison in November 2003 for libelling the president (Hantoro and Nurhayati 2003). This was the ﬁrst time since the fall

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of Suharto in 1998 that a journalist was convicted for insulting the President. Even after the end of Suharto’s rule, ownership and control of the media was largely in the hands of his family and friends. ‘Most of the urban TV channels are owned by Suharto’s daughter Tutut and other Suharto cronies. The press has been bought,’ according to Gus Dur in 2001. At the time, at least four TV stations, including TVI and SCTV, were owned by Tutut. The government owned only one TV station. The most established and prestigious daily newspaper, Kompass, belonged to Catholic media mogul Yacob Oetama. The English-language daily Jakarta Post was also part of the Kompass Group. There was, evidently, a high degree of concentration of ownership and control in the media industry, such that even the rich, powerful and famous would think twice before deciding to take on the media (Sng 2001). Although media ownership is apparently dominated by Abangan and Christian interests, radical Muslim groups have managed to penetrate Kompass since 1991, when it was threatened by Muslim fundamentalist groups who attacked a Kompass Group tabloid for printing the results of a poll which alleged that the public regarded Suharto as more famous than the Prophet Mohammad. Consequently, Kompass’s editorial line often reﬂected the views of radical Muslim groups who became very critical of Gus Dur. As a result, the Megawati government tried to instigate a control policy over the media, working to limit the eﬀects of the proliferation of the media and attempting to transfer power away power from Suharto’s family and friends to the reconﬁgured post-Suharto elites. A new broadcast law went before the Indonesian parliament in November 2002. It was aimed at increasing regional programming and diversifying ownership beyond Jakarta’s business elite – namely the Suharto siblings. It attempted to break their inﬂuence by revoking national licences and restricting licences to a single province (of which Indonesia has 32), forbidding cross ownership of newspapers and TV stations, and limiting the stake allowed to foreign investors in local media to 10 per cent. Outside commentators were sceptical the new law would work: ‘in a country where capitalists were all cronies, business and politics are not so easy to disentangle’ (The Economist 11 January, 2003). The law did little to assuage the growing concerns that centralized ownership was stiﬂing diversity, and that the message the media conglomerates were sure to convey would be one of overzealous patriotism. The concentration of media ownership increased, with a ‘concerted eﬀort by the business community to buy up’ media outlets (Djalal and Reen 2003). Some of these business tycoons were former associates of President Suharto, such as Sjamsul Nursalim, a joint owner of Sinar Harapan, one

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of Indonesia’s leading newspapers. Hary Tanoesoedibjo, another tycoon who was a former partner of Suharto’s daughter Titek, controlled more than 30 per cent of the industry. He was president director of the conglomerate Bimantara, formerly headed by Suharto’s son, Bambang Trihatmodjo and, through Bimantara, owned 69 per cent of shares in Indonesia’s largest television station, RCTI, and 70 per cent of shares in Global TV. Through another vehicle, Bhakti Investama, he owned 33 per cent of SCTV. Tanoesoedibjo, personally, took control of RCTI and dismissed the former managers. While the oﬃcial explanation was commercial concerns, the station’s new news director was quoted as saying RCTI was to be ‘red and white’, that is super patriotic (Djalal and Reen 2003). What was of more concern for journalists was the fact that the law also proposed the limitation of foreign programmes and allowed for the establishment of a new censorship board. The new legislation was aimed at tackling the biased reporting of Indonesia and the promotion of Western viewpoints, at the heart of which was Indonesia’s image in the international media as a haven for Islamic militants and terrorists. One of the law’s articles prohibited ‘slander, misleading information, highlighting military violence or provoking one group against another’. It reminded many, however, of the Suharto era of ‘SARA’, when discussion of race, religion and ethnicity was forbidden. To reintroduce such a prohibition could potentially prevent the media covering ethnic clashes. For many in the industry both inside and outside Indonesia, alongside the growing number of libel and defamation cases, it marked a further move to regain control over the media, and mirrored similar eﬀorts by governments across the region to stem the ﬂow of controversial news and entertainment products. When Tempo’s Harymurti was found guilty of libelling businessman Tomy Winata in a story that suggested Winata, who had strong ties to the military and to the Suharto family, stood to beneﬁt from a ﬁre that destroyed a Jakarta textile market in 2003, not only did supporters of Winata attack Tempo’s oﬃces, but his lawyers also ﬁled a series of civil and criminal complaints against the magazine. It was ‘the vigour’ with which government prosecutors pursued Winata’s complaints that worried those keen to encourage the nascent pluralism in the country (Mapes and Hindryati 2004). The court’s decision had a ‘chilling eﬀect on freedom of expression in Indonesia’ (Jakarta Post 23 September 2004). The use of libel and defamation laws to silence criticism became increasingly commonplace, as the country’s political elites, stung by the loss of East Timor in 2002, and concerned that Indonesia might fragment, moved to quash the media genie and place it ﬁrmly back in its traditional containment bottle. In this context, the elite see court trials as a legitimate weapon to curb press freedom rather

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than merely refusing to comment or denying inaccurate reporting (AMCB January–February 2004).

MEDIA LIFE AFTER SUHARTO: CLOSING PANDORA’S BOX While a return to the censorship of the Suharto years looked unlikely in the initial years of the twenty-first century, many of Indonesia’s political and military elite, clearly, yearned for more control. And it is something they worked to realize through a combination of factors: through legal recourse as with the case against Bambang Harymurti, through commercialization and through the concentration of ownership. Indonesia’s media free-for-all led to a lot of criticism of the ruling elite, yet industry competition became acute leading, initially, to greater quantity but also more sensationalism: Indonesia’s ruling classes might have been wary of the wide play received by the BBC’s Indonesian language programming, but the new tabloids were more likely to trivialize political commentary with their ‘speculative and irresponsible’ reporting ‘spiced up with sex and crime’ (Harsono 2000, pp. 89–90). In addition, the limited resources of the local media encouraged the spread of corruption, which added to factors like intimidation and inﬂuence from regional and national political forces in threatening to skew reporting. The signiﬁcant growth of the media since 1998 was not matched by investment in training or the development of a widespread culture of journalistic professionalism (Scarpello 2002). Again, like many of its neighbours, Indonesia did not escape the celebriﬁcation of its political scene. There was a politicizing of leading media ﬁgures, as they turned from reporting and analysing national aﬀairs to become part of the political development process itself. Political analyst and television talk-show host Andi Mallarangeng even formed his own political party with Ryaas Rasyid, who was Minister of Regional Autonomy and administrative reform in the government of President Abdurrahman Wahid. Media baron Surya Paloh, owner of one of Indonesia’s new television stations, Metro TV, who was once a controversial reporter during the Suharto era, was known to want to enter the political fray for Golkar (Sitathan 2004). Financial constraints also restricted the further expansion of the industry, even encouraging a dwindling in the number of titles (RSF 2002a). The dominant groups such as Java Pos and Surabaya Pos began to tighten their grip on the print industry, just as the Suharto clique had dominated the television and radio end of the business, buying up smaller regional and local titles, leaving Kompass as one of the few independents.

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By 2002, the picture of celebriﬁcation and centralization reﬂected a reinvigorated determination among the political elite to reassert control over the country’s media. East Timor’s loss oﬀered a powerful stimulus to a nationalizing and elitist impulse on the market and the wider community, encouraging a reversion to the media’s traditional developmentalist stance. The old political elites remained remarkably resilient. As with the military and its inﬂuence, many of the old faces were still around. Suharto’s family still remained inﬂuential. Suharto’s daughter, Tutut, who was also said to have political ambitions, owned four television channels including TVI and SCTV (RSF 2002a), and Suharto’s political vehicle, the Golkar Party, remained inﬂuential. But, the Megawati regime was also discomforted by criticism in the media. The President worried journalists with her close links to the military (Menon 2001), as did her decision to recreate the post of Minister of Information, and to reintroduce to the country’s penal code prison sentences for ‘slander’ (RSF 2002a). Her attack on the editor of Rakyat Merdeka was just part of the evidence that her government was not willing to allow a free press to continue its work. But it was Megawati’s attempt to silence the ﬂow of foreign news and information that ultimately revealed the intentions of the Indonesian authorities. The archaic piece of legislation used by the government was described by Abdullah Alamudi of Jakarta’s Dr Soetomo Press Institute as turning the clock back to 1964 when then president Sukarno banned people from listening to foreign broadcasts at the height of the Indonesia– Malaysia confrontation. Amin Said Husni, the deputy head of the parliamentary team drafting the bill, told Reuters, ‘We don’t want our stations and radio to be foreign kiosks (selling their products)’ (CPJ 2002). Paradoxically it was Sukarno’s daughter who revived these ‘reviled habits’ (Scarpello 2002), but they reﬂected a growing elite unease with foreign reporting on Indonesia.

THE FOREIGN MEDIA Criticism from foreign journalists also irked Indonesia’s political elite, leading to some high-proﬁle expulsions under President Megawati’s administration; the ﬁrst since the fall of Suharto. Like the domestic media, the foreign media had faced tight controls for most of Suharto’s autocratic, 32-year rule. The Suharto government had welcomed foreign media content as the globalized media sought audiences around Southeast Asia. Suharto saw these products as having a narrow audience, and thought it of little threat to the status quo. Indeed, local broadcasters could ﬁll airtime with US

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programming like CBS’s Dallas, using space that could have harboured potentially more controversial local products. As the country developed, the availability of these global media products was also seen as part of the modernization process: satellite, the symbol of modern Indonesia, brought with it cable television and foreign media channels. Thus, Indonesians who could aﬀord cable television had access to news channels from CNN and the BBC to CNBC and Bloomberg, as well as sport and entertainment courtesy of providers such as Star, National Geographic, HBO, Hallmark and Disney. There were stations from Japan (NHK), Korea (KBS World) and Hong Kong (TVB). There are also the localized versions of Viacom’s MTV and Star Television’s VTV.2 By 2006, Southeast Asia’s largest economy had 11 national TV stations and dozens of provincial broadcasters. Many of the stations were struggling to compete in the crowded markets. Foreign investors had shown an interest in the local television industry hoping to tap the Southeast Asian nation’s $2.1 billion advertisement market. In October 2005, News Corp made an exploratory foray into Indonesia’s local media market. Through subsidiary Star TV, it bought a 20 per cent stake in PT Cakrawala Andalas Televisi, which ran ANTV, for a reported US$20 million. Outright ownership was prohibited. Foreign investors were not allowed to hold more than 20 per cent of any local TV station. Minister of Communications and Information, Sofyan Djalil, said this was ‘to guarantee our media is not inﬂuenced by foreigners’ (AMCB September–October, 2005 p. 16). This sensitivity to foreign criticism was not new. Suharto was keenly aware of his image in the outside world. The Australian news media, in particular, which was ‘frank and, at times, confrontational’, was seen as ignoring the Indonesian values of respect (halus) and deference (hormat). It became a ‘cultural straw man’ to be knocked about by the Indonesia government when politically expedient (Kingsbury 1997, p. 112). In 1975, six Australian journalists were murdered in Timor after ignoring instructions from the military to leave the Island. In 1986, Sydney Morning Herald journalist, David Jenkins, was expelled for reporting on the Suharto family wealth. This was followed by a general ban on Australian foreign correspondents and, although they were slowly readmitted over the next decade, it was made clear they were expected to ‘understand the Indonesian government’s perspective’ (Harsono 2000, p. 81). The constant presence of foreign, particularly Australian, media in the Indonesian subconscious led to tensions over East Timor’s vote for independence in 1999. Clearly, the diﬃculties between Indonesia’s political elites and the Western media have stemmed from the Indonesian government’s ‘disinclination to accept that it could not control external – sometimes critical – commentary’ (Kingsbury 1997, p. 113). This uneasiness with criticism con-

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tinued through to the government of Megawati Sukarnoputri as, in the post-Suharto era, Indonesia is forced to learn ‘how to cope with more intense and sustained attention from the Western media’ (Tiﬃn 2000, p. 49). In May 2002, when Megawati’s government refused to renew a journalist visa for Australian Lindsay Murdoch, concerns about the Megawati administration’s attitude to a free press began to gel, and was symbolic of the post-Timor crackdown. The move against the Jakarta correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Melbourne Age was said to have come from the National Intelligence Body (BIN), headed by retired General A.M. Hendropriyono, and part of a general resurgence of military inﬂuence within the government after Murdoch wrote unfavourable articles about the military’s actions in Timor and Aceh. These included stories revealing a military plan to separate East Timorese children from their parents and bring them to orphanages in Java after Timor voted overwhelmingly to separate from Indonesia in 1999, and claiming Indonesian troops had poured boiling water over a baby who later died in Aceh (Timberlake 2002). In 2005, an Australian academic, Dr Edward Aspinall, was barred from entering Indonesia. The immigration authorities sent the Australian back to Sydney shortly after he arrived on a business visa at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. He was on his way to Aceh to help an aid agency there. Although the authorities gave no reason for the ban, it was suggested in the media that Aspinall worked as an advisor to a Free Aceh Movement (GAM) activist in Aceh (Simamora and Anggraeni 2005). This was not the ﬁrst attempt to curb foreign commentary on the situation in Aceh. In July 2003, an American journalist was arrested for ‘misuse of his visa’. A year before, two western women, an English academic and an American nurse were sentenced to several months in prison by a court in the Acehan capital Banda Aceh. The two women were accused of violating visa rules after they were accused of associating with GAM (ABC 2003). But it was an incident in the run up to the presidential elections in 2004, when the government expelled an American researcher, that was seen as the ﬁrst example of a new determination by Indonesia’s political elites to try to control the ﬂow of information across as well as within its borders. Ms Sydney Jones was working for a ‘well-respected’ think-tank, the Brusselsbased International Crisis Group. Her expulsion was seen as part of the ongoing eﬀorts of President Megawati’s government to crack down on its critics, including the detention of peaceful protestors and the conviction for libel of several newspaper editors (The Economist 5 June 2004). Jones was a long-time source for foreign journalists, and she was known to have very good contacts with some of the radical Islamic groups.

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Hendropriyono’s name emerged again when Jones was expelled. In an interview with Tempo magazine, in June 2004, Hendropriyono labelled the organization’s reports on Indonesia, particularly those on Islamic Radicalism and the separatism-racked provinces of Aceh and West Papua as inaccurate, biased and subversive, though he gave no details (Tempo 2004). In an ICG report on JI operations and the Christmas Eve bombing in Medan, however, published in December 2002, ICG had suggested, although not conclusively, that the Free Aceh Movement, Indonesia’s military (TNI) and JI may be surprising bedfellows. In addition, it recommended that the government strengthen the capacity and coordination of intelligence, with an emphasis on the police rather than the BIN or the TNI, and also pay serious attention to corruption among police, the military and the immigration service, particularly in connection with the trade in arms and explosives. It was also a police report from the head of BIN that had the executive editor of the Rakyat Merdeka daily charged for defamation. This was not the sort of information the Indonesian military and its backers were keen to see from a source which had credibility with Indonesian and foreign journalists.

INDONESIA’S ‘WAR ON TERROR’ Jones’s expulsion was also put down partly to politicians looking to score points on the campaign trail (The Economist 5 June 2004). However, while internal political interests and the eﬀort to hold Indonesia together had long been the main focus of the country’s political elites, the post 9/11 world was impinging on developments within Indonesia and how the country was perceived by both its neighbours and its allies and trading partners like the US. The terrorist attacks on foreign targets in the country, alongside the government’s failure to deal eﬀectively with those the West wanted incarcerated, notably the imam Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiya, who is said to have ordered the 2002 Bali Bombings, was in marked contrast to the eﬃciency of Indonesia’s neighbour, Singapore. The United States and the United Nations blacklisted JI as a terrorist organization and the Western powers expected the Indonesian government to root out dangerous militants and shut down any organization they belonged to, or face economic and diplomatic repercussions. And yet internal divisions continued to reduce Indonesia’s political scene to a ‘Babel of conﬂicting and sometimes violent factions’ (Scarpello 2002). As the twenty-ﬁrst century unfolds, Indonesia is a serious issue for the West and for the stability of Southeast Asia. Suharto had continued

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Sukarno’s eﬀorts to secularize the Indonesia state, depoliticizing and synchretizing Islam across the country. By 2006, however, the country looked increasingly Islamist. Suharto, despite his power and inﬂuence, had not been able to prevent divisions emerging across the country, even within the military ABRI (the Armed Forces of the Republic of Indonesia – Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia), the protector of the pancasila faith.3 These divisions were particularly felt at the periphery of the state, where there were more localized national identities: in Banda Aceh, Timor and Papua. By the turn of the century, however, Indonesia’s modern veneer was also worn in places, and religious concerns had pushed through the uneven surface. There developed evidence of a shift towards greater public and private practice of the Islamic faith in Indonesia, a process that was described as the ‘santriﬁcation’ of Indonesian society.4 The increased religious identiﬁcation, in turn, reﬂected wider trends in the region, the growing awareness of Islam’s global identity, and the increasingly coherent emergence of its militant expression. As Marxism once was, Islam had become a change agent, ‘transforming the culture and institutions of modern Southeast Asia, sometimes buttressing them against the advance of global capitalism and Western popular culture, at other times accommodating notions of democracy and universal human rights’ (Raymer 2002). But Southeast Asian Muslims, like Muslims worldwide, faced competing interpretations of Islam and adopted and utilized the identity in varying ways. While rural Indonesia often reﬂected the mix of faiths that was the country’s inheritance, urban Indonesians had become, on the whole, modern. Moderate views, therefore, still dominated Indonesian Islam. But, an unwillingness by the political elites to challenge the more doctrinaire views of religious extremists had allowed the radicals to shape the public debate in Indonesia. This was, increasingly, reﬂected in the local media, and became a particular focus for their foreign media counterparts. In the streets, where FHM and Cosmopolitan rubbed shoulders with religious tracts, ‘the cultural battle for the soul of Indonesia can look like a tropical rumble between the Jihadis and the sex columnists’ (Donnan 2005). Where there might have been division over reading matter, on one thing, at least, Indonesians were increasingly of one mind. Action by the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq managed to unite Indonesians in opposition to Washington. When Abu Bakar Ba’asyir (the alleged spiritual leader of the Jemmah Islamiyah terror network) led the criticism of the US, the Indonesia government, sensitive to the importance of US trade and ﬁnancial support, remained silent, and he was feted as a hero. After his

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arrest and trial in 2003, for allegedly being part of the Bali bombings, the more secular media like Kompass covered the trial in a way that was ﬁtting with the liberal intention that media be the history of ﬁrst record, but coverage by other media including Republika was pro-Ba’asyir. The new president, SBY, even maintained that Jemmah Islamiyah’s existence in Indonesia was unproven, which did not bode well for Washington and its allies hoped that the organization would be banned in Indonesia (Donnan 2004). In direct contrast to SBY’s statements, police raids in early 2007 uncovered information on the growing inﬂuence of the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist organization in Indonesia, uncovering details of an assassination ‘hit squad’ with a large cache of weapons and plans to target foreign diplomats, local oﬃcials and high proﬁle Christians (ABC News 2007). For all the oﬃcial denials, the Bali bombings in 2002 and 2005, and the bombings in Jakarta in 2003 and 2004, had placed the ‘war on terror’ ﬁrmly on Indonesia’s doorstep. All the while, the media, in particular the new media, was seen as carrying change to the heart of these societies. The new technologies, moreover, supported both a concentration and a dispersion of power. New media allowed those on the periphery to develop and consolidate power, and ultimately to challenge the authority of the centre. In this high-tech mobilization of radical constituencies, many Indonesia voices spoke up in opposition to globalization, whether reﬂecting national, regional, local or religious discontent (Majod 1999, p. 81) challenging the authority of the centre and drawing a response from the political elites. Indeed, despite the initial ﬂurry of activity after the ﬁrst Bali bombings, attempts to eradicate the cells of radical Islamic terrorists in Indonesia looked ﬂimsy, as political ambitions meant the elite in Jakarta were ‘tracking the responses of the major Muslim leaders’ (Desker 2002). The election of SBY suggested, however, public support for those who were prepared to control militant Islam. What was certain was that a greater focus on security meant the military, momentarily pushed aside by the initial surge of popular democratic fervour in the wake of Suharto’s fall, stepped forward to retake their place as a dominant force in the country and its political culture, restored to their dual fungsi, as both defenders of the nation and as a social-political force in national development. This, naturally, had an important impact on the environment in which the media operated. Indonesia has had an image problem. If Southeast Asia, as a whole, was seen in the US as a risky place, Indonesia, as the world’s largest Muslim country and bordering the strategically important Malacca Straits, was the region’s poster child for danger (Pesek 2003). This was a problem exacerbated by the ‘TV eﬀect’ – where the focus of media attention, in particular television, distorts the daily reality. This was something Indonesia could ill aﬀord, given the importance of the US to its economy. The US was the

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biggest foreign investor in Southeast Asia, with direct investments totalling nearly US$90 billion, and its third largest export market valued at $US50 billion. And international concern about the security situation in Southeast Asia was very real (Urquhart 2004). The events following 2002 led the international media to paint a bleak picture of the security situation in Southeast Asia (Clendenning 2004). And with bombs and terrorist training camps continuing to rend the reputation of the country and some of its ASEAN partners, the region looked to be a risk too far for many investors.5 Successive Indonesian governments closed their eyes to the militant threat, allowing Islamic militias to foment sectarian strife in areas like Maluku and Sulawesi, and security analysts maintained JI cells were active in Indonesia (McBeth 7 November 2002, p. 13). The links with the network of al-Qaeda terrorists and to 9/11 architect Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, were reinforced by the capture of his Southeast Asian deputy – Indonesian terrorist, Riduan Isamuddin, in Thailand in 2003 (Hussain et al. 2004, pp. 1–2). Sydney Jones suggested it was a wide network including ‘individuals with well-established political legitimacy’ for defying Suharto, blurring the lines between terrorists, political dissidents and Islamic extremists (Wain 2002). For many years, the international community was in denial about the development of militant Islam in Indonesia. Perhaps the dogma generated in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly by neighbour Australia, portraying Indonesia’s ‘civil Islam’ as more tolerant and capital friendly than the Middle Eastern alternative; a benign and cooperative neighbour within a stable and prosperous Southeast Asian region, led to a misreading of the development of Islamic extremism. As the new century unrolled, it was clear that, within Indonesia at least, the desire to downplay Islamic extremism continued, and the media, particularly the foreign media, was held accountable for distributing the wrong messages about Indonesia. In mid-October 2004, a senior police oﬃcer, General Ansyaad Mbai, accused the press of giving too much ‘visibility’ to Indonesia’s Islamist activists, and of being responsible for the country’s vulnerability to terrorism (RSF 2004). Muslim pressure groups were increasingly powerful, whether persuading the government to be lenient with Ba’asyir (BBC 17 August 2005), or inﬂuencing media content (Sangadji 2005). The atmosphere of threat encouraged self-censorship – especially when reporting on the military and Muslim militants. It should be pointed out, however, that SBY and his vice president, Jusuf Kalla, have been far more media aware than Megawati. Aspinall, Jones et al. are now free to deal in Indonesia once more. Fears of an Islamist backlash in the run up to the 2004 elections were unfounded. Despite the bombing of the Australian Embassy in the run up

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to Indonesia’s ﬁrst direct presidential election in September 2004, the voting went ahead generally peacefully. The election was praised as a key step in the country’s transition to democracy after the downfall of ex-dictator Suharto in 1998 (Associated Press 4 October 2004). But Indonesia’s security dilemma was highlighted once more, after the 2005 bombing in Bali brought renewed international pressure on Jakarta to act against JI (Associated Press 5 October 2005). The new President’s response was to turn to the military. Speaking at a ceremony to mark the 60th anniversary of the Indonesian armed forces, SBY said that acts of terrorism had repeatedly sullied the good name of the country within the international community (Associated Press 5 October 2005). The new president brought a characteristic pragmatism to the dilemma. In an interview before his inauguration, he made it clear that in his eﬀorts to combat terrorism, he would step up dialogues with Muslim groups to ensure that there was no ‘miscommunication’. However, in line with news that his landslide victory was indicative of popular support for his pledge to ﬁght terror and ﬁx Indonesia’s battered economy, he was soon quoted as saying that tougher laws might be needed to crack down on Islamic extremism in the country (Pereira 2004). Subsequently, in November 2005, rewarding SBY’s pragmatism, Washington restored military ties cut in 1992, in protest against its actions in East Timor. The move came, according to the Jakarta Post, as ‘a reward for the most-populous Muslim nation’s cooperation against al-Qaedalinked militants’, and despite objections from human rights groups that said Indonesia had done too little to punish oﬀenders for the violence in East Timor. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, signiﬁcantly, described Indonesia as ‘a voice of moderation in the Islamic world’ (Reuters 23 November 2005). It was a voice of moderation, however, that was all too aware of its Islamic links. Indonesia’s new President was quick to establish his Islamic credentials with a tour of other Islamic nations. In May 2006, Yudhyono met Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, aware that as relations improved with the US, he risked the fate of Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf, ‘scorned by many fellow countrymen as America’s lapdog’ (The Economist 20 May 2006). Likewise, Yudhyono was no more prepared to countenance dissent than his predecessors. The now ‘infamous’ articles 134, 136, 137 and 154 of the Criminal Code, which criminalize expressions of disrespect to the government, were used to detain protesters almost as frequently in the ﬁrst seven years of reformasi as they were to incarcerate dissidents in the last seven years of Suharto’s rule remain, and the President showed no signs of discouraging the ‘overzealous enforcement of these archaic provisions’,

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underlined in 2005 by the arrest of students for burning his image (Meidyatama 2005). A controversial draft of the Criminal Code was criticized by the Press Council for allowing for the criminal prosecution of journalists who violated the law in the course of their jobs, citing concerns that journalists committing libel would be tried as criminals rather than as a civil case (AMCB March–April 2005, p. 12). Clearly, SBY’s positioning in the media and his ability to communicate eﬀectively to internal and external audiences would play a key role in the perceived success of his government. SBY appeared to be a very able media manipulator. Like many other Asian politicians SBY played the show biz card to beat Megawati in the presidential election, and had literally sung his way to success: ‘the “aﬀective power” of inherited charisma may be persuasive, but in this competition of political celebrity in a democratic election, the singing general triumphed over the revolutionary’s daughter’ (Hughes-Freeland 2007, p. 193). The President has continued to use the media to play to both the West and to his more radical constituencies. Stephen Schwartz, the IMF’s Country Director for Indonesia, was complimentary about the President’s ﬁnancial management, applauding the fact that the country has achieved signiﬁcant macroeconomic stability: The Indonesian government handled the abolition of the fuel subsidy very well in terms of containing inﬂationary pressures, and has shown sound judgment in respect of monetary policy as well. In fact, Indonesia has done so well in terms of macroeconomic and ﬁscal performance, that it paid back its IMF loan four years ahead of schedule. (Harcourt 2006)

When hard-line Muslims, angered by caricatures of Prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper, stormed the lobby of the Rajawali Tower building where the Danish Embassy was located in Jakarta, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono added his voice to the condemnation. Speaking at a news conference, SBY said: The Indonesian government condemns the reprinting of the images by Western European media. The publication is clearly insensitive to the views and beliefs of other religions . . . the justiﬁcation of freedom of expression used by the media is diﬃcult to accept . . . Human rights are not absolute and their implementation must not restrict or insult the beliefs of others. (Jakarta Post 5 February 2006)

This ability to play to both sides has also shown itself in SBY’s attitudes to a free media. Adam Rainer, the Indonesia programme director for the democratic policy institute, the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, suggests that,

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in comparison to previous presidents, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has from the outset shown a more thorough understanding of the role of the media in a presidential democracy: ‘he is open to journalists and converts his public appearances into eﬀective media shows’ (Rainer 2005). But, despite saying publicly in February 2005 that he had no intention of curbing media freedoms, criticism from the media of government policies, including the lifting of fuel subsidies, seems to have irritated the President. At a dinner at the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur on 14 December, 2005, he was reported as saying that ‘even if you compare to liberal democratic countries like the US and Europe, the scale of democracy in Indonesian media has already passed the US. This is what you call an oﬀ the mark democracy’ (Ardi 2005). The debate over pornography promoted by Keadalan in the National Assembly proves that the more media-savvy approach that SBY has evolved still involves a clear intention of controlling the political space. When the President discussed pornography and public welfare with national Muslim leaders in a small Indonesian-Chinese mosque in Pasar Baru, SBY said pornography did not have to be part of media freedoms: The Constitution says that human rights are absolute unless they contravene accepted values of decency and norms, or impinge on matters of security and public order. While pornography was a problem, the content of some tabloid TV shows, with their gratuitous, often unsavory treatment of stories also posed a threat to public morality. (Hotland 2006)

CONCLUSION Like many of its Southeast Asian neighbours, the history of the Indonesian mass communications media has been marked by a fraught relationship with authoritarianism. The link between the communications media and political change remains ambiguous in Indonesia, however it is possible to trace connections between the media and the control of information both in the creation and the survival of Suharto’s Indonesia, as well as the collapse of the President’s New Order. While a direct causal link between the media and the fall of Suharto is hard to draw, ‘in its pores one could see the impending end’ (Sen and Hill 2000, p. 1). The part that communications and the ﬂow of information within the state plays in deﬁning that state and creating a meaningful homogeneity that makes it possible to imagine and gives it its coherence, is also played out in full in Indonesia. As Kellner notes, technological developments and the current round of global economic integration have ensured that the mass communication media and its connected apparatus have become

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increasingly central in daily life in Asia, even in societies like Indonesia where economic disparities mean the distribution of media products is uneven. Crucially, Indonesia’s political elites have long appreciated the importance of the media and, as its centrality has increased, so the political elites have perceived a growing new media impact on their security and the integrity of the state. This has directly aﬀected political behaviour, forcing them to look for ways to bring the media back into line and restore the gatekeeping role lost to technological development at the end of the Suharto era. So, while the end of the Suharto era brought a dramatic opening in media freedoms and a growth in the media industry that, itself, had contributed to the emergence of a public sphere and civil society, the industry remained exposed to political interference. As this chapter shows, the desire to control has limited the drive for media freedom as evidenced by the legislation introduced by Megawati and continued, more pragmatically, by SBY. National level censorship was formally defeated with the collapse of the Suharto regime in May 1998. However, in this delicately imagined state, elements of the old power elite including the military, business and politicians continued to use the media to further their ambitions and interests. The collapse of the old Suharto system and the highly centralized state authority had ‘opened the door for a new struggle to reforge coalitions and build regimes’ (Robison 2001, p. 109). When the Suharto regime could not resolve its crisis of legitimacy, elements of the regime began to embrace democracy as a possible option to remain powerful. Their accommodation represented the initial crafting of democracy in Indonesia, as a ‘reforma partada – a negotiated agreement between democratic forces and interests from the old regime’ (Di Palma 1990, p. 8). The scramble for control of the mass communications media marked the eﬀorts of competing elites to control the way their messages are conveyed to internal and external stakeholders. The new media was seen as central to the new democratic process. The globalized media had brought images of democracy to Indonesians. Misunderstood, uncertain in its elements but, nevertheless, embraced by many. Indeed, the democratic aspirations shared by so many Indonesians can be seen to be part of the beginning of a process of building a democratic political culture. However, as with the signiﬁcant increase in the public understanding of democracy brought about in Indonesia by the voter education programmes, it would seem the democratic principles were being ‘internalized by actually working within the democratic process’ (Dalton and Shin 2003, p. 19). Whether this will be enough, in the long run, to secure an open media and democratic pluralism is unclear. Indonesia remains an ethnically,

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socially, economically and religiously diverse country where tensions were held at bay by authoritarianism up to 1998 (Scarpello 2002). By the turn of the century, many journalists, including the foreign media, were under threat as the reforged political pact meant the elites fought both to conglomeratize and celebrify the media for managerial purposes. The moves to criminalize the work of journalists and the use of defamation laws to silence critics marked a concerted eﬀort by the political elites to regain central control over the ﬂow of information within and across the borders of the state. Internal tensions and external pressures provided the military with the reasons it needed to move back into the political process. New and closer political and business alliances have been formed between regional commanders and provincial bosses as decentralization changed the dynamics of the Indonesian polity, and the central control of the Indonesian state frayed at its edge. The battle for the control of the media has also been aﬀected by the trends that are similarly impacting the media around the world, that of commercialization and the connected move towards sensationalism, and media concentration. These all comprise an obstacle to the existence of true pluralism. But there has been a broader struggle going on which has had an impact on both the security of Indonesia and on media content, and that is the globalization of the industry and cross-border ﬂows of cultural products. There has been a growth in access to foreign content, both deliberately oﬀered by cable TV, and slipping across porous borders. In response to, or at least alongside this wave of cultural products, there is the high-tech mobilization of radical constituencies, whose voices that have tended to be raised against globalization and the inﬂuence of the West. These voices have challenged the authority of the centre. In Indonesia, as with its neighbours, culture has become a factor in both national security and international relations. Thus, however ambiguous media inﬂuence, and ﬂimsy its connections with democracy, the communication media, and its electronic forms in particular, have extended their inﬂuence into the national political sphere, eliciting a response at an elite level to the challenges to traditional forms of power and authority. Thus the information technology that helped to push the Suharto regime from its post, from video machines and mobile text messaging to Internet websites, can and will continue to be used to challenge dominant political visions and cultural traditions. Meanwhile, in Indonesia’s madrassas and mosques, the 20 million mobile phones are seen as having more political impact than a plural media, as Afghanistan and Iraq provide kindling for the ﬂames of hate building against the West, and the US in particular. As VCDs circulate depicting the horrors visited on fellow Muslims in places like Chechnya (Shefali 2004),

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local anger is joining global hate, whispered in the plotting and scheming, etched on the bullets of resistance, and echoing in the blast of bombs from Bali to Jakarta, and Indonesia’s government, like many in Southeast Asian, has been ‘ﬂoundering in the face of these threats’ (The Economist 19 October 2002). As the American ‘war on terror’ has brought these local tensions onto the global stage, it has complicated eﬀorts to maintain the levels of press freedoms, not only for foreign reporters, but also for their local counterparts. The political elites appreciate the importance of the media in portraying the external image of Indonesia – whether it is seen as a stable, coherent community, or a fractured, disintegrating state beset by Islamic militants. Having lost East Timor, they were all too conscious that they needed to control the medium and the message. As Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda made clear, with a globalized media, nothing is purely local anymore: ‘every domestic issue has a foreign policy aspect’ (Bayuni and Suryodiningrat 2004). Writing about Indonesia in 2000, Harold Crouch suggested that the country faced three crucial challenges: the creation of a sustainable and eﬀective political system based on democratic principles and capable of preventing the return of the military to political power, dealing with separatist pressure, and trying to reverse social disintegration, in particular ethnic and religious conﬂict. Crucial to all these challenges is economic recovery, for ‘unless sustained economic recovery can get under way, the long-term prospects of democratization, national unity and social peace will remain questionable’ (Crouch 2000, p. 132). Crouch, however, omits from his analysis the role of the media. It has played a highly ambivalent role in the development of Indonesia, ﬁrst as a tool of state self deﬁnition and imagination and, subsequently, emphasizing in the crisis of 1997, the geographical and political fault lines in the imagined entity. In the aftermath as political elites sought to redraw the pact between business and military, regional and provincial elites, the new, old and foreign media have come under increasing pressure to reﬂect the wishes of the ruling elites as the industry is comglomeratized and commercialized in order to reduce the space both for civil society groups as well as those concerned to advance the democratization of Indonesia.

NOTES 1. Recorded by the author. 2. http://www.indovision.tv.

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3. Later known as Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI). 4. Information from the Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/frd/cs/idtoc.html. 5. See Associated Press and Agence France Press (2004) and Associated Press (26 August 2004).

7. The rise and fall of the media dictator: Thailand and the continued inﬂuence of the military in Southeast Asia INTRODUCTION Any consideration of the media environment in Thailand, must take particular account of the military and its place in the political culture of the country. The military has played a central role in the independent existence of the Thai state and, by means of ownership as well as authoritarian control, the development of the mass communications media. As we have already seen in the Indonesian case study, given that the military by its very nature is neither an open nor liberal institution, it is likely that it can only serve as a constraint to the development of a free Press as this is understood in a western context. Even before the military coup of 1932, which introduced the constitutional monarchy, it was closely connected with the development and control of the Thai broadcast industry. But, from the end of the absolute monarchy until the ousting of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in September 2006, sporadic attempts to clamp down on the media instigated by the political elites, often dominated by the military, have taken place. The media environment was historically predisposed to guidance by Marshall Phibun, one of the sponsors of the 1932 coup, a Thai nationalist and admirer of Japan, who dominated the Thai political scene until he was replaced by another military commander, Marshall Sarit, in 1957. The development of a political coalition combining the military with a traditional elite around the monarchy, which also had a history of early contact with the media and a focus on image control, did little to encourage pluralism, although it included the introduction of a business elite into the coalition as the Thai economy grew and internationalized in the 1970s and 1980s. Indeed, it was one of the business elite, Thaksin Shinawatra, who parlayed not only political savvy, but a sophisticated understanding of the 175

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modern communications environment and a keen appreciation of the media policy of near neighbour, Singapore, into becoming the democraticallyelected prime minister in February 2001. Thaksin took advantage of the emergence of liberal democracy in Thailand and his ability to capture a large rural vote, to limit the absorption of free speech and a plural communication media in Thai political culture. Thaksin’s attempt to Singaporeanize the Thai media after 2001, using ownership and ﬁnancial persuasion, was not enough to ensure his continuing inﬂuence over the Thai polity. Thaksin was unseated from his position as Prime Minister in September 2006, in what could be described as not so much a democratic victory as a victory for a middle class, urban, bourgeois, liberal understanding of law and freedom combined with a traditional, military-led elite positioned around the King. The coup of September 2006 was another episode in the ongoing battle over the shape of the Thai polity and the media’s role within it. The apparent end of military rule and the attempts to embed a democratic political system in Thailand after 1992 witnessed the blooming of a thousand ﬂowers in the print industry. This led, however, to a highly-competitive industry environment and increased sensitivity to political inﬂuence. In the aftermath of the 1997 economic crisis, vested interest groups, comprising mainly politicians and tycoons, slowly tightened control over the Thai print media due to its weak ﬁnancial foundations. Particularly during the second Thaksin administration in Thailand (2005–2006), like many ASEAN neighbours, it appeared that by the use of ‘insidious tactics . . . the tyranny of market mechanisms and defamation law, the political elites were able to undermine the foundations of independence of many media organizations’ (Chongkittavorn 2005b). Thaksin led this process, and enjoyed a fractious relationship with the Thai media from his ﬁrst days in the Prime Minister’s oﬃce. Indeed, with an eye to the methods used by near neighbours Singapore, Thaksin made a concerted eﬀort to silence media that could not be controlled. ‘No criticism’, was his mantra, a position his critics have likened to the dark days of military control in October 1976, when the Thammasat University Massacre led to an ultra-conservative government and strenuous eﬀorts to suppress press freedom. As non-oﬃcial voices struggled for airtime, and advertising budgets were used to punish or reward media organizations, Chris Baker wrote ‘the army is back, the media is smashed’ (Kazmin 3 February 2005). Despite Thaksin’s desire to silence opposition and his popularity in the country (he won a landslide victory to win 375 out of 500 seats in the 2005 general election), Thailand’s media industry and the regulations which had seen it become one of the freest presses in East Asia, proved diﬃcult to

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control, as competing interests sought to use it to support their position, as media attention became ‘increasingly important in determining things of signiﬁcance in Thai politics’ (Pongsudivak 1997, p. 217). However, although many Thais were, in principle, sympathetic to the idea of an open media, as is the case with many of its neighbours, Thailand’s established mass media can easily be cashiered by its own economic self-interest and the desire to create and hold an audience. This chapter, therefore, examines the development of the Thai communications media and its interplay with authoritarian political forces within the country. It shows that, despite a history of suppression and sensationalism, at the time of Thaksin’s ouster, the opinion of the press was ‘key in the eﬀorts of competing elite interest groups . . . to advance their own positions and undermine the standing of others’ (McCargo 2000a, p. 8). This chapter considers the question of what role the media has in a state that oscillates between semi-democracy and military–monarchical rule. It examines whether or not the international media plays an inﬂuential role in regime change, in this ﬂuid, proto-democratic environment, as well as looking at the role of the local media and the importance of the broader communications technology. It examines the question of whether or not the media served as an important resource in the complex interplay between the Thai elites, as they sought to establish and protect their legitimacy in the Thai polity. It also considers, as is the case with many of Thailand’s neighbours, if the threat to a plural media can come not so much from authoritarian government, which can require, ultimately, the acquiescence of inﬂuential sections of the public, but rather from audiences that accept either bland media fare or encourage the salacious and the sensational that equally limit the space for critical commentary. The Thai context raises the question of whether a democratic political culture results from, rather than being at the root of, a democratic system. For while its robust media appeared to provide hope for those supporting the emergence of democratic pluralism, despite a legacy of decades of military and government control, the ongoing inﬂuence of big business groups and traditional political elites, as well as a tendency for the Thai press to run wild whenever it has been given its head, raises the question of how the new media operates in conditions of democratizing uncertainty. Does it become the tool of powerful interest groups, or does it have the resources to sustain independence in the face of authoritarian challenge? And, for Thailand at least, will there emerge, post Thaksin era, a ‘new balance between the demands of commercialization and the responsibility of a free media?’ (Chongkittavorn 2000, p. 221).

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THE MILITARY AND THE MEDIA The political crisis surrounding the Thaksin administration in early 2006 was an interesting test of both the independence of the Thai media and of the emergence of democratic pluralism in the country, all the more so in the light of increased security concerns which threatened to strengthen Thaksin’s hand in suppressing dissent within Thailand, and the traditionally tense relationship the Thai media has had with the country’s political elites. Thailand has been subject to a powerful military–bureaucratic inﬂuence on political life: some 17 coups d’état since 1932, marked the ‘consistent intervention in the political process by the military’ (Cook 1993, p. 127). For the Thai military, ‘the integrity of the state has been sustained in the face of insurgency and the potential divisiveness stemming from the . . . process of bringing divergent ethnic groups and peripheral areas into a consolidated nation-state’ (Muscat 1990, p. 272). And, although the Thai military ‘returned to barracks’, disgraced by the violence in Bangkok in May 1992, when troops ﬁred on demonstrators killing around 50, it remained a major inﬂuence within the Thai political system interlinked with an increasingly inﬂuential Thai Palace. Indeed, as a coalition between the military and the monarchy, the soldiers showed themselves quick to jump back into the political fray when the coalition felt the interests of the monarchy were threatened. As rumours circulated in July 2006, suggesting Thaksin was about to reshuﬄe the military and place a supporter in the top role, Privy Council president and royal advisor General Prem Tinsulanonda appealed to the military to support the Monarchy and the Kingdom (The Nation 15 July 2006). The military did not need persuading. Prem’s speech came ahead of a preemptive move to reassign more than 100 middle-ranking oﬃcers thought to be Thaksin supporters, in what was seen as the latest twist in a deepening political crisis, with ‘more and more signs emerging of a looming head-to-head between Thailand’s “old school” elite, whose power has centred on the palace and armed forces, and Thaksin, a megarich provincial businessman of Chinese descent’ (Reuters 20 July 2006). It also represented another move by an autocratic and durable monarch, who has, behind the scenes, manipulated an aristocratic, military and business hierarchy, partnering the palace with ‘a series of army generals who pockmarked the Ninth Reign with military coups d’état and the serial abrogation of one constitution after another’ (Handley 2006, p. 8). Given its control over the means of destruction, the military is more powerful than any other organization in a modern state (Finer 1988). Finer

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notes that the military ‘enjoy massive advantages over civilian organizations’ due to ﬁve characteristics: it is highly-centralized, hierarchical, disciplined, with extensive intercommunication and esprit du corps – all attributes, Finer suggests, that are likely to stand out in developing nations (Finer 1970, pp. 538–40). In these new states, the military tends to be the one institution with modern technology, securing its competitive advantage. This also means it has the necessary infrastructure to be a powerful communicator, and often introduces and works to control new communications technology. The military does not always use its power to take a direct political role. In his work on military–civilian relations in Southeast Asia, Harold Crouch, following Finer, emphasizes the impact of both internal and external factors when considering the reasons for military intervention in the political process. These include the values and orientation of the military and their interests, as well as the external factors, the socio-economic conditions, the political situation, the legitimacy of the government and international factors (Crouch 1985). Moreover, the military’s role can change during its political tenure, often from reformer to guardian of the social order.1 But it always tends to come under pressure to step back from the political sphere, and the military’s role in social and economic development is still contentious: whether it is a catalyst for economic and social modernization (Janowitz 1964), or whether soldiers are more reactionary than they are revolutionary (Wilner 1970), is still a subject of scholarly debate. The military often falls prey to the evils it criticizes and oﬀers as a reason for its political intervention. They include corruption, political/social breakdown or an irresolvable constitutional deadlock as evidenced in 2006. At the same time, political and economic modernization creates new groups in society, for example urban professionals, who want their share of power, so the military lose whatever legitimacy they had for intervention (Sundhaussen 1984, p. 546). Pressure to return to barracks can be particularly strong when, to use James Davies’s J Curve theory, social want formation exceeds social satisfaction, leading to civil frustration and then to violence (Davies 1962, pp. 5–19). As in Indonesia, the Thai military is an institution obsessed by security and secrecy, two of the key elements to waging eﬀective war (Kasper 2001). There are also special characteristics of the military as a profession with ‘its emphasis on discipline and hierarchy, an emphasis on preparation towards an activity rather than the activity itself, and its belief in the magnitude of the potential dangers facing the community over which it stands guard’ (Blondel 1969). Given that these are not conditions or characteristics which either encourage debate, or make the military conducive to an

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open, liberal media environment, a military-led state is rarely a settled one, and always oﬀers major challenges for the existence of a plural mass media. The introduction of radio in Thailand by the Navy, and the development of television during military rule, meant the military had a central role in the development of the Thai broadcast industry and maintained tight control over the medium up to and beyond 2006 (Ubonrat 1992). In a country where television was, by far, the most popular medium, and over 80 per cent of Thais were estimated to rely on television as their primary source of news, signiﬁcantly, from a perspective of social and political inﬂuence, the Royal Thai Army retained its holdings in the media. It remained, alongside the MCOT, a former state enterprise of which the government owned 77 per cent, the major player.2 The military, moreover, used the broadcast media to legitimize its political role as well as to enrich the military leadership, and the military was focused on retaining ownership of numerous broadcast frequencies even after the end of military rule in Thailand. The military fought the reallocation of band frequencies. It openly demonstrated its opposition to Article 40 of the 1997 constitution, which set in place provisions for the democratization of these media.3 This opposition was ‘closely entwined with the privileged economic right under its monopoly, but based on the claim of its function on national defense’ (Ubonrat 1999, p. 7). Despite attempts to modernize the Army and render it politically accountable after the 1992 massacre (as indicated by programmes like that led by consultants Booz Allen in 1993),4 the army not only retained the internal will to interfere in Thai politics, but still retained a signiﬁcant media role, able to apply it as the basis for political interference. What is clear, then, from the Thai experience is that the coincidence of the timing of the rise to pre-eminence of the military with the development of the media, particularly the broadcast industry, has had a deep impact on the industry and its role in Thai society. And as for the press, what it did not own the military sought to control by other means against the background of an authoritarian political culture.

SPREADING THE ‘WHITE UMBRELLA OF KINGSHIP’:5 PATRONAGE AND AUTHORITARIANISM IN THE THAI STATE As we have seen in the preceding chapters, the media is inﬂuenced by ‘the form and coloration of the social and political structures within which it operates’ (Siebert 1956, p. 1). Thailand’s political culture is a study in

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contradictions. There remains an exaggerated dualism that has framed the development of the media industry embedded within it. Thailand’s culture reﬂects a patriarchal authority that emphasizes the importance of the family and the father at its head. This is traditionally expressed within the state in the form of the Monarchy, at least until the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932. The concurrent themes of paternalism, patronage and hierarchy are also located within a Buddhist tradition that has promoted moderation and tolerance. This has resulted in pronounced dichotomies including that of authoritarian control versus pluralism and the tendency of the media to indulge in sensationalist criticism. At the same time, the embrace of modernity and globalization has had eﬀect of encouraging protectionist nationalism. As McCargo (2000b, p. 136) suggests, ‘crisis and reform are not antithetical in Thailand: rather they enjoy a symbiotic relationship, each thriving oﬀ each other’. The ebb and ﬂow of elite paction also forms an important thread between these elements as they inform the development of the political system, often guided by the monarchy, which is seen as having the role of bringing balance to society. This is a role which was revived and reinforced under the long reign of King Bhumibol (1946–), a monarch widely loved and respected by the Thai people, leading to speculation that when the King died, the role of the monarchy would be severely attenuated. Commentators have suggested that examining the development of the Thai media industry has been to track the development of the modern state, paralleling the nation’s political history as it moved from dictatorship to democracy. In other words: ‘to trace the history of mass media laws in Thailand is to be witness to the history of democracy itself in the country’ (Muntarbhorn 1998, p. 25). In the light of the media’s complicit role in the 2006 coup, however, this assessment now has to be revised. A uniﬁed Thai kingdom was ﬁrst established in the mid-fourteenth century, and run by a ‘quasi-hereditary class of nobles dominated increasingly by a small group of families’ (Chandler et al. 1971, p. 64). Known as Siam until 1939, Thailand is the only Southeast Asian country never invaded by a European power. This is attributed to the ﬂexible nature of elements of the Thai political elite in the face of the emerging power of the West. The beginnings of the modern state have their root in a critical period from its consolidation under the military general turned king, Taksin, in the eighteenth century. This was continued through the rule of Rama I (1782–1809), who cemented a system of relationships between the monarchy and the nobles under which power and patronage deserved rewards (Mulder 1997, p. 316), as well as the centrality of Buddhism and the monkhood. Through the rule of his sons Rama II (1809–1824) and Rama III

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(1824–1855), Thailand saw the growth of Siamese inﬂuence in the central Indochinese Peninsula and ﬂourishing foreign trade. It was, however, Mongkut (1851–1868), and his son Chulalongkorn (1868–1910), who realized the culmination of the Chakri dynasty’s eﬀorts to modernize Thailand in the face of the external challenge mounted by Western colonialism and Western science and technology. It was Mongkut and son who ultimately transformed Siam, from a traditional into a modern nation state. Mongkut had close contact with the West and, therefore, was representative of an elite group within Siam who were ‘less likely to underestimate the West than their fathers or neighbours’ (Chandler et al. 1971, p. 117). So, although under the 1855 Bowring Treaty – signed by Mongkut and British colonial representative, Sir John Bowring – the Thai state oﬀered a position of compromise under which it surrendered substantial sovereignty, it was a position which proved pragmatically adjusted to the new nineteenth century reality as Burma and China, states which proved less ﬂexible, became subject to the colonial powers. Mongkut embraced Western ideas from engineering to politics, and negotiated an arrangement with the Western colonial powers, France and the UK, which kept Thailand independent. This accommodation saw the development of an economic infrastructure and the creation of a bureaucratic framework in the late nineteenth century, which delineated the ongoing relationship between the Thai state, its neighbours and the global powers, and the design of the role of the monarchy to bring balance to the system, a role which resonates today in a monarchy that: ‘in the face of external demands, was to lead the nation to the acceptance of what was minimally necessary for its survival and to balance the personal and institutional interests at court in order to prevent conﬂict and paralysis’ (Chandler et al. 1971, p. 122). These early characteristics of the Thai state resonated through the bloodless revolution in 1932, which led to a constitutional monarchy, an alliance with Japan during the Second World War, and Thailand becoming a US ally following the conﬂict. They continued to inform the cultural context in which the media industry developed, with the Thais conﬁdent early adopters of technology, yet restrained by a consensual censorship and authoritarian patrons uncomfortable with criticism. Given its experience of expansionism, openness to outside ideas, history of interaction with the US, and ability to absorb new material and inﬂuences, Thai political culture is a ‘noisy and bruising world’ (Reynolds 1998, p. 126). Approximately the size of France, with a landmass of 500 000 square kilometres, Thailand borders Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia. By the turn of the twenty-first century, it remained a very rural country

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(Gunaratne 2000a). As with many of its neighbours, Thailand’s tropical environment continued ‘to constrain and shape life as do geographical realities’ (Keyes 1989, pp. 6–7). And, as with much of Southeast Asia, income and wealth distribution were ‘increasingly skewed’ (Hewison 1997, p. 110). In addition, although Thailand was also a relatively homogenous community, about 75 per cent Thai, 14 per cent Chinese and 95 per cent Buddhist, by 2006 it was currently facing armed insurgency in its three Muslimmajority southernmost provinces. By the beginning of the twenty-ﬁrst century, the idea of a nation under fatherly guidance still had a ‘compelling logic’ (Mulder 1997, p. 311). The role of the King was never purely constitutional since the 1950s’ arrangement developed by Bhumibol and General Prem Tinsulanonda – chief advisor to the King, and key mover in the 2006 coup, appointing the post coup parliament and the interim government of Surayud Chulanont. As late as 2006, the King indirectly intervened in the political crisis via his Privy Council.6 This reﬂected the success of an ongoing eﬀort by the Palace to move back to the centre of Thai politics dating back to the 1950s, suggesting the constitutional monarchy initially created in 1932 was merely a temporary setback as the Palace sought to accommodate itself with emerging modernity (Handley 2006). Despite the search for a political structure conducive to the modern Thai public since the constitutional monarchy was established in the 1930s, the creation of a bureaucracy and military manned by people nurtured by the state and educated overseas, and the global ﬂow of ideas which exerted a powerful inﬂuence on public discourse, the continuing importance of the family meant ‘patronage arrangements remain the mainstay of Thai society; they carry on into the present where business-aﬃliated politicians have taken over from aristocrats’ (Mulder 1997, p. 181). This engrained feature of Thai society was often a ‘synonym for corruption’ (Muntarbhorn 1998, p. 34). Since the media could throw light on this or could be part of the system, it had long existed as a weapon with which sections of the political elites could attack each other such that, by the turn of the century, the ﬂavour of politics was still ‘personal not programmatic . . . commanded by godfathers in all spheres’ (Mulder 1997, p. 314). Even the expansion and diversiﬁcation of the economy, the rise of a Sino-Thai class of business people and professionals, the explosion of education, and the spread of the media which took place as a result of the policies of Mongkut and Chulalongkorn, had a limited impact on the composition of the political elites and the Thai public world remained the domain of a small minority of educated and/or inﬂuential people (Mulder 1997, p. 341). Political parties developed as ‘trading outﬁts reﬂecting the business interests of rival provincial elites’ (McCargo 2000b, p. 136). The

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state and the political elites continued to ﬁnd the media useful for legitimization, ‘producing a steady stream of propaganda and by covering up the more unsavoury aspects of the exercise of power’ (Mulder 1997, p. 322).

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE THAI PRESS: SENSATIONALISM AND CONTROL As with many countries in Asia, the printing press was introduced by Europeans. In the case of Thailand, American missionary Dr Dan Beach Bradley arrived in June 1835, with a press and type from Singapore. The Thai-language Nangsue Jodmai Het (The Bangkok Recorder), debuted on 4 July, 1845, America’s Independence Day. Bradley served as editor while the manager was a Dr Caswell, who later became Prince Mongkut’s English tutor. The ﬁrst newspaper had a clear agenda: with a small but very exclusive readership, and providing foreign and trade news, and articles about the sciences and medicine, The Bangkok Recorder was a means of inﬂuencing King Nang Klao Rama III who, in turn, used it to inﬂuence his broader public, installing the media as an inﬂuential institution (McCargo 2000a, p. 7). The newspaper lasted only a year. It was suspended in 1846, following pressure by the French envoy to the Royal Court of Thailand. But, its importance was not lost on Thailand’s ruling elite. As a monarchy in colonial Asia, Mongkut and his son Chulalongkorn (Rama IV and Rama V), were moderate rulers, importing technology and ideas – laws, western philosophy, and political understanding – but the media developed as a tool to be used by the central authority, and a monarchy very conscious of its image (Handley 2006). Mongkut and Chulalongkorn, keen to modernize their kingdom, embraced the mass communications media. The ﬁrst government publication was printed in 1858, when King Mongkut edited a Royal Gazette, a useful tool in a society where the King maintained his rule by carefully ‘manipulating public appointments so as to balance the noble families against each other’ (Chandler et al. 1971, p. 65). Print largely remained in private hands. It grew in the second half of the nineteenth century as Thai, Chinese and English publications sprang up under the modernizing Chulalongkorn. Under Chulalongkorn literacy and education increased and trade with foreign countries grew, creating a need for trade news and an inﬂux of Western ideas including the idea of freedom of expression (Gunaratne 2000a, p. 432). Despite the fact that most of these publications were short-lived, the nascent industry was ‘closely intermingled with the rise of Western inﬂuence in the 19th century’ (Muntarbhorn 1998, p. 25). Newspapers enjoyed more freedom to print

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under the Chakri rulers before 1932 than they were allowed during constitutional regimes. Ironically, the Thai press could be seen as at its ‘freest under absolute monarchy’ (Gunaratne 2000a, p. 432). It was the monarchy that ﬁrst attempted to control the press through a Royal Decree in 1917, which formed the basis for Thailand’s law on defamation. Then, through the 1922 Act on Documents and Newspapers, whereby the media must seek permission to publish, and the 1927 Licensing Act, the King sought to deﬁne the rights, duties and scope of publishing organizations. Signiﬁcantly, the media has always stepped around the monarchy which was perceived as the ﬁnal arbiter of power (Keyes 1989, p. 193), but when, in 1932, the absolute monarchy was terminated in the ﬁrst of many military coups, despite a constitution guaranteeing freedom to publish, systematic censorship by the state began. As well as installing many bureaucratic hurdles, under Phibun Songkram (1938–1957) the media’s ability to report news continued to be hindered by legal means, for example the 1941 Printing Act that gave the authorities the power to close media organizations. This trend continued under Prime Minister Sarit Thanarat (1959– 1963). His government issued the law Announcement No. 17, which required the licensing of all newspaper publishers. So, just as the media helped develop the public space for the expression of opinion and ideas, including those of equality, so elite patronage meant it was also used as a tool of inequality, and was manipulated by those who sought to monopolize power and resources rather than distribute them. Only a year after the 1932 revolution, the Department of Propaganda was established and charged with ‘publishing government announcements, news and government oﬃcial speeches to promote and legitimize the new political order’ (Suriyasarn 1997). Marshal Phibun used key propaganda architect, Luang Wichitwathakan, to mould the nation, particularly using radio to convey political ideas that reﬂected Phibun’s view of society, which showed a ‘deft use of the mass media provided support for his regime and its policies’ (Pongsudivak 1997, p. 220). The example of Japan informed much of the authoritarian position of Southeast Asia’s political elites towards the mass media from the 1930s onward, and Thailand was no exception. Already looking to their North Asian neighbours for guidance on modernization before the conﬂict, accommodation during the Second World War was a meeting of minds for Thailand’s political strongmen. During the Second World War, while practical constraints such as a shortage of resources contributed to the restriction of publishing, the Printing Act of 1941 introduced broad powers to curb press freedom on grounds of conﬂict with public order and morals. By the end of the War, and the rise of military governments into the 1990s,

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authoritarian governments never felt comfortable with press freedoms and, as a result, ‘censorship was rampant’ (Muntarbhorn 1998, p. 27). The regimes of Sarit and Thanom carried Phibun’s media legacy: Sarit (1957–1963) showed ‘shrewd use of press interviews to gain legitimacy following the 1957 coup’ (Pongsudivak 1997, p. 220), and Thanom (1963– 1973) used the print media for legitimacy and consensus building. During the 1950s to the 1970s the state doctrine was the confrontation of communism. This meant sporadic clampdowns, usually led by the military, on any newspapers with Leftish sympathies. Many journalists were arrested during this time for being left-wing or antithetical toward military rule, as political elites moved to protect their own interests and media controls were explained as ‘essential to protect the monarch and to counter communist insurgency’ (Chongkittavorn 2000, p. 222). By the 1950s, the growing popularity of newspapers amongst an emerging and literate urban middle class made their licences a valuable commodity, and encouraged a popular press that remained sensational and full of inaccuracies. By the 1960s, as competition for circulation heightened, sex and sensationalism came at the expense of political issues – they were, after all, subjects that were less like to attract the ire of the political elites. But, by the end of the Thanom government, although the media remained a tool of political elites and interest groups rather than an independent actor or commentator, there were signs of the increased politicization of the urban Thais and, to cater for this demand, the press became more ‘incisive and critical’ (McCargo 2000a, p. 9). Indeed, in 1973, when Thanom’s regime gave way to Thailand’s ﬁrst civilian Prime Minister since 1956, Sanya Dharmasakti, he told editors to tell him what the people wanted. But what resulted was the increasing identiﬁcation of the press with particular interests and the growth of personal relationships between the media and the government, which all resulted in partisan reporting as newspapers came ‘to identify with particular, friendly power holders and their ongoing access to information – and in a sense their commercial survival – relied on supporting their patrons on their pages’ (Chongkittavorn 2000, p. 223). In the end, this ‘degenerated into sensationalism, muckraking . . . corruption’ (Gunaratne 2000a, p. 434). Despite these tendencies and the obvious controls, liberal newspapers and magazines developed, and were instrumental in the 14 October 1973 popular revolt against the military, acting as a ‘spectator, providing information from the students to the people, leading to Thanom’s downfall’ (Pongsudivak 1997, p. 221). The events of 1973, were the ‘closest thing Thailand ever had to a revolution’ (Owen 2005, p. 359). After a brief period of democratic government in 1969, and mounting student activism around

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the world in the late 1960s, students poured onto the streets of Bangkok in their hundreds of thousands, mobilizing mass power for probably the ﬁrst time in the Thai polity. When military and police leaders refused to order troops to attack crowds of students which contained their own children, Thanom and his close associates ﬂed the country. The immediate objective was the unseating of the ‘Three Tyrants’, but the long-term goal, the institution of democratic government, was to prove beyond them. Thailand slipped into chaos, as the social cleavages between ‘rich and poor, city and countryside, management and labour, monarchist and anarchist, revolutionary and conservative, came to the fore’ (Owen 2005, p. 359). The explosion of new media gave voice to complaints about ‘social justice, corruption, abuse of power, and economic exploitation’ (Handley 2006, p. 217). But the laws to enforce censorship remained and when the military crackdown took place in October 1976, with a massacre of student activists, and the period of democracy ended, all newspapers were banned. When they were allowed to begin printing again, although still in the hands of the private sector, the moderate and conservative publications allowed to exist had to ﬁre undesirable journalists and bar others from writing (McCargo 2000a, p. 11). There remained a commercial imperative to the business: the new regime, the National Administrative Reform Council (NARC), began its own newspaper, the Chao Phraya, but it was so unpopular that it folded within three months (Chongkittavorn 2000, p. 223). From 1976 onwards, the search began for a political arrangement that would suit the competing interests. In 1977, the King moved to secure a central place in the political order, allying with the extreme right and using the growing internal unrest and the fear of communism, to install a military government under the rule of a general favourable to the monarchy, Prem Tinsulanonda. Political parties had some success in mobilizing popular support behind economic and social issues, as pressures grew from the Thai middle class for a more representative and transparent political process. This was interwoven with eﬀorts by right-wing groups in the military to maintain a hold on power, and the royalists who wanted to ensure the continued centrality of King Bhumibol. The sixteenth constitution of 1977 was very diﬀerent from the 15 previous attempts. It was drafted by independents, open to public scrutiny and consultation and voted on by parliament in an attempt to break the mould of past vested interests (McBride 2002). These developments came alongside the development of communications technology which challenged the traditional state control of the ﬂow of information across Southeast Asia. Thailand was no exception. In January 1982, shortly after banning an issue of Newsweek for cover pictures

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that ‘unmindfully’ positioned Prem higher than the King, Prem’s government banned the Asian Wall Street Journal completely, for an opinion piece titled ‘Can Thailand’s Monarchy Survive This Century’ suggesting that the monarchy’s political interventions were ‘self-endangering’ (Handley 2006, p. 293). But, even as the economic development of the 1980s and 1990s continued to play against military control, and the communications media became increasingly independent, the military was able to retain its control of the broadcast media, securing its political role and bringing it into conﬂict with the entrepreneurial interests emerging from the Thai business community. Thus, the deﬁning elements of the development of the Thai media were its interplay with authoritarian control, and its manipulation by competing elites. At least until the Second World War, mass media was conﬁned to Bangkok. But, as its inﬂuence spread and it was used by new business elites to question the authority of the state, the military and the conservative monarchy reacted to any opposition they feared would undermine their authority. At the same time, as well as expressing political views, the Press was, at least in its popular form, stylistically embracing sensationalism or ‘yellow journalism’ (Keyes 1989, p. 193). The combination of tolerance and free-wheeling capitalism gave rise to a press that was ‘lively, scandalous, licentious, overenthusiastic, and often shallow’ (Mulder 1997, p. 183). This often meant the media’s reactions seemed to be a far cry from the cultural values of order, obedience and social respect that were said by the proponents of the Asian Values thesis to have underpinned the economic growth rates of East Asian countries (Inoguchi and Newman 1997). It is a trend that has continued into the twenty-ﬁrst century, with the popular press like Thai Rath, Daily News, Naew Nam Khao Sod and Ban Mueng serving up a diet of ‘crime, sex and scandal, and sport’ (Gunaratne 2000a, p. 442). Even the once quality Thai language press like Matichon had loosened up, while Siam Rath, Thailand’s oldest vernacular newspaper – created by palace supporters (Handley 2006, p. 194) – lost its reputation for quality when it was sold to a famous gambler, known for operating illegal gambling dens during the Asian ﬁnancial crisis (Chongkittavorn 2002, p. 256). By contrast, this has left the English language dailies Bangkok Post and The Nation to maintain investigative journalism. The Nation even started what it described as a new, mass-market daily; an intelligent ‘family paper’, Kom Chad Leuk – Thai for ‘sharp’, ‘focused’ and ‘deep’ – ‘unlike other Thai newspapers, this one is splashed with colourful, bite-sized stories; it’s long on lifestyle issues, short on sex and crime’ (Granitsas and Crispin 2002). However, during Thaksin’s rule, the continued independence of The Nation, which had been critical of Thaksin, was the subject of specula-

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tion when shares in the company were bought by close relatives of Communication and Transportation Minister Suriya Jungrungreungkij, Secretary General of the Thai Rak Thai party (Daorueng 2003). So, while media owners have reacted to the fact that ‘if a paper becomes too serious or too tame, its readers will complain’ (Heuvel and Dennis 1993, p. 167), and diﬀerences in ownership are ‘reﬂected in the ways . . . [the media] attend to popular tastes’ (Keyes 1989, p. 192), the Thai media is clearly seen as an important tool to legitimize political elites as they manoeuvre to protect their positions of power and inﬂuence.

THE BROADCAST MEDIA: TOOL OF MILITARY RULE This eﬀort to secure the means of communication has been key to the role the military played in the development of both the radio and television media. The introduction of radio in the 1920s and TV in the 1950s, reﬂected the centrality of the government, and in particular the military, to Thailand’s adoption of the technology, and ‘provided the groundwork for pervasive state control of broadcasting’ (Muntarbhorn 1998, p. 26). Since the late nineteenth century, the Thai government provided telecommunications services on the basis of a state monopoly. The Post and Telegraph Oﬃce (PTO) was ﬁrst established in 1883, under the royal decree of King Chulalongkorn. The Post and Telegraph Department (PTD), formed in 1897, still retains responsibility for radio frequency spectrum allocation and licensing, as well as international postal coordination and cooperation.7 The Royal Navy imported the ﬁrst radio technology from the UK in 1907, and the ﬁrst government radio station was established in 1929. Thailand was the ﬁrst country in continental Asia to start regular television broadcasts, with the establishment of the ﬁrst television channel, Channel 4, launched on 24 June, 1955. Field Marshall Phibun had sent a delegation to RCA in the US in 1951, to gather information on television and prepare to purchase the technology. Phibun used the broadcast media to shore up his political power after the 1948 coup, a coup which ‘set the stage for extensive political suppression, which included the Press’ (Ubonrat 1996, p. 183). While the Press had supported parliamentary democracy, the radio was used to counter press criticism and political opposition. Television, conceived as it was during Phibun’s time as Prime Minister became, unequivocally, the tool of the state, and the ‘main propaganda tool of government’ (Gunaratne 2000a, p. 436).

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Centrally, in the developing Thai nation state, the broadcast media, like radio, post and telegraph, ‘was rooted in the concept of state monopoly’ (Ubonrat 1996, p. 181), and television, in particular, was conceived with a ‘deﬁnite political objective’ (Gunaratne 2000a, p. 436). As the broadcast industry expanded, the state maintained its monopoly, but provided longterm leases to commercial enterprises. The television, however, remained concerned with the ‘presentation of the theatre of state’ (Mulder 1997, p. 183). This was a hegemony which ‘deepened as it extended the network to the regions in the 1960s and 1970s’ (Siriyuvasak 1996, p. 185), and proved invaluable during the political crises of 1973 and 1976 (Pongsudivak 1997, p. 229). At the time of the 1992 crisis, the broadcast industry was, again, the ‘main propaganda tool of the government, presenting lies and distorted information to its audiences’ (Siriyuvasak 1996, p. 181). While print was more independent, television and radio was still reluctant to show footage of the May 1992 massacre, and during the reporting of the unrest, the broadcast media did not show the street protests, creating a stark contrast between the print media and the state-operated electronic media (Pongsudivak 1997, p. 225). Even with the end of the Junta, later that year, and growing liberalization with the launch of the new TV channel – iTV – change remained ‘illusory’. The licence was still owned by the PM’s oﬃce. The Radio and Television Administration board was also created in late 1992, giving the Prime Minister the power to cancel programmes and withdraw broadcast licences, further securing state monopoly and government inﬂuence (Muntarbhorn 1998, p. 37). Thus, despite pressure from the democracy movement for a more open communication media as an important element of an emerging civil society, censorship – whether by existing laws and regulations, or self-imposed at the behest of self-interested owners – continued, and radio and television remained part of the ‘state ideological apparatuses that provide dis-information’ (Ubonrat 1994, p. 10). The second Anand government – itself appointed by the King, and with a reputation for being led by a technocrat – did begin a process of liberalization. Private operators were allowed to acquire TV and radio licences for designated time slots, plus UHF channels on which iTV began in 1995. By the 1990s, new technology was also loosening the state monopoly. Cable and satellite operations sprang up, including IBC, initially controlled by Thaksin’s Shinawatra Group. IBC became United Broadcasting Corporation (UBC), the largest local player, which included the BBC and CNN among its providers. In 2005, food conglomerate and Thaksin ally Charoen Pokphand took control of the conglomerate as Thaksin and his family attempted to put distance between them and their business interests

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in an attempt to deﬂect accusations of corruption and conﬂict of interest. CP also owns True Corporation which had more than 1 million subscribers, becoming Thailand’s largest ISP. The new space created by deregulation did lead to the introduction of invigorated programming after May 1992, despite threats of censorship, including panel discussions often with a studio audience, for example Mgon Tang Moon on Channel 11 (controlled by the Government’s Department of Public Relations), and the increase in outspoken phoneins such as Tong Praden on Channel 9 (controlled by the PM’s oﬃce through MCOT Plc). But, patronage and state monopoly meant the military maintained its control. Out of the six national television stations, eight regional and two cable operations, the government or the armed forces controlled ﬁve of the national TV stations. The sixth, iTV, was majority controlled by Shin Corp., run by members of former Prime Minister Thaksin’s family, and other large private media companies continued to ‘act in the corporate interest rather than in oppositional mode’ (Pongsudivak 1997, p. 231). The Department of Public Relations and Mass Communication Organizations of Thailand (MCOT Plc) administered the TV industry, and even though the 1997 Constitution declared broadcast frequencies the common resource of the people, to be placed under an independent agency, these instructions were not implemented before the 2006 coup. Questions remain over the transparency of granting concessions to the private sector particularly with the patronage system so entrenched (Muntarbhorn 1998, p. 36). As for radio, Thailand’s 1997 constitution called for a formal redistribution of national frequencies with guaranteed access for local communities. In late 2001, the military tried to renege on the charter obligations, arguing the need to maintain their continued monopoly over the airwaves in the interests of national security. But there was a move to some local empowerment with the emergence of community radio, for example in northern Narathiwat Province in 1999, a group of 170 local organizations pooled resources to launch Narathiwat Community Radio or NCR. The channel dealt with subjects from public health to constitutional rights, and reports were called in by CB-radio carrying volunteers (Crispin 2001, p. 42). There was also interest from international investors as Virgin planned to set up three FM radio stations in Thailand, with plans to create Asia’s ﬁrst regional network of FM stations. In a joint venture with BEC-ERO Entertainment, part of Thailand’s largest commercial media conglomerate, BEC World Public, there was talk of a $US2 billion commitment to Asia, with plans to start stations in Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, India and Singapore (Arti 2001, p. L3).

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But, as with television, formal and informal censorship continued. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), for example, expressed its concern about a 2002 government order to ban radio programmes produced by the Nation Multimedia Group. In March, 2002, a Defence Department oﬃcial ordered Smart Bomb, the company that licensed airtime on FM 90.5, to discontinue programming produced by the Nation Multimedia Group.8 And, on television, opposition was often cut short. In 2002, Bangkok Senator and Thaksin critic Chirmsak Pinthong found it hard to get air time. State-owned Channel 9 cut short coverage of a Chirmsak speech critical of the government, ostensibly for a football match. Subsequently, TV coverage of Senate proceedings was set to continue to 8 pm, but ended at 5 pm as the Senator rose to speak. And, in a taste of what was to befall Sondhi Limthongkul, head of the Manager Media Group (MGR), the Senator’s ‘Watchdog’ political talk show was pulled oﬀ the air in August 2001 (Far Eastern Economic Review 6 June 2002). There also remained limits to freedom of speech on community radio. When one NCR broadcaster reported that a controversial palm-oil plantation project between a Malaysian business group and government oﬃcials allegedly endangered mangrove forest, he was shot and killed. Other reporters at the same station said they were reluctant to report on suspected smuggling rackets controlled by local oﬃcials along the border with Malaysia (Crispin 2001, p. 42). The Asian Financial Crisis also took its toll. Cuts to the budgets of broadcasters engendered by the crisis meant staﬀ cuts. As mentioned above, UBC, Thailand’s monopoly pay television provider, reduced its staﬀ by 25 per cent in 2001 as part of a broader cost-cutting eﬀort in the face of the weakening baht (Kazmin 2001). However, the actions of the military-led government in 2007 to regain control of the three broadcast satellites owned by Shin Corp. and attempts to close Shin Corp.’s TV station, iTV, were clear evidence of the Thaimilitary’s continued interest in the communications media. Singapore’s investment arm, Temasek, bought iTV and the satellites – used for television broadcasting and telecommunications – as part of the controversial $US3.8-billion purchase of Shin Corp., from Thaksin’s family in 2006. The military-led government threatened to revoke iTV’s licence and to cancel the satellites’ operating concessions as a ‘warning shot’ at Temasek, with the Communications Minister Sittichai Pokaiudom, underlining the importance of their return (Kazmin 20 February, 2005). The Thaksin’s media deal with Temasek had come under considerable scrutiny since the new nominated assembly took over in October 2006. Sonthi Boonyaratkalin, the Thai army chief who led the 2006 military

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coup, actually accused Singapore of using the satellite operator to spy on Thailand’s communications (Agence France Presse 28 February 2007). And supporters of ousted PM Thaksin, seeking to seize some space on the country’s television sets in order to continue their propaganda battle against the generals, were given short shrift. The media battles between the military/royal coalition and Thaksin and his allies continued through into 2007, when the acting leader of Thai Rak Thai, Chaturon Chaisang, toured the party’s strongholds of north-eastern Thailand. Coverage was quashed as the junta blocked the launch of a new satellite television channel run by former Thaksin aides, due to have opened at the beginning of March that year (The Economist 3 March 2007). The additional issue raised by restrictions placed on Thaksin-associated companies was that the new military council actually held back the not insigniﬁcant integration of the media industry in Southeast Asia, demonizing Singapore, for example, as a ‘foreign’ power despite shared membership of ASEAN. It also reﬂected the continuing concerns amongst the military to limit the negative impact of new communications technology on the continued legitimacy of the regime, something it was more successful doing with TV than with the Internet.

NEW MEDIA: INFORMATION COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY AND THE THAI STATE The Internet in Thailand began in academia. The Thai Internet had its oﬃcial debut in 1987, when the ﬁrst electronic mail activity occurred between the Prince of Songkhla University (PSU) in southern Thailand and the University of Melbourne, Australia, with assistance from the Australian International Development Plan (IDP) (Palasri et al. 1999). A year earlier, a computer science professor at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) and a University of Melbourne graduate, Kanchana Kanchanasut, were the ﬁrst Thais to use email (http://www.busakorn. addr.com/thaitcom/overview/emergence.html). Use of the Internet in Thailand developed slowly into the early 1990s, remaining limited to academics, researchers, engineers and computer professionals until commercialization in 1995. At this time, many Thai newspapers went online, and the government promoted Internet use in school with the launch, in 1998, of Schoolnet, a programme of nationwide access free for secondary schools. The early commercial growth was engulfed by the Asian Financial Crisis. In the early part of the new century, however, as the Thai economy recovered from the meltdown of the late 1990s, there was ‘a surge in Internet

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users’: from one million in 2000, to almost four million by 2004 (Hoﬂich 2004). The government recognized from the start the developmental importance of the technology, pledging to bridge the digital divide by providing equal access to information technology for all, including a ‘Million PC Project’, which comprised making broadband Internet access available to the public for TB1000 ($US26) a month for unlimited access, and installing broadband Internet at schools and health-care centres in remote areas (AMCB January–February 2004, p. 6). The government also set a three-year target to provide comprehensive e-government services, after surveys, one by US-based Brown University, suggested Thailand was trailing its neighbours in oﬀering online services. The Brown report, which examined how well connected Asian countries were, ranked Singapore second, Malaysia eighth and Thailand a lowly 42nd (AMCB May–June 2004, p. 7). Like many of its neighbours, communications technology was seen not only as an important element of economic development, but as a government status symbol. The close connections between the government and private companies establishing global communications systems, particularly under Thaksin, had a particular symbolic resonance. Thailand’s Shin Corp., founded by Thaksin in 1983, was at the forefront of IT development in Thailand. One of the largest conglomerates in Thailand, it began life as Shinawatra Computers, with operations divided into four lines of business: Wireless Telecommunications Business; Satellite and International Business; Media and Advertising Business; E-Business and others. Despite the fact that Shin Corp., through its satellite operation Sattel, launched its third satellite in 1997 during Thailand’s economic collapse, it still managed to become Asia’s No. 2 satellite operator in terms of market share after Hong Kong’s Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co. Ltd, or AsiaSat (Crispin 2002b). Indeed, Shin Corp. launched one of the most complex commercial satellites of its time in 2005 (the launch was delayed for almost three years due to commercial concerns). IPStar aimed to provide high-speed data transmission for telecoms, Internet and multimedia services at 10 per cent of the cost of conventional satellites. Covering most of Asia, it was the ﬁrst satellite ever to be aimed at a mass Asian consumer market. The sale, in January 2006, of the Shinawatra family’s remaining 49.6 per cent stake in the company to Singapore’s Temasek Holdings for US$1.88 billion, threatened to put this technology into the hands of Singapore, and sparked the political crisis which led, ultimately, to the coup of September 2006. Like many of his predecessors, Thaksin used the television in his eﬀorts to legitimate his political control via Thai rak Thai in successive reelections

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from 2001 to 2006. After imposing emergency rule, when conﬂict with government forces had claimed more than 800 lives in 18 months, the government saw television as one of the ways to combat insurgency in the Muslim south. Thaksin announced a plan to install cable TV in teashops across the region, claiming it would keep the young entertained and out of trouble (Head 2005). But developments in ICT also had a broader impact on Thai society and government. The high economic growth of the 1980s, the move away from military rule and the relaxation of restrictions on the media under Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanond, came at a time of technological change for the whole region. The growing urban middle classes meant distribution opportunities for global media companies like the BBC and CNN, but the same economic growth: Stirred underlying social pressures, exacerbating the gap between rich and poor and the disparity between the developed urban areas and the poor provinces. The vernacular press began to report on these issues, which were more and more bringing the people into conﬂict with the state. (Chongkittavorn 2000, p. 224)

The social problems, such as pollution and traﬃc jams, which accompanied the economic boom through the 1980s, met rising expectations of better conditions. Championing these causes meant that, by 1992, much of the local press was ‘united against state suppression’ (McCargo 2000a, p. 13). All media was, however, meant to be under strict government control following the bloodless coup of 1991. TV and radio stations continued to reﬂect the interests of the besieged regime; the press, however, remained untamed leading to conﬂict with the military dictatorship of General Suchinda Kraprayoon. Despite attempts by the military government to block newspaper reporting of the crisis in 1992, the urban middle classes were well informed. Commercial realities forced press coverage – even some broadcasters found they could not ignore what their audience was seeing and hearing via other communication media. A ‘media howl’ echoed through the streets of Bangkok, begun through the video circulation of military brutality against demonstrators broadcast by global outlets BBC and CNN, circulated back to the protestors through all the communications technology available, from mobile telephone to printed matter as ‘technology defeated the censors and the propaganda departments’ (Chongkittavorn 2000, p. 220). As a result, the Thai Press received credit for toppling the Suchinda regime (Gunaratne 2000a, p. 435). Thus, the technological changes wrought in the 1980s and 1990s added further complications to the ongoing competition between elements of the

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Thai political elite to control the communication of their messages. Thai military attempts to control the media came up against countervailing business interests, which meant that there were no controls over the use of satellite dishes, and no way to control the images of the Thai soldiers’ liberal use of force during internecine unrest in Southern Thailand, broadcast in news bulletins by Malaysia and picked up by Thai Muslims in late 2004 (Ghani 2004). As the Internet developed through the 1990s and into the new century, lack of controls manifested itself in similar ways. After 2001, when access to the traditional media was cut oﬀ during unrest in Thailand’s southern provinces, the Internet continued to provide an accessible public space for the expression of opposition even for militant groups (Bangkok Post 28 October 2004). The mobile phone was another example of how Thais used the media and communications technology in various ways which the state was not able to control, both ‘to enchant [and] . . . to subvert’ (Reynolds 1998, p. 119). The 1992 uprising was dubbed the ‘mobile phone revolution’: the ﬁrst time in Southeast Asia that new communications technology was used to organize protests (Chongkittavorn 2000, p. 219). Indeed, with 22 million people using prepaid phone services in Thailand by 2005 (some 13 million of them customers of the Thaksin family’s Advanced Info Service Plc), mobile phones had become ubiquitous. Thais were not only using them for entertainment, but to express their views, for example, by participating in radio current aﬀairs programmes. And, as internecine conﬂict heightened in Thailand’s southern states, mobile phones were used to remotely detonate the bombs which ripped through Hat Yai International Airport, a Carrefour shopping centre and a local hotel, in Songkhla’s Hat Yai district in 2005.9

GLOBALIZATION AND NATIONALISM: THE GROWTH OF THE INTERNATIONAL MEDIA IN THAILAND The inﬂuence of technology on the state and its early adoption goes back to the initial days of its development and has had deep cultural implications. It was in reaction to the outward facing position of Mongkut and his son, seeking ideas and technology from the West, that a culture of Thai nationalism ﬁrst appeared as a modern identity seeking to build an imagined Thai community. This modern relativist impulse continued to inform the environment in which the international media operated in Thailand into the twenty-ﬁrst century.

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While Thai national culture has roots in pre-modern Siam with its animist elements, Hindu-Buddhist cosmological notions and Theravada Buddhist religion, it is a relatively modern creation: Formulated only in the later part of the Nineteenth Century, in the wake of eﬀorts to create a modern nation state and impacted by external political and economic forces since the Nineteenth Century as the Thai economy was increasingly tied to the world economic system. (Keyes 1989, p. 4)

These relatively modern roots have provided fertile ground for the current trends of globalization in Thailand, but also led to uncertainty among many ordinary Thais searching for a meaningful identity. A history of being open to foreign ideas and inﬂuence meant there was less suspicion of globalization in Thailand than in many of its neighbours discussed in this book. There was a powerful modernizing force that saw Thailand mobilized via a coherent national project while, on the other hand, there was a sense that globalization created plurality and diversity, which also enjoyed a historical precedent in Thailand, rooted in the development of an ethnically diverse Bangkok state. This predisposed the urban Thai to be cosmopolitan (Reynolds 1998, pp. 120–21). Even the signiﬁcant degree of tolerance for pluralistic life styles within society and the acceptance of external ideas had its roots in Mongkut’s reformation of Thai Buddhism that accentuated individual responsibility and encouraged a secularization of Thai society (Keyes 1989, p. 210). It also gave rise, however, to the discussion of what it was to be Thai: Lost in a global world and the eﬃciency of imitating institutions of powerful cultures, the importance of Thai-ness is embedded in the elite consciousness, reinforced in the space provided by the media, and iconisized in work of the current-day tourist industry, commoditized for the international tourist and consumed by the Thai national. (Reynolds 1998, p. 135)

The pluralized media can and does support both these tendencies. It is, after all, ultimately a technology in and of itself value free and inﬁnitely manipulable. In Thailand, the media industry was associated with this modernization and globalization (Muntarbhorn 1998, p. 25). And yet, it has also had a particular role in the development of the Thai nation as it was manipulated by the state to ‘impose a dominant national ideology on the populace’ (Keyes 1989, p. 201). These ideas were contested and appropriated by diﬀerent media constituencies to serve diﬀerent purposes (Reynolds 1998, p. 141). While it was a tool of the state, the media was also seen as an avenue through which the outside world changed Thailand. The creation of global

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consumers, and advertising, which grew up with print (the ﬁrst Thai advertising company was founded in 1924, the ﬁrst multinational established in the 1980s) as the face of the global capitalist economy, was expressed through the media. But the same medium has highlighted the growing, new middle class market and its increasing access to international news and entertainment products. While this led Thailand’s political elites both to fear the power base of the country’s urban middles classes, and search to ﬁnd ways to accommodate their aspirations, the middle classes remained uncertain. The expansion of the global media and localization of the globalized media content by the Thai media industry led to an increasing ambiguity within the public sphere and confusion over the role the middle class played in constructing a democratic Thai society in an apparent ‘existential schizophrenia’ (Ubonrat 2000, p. 115). Clearly, there was a desire to embrace the modern political ideals of democracy and pluralism, but there remained a fear of what nationalists criticized as a ‘deconstruction of the Thai identity and creation of a desire to be un-Thai’ (Ubonrat 2000, p. 112). These same nationalist voices railed against the script for the ﬁlm Anna and the King of Siam which was deemed to be insulting to the Thai monarchy; forcing ﬁlming to move to neighbouring Malaysia.10 Similarly, as the new century unrolled, there were concerns raised that Thai students were losing touch with their heritage due to the proliferation and increasing popularity of international schools (Tang, E. 2002). The same voices celebrated the expulsion order served on the journalists of the Far Eastern Economic Review magazine in 2002, critical of the coverage of the country in the magazine’s pages and eager for ‘a demonstration of national sovereignty’ (Plott 2002). Caught in this popular urban angst had been the foreign media. From Bradley’s ﬁrst printing press, to the use of satellite technology to publish foreign dailies like Yomiuri Shimbun, The Asian Wall Street Journal and the IHT in Bangkok, Thailand had been forced open to international media inﬂuence. By the turn of the century, more than 300 foreign journalists representing 10 major news organizations from around the world worked from Bangkok, rivalling Singapore as a media hub in Southeast Asia. Embraced by those who sought democratic change yet criticized by nationalists as a ‘western force’ attempting to impose political values on Asian societies, the international media played an unusually important role in Thai polity. Compared with elsewhere in Asia, both the Thai media and the Thai political elite were involved with the international media, as the Thai media fed oﬀ their international colleagues and used international media reports to attack local politicians. From coverage on areas such as on prostitution and Aids, to its role in the 1992 fall of the Suchinda government, the international media was

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regarded by many in the Thai press as an ally. This led to growing concerns on behalf of the local political elite on reporting in the international media, particularly when it portrayed them and Thailand in a poor light, and demonstrated the ‘mutually beneﬁcial relationship between the international and domestic media’ (McCargo 1999, p. 552). With his desire to repair the battered fortunes of the Thai economy in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis, Thaksin was particularly sensitive to this partnership. For the Prime Minister, not only did the foreign media connive with the Thai opposition, its critical portrayal of Thailand to the outside world risked damaging Thai interests. In May 2001, as Thaksin left for a conference in Hong Kong, he described foreign coverage of his government as ‘too simplistic’ (Tasker 2001). Within one year, he had acted to try to silence foreign intervention, picking one of Singapore leader Lee Kuan Yew’s favourite whipping boys, The Review, as a target (Associated Press 2002) and threatening The Economist over coverage that mentioned the royal family (The Nation 2 March 2002). The move brought expressions of shock and dismay from The Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand. In an open letter to Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, it claimed the deportation of the Review journalists would result in ‘immeasurable harm to Thailand’s reputation in the world community as a tolerant democracy and haven for free expression’. Meanwhile the US press watchdog, the Committee to Protect Journalists, described it as a ‘shot across the bows . . . It’s got to be . . . a long-standing grievance of the Government that The Review has been too critical’ (Barnes 2002). For the owners of The Review, it was a threat to an already unsteady business. With the speed it showed elsewhere in Asia over the row with Mahathir and the CNBC Anwar tape (see Malaysia chapter), Dow Jones quickly moved to protect its distribution. In an interview with The Review after the magazine’s management had apparently smoothed over the row which had led to the threat to expel its journalists, Thaksin blamed the media for having a hidden agenda. He claimed this dated back to the time when he was in business and refused various media sponsorships, and that the media were seeking conﬂict with him. He argued that strong government was needed to get things done. ‘Real or imagined, Thaksin believes there is a sinister plot to topple him by stirring up trouble between himself and the public. That, he feels, is one reason why he has to act tough’ (Vatikiotis and Tasker 2002). Thaksin echoed Lee Kuan Yew’s hard-line stance. The Prime Minister acknowledged that his forceful, hands-on style of rule rubbed some people up the wrong way. ‘I need to punch things, otherwise nothing gets changed,’ he explained, adding: ‘You have to be strong. Sometimes I am too strong

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and that is my weak point. I never worry about my face, but I worry about the success of the government’ (Vatikiotis and Tasker 2002).

THE THAI MEDIA UNDER THAKSIN – THE ASIAN FINANCIAL CRISIS AND ITS IMPACT Being heavy handed was not the sole prerogative of Thaksin. Physical attacks on journalists had ‘long been a common practice’ (Muntarbhorn 1998, p. 27). At times of ‘intense political uncertainty’, journalists were most at risk and, between 1979 and 1984, at least 47 Thai journalists killed, mostly in provincial areas as ‘police and press oﬃcials intimidated journalists, or used other forms of harassment, to control the content of newspapers’ (Chongkittavorn 2000, p. 223). But under Thaksin, as they once did under military rule, these attacks occurred with seeming impunity. In 2001, there were physical assaults on journalists, including the murder of Witayut Saengsopit, a radio host in Surat Thani, after revealing corruption allegations involving the local municipal council (Bangkok Post 2001). Thaksin inherited a Press that, post 1992, had developed into a relatively free medium, at least compared with its neighbours. Despite this, the media was subject to continuing inﬂuence as successive Thai administrations continued to ‘attempt to blunt criticism’ (Chongkittavorn 2000, p. 224). Media inﬂuence had altered, becoming more obviously corrupt rather than relying on intimidation. The violent confrontations between pro-democracy demonstrators and the Thai military in May 1992, which led to a political crisis which saw the intervention of the King, provided Thailand’s political elites with a clear lesson that the rapid growth of new social groups and classes, namely the urban middle class in Bangkok, could be an essential force in bringing about political change. So, despite the fact that technological change and developments meant there was more public space for discussion of political and social issues, government censorship, both direct and indirect through market forces such as advertising, strengthened. Prime Ministers Banharn (1995–1996), and Chavalit (1996–1997), attempted to inﬂuence the press and, therefore, the people of Thailand, through rewards and incentives available to them under the patronage system ensuring that even after 1992, ‘freedom of expression and information had not been achieved’ (Siriyuvasak 1996, p. 196). Banharn came to power at the head of the Chart Thai Party in July 1995, taking over from Chuan Leekpai and the Democrat Party, which had won the 1992 elections which followed the political crisis of 1992. Allegations of corruption soon followed, and in the following year Banharn was obliged to dissolve parliament and resign as premier after ‘three days of merciless

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televised grilling by the opposition over matters ranging from economic mismanagement to land speculation to thesis plagiarism’ (Suh and Gearing 1996). In November 1996, General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, leader of the New Aspiration Party (NAP) and defence minister under Banharn, won what was dubbed as the most corrupt election in Thai history, with an estimated 25 million baht spent on vote-buying in rural areas. Chavalit had, during the early 1990s, controlled the 126 military-run radio stations and the two military-controlled television networks. However, his attempts to inﬂuence the media were of little use. Chavalit resigned almost one year later at the height of the Asian Financial Crisis, to be replaced by Chuan Leekpai. Other Thai leaders saw the media as a useful external communication tool, and this meant increased freedoms. Both Prime Ministers General Chatichai Choonhaven (1988–1991), and Chuan Leekpai (1992–1995 and 1997–2001), saw the press as a means of promoting Thailand both regionally and globally, as they sought to repair Thailand’s economy and its image. As a result, journalists were able to get some of the more restrictive press laws scrapped, including Revolutionary Decree No. 42 (1976), which the military junta had enacted to provide ‘overwhelming powers’ to the Interior Ministry to withdraw licences. This made the media increasingly self-conﬁdent, and it shouldered the role of championing the urban middle class. So, as the Asian Financial Crisis hit Thailand, it brought the media into direct conﬂict with the Thai political elites.

THE ASIAN FINANCIAL CRISIS: WHAT GOES UP, MUST COME DOWN Like many of its neighbours, the Asian Financial Crisis did more than undermine local conﬁdence in the Thai political elites, it also drew the media into the foreground – particularly the business media – with contradictory consequences. The same media which had punted everything from Mercedes cars and Rolex watches to hot shares on the Thai stock market and must-have new apartments in blocks springing up around Bangkok, began to bring its audience news of the demise of the Thai economy. The Thai public relied increasingly on the press to provide them with information as the crisis unfurled, and there was increased transparency forced on the government by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as it stepped in to help support the Thai economy. At ﬁrst, the media helped the government to get its messages across but, as the crisis worsened, the populist Thai language media became increasingly critical of the government. As a result, many

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politicians and oﬃcials were ‘unable to hide their hostility toward the independent press’ (Chongkittavorn 2000, p. 228). The economic crisis forced signiﬁcant contractions in the industry. Closures and lay oﬀs, falling advertising revenue, more competition, fewer staﬀ and fewer pages forced some newspapers to be more accurate, tight, and to introduce investigative reports and analysis. Others, like Thai Rath, Daily News and Kaho Sod, continued to see the tabloid fare as their way to attract readers – from gossip and scandal to the grotesque – and there was a similar eﬀect on both English language and Chinese language publications (Chongkittavorn 2000, pp. 230–31). Corruption stories continued, however, to bring the media into direct conﬂict with successive administrations. The Chuan government, for example, tarnished its hitherto unblemished record on press freedom by ‘incidents of abuse and intimidation’, attempting to force changes to stories as with the July 1999 invasion of the Bangkok Post newsroom (The Nation 16 July 1999). Thus, while the Thai print media played an important political role after 1997, adopting strong critical stances concerning issues such as corruption, constitutional reform and coalition formation, it sought to present itself as a disinterested, neutral party, a watchdog monitoring the activities of the political elite. This was misleading, since the Thai Press remained ‘deeply partisan . . . frequently locked into highly collusive and mutually beneﬁcial relationships with politicians and other power-holders’.11 It was into this contradictory context that Thaksin strode in 2001, backed by popular vote and a mandate to restore Thailand to economic prosperity. Signiﬁcantly, Thaksin was able to build his party via his business and media interests into a one-party dominant system, overcoming the coalitionism that had previously characterized Thai politics. It was a mandate that stood him in good stead through his strenuous eﬀorts to bring the Thai media to heel. Unwilling to repeat the mistakes of his predecessors in allowing the media to feed opposition and unearth corruption, he hounded those who criticized him and those, like the independent Campaign for Popular Media Reform, who sought a more plural society. His single-minded pursuit of the media revealed, critics claimed, ‘the determination of the political and business elite around Mr. Thaksin to stiﬂe media probing of its intertwined relationships’ (Barnes 2003). As we have seen, Thaksin was operating within a political culture that understood the use of the media as a state tool. Thaksin signiﬁcantly possessed more resources than many of his predecessors and a more coherent vision. The new Prime Minister’s business interests soon brought him into conﬂict not only with elements in the Thai media seeking more openness, but with other members of the political elite with their own media

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channels. Thaksin’s businesses, particularly his media interests, allied with government controls, meant he could exert remarkable inﬂuence over the industry. The Thai Journalists Association viewed Thaksin as a threat to press freedom, naming 2001 the ‘year of interference’. The Association cited the termination of critical programmes on state-owned media, and the army’s 29 June, 2001, order for its radio and television stations to air constructive news about the prime minister and cabinet ministers and to publicize government policies and measures. This, the Association suggested, was in violation of articles 39 and 41 of the constitution, which ensure the freedom of the press. The Association also indicated a list of other concerns, including the move by the Public Relations Department of the Thai Government to take talk shows Rian Song Dan (Two Sides of the Coin) and Tarm Ha Kaen Dharma (The Core of the Dharma) to court on the grounds the host, Chirmsak Pinthong, did not have an announcers’ licence, and the move by Special Branch police, invoking the Press Act of 1941, to warn Thai Rath and Krungthep Thukrait for their reports on the share concealment case against Thaksin. Thaksin’s rise to power had serious implications for press freedom, and pressure on media owners combined with the withdrawal of advertising meant media organizations became ‘more willing to blend their editorial independence to ally with the powers-that-be’ (AMCB September – October 2002). Allied with the local taste for tabloid fare, it was a formidable formula. Game shows soon replaced political debate on the government controlled channels and the Prime Minister called for ‘more positive news’ (Barnes 2003). Newspapers that oﬀended the ruling establishment quickly felt the pain: all the big telecommunications companies – which dominated newspaper advertising – were represented on the cabinet. After The Nation, one of the few papers that remained critical of the government, started a Thai language version in early 2003, The Anti-Money Laundering Oﬃce (AMLO), a government anti-corruption agency, launched an investigation of its senior staﬀ. But Thaksin’s coalition was not secure. The Prime Minister had won the ﬁrst election in 2001 by playing the nationalist card, working on people’s distrust of globalization and democracy, both of which were held responsible for the economic and ﬁnancial crisis of the late 1990s. By 2005, the urban middle classes had realized he was no liberal, and he had alienated the voters in Bangkok, in particular. His policies were focused on improving the lot of the Thai peasant – distributing bank notes to the poor during his campaign trips, giving every village a million bahts, oﬀering to cancel the debt of the small peasants and developing a policy of access to health care for 30 baht a consultation.

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When the west coast of Thailand was devastated by the Tsunami in 2005, Thaksin had another opportunity to position himself as the country’s ‘omniscient national saviour . . . [with an] eﬀective and widely broadcast performance’ (Kazmin 3 February 2005).This helped Thai Rak Thai to an unprecedented landslide vote in national elections later that year, founded on the broad support for Thaksin in rural Thailand. It was a success that was to be short-lived. Critics labelled the 2005 election as ‘one of the dirtiest the country has ever seen’ and claimed intimidation and use of state power to ‘manipulate voters’ (Bangkok Post 7 February 2005). Political activist and writer Sulak Sivaraksa also pointed to Thaksin’s eﬀorts to emulate the success of authoritarian regimes in Malaysia and Singapore: ‘his democracy means every four years elections, and then you shut up and pass your power to me, and I will do what I feel is right’ (Kazmin 3 February 2005). As with near neighbour Singapore, the opposition claimed it was diﬃcult to ‘make its voice heard when Thai television and radio channels – all statecontrolled – have been ordered to play down news and criticism of the government’ (Kazmin 1 February, 2005). Matichon party leader Anek Laothammathat said Thai Rak Thai had resources at its disposal to run publicity campaigns which allowed it to dominate the election, describing the situation as ‘akin to an election in a communist country’ (Bangkok Post 7 February 2005). Commentators warned that Thaksin’s return would herald a period of broader and deeper control, if not outright oppression of Thai society by the state apparatus, especially through the increasing arbitrary powers of the police (The Nation 20 December 2004). Even Thaksin’s former business allies began to desert him. Thaksin’s response in late 2005 to attacks from Sondhi Limthongkul, head of the Manager Media Group (MGR), one of Thailand’s largest media ﬁrms, was a familiar attempt to suppress any dissent.12 In what was seen as a perfectly coordinated attack, Thaksin not only ﬁlled the media with messages supporting his position, but also sought redress through the Thai courts. Finally, an ally, home entertainment tycoon Paiboon Damrongchaitham, announced hostile bids against two independent and distinguished publishing houses in an attempt to bring them within the sphere of inﬂuence of Thaksin and his cronies. In December 2005, Paiboon, a good friend of the prime minister, launched twin takeover bids against Matichon Plc and Post Publishing Plc – if successful, GMM Grammy would have controlled at least ﬁve leading daily English- and Thai-language newspapers – most of them accepted for quality and investigative reports while the Bangkok Post is well-known among international readers (Glahan 2005). It was a response clearly designed to silence his critics with a triple play of ﬁnancial pressure, including legal action, cutting oﬀ their channels of

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communication to the general public through control of the media, and public intimidation, including attempts to discredit his critics with comments from his own supporters. As his coalition began to collapse and Thaksin turned on Sondhi in 2005, all those around the media tycoon were aﬀected. First major civil suits were ﬁled by the prime minister’s business empire against Thai Post and activist Supinya Klangnarong. Editors and senior journalists from The Nation were subjected to a controversial banking assets probe by the Anti-Money Laundering Oﬃce. Editors were sacked. Businessmen with connections to the Thaksin regime bought up shares of newspapers, including the takeover bid for the respectable Matichon newspaper by entertainment tycoon Paiboon Damrongchaitham, only narrowly deﬂected by social outrage, largely because the Thai public – at least the vocal urban middle class – suspected that the plan was politically motivated. The play was all too familiar: from his early days in power, Thaksin had embarked on a communication strategy that succeeded in making Thailand slip more than 50 places toward the bottom half of the world rankings on media freedom.13 It started with his conglomerate’s purchase of iTV. Then rumours grew about the government helping various businesses or projects of media organizations friendly towards the government. Advertising money from state coﬀers also ﬂowed towards those media outlets. By contrast, critical ones were left in no doubt that their business would suﬀer. Under Thaksin’s administration, politicians also interfered with the work of independent agencies such as the Constitution Court, the national Counter Corruption Commission and the Election Commission, leaving the media unprotected. The consequences were that between 2001 and 2004, the Thaksin government interfered with the media 31 times. This included banning the Khor Kid Duay Chuay Kan radio programme, issuing warnings to Thai and foreign media, among them The Review, depriving Thai Post and Naew Na newspapers of advertising and, indirectly, causing the dismissal of the editors of the Bangkok Post and the Siam Rath weekly magazine. Meanwhile, the major players in the industry came under even tighter control as media outlets transformed via mergers into public companies in hopes of competing for TV and radio frequencies (Asian Media and Communication Bulletin March–April 2004). Thaksin’s government also looked to how PR could further control the messages relayed to its local and international audience. In late 2001, as part of the Prime Minister’s policy to strengthen state-controlled media, particularly the Thai News Agency (TNA), the Prime Minister’s Oﬃce announced the establishment of an information centre. Initially named the Information Management Centre, heavy criticism from academics and the

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media saw the Centre’s name changed in early 2002 to the Information Service Centre for Public Interests (Ruangdit 2002). Attempts to work directly with journalists also met with resistance. Plans to hold a media workshop ran aground after journalists criticized it as an attempt to stiﬂe criticism of the Thaksin administration. The workshop was titled Reforming and Improving the Eﬃciency of Media. The Thai Journalists Association boycotted the government-organized seminar, which it saw as inappropriate. It claimed that improving eﬃciency was the responsibility of media organizations, not the government (Asian Wall Street Journal 2002). As Thaksin moved to establish a state agency charged with correcting ‘errors’ and ‘misprints’ in the news while providing strict guidelines for what state-controlled media could or could not report, Secretary General of the Association, Chavarong Limpattampanee, suggested the government was concerned about stories on corruption and conﬂicts of interest which it felt would be harmful to its own political stability, and wanted to ‘manipulate and dominate the news . . . they only want to hear good news’ (Crispin 2002a). And where Thaksin could not persuade or force, he bullied. When Shin Corp.-controlled iTV failed to achieve the ratings it felt it deserved, as it changed its fare from news and current aﬀairs to less controversial entertainment programming, the channel’s management attacked the ratings agency, internationally-recognized AC Nielsen. The struggling channel, hoping to raise money with a public listing, sent an investigation team to track down about 100 of the rating agency’s 865 sample Thai households. AC Nielsen said the tactics went beyond the limits of industry ethics and propriety, as the households are usually kept conﬁdential to prevent tampering with the data. Sunchai Anuman-Rajadhon, managing director of AC Nielsen Media Thailand, said the station should look at itself, rather than criticize objective, professional market researchers: ‘when you are previously a respectable news channel and you want to move towards entertainment, you have to establish your credibility as entertainment’ (Kazmin 28 January 2002). The Bangkok Post criticized government oﬃcials who launched ‘jingoistic tirades against anyone who dares hold a diﬀerent opinion’.14 And, as Thaksin turned his attentions to foreign journalists, claiming they were biased and part of a ‘smear campaign’ against him, Thai columnists referred to him as Field Marshall Thaksin, pointing out the link to the days of military dictatorship. Even King Bhumibol was moved to intervene, pointedly criticizing the government: ‘People can’t be made to think the same way. When we have an idea and others say it is not right, they have the right to say so’ (Horn 2001).

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Thaksin’s ability to provide patronage was curtailed. Thaksin was accused of interference after the Senate appointed Wisut Montriwat (former Deputy Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance) to the position of Auditor General. The Constitution Court had earlier found Jaruvan’s nomination illegal and unconstitutional; however, she refused to acknowledge her ouster without a direct order from the King. In addition, the government was seen to be pushing through policies which transferred debts from politicians connected to the Thaksin camp to the government’s Thai Asset Management Company, and enacted telecommunications legislation which was seen as beneﬁting Shin Corp. Even state visits to India were said to be focused on negotiating a satellite deal for Shin Corp. A vocal press and even some senators ‘criticized the conﬂicts of interest in new government policies’ (Crispin 2002a). By now, the concerns about the Thaksin administration’s corporatist view of the media had spread abroad, just as Thaksin was hoping to attract foreign capital to boost the struggling Thai economy. When the United States State Department, in its human-rights report on Thailand, cited 14 incidents where the Thaksin administration had obstructed press freedoms and, in 2002, the largest fund manager in the world, the US-based California Public Employees Retirement System (CALPERS), pulled its investments from Thailand, Thaksin turned on the foreign media. The Review expulsion orders marked Thaksin’s move to inﬂuence the coverage of Thailand overseas, as was the decision to block an issue of The Economist – moves which only served to increase international criticism. At the same time, the Defence Ministry ordered Nation Multimedia Group (of which The Review’s parent Dow Jones held a 7.5 per cent share) to cut political programming, after it aired an interview with a senior member of the opposition causing the group to stop all political news coverage in protest (ABC News 3 July 2002). The Nation Multimedia Group continued to feel the weight of government pressure later in the year, when the group’s Kom Chad Luek carried a story about Thaksin’s son Panthongtae Shinawatra cheating in a university examination on its front page. The story was accompanied by a picture of the young man smoking a cigarette, something that is seen as unacceptable in Thai society. A senior editor was asked to accept demotion to appease angry government oﬃcials. In return, staﬀ asked management for assurances of editorial independence (FEER 10 October 2002). The military was also quick to stem the chance of adverse coverage of border problems. In 2002, during mounting tension between Burmese forces and the rebel Shan State Army, the military refused NGO (nongovernmental organization) workers and foreign journalists access to the area. National Security Council head, General Khachadpai Burusapatana,

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denied that the ban was designed to appease the military regime in Rangoon after months of reciprocal abuse and boycotts of local journalists. But he claimed that reporting by the foreign media on the activities of the rebels and on conditions in the refugee camps was adding to the friction in Thailand’s relationship with Burma (Baker 2002). Thaksin’s policies thus appeared to be an attempt to produce a control strategy with a thoroughly modern blend in that, like Singapore’s ruling elite, he not only attempted to control the medium, but also slipped easily into using the media, himself, to respond to criticism and improve his popularity. Not satisﬁed with his PR initiatives, Thaksin was prepared to face the camera himself. By the end of 2005, the Thaksin government was on the back foot for the ﬁrst time since its re-election. A scandal involving the purchase of CTX bomb-detection machines saw public conﬁdence in the government deteriorate. With cabinet members admitting trust was now an issue for the government, the scandal ‘had one clear eﬀect: the people have begun to question or scrutinize the government’s each and every move’ (Khanthong 2005). The general dissatisfaction and suspicion intensiﬁed when, following criticism about continuing conﬂict of interest for the Prime Minister, Thaksin’s family sold the interests in the family telecom operation to the Singapore government’s investment arm, Temasek, itself the nation’s biggest single portfolio investor (Asian Banker 2006). As Sondhi’s attacks mounted and the noise over the government’s abuse of power grew, Thaksin agreed to take part in his own reality show. Thaksin’s move seemed to be an ironic retort to King Bhumibol who, during his 78th birthday speech in December 2006, indirectly advised Thaksin not to overreact in countering his critics or listen too much to the advice of lawyers, suggesting Thais preferred to watch soap operas over the Prime Minister rushing on to the television to respond to every criticism (Bangkok Post 7 December 2005). So, when the Thai courts threw out his defamation suit against Sondhi, Thaksin agreed to a starring role in a mobile cabinet meeting in Roi Et province, to be broadcast in a reality programme called ‘Backstage Show: Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’. The programme, to be shown on UBC, Pokphand’s pay-TV operator, was said to be aimed at showing how Thaksin tackled problems outside Bangkok, ostensibly to be used as a model by government agencies working on problems in other areas. Certainly it was a clear eﬀort by Thaksin to play to the heartland of his support, the rural Northern Provinces (Amnatcharoenrit 2006). It was not enough. Despite his apparent inﬂuence on the mass media, and his popular support in the countryside, Thaksin was forced to resign as Prime Minister in April 2006. Opposing business interests allied with democratic

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forces among the urban middle class in Bangkok, and the conservative military elite around the monarchy, combined to push Thaksin into elections which the opposition refused to contest. The decision by the Democrats not to contest the election, knowing that they would lose, revealed the illiberal nature of their liberalism, and left Thaksin and his party facing a constitutional crisis and a political stand-oﬀ despite electoral success. Sondhi, who faced Bt2 billion in lawsuits and saw his business interests threatened, was able to help forge this new alliance, cleverly using the communication media to mount an anti-government campaign, launched through his newspaper, its website, and sale of CDs (The Nation 1 December 2005). Again, the King played a major role, criticizing Thaksin, and giving ‘permission’ to the opposition forces to challenge the government. But Thaksin, made caretaker Prime Minister after the failed polls in 2006, was not easily defeated, and remained a formidable political actor – strong enough to force the traditional political elite with the military at its head, to step in to protect their interests.

UNREST IN THE SOUTH: SECURITY OFFERS EXCUSE FOR MEDIA CRACKDOWN Thaksin had also used another resource in his work to secure the communications media as a tool of government rather than a voice of opposition – one that was also available to the military strongmen who governed Thailand in the 1950s through to the 1970s – that of the growing fears of terrorist attacks in Southeast Asia and the territorial integrity of the Thai state. In doing this, Thaksin mirrored the direction of many of his neighbours, but the apparent failure to secure his position despite the mounting concerns over unrest in the south of the country, and Thailand’s role as a US ally in the ‘war on terror’, said something about both the strengths of the other political elites and the growing awareness amongst the urban Thai population of how democratic ideals were in their interests. Thaksin, however, continued to use the threat of terrorism and even military interference – something the urban middle class was also wary of – right up to the election in October 2006 (Head 2006). The South of Thailand is home to most of Thailand’s Muslim minority, which made up some 4 per cent of the population, and Muslim rebels fought the government up to the mid 1980s. Suspected militants began to increase their use of violence in 2004, targeting Buddhists – the majority religion in Thailand. Thaksin’s response was to seek authoritarian powers, including measures allowing the detention of suspects for seven days, censoring newspapers and tapping phones.

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The violence was exacerbated by the arrest in Thailand in February, 2004, of Riduan Isamuddin, alias Hambali, widely projected by the intelligence agencies of the USA and the countries of Southeast Asia as the operational brain behind the Jemmah Islamiyah (JI) and as the suspected mastermind behind many of the terrorist attacks of the past in the region. Hambali was closely linked to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, regarded as one of the most senior operatives in Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, and captured in Pakistan in March 2003. This came despite initial denials by the Thai Prime Minister that alQaeda existed within its borders.15 Two years later, Thaksin had changed his mind, and announced during his weekly radio address that the Thai authorities found al-Qaeda training CDs in an Islamic school in one of the Southern Provinces.16 Clearly, Thaksin saw this as a move which might bring him not only greater powers, but the support of the US and its allies in the ‘war on terror’. Some analysis continued to deny any existence of a connection, and talked instead of a coalition of local criminals and separatists, fuelled by disenchantment within the Islamic community in the south (BBC 15 July 2005). The warning was enough, however. In July 2005, the Thai Cabinet agreed to issue the decree after a series of coordinated attacks on the southern city of Yala. The government looked to the draconian internal security acts of Singapore and Malaysia, as it prepared the emergency powers which Thaksin was granted without judicial approval (The Nation 1 December 2004). These powers were criticized as a pretext for controlling information and stiﬂing press coverage of events in the South. The Nation once again incurred the wrath of the administration when a photographer captured a damning image of a soldier ﬁring into a crowd of protesters (The Nation 2 December 2004). And, Thailand’s general position supporting the US after the 11 September, 2001 attacks, provided a less critical environment for illiberal Thai controls – reminiscent of the relationship that developed with Washington in the 1960s and 1970s at the height of US involvement in Vietnam. The US worked together with Thailand, as with a number of other governments in Asia, to combat terrorism. The US already had a history of training and cooperating with Thai military and police forces which dated back to the ﬁght against communism in the region, and Washington looked to them for their counter-terrorism role (Crispin 2004). Bush reminded Thailand of the battle against communism when he looked to the country for support.17 Washington seemed to be able to turn a blind eye to some of the excesses of its illiberal ally, including accusations of torture and abuse by Thai security forces which ranged from the unrest in Southern Thailand and the

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estimated 2500 suspected drug dealers killed in the 2003 anti-narcotics campaign, to the disappearance of human rights lawyer Simchai, the shooting dead of environmental activist Charoen Wataksorn, and the deaths or disappearances of at least 16 environmentalists and human rights workers while in government custody. Irene Khan, secretary general of London-based rights group Amnesty International, told Thai reporters in July 2003, that ‘a climate of impunity’ had taken root among the security forces (Crispin 2004). Indeed, as a proclaimed ally of the US, Thailand had enjoyed a period of ‘unprecedented goodwill in the Bush administration’ (Chongkittavorn April 18 2005a). The country had even been removed from Washington’s watch list of major drug-producing and drug-transit countries, unlike Golden Triangle neighbours Laos and Myanmar (Associated Press 4 October 2004). There was discussion of a Free Trade Agreement, although local Thai political opposition had been voiced, fuelled by suspicions that the negotiations were being held behind closed doors to cover up the beneﬁts expected to accrue to Thaksin and his cronies (Bangkok Post 8 January 2006).

THE 2006 COUP AND ITS CONSEQUENCES FOR THE MEDIA This beneﬁcence could be threatened by the overthrow of Thaksin by military coup in September 2006. Despite the fact that Thailand was seen as a key US diplomatic and non-NATO ally and played an important role in the US ‘war on terror’ following the 11 September 2001 attacks, including the arrest in Thailand in 2003 of Hambali, the alleged operations chief of Southeast Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, the United States threatened to impose sanctions against Thailand in response to the coup. Urging a rapid return to democratic rule, the US state department said the move involved cutting oﬀ US$24m in military assistance, including military education and training, peacekeeping operations and counter-terrorism (BBC 28 September 2006). Thailand quickly became Asia’s ‘outstanding underperformer’, with consumer spending at a ﬁve-year low and ﬁxed investment sliding. Thailand’s prospective 2007 price–earnings ratio was 10.9, as compared to 16.7 for the Philippines and 17.7 for Singapore. Investors were waiting to see the outcome of the military coup, concerned that the Democrats would be unable to garner enough support to govern, and Thaksin and his supporters would try to undermine the Democrats’ attempts. Indeed, there was speculation that among the traditional elites linked to the junta, there were

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those who might not want to reinvigorate the economy, as they perceived this as a threat to their own interests, pushing power back towards the SinoThai business entrepreneurs and the urban middle class (Barnes 2007). The importance of the foreign media in portraying Thailand’s image to an external audience continued through 2006. Concerns that the coup was viewed negatively overseas prompted coup leaders to call a special meeting of foreign correspondents in late September. General Winai Phattiyakul, who was made permanent secretary of the Defence Ministry following the coup, told gathered reporters that the coup was the only way to retain democracy in Thailand, and he appealed for fairer coverage (BBC 29 September 2006). He suggested the coup was popular with the Thai people, and with many in Bangkok it did appear to be. The fact that Thaksin was seen to be lining the pockets of his family and friends made him increasingly unpopular with the urban middle class – which was being ignored at the expense of Thaksin’s rural support, sick of yet another corrupt leader – and elements of the political elite which felt excluded from Thaksin’s cronies and the wealth they generated. The combined wealth of Thaksin’s family had swelled by a massive 70 per cent, or 13 billion baht (S$546 million), between 2003 and 2004. Since 2000 – or since Thaksin had been in power – his family’s stock portfolio grew by about 147 per cent, and the family’s worth was around 31.5 billion baht, with family members or relatives of the Prime Minister dominating the list of the 500 richest families in Thailand (Ghosh 17 December 2004). Despite Thaksin’s substantial resources, ﬁnancial, media and electoral, he could not keep power in the face of coalescing opposition. Like other ‘Big Men’ in Southeast Asia, Marcos and Suharto, Thaksin slithered into corruption and cronyism as he tried to prop up his support, alienating those who did not beneﬁt directly, and divorcing himself from the military and its royal leadership to his detriment.

CONCLUSION Thaksin’s attempts to achieve corporatist control of the media in a developmental coalition that was business oriented failed in 2006. Thaksin believed he could tighten his control over the mass communications media and work to silence voices of opposition. The move toward an illiberal developmental state was part of the regional regression towards more authoritarian controls, further encouraged by the war on terror. Against a background of Thailand’s historical experience of military control of the media, Thaksin created a climate of ‘fear and censorship’ – tactics that ﬂew in the face of his claims to be a modernizer, and represented his attempt to

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use his popular support to establish a ruling coalition which still resembled a ‘step back to the dark days of military rule in Thailand’ (Adams 2003, p. A7). Ironic, then, that the alternative was just that: renewed, military control. Given its centrality in Thai society, the print media remained ‘one of the principal sites of political contestation . . . vibrant and energetic’ (McCargo 2000a, p. 1). Whether by royalty, the military or business elite, the media had long been seen as a tool to be used by those who owned and controlled it and a developmental agenda remained well into the twentyﬁrst century (AMCB November–December 2004, p. 12). And, when the commercial pressures of a conﬁdent urban middle class were added to the mix, the media played an increasingly important role in elite paction: some elements of the media supported the democratic forces pushing for political reform, while other elements were linked with the authoritarian, the military and political right (Samaduvanij 1997, p. 57). Thus, rather than as a result of pressure from a truly independent media, Thaksin’s resignation in early 2006 was due to the fact that ‘concessions to both intransigent elites and challengers are required in order to build a broad democratic consensus’ (Friedman 1994, p. 22). Indeed, in Thailand, there were few signs that a more mature and responsible media was emerging even before direct military rule was re-established in 2006. Rather, commercial concerns overlaid with political pressure tended to result in a climate of self censorship and shallow coverage. The restrictive nature of demand and a reading public eager for excitement meant many newspapers continued to ‘pursue the commercially successful formula of sex and violence . . . with little thought for serious political news’ (Chongkittavorn 2000, p. 221). Professional ethics remained sparse: the industry was seen as being as corrupt and self-serving as the politicians. Thus, despite eﬀorts by many journalists to reﬂect the expectations of democratic pluralism and the role of the media, journalism, as a profession, struggled with low legitimacy. The new, educated middle class was beginning to engage with the broader political ideologies within which sat the acceptance of democratic pluralism, but still remained ‘largely absent from current debates . . . more attracted to stuﬀ modern “urbanity” with consumer culture, the quest for money and, for some, sectarianism and cults’ (Mulder 1997, p. 328). There was also a growing feeling within the country that while media freedom might be important, privacy was poorly protected and there was increasing pressure for accountability. Discussions of self monitoring and self regulation had led to the creation of the Press Council of Thailand in 1998. After decades of control, the media reacted with fear at the possible censorship powers of a legalized press council, but there was widespread

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recognition that ‘the media [acted] at times in breach of other people’s rights, especially rights to privacy’ (Muntarbhorn 1998, pp. 37–8). Even when there was acceptance of the growing pressures for deregulation and a freer media, this was consistently met with attempts to regain control by political elites sensitive to the power of the media. Where they expressed their individualism, journalists found they were often restricted and subject to ‘harassment and threats by political power brokers’ (Chongkittavorn 2000, p. 221). But, while Thaksin mounted the most sophisticated attempt to emulate the ‘slick authoritarianism’ of Singapore, Thailand provides an example to support Rodan’s (2002) assertion that the question remained whether, in larger, more diverse political systems, the Singapore model of control can be anything more that a guide or inspiration for the region’s authoritarian regimes. As the global media industry developed, Thailand’s political elites were less adept at controlling the international media. Despite their concerns over its portrayal of Thailand and the interplay with the local media – particularly during the 1992 unrest – the global media enjoyed an unusual inﬂuence on the Thai polity, if only indirectly and despite a continuing suspicion of foreign inﬂuence. Indeed, there continued to be broad inconsistencies in the position of the Thai media, as disparate private ownership meant it was a tool of competing political elites – a danger of which Singapore’s rulers were all too well aware. So, while press freedom was a strengthening pillar in the development of a lively civil society in Thailand, particularly when compared to most of its neighbours, the media was driven into being part of an electoral coalition along authoritarian developmental lines as, for authoritarian and liberal alike, it remained ‘simultaneously unfettered, dynamic, vigorous, unprofessional – and deeply untrustworthy’ (McCargo 2000a, p. 76). The move by the military–royal coalition to take control in 2007 suggests the Thai version of the Southeast Asian model of illiberal democracy – where western liberal ideas of free speech, pluralism and electoralism are mutated within an authoritarian political culture – continues to be in eﬀect. The attempt to replace him with a military royal coalition will not work in the long term unless the business community is fully aboard. Moreover, the middle class in Bangkok are a minority in the country. Thaksin’s power base was amongst poor farmers in the northwest – a class theme which will continue to threaten any urban-led democracy until economic disparities between the cities and the countryside are diminished. Thaksin’s position, out of power and out of the country, looked uncertain through 2007. His party banned, the military government sought to pressurize an absent Thaksin by charging his wife with tax evasion in March, 2007 (Associated Press 27 March 2007, p. 14). Democracy Thai

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style, therefore, tended to look toward authoritarian consolidation, and its mass communication media (although more vibrant than many in Asia) followed suit. Indeed, where the media has been freest in Southeast Asia, democratic corruption and economic uncertainty seem at its most problematic – as shown by Thailand as well as Indonesia and the Philippines. This would suggest that the developmental part of the media (which is, after all, in McLuhanite terms, only a technology), assumes a proauthoritarian tendency in an era where the globe is increasingly interconnected but by no means integrated, and where commercial concerns mean that the space the media oﬀers is open to the highest bidder. Thus, Thaksin becomes emblematic of the post-modern Southeast Asian ruler – media savvy, with populist instincts and relentlessly focused on building a political coalition that resists criticism, while constructing a coherent and protodemocratic vision of the nation as a unique political entity, all the while informed by a traditional authoritarian political culture. It is with this post-modern authoritarian developmentalist state model in mind that, in the next chapter, we examine our ﬁnal case study, Singapore. As the Lion City entered the new century, the government was attempting to ensure Singapore could compete successfully in the globalized world economy, with a much-heralded new era of civil society accompanying moves to deregulate its key industries. Previously seen as a government keen to maintain tight control over the ﬂow of information and opinion across and within its borders, this apparent change of heart was seen as inspired by the Internet’s rapid advance in Singapore (59 per cent of local households have a computer, and 42 per cent online access18). However, it marked a continuation of the authoritarian state in the face of more outspoken and demanding citizens.

NOTES 1. 2.

3.

Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Developing Societies (1968, New Haven, Connecticut) quoted in Valenzuela (1985, p. 34). Thai television viewers top the global list for television viewership with more than 22 hours per week according to the NOP World’s Culture Score Media Habits Index (‘Thailand Residents Spend Most Time in Front of TV’, Worldscreen.com, 15 June, 2006, http://www.worldscreen.com/print.php?ﬁlename=nop 615.htm). Article 40 of the 1997 Constitution provides for an independent regulatory body to distribute broadcast frequencies and supervise radio and television broadcasting, with regards to utmost public beneﬁt (paras 14/5). The Wavelength Regulator Act 2543 (2000) established article 40 under law and provided that 20 per cent of the media broadcast spectrum be reserved for people’s media. However, the government has dominated the selection process for the regulator, and selected candidates with whom it has connections (Asian Legal Resource Centre, http://www.alrc.net/doc/mainﬁle.php/unar_hrc_th_2005/ 331/).

216 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

The media and political change in Southeast Asia http://www.boozallen.com/home/about/article/657787?lpid=659368. Steinberg (1987, p. 112). See Bangkok Post (26 April 2006) and The Nation (27 April 2006). http://www.busakorn.addr.com/thaitcom/overview/regulatory_structure.htm. http://www.cpj.org/attacks 02/asia02/thai.html. See The Nation (20 April 2005) and Waerdao (2005). BBC (10 November 1998). McCargo quoted in Zeitlin (2001). MGR is the publisher of Thailand’s market-leading daily, weekly and monthly Phujadkarn business newspapers and magazines (www.manager.co.th). Through its aﬃliate, Thaiday Dot Com Co. Ltd., it also produces Channel 11 News 1 and Thai-Lao Channel national-television networks, the English-language Thailand Outlook Channel, the Thai-lifestyle magazines Mars and Mars Style, and Manager Online, Thailand’s most-visited business-news website, and The Asia Times Online (www.atimes.com). It also has a distribution deal with the New York Times-owned International Herald Tribune. http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=204&year=2005. Bangkok Post (1 March 2002). See Ressa (2002). See Agence France Presse (21 May 2005). Remarks to Thai Troops, Royal Thai Army Headquarters, Bangkok, Thailand 19 October, 2003, http://www.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2003/25352.htm. See Stephens (2000).

8. The Singapore grip: putting the squeeze on a globalized media post 9/11 We don’t try to hide the statistics; we don’t try to hide the problem. We deal with it in a very open manner, in a very professional manner. (Goh Chok Tong, Prime Minister of Singapore)

As the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic took hold in East Asia in March 2003, Singapore’s Prime Minister was on a trip to Japan. This declaration of transparency by Goh Chok Tong’s government was welcomed around the world. Few commented upon the irony that the statement needed to be made at all (Straits Times 2003). For, the PAP government is determined to secure its hold on the ‘modern machinery of memory’ (Wright 2002), despite the growing impact of cross-border, mass communication media in the Asian region and beyond. Following Douglas Kellner’s hegemony model, the Singapore media not only serves to further the perceived interests of the ruling elite but, despite an increasingly globalized communication media, Singapore’s government also asserts its gatekeeping role over the ﬂow of news and information within its borders by forging its own alliances among ‘transnational corporations, the capitalist state, and communications technologies in the era of technocapitalism’ (Kellner 1990, p. 90). While other governments around Southeast Asia bemoaned their failing ability to control the ﬂow of information in the Internet age, Singapore’s grip seemingly remained as tight as ever. Elites around the region could only watch with envy as the island state shrugged oﬀ the predictions of democratization theorists who maintained that, as a society develops, its middle class necessarily demands a more critical and open media which, in turn, facilitates liberalization if not democratization. The ruling PAP government, like its neighbours, faced the challenges of globalization, including an increasingly well-informed population. But, at the turn of the century, as Singapore sought to reinvent itself to remain competitive in the global economy, it was also exploring the limits of authoritarian control in a modern state. Again, as with its ASEAN neighbours, security concerns in the wake of 9/11 and the Bali Bombings were to result in support from 217

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unexpected quarters for a government determined to reinforce Singapore’s surveillance state. Indeed, the PAP has created a prototype of a more controlled social experiment that could suggest a model for political arrangements in the developing and the developed world. The early years of the new century marked a reversal in what was perceived as a liberalizing trend in Singapore. The government eﬀectively wielded its defamation laws to silence critics. In 2002, against the background of the worst recession since the founding of the island state and much public hand wringing over how best to reshape the economy into a more competitive form, came a series of separate but decisive moves to suppress open debate in the island state. June 2002 saw the seizure of personal computers as part of an investigation by the Singapore Attorney General into postings on the Internet following a complaint of criminal defamation ﬁled by the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP).1 A few weeks later, ﬁnancial data provider Bloomberg agreed to pay libel damages and costs totalling US$340 000 to three Singapore government leaders, following an article in August 2002 about the appointment of Madam Ho Ching, Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s wife, to head Temasek Holdings, the government’s powerful investment agency. The year closed with the governmentcontrolled Development Bank of Singapore suing BusinessWeek magazine (published by US-based McGraw-Hill) for libel over an article discussing the Bank’s involvement with government-owned steel maker, NatSteel and forcing the Business Times to sack outspoken columnist Lee Han Shih.2 Nor have the years since 2002 seen relaxation of the pressure on the media. Between 2004 and 2006, both The Economist (ordered to pay damages totalling more than $US200 000 in September 2004 for suggesting Lee family nepotism in Singapore)3 and ﬁnancial industry magazine Finance Asia (ordered to pay undisclosed damages in August 2005 for suggesting investment company Temasek was the ‘Lee Family Trust’),4 have felt the ﬁnancial pain and editorial ignominy resulting from the PAP’s tight grip on the media. And, in 2007, the Lees took their old opponent, The Review, to task in the Singapore courts. The upshot was the Singapore government banned the review and subscribing to it, importing it or copying it for distribution was made a criminal oﬀence, although the company was planning to appeal the decision (Kwek 2007). Across the region, dramatically rising levels of wealth in the 1980s and 1990s saw elites pay lip service to greater openness. Economic and political turmoil since 1997, however, has coincided with a return to a more conservative politics. Nowhere is this more apparent that in Singapore, where the ruling social science paradigm of an ‘inexorable liberal-democratic end of history . . . [where] economic progress inevitably presaged eventual liberalization and democratization’ (Jones and Smith 2001, p. 855), appears to

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founder. The PAP has ﬁnessed a system of control of which there are echoes in Malaysia. However, unlike Malaysia, there are ‘no cracks in the Singapore system’, as it continues to inspire, inform and guide other authoritarian regimes in the region (Rodan 2002, p. 10). In the wake of 9/11 and bombings closer to home in Indonesia and Southern Thailand, Singapore’s government has revelled in a return to the role of ‘Protector’ of its citizens, seeking to contain internal security concerns amidst its deep economic troubles and a turbulent sea of social change. The PAP elites have brushed aside those doubters ready to pronounce the death of the Singapore version of capitalism. Indeed, the war against ‘terror’ has reinforced Singapore’s garrison-state mentality – a psychological pit prop to the PAP’s validation system (Lieberman 2004), providing a ﬁllip to authoritarianism, in conﬂict with the global, open media policies of the 1990s. Singapore’s elites have perfected a surveillance society with, among other things, a compliant mass communication media, oﬀering a possible model for many western conservatives (Zolo 2001). By examining the developments in Singapore’s media industry, this chapter oﬀers a brief survey of the existing literature analysing the media in Singapore and the government’s ability to control the ﬂow of information across and within its borders, and the response of Singapore audiences. It further examines the development of the communications media in Singapore, and its historical position in the evolution of post-colonial states in Southeast Asia. It also considers the direction and impact of current industry trends on the development of political pluralism in the Lion City. By doing this, the chapter oﬀers a more nuanced interpretation of the mass communications media and its ambivalent relationship to political institutions in Southeast Asia, outlining the distinctive Singaporean model as an example of the general problem of the media and democracy in an era of global commercial operations set against speciﬁc regional experience. It is a model which the rest of Asia watches with keen interest as political elites around the region look to protect their interests in the more complex communications environment.

THE EMERGENCE OF CONTROL STRATEGIES Singapore, a city-state at the toe of the Malay Peninsula, has achieved an advanced level of economic development and a sophisticated mass communications industry, yet has a political system with a severely circumscribed level of democratic debate. While Singapore embraces what is a market system, regularly ranking at the top of global indices of economic

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freedom, the PAP-led government in Singapore enjoys a remarkable amount of control over both the local and international mass media, where there can be no free market. In the face of technological developments after 1995, in particular the growth of the Internet, some commentators maintained that this grip on the ﬂow of information might be slipping (McCarthy and Ellis 1999). Even the PAP leadership worried that it was losing its sway over the communications media (Kuo and Peng 2000, p. 420). But, while there are alternative voices on the Internet and even the established mass media has been the site of discussion of government policies, there are few calls from Singapore’s populace for an increase in media pluralism. Perhaps quiet is bred of content. Singapore is, arguably, Southeast Asia’s most successful economic model as well as a major world communications centre, oﬀering many obvious beneﬁts for its citizens. They have enjoyed security, stability and noticeable equity in wealth, nonetheless creating a society with a ‘censorial political culture’ (Gomez 2000, p. 52). Further, a conservative cultural fabric that weaves tradition with ideas of national development ensures that ‘liberal, communicatory democracy exercises little appeal and, when it appears, represents a comminatory intrusion upon the conservative pursuit of harmony and consensus’ (Jones 1998, p. 164). Thus political change is rarely more that ‘a conservative managerial strategy to amplify political control’ (ibid., p. 163). Its illiberal political environment notwithstanding, the Republic has been home to 18 international cable and satellite broadcasters and licences at least 38 foreign publications including The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and The New York Times (MITA 2001). And yet, with a local media controlled by two government-linked groups (Singapore Press Holdings and Media Corp.), an international media which seems all too prepared to ‘work adjustments at the editorial levels in an attempt to advance broader commercial interests’ (Rodan 1998, p. 139), together with a tightening grip on the Internet, Singapore remains a model of containment its equally autocratic neighbours can only seek to copy (Rodan 2002). However, although this seems a model of containment, the developments in ICT allow internal and external forces to present the state with severe challenges due to its illiberal character. It is this increasingly complex media environment that the Singapore political elites are forced to manage in a way conventional democratic theory does not account for, and nor do the theories of Rodan and others. For while the Singapore government has managed to continue a policy of containment, it has been successful partly due to changes in the external environment post 9/11 and partly because the Singapore government has been able to ‘adjust its set’, proving its remarkable adaptability.

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A COLONIAL INHERITANCE In order to situate Singapore’s success in media management, it is helpful to look into the genealogy of this containment strategy. The ‘post-colonial discourse of nation-building’ (Birch 1993, p. 74) and the political development of Singapore are important to an understanding of the development of the communications media and the system of regulatory constraints and ownership control. Founded as a British trading colony in 1819, modern Singapore was born from the colonial ashes of Malaya in 1965. It was a gestation nursed through Japanese occupation and post-war communist insurgency, and in the common experience of ‘hunger, sickness, misery and demoralization, with a marked decrease in standards of social trust and an increase in corruption’ (Steinberg 1987, p. 405). This newly-formed Chinese state amidst a sea of Malay peoples faced a diﬃcult birth threatened both from within and without. ‘Struggling with its multilingual and multicultural identity’ (Wang 1994, p. 155), Singapore saw a need to maintain internal ethnic harmony and both internal and external security in the face of vulnerability to foreign interference and communal strife in a city in a key strategic position. The country’s ﬁrst Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, decided that it would need a ﬁrm hand to lead his country out of this post-colonial uncertainty. The PAP duly considered the media a vital tool for political socialization and a key instrument of nation building of which the state was ‘unlikely to cede control’ (Chua Lee Hoong 2000, pp. 32–3). Under the uninterrupted rule of Lee’s People’s Action Party (PAP), Singapore has become one of the world’s most prosperous countries. Singapore’s uncertain beginnings also gave rise to a political culture Max Weber would have termed ‘devotion born of distress’ (Gerth and Mills 1958, p. 250). The middle class, rather than demanding a pluralist society, ‘welcomes the activist and interventionist PAP style of rule’ (Jones 1998, p. 153), amidst the fear that internecine conﬂict could return Singaporeans back to the uncertain times presaging independence. The government promoted a siege mentality – a ‘Fortress Singapore’ – by reminding its charges of the travails of many of its larger neighbours. It sees itself as in a constant battle to hold at bay those who would threaten this prosperity, battling to shore up its current system of values against an ‘overwhelming tide of diﬀerent ideas and values in an increasingly integrated global environment’ (Hitchcock 1995, p. 167), in a management of civic fear that encourages the populace to cling to the cultural worldview of the ruling political elite (Greenberg et al. 1997). Against this background, the local media see it as their responsibility to ‘uphold its domestic systems in an unequal world’ (Latif 1994, p. 100).

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They are encouraged by a media policy formed out of the Malay colonial experience, which also provided the government with the initial legal tools of control and surveillance: licensing, censorship and sedition laws (Seow 1998, pp. 19–21). After the British introduction of the printing press, the creation of newspapers expanded the public sphere, ‘providing the space in which social identity or political policy might be debated’ (Milner 1995, p. 292). Lee Kuan Yew understood the important role played by the press in the development of Malay nationalism in opposition to British rule. He also had another important contributor to his colonial education, the militaristic Japanese government in Singapore during the Second World War. An English interpreter for Japan’s main news agency for a year during the occupation (Burton 2005, p. 3), Lee learnt the importance of power as a ‘vehicle for revolutionary change’ (Lee 1998, p. 297). Like the Japanese colonialists of Syonan-To (as the Japanese renamed Singapore), he too would demand total obedience. He decided that post colonial Singapore could not aﬀord public debate: it needed tools to hold a new nation together. In the wake of Singapore’s separation from Malaysia, Lee made the Straits Times the mouthpiece of his government, and bent the other newspapers in Singapore to his will or destroyed them, their owners, editors and journalists. Whereas the print media was brought to heel over the ﬁrst 20 years of PAP rule by legislative ﬁat, electronic broadcasting has been a direct tool of government on the Malay Peninsula from the time the technology arrived. As we have seen in preceding chapters, in colonial Malaysia, radio, in the early days of its development, was a government information service, and was used to ‘prepare the hearts and minds of the people’ for independence (Sued 1989, p. 45). Subsequently, television in Southeast Asia coincided with the creation of the new post-colonial political state, and it quickly shouldered radio’s responsibility, becoming a vital part of government eﬀorts to forge a national identity. As in Malaysia, what developed in Singapore was a western-style media form but Asian in content, where legislation combined with ownership concentration ensured the media would remain under tight control (Williams 2000). And, while the state moved to circumscribe freedom of expression, it cultivated traditional values of passivity and group conformity, working through universal education programmes to suppress ‘individualism, the rule of law and critical public debate’ (Jones 1998, p. 163). As a result, few were prepared to challenge the PAP’s rule, uninterrupted in power since 1959, and there are even fewer arenas for the expression of dissent. Even Singapore’s elections are seen by critics as either a ‘stunted political expression’ (Rodan 1996, p. 61), or merely ‘procedural practice’ (Zolo 2001, p. 412).

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ENTERING THE GLOBAL MEDIA AGE Since the inception of the independent state of Singapore, indeed, from the very beginnings of the PAP, its political leaders have realized the importance of the communication media as ‘a powerful instrument to be properly controlled or guided to play a positive role in social development’ (Kuo and Chen 1983, p. 99), with a ‘critical ideological role to play in producing a state-sponsored consensus’ (Rodan 2000, p. 188). Moreover, because of Singapore’s perceived vulnerability to both internal and external inﬂuences, the garrison state has seen constraints and censorship as necessary and so too has wider public opinion. Reﬂecting the Deutschian view, communications become central to the creation of a modern nation, creating coherence among society and contributing to cultural homogeneity (Deutsch 1953). As the local communications media grew and expanded, the Singapore government maintained its control through a combination of practices. Direct ownership of local radio and television continued, while privatelyowned newspapers, magazines and cinema were only allowed to operate ‘under legal proscriptions’ (Kuo and Chen 1983, p. 100). Besides, local media organizations were overseen by ‘like-minded’ and ‘safety conscious’ editors (Heuvel and Dennis 1993, p. 133), and a practice of self censorship (Gomez 2000). Where ownership and inﬂuence was not suﬃcient leverage, a ‘draconian’ (Doronila 2000, p. xxii), legal infrastructure has been put in place. This comprised a legislative thicket that includes the Internal Security Act of 1963, and the Sedition Act of 1964, the Undesirable Publications Act of 1967, and the Newspapers and Printing Presses Act of 1974, with its Amendments in 1977, 1986, 1988 and 1990 – the latter detailed the necessity of an annual distribution permit for all foreign publications with a distribution of 300 copies or above, plus a security bond to cover legal expenses. While there was a legislative link to Singapore’s colonial past, this legislation represented the ﬁne-tuning of the post-independence government’s eﬀorts to perfect its control over the ﬂow of information. Critics suggest that much of it is intentionally vague and unnecessarily obscure, often leaving defendants, in the words of one lawyer representing the Nanyang Siang Pau newspaper in 1971, ‘only to ﬁght with shadows’ (Seow 1998, p. 49). By the beginning of the twenty-ﬁrst century, most constraints remained informal, but the ‘mechanisms for a crackdown’ (Heuvel and Dennis 1993, p. 137), were available, including stringent libel laws. These were used to restrict publication of news and information that the government

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considered inimical to ‘national security’ or ‘national interests’ (Doronila 2000, p. xii). Moves to liberalize the media industry and pressures on the government to ease the 3 per cent equity ownership restrictions enshrined in the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act (Amendment 1977) and the Singapore Broadcasting Authority Act (1994), only brought reminders from the government of the dangers of a media untamed. The Nanyang Siang Pau, the Eastern Sun and the Singapore Herald (newspapers all either shut down or brought under government control in the early 1970s), were demonized as vehicles through which foreign powers attempted to mount covert operations in Singapore. They were held up as examples alongside the newspaper reports blamed for the race riots in the 1950s, to show just how important government controls are to a stable future and to pre-empt communitarian violence, a product of excessive pluralism. Foreign ownership brought further warnings of an ‘erosion of values that the government has struggled for years to inculcate in the population’ and an ‘unravelling’ of Singapore’s social fabric (Chua Mui Hong, 16 February 2000, p. 45). But in 2002, the clampdown on Internet content by the Singapore police indicated that the government was still intent on exercising its control in a monolithic way despite new ICT. It came despite signs that the Singapore government understood that the island-state could not survive in isolation, neither could it maintain a constantly repressive regime. As a result, its approach became more sophisticated: an Asian version of authoritarian control with the modern persuasive sophistication of the global persuasion industry.

VELVET GLOVE, MAILED FIST When Goh Chok Tong became Prime Minister in 1990, and Lee assumed the role of Senior Minister (since 2004, Minister Mentor), the idea of participation and consultation was introduced into politics. The local print media began to be seen as a valuable pressure valve allowing citizens to let oﬀ steam through their letters pages, but carefully monitored for dissident views – the introduction through the media in early 2005 of a change in government policy allowing casinos in Singapore is an interesting case in point.5 But, the limits to participation and consultation meant that, at the very most, any move towards liberalization was ‘glacially slow’ (Heuvel and Dennis 1993, p. 135). More latitude was allowed in theatres and cinemas – although this was more a matter of populism than politics. Any hint of religious or other ‘Out-of-Bounds’ (OB) issues, and the censors stepped in.

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It was suggested that the moves to allow more discussion were an attempt to stem a slide in the popularity of the PAP (Birch 1993, p. 74). But they also came at a time of great economic change in and around Singapore. More than any of its neighbours, Singapore embraced the global economy in the 1980s. Opening the door to the ﬁnancial opportunities this represented also meant that forces of change threatened to undermine the PAP’s traditional control culture. For with globalization came media expansion and the entrance, in the 1980s, of the international mass media into the Asian market place keen to carve their niche in the expanding Asian markets with their emerging middle class and promise of new advertising revenues (Rodan 1998). This coincided with a major structural shift in electronic media. Developments in technology, including international satellite television services and later networked computer systems (resulting in the creation of the Internet), meant it was possible to circumvent the oﬃcial state information systems. Global broadcasters like the BBC, CNN and CNBC, challenged the monopoly of domestic, state-controlled information sources. The Singapore government moved to deal with this dilemma, putting in place an operational framework allowing it to maintain signiﬁcant gatekeeping power, by means of a ‘series of complex responses to the perceived threat to the political information order’ (Atkins 1999, p. i). From the early 1970s, the government had attempted to assert its authority over the foreign media, through well-publicized battles with The Far Eastern Economic Review, in particular (Seow 1998, pp. 141–3). Even distributors were singled out for pressure. In 1977, The Review was withheld from circulation due to libel concerns against the Singapore government, likewise the Time Magazine distributor inked out an article on the media and Singapore in August of the same year (Kuo and Chen 1983, p. 50). Until recently Singapore even said ‘no’ to magazines such as Cosmopolitan, banned in 1981 for the ‘promotion of undesirable lifestyles’ (Hogan 1999, p. 439 FN62). In 2003, the Censorship Review Committee recommended that the ban on Cosmopolitan be lifted but that the one on Playboy be continued because the Singaporean community was not ready for Playboy’s liberal use of sexually explicit photographs. It was in the late 1980s, in the context of increasing global interconnectivity and the government’s growing understanding that Singapore could really become a media hub, that the foreign media really felt the full force of the government’s desire to control its image. By this time Lee had achieved ‘absolute and total control over the local newspapers’ (Seow 1998, p. 147). As a result, there were celebrated legal challenges with The Asian Wall Street Journal and The Far Eastern Economic Review, as well as with Asiaweek, Time and the International Herald Tribune (IHT), through the

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1980s, particularly after the 1984 election result which saw a 13 per cent fall in the government’s share of the vote. By this time, Singapore provided many of these regional publications with one of their largest markets and a distribution centre for the region. Brigadier General Lee Hsien Loong, the Mentor Minister’s son and current prime minister, delivered a speech at the World Congress of Newspaper Publishers in Helsinki in 1987, outlining Singapore’s stance on the foreign media. Now that foreign correspondents reported Singapore to a Singapore audience, he explained, ‘they must not take sides on domestic political issues’ (Heuvel and Dennis 1993, p. 142). The policy was reinforced by a strategy of restricting circulation and using Singapore’s laws of defamation and contempt to control content. It hit media organizations where it hurt most, their bottom line. Sydney barrister and writer Stuart Littlemore, monitoring Singapore libel cases for the International Commission of Jurists, noted that members of the PAP have never lost a libel action heard in Singapore. He also observed that no foreign publisher has ever successfully defended a libel action in a Singapore court when opposing a Singapore politician, and their average award for damages – S$450 000 (A$463 000) – is 12 times the wider Singaporean average (Ellis 2002). Singapore’s leaders argued that they had a greater reputation to defend. In this context, as early as 1987, a ‘virtual feud’ (Heuvel and Dennis 1993, p. 142) developed between the Lee’s government and Dow Jones, the publisher of The Journal and The Review. This led to severe distribution limitations for refusing to bow to the government’s demand of a right to reply to articles it did not agree with. The Journal’s distribution was slashed from 5000 to 400, and The Review from 9000 to 500 for the period between 1987 and 1992. The Economist, which closed its Singapore oﬃce in 1988 after its reporters were banned from government press conferences, had its distribution capped at 7500. Asiaweek and Time suﬀered similar punishment, (Asiaweek: 10 000 to 500; and Time 18 000 copies an issue to 2000), but when they published the government’s rebuttals, their circulation was restored. The battle between Lee and Dow Jones continued into the 1990s, with suit and counter suit. By 1992, only 260 copies of The Review could be distributed in Singapore, advertisements blanked out. The battle ended the same year, when Dow Jones capitulated to the government’s hard line, appointing a new editor and removing Philip Bowring, one of The Review’s leading ﬁgures in the conﬂict with Lee (Heuvel and Dennis 1993, pp. 142–3). Bowring moved to write for the IHT, a newspaper also published in Singapore, continuing to test the Lees’ patience. Lee and his son sued him

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for almost $S800 000 in 1994, over an article on Asian values, something Lee championed as central to Asian success, and the need to challenge erroneous accounts of PAP rule. By now, emboldened by the seeming Asian economic miracle, the Lee family sought to press home its advantage, suing the IHT for an article written by American academic at NUS (Lingle 1994). Despite a show of contrition by the IHT, the courts found the newspaper and author guilty of contempt of court, scandalizing the Singapore judiciary, and ordered the defendants to pay a ﬁne and legal costs amounting to $S100 000, and similarly in the separate libel suit brought by Lee, ordered damages of almost $S100 000 (Rodan 1998, p. 133). The relationship between The Review and Singapore’s ruling family also remained fraught, even after The Review was restructured along the lines of an academic journal. In September, 2006, the Lees ﬁled a defamation suit against The Review and its editor Hugo Restall, following an article which included an interview with opposition ﬁgure Chee Soon Juan in July of the same year.6 The recourse to law, some western commentators maintained, would aﬀect Singapore’s eﬀorts to become a media and education hub. This claim had been regularly made, and it had always proved exaggerated. Since 1994, when the IHT took on the PAP, the media had always settled out of court, but this time The Review had taken a stand. There has been a knock-on impact on a number of fellow publications. The Review was quickly threatened with the libel suit by lawyers acting for the Lees, and Singapore’s information ministry cancelled a long-standing exemption enjoyed by ﬁve foreign publications, including the Financial Times, from the requirement that they post a S$200 000 ($US126 000) security bond and appoint a local representative with local legal responsibility. The Review’s editor said the decision to contest was made to send a message to other countries such as China about media controls: ‘it is important to ﬁght this case, to prevent China from believing that if it adopts a Singaporean model, the international media is going to roll over and accept that and tone down its coverage’.7 These sallies against the foreign media marked a ‘move away from simply exerting pressure on journalists and editors in favour of broader legal and ﬁnancial penalties’ (Rodan 1998, p. 129). Lee Kuan Yew understood perfectly that the media business is, ﬁrst and foremost, a business: that a press allowed to make money out of a system will support that system; and that publishers value their bottom line more highly than they do their editorial freedom (George 2001). The strategy used to silence media critics mirrored an even more eﬀective pattern of potentially ruinous defamation suits brought by the PAP against its opponents which, according to Amnesty International, continues to

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‘inhibit political life and engendered a climate of self-censorship’ (Amnesty International 2003). Opposition ﬁgures such as one time Workers’ Party leader JB Jeyaretnam, have been relentlessly pursued through the courts to bankruptcy and ﬁnancial ruin. During the 2001 general elections, Chee Suan Juan, leader of the opposition Singapore Democratic Party, became the target for government wrath, in what Amnesty suggested was a desire to silence selected opposition ﬁgures and remove them from public life (ibid.).8 Clearly, many organizations and their journalists (both local and foreign), found the costs of defending and paying damages in legal suits onerous, as the government continued its potent mix of legal and commercial pressures to stiﬂe criticism. In addition, new laws including a ban on satellite dishes were introduced into the Singapore government’s arsenal, as it reinforced its ‘politics of prohibition’ (Atkins 1999, p. 147). At the same time as the government sought to restrict independent commentary it also expanded choice. This was somewhat disarming, but the choice was really not a choice in political terms. With the founding of Singapore Cable Vision (SCV) in 1992, the government sharply increased the number of television channels available to the public, further diluting the international information services available to a mass audience. Meanwhile, it encouraged local and international media partners to provide non-threatening programming to ‘marginalize the eﬀectiveness of politically-oriented international programming which challenged state power’ (Atkins 1999, p. 5). This policy continued through the 1990s. In March 1999, Channel News Asia (CNA), was founded with the stated aim of providing news from a ‘unique Asian perspective’ (CNA 2001). The moves announced in the summer of 2002, that the government claimed were to liberalize the local media industry, marked no real change to this approach. Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), which published only newspapers, was given a licence to operate up to two free-to-air television channels and run two radio stations, while Media Corporation of Singapore (MediaCorp), which owned the local television and radio channels, was given a newspaper licence. Similarly, the calls for an easing of media controls made by a governmentappointed panel aimed at improving creativity and providing a boost for the struggling economy received short shrift (Tang Weng Fai 2002). The Singapore Government’s reaction was to introduce a media competition code and the ‘Media 21’ blueprint in 2003. The competition code was described by MITA (since 2004, MICA – Ministry for Information, Communications and the Arts), as a major contribution towards healthy competition in the media industry, and to help develop wider access to quality media products and services for media consumers. The ‘Media 21’

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blueprint was a strategic plan, described by MITA as charting the course for Singapore’s transformation into a Global Media City.9 Thus, recognition that an open media could contribute to future competitiveness is met by the inherent paternalistic tendencies of a government that was convinced expressing opposition was only one step away from social and political anarchy. Consequently, despite the state’s surveillance and management of the international media, it remained a source of concern. The announcement of the liberalization of the Singapore media industry went with a government proviso announced by MITA minister Lee Yock Suan at the BroadcastAsia 2000 trade show. He emphasized that there would be no ‘free-for-all competition unleashed by liberalization of the telecommunications industry, the media industry . . . will be freed up gradually, with controlled competition introduced’ (Chua Mui Hong 2000, p. 1). This was media competition PAP style: growth as and when the Party decided and on its terms. Lee went on to welcome foreign talent and international media organizations, but held the party line that the regular reporting on Singapore aﬀairs for the Singapore audience had to be undertaken by the Singapore media, or reﬂect Singapore values. And, just in case foreign broadcasters, who peddled their views over the growing SCV network in Singapore, felt that this welcome might mean a more liberal view on their product, on 19 April, 2001, Singapore’s legislature passed the Singapore Broadcast Authority (Amendment) Bill. The Bill allowed the government to limit a foreign broadcaster’s distribution in Singapore if it was seen as meddling in local politics and did not allow the government a right of reply. The right of reply, which was at the heart of the disputes with the foreign (western) media organizations from the 1980s Dow Jones case, remained at the heart of the government’s eﬀorts to secure its ability to have its say. The Amendment, therefore, made the broadcasters subject to similar rules to those that disallowed all foreign print media from intruding where the government deemed inappropriate. No clear guidelines were provided to foreign broadcasters, ensuring they would be, like their print counterparts, more cautious than if detailed deﬁnitions were in place. Interestingly, the Bill, and the raft of legislation it added to, did not aﬀect Singapore’s bid to be a regional media centre. Global players like the BBC and Reuters had taken up the invitation, and the government continued to attract new media business. Shortly after the new bill was introduced, it signed a $US7.5 million partnership with the Discovery Channel – partowned by John Malone’s Liberty Media, in a global joint venture with the BBC (Straits Times 11 October 2001, p. H6). A more commercially-sensitive industry gave rise to an unspoken pact between the Singapore government and the international media owners. It

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was a contract engineered, over time, by Lee Kuan Yew, with rules that were vague and are always interpreted in the states’ or the PAP’s interest. In a media world where access and distribution was everything, a quiescent international media seemed prepared to report from Singapore rather than on Singapore. Under this tacit agreement, the world’s leading media organizations were given a base in the most technically advanced city in Asia, but they held back from any criticism of government policy. As we have seen in the Malaysian case, the founding managing editor of CNBC Asia (who later went on to be Managing Director of The Review), Chris Graves, was clear about this policy of cooperation with the local governments (Rodan 1998).

SINGAPORE ONLINE: CRACKS APPEAR? It was, however, the growth of the Internet in the 1990s that further complicated the media scene in Singapore and elite government eﬀorts to control the ﬂow of information. Despite the challenge it would mean for the political elites of Southeast Asia, Singapore, like Malaysia, embraced US government moves to establish the information superhighway as a central strut of the global economy (Langdale 1997, p. 117). In fact, the Internet oﬀered the clearest example of the proactive way in which Singapore’s government manages both the potential and the threat of ICT. Singapore has continued to compete at the highest levels in this area whilst, at the same time, managing and emasculating its potential for what the government might view as subversive. From the government’s ‘Intelligent Island’ initiative (National Computer Board 1992), to e-initiatives (including the $S1.5-billion Infocomm 21),10 the government sought to exploit information technology for economic growth, while working to maintain its position as gatekeeper for information and media access. By the turn of the century, Singapore had one of the highest computer and Internet penetration rates in the world with about 60 per cent of households equipped with a PC (Chen 2001), and Internet users had grown from 240 000 in 1996 to more than 1 940 000 users in 2001 (SBA.gov.sg.com). By 2003, two in ﬁve or 1.24 million Singaporeans were broadband users. This represented a 30 per cent increase from its 950 000 user-base in 2001, and was a clear indication that government policies had been a success. Khoong Hock Yun, Assistant Chief Executive, Infocomm Development, IDA explained at the time: ‘The 30 per cent increase in broadband users shows broadband has come of age in Singapore as a pervasive mode of high speed connectivity. This bodes well for Singapore’s vision to see 50 per cent of our households on broadband by 2006’ (IDA 2003). But, the

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government was also leading the way in the region in working to control this potential new source of dissent. By wiring up Singapore for broadband Internet access, and creating an Internet portal delivering interactive, multimedia applications and services to homes, businesses and schools throughout the Republic, the government moved to further secure its gatekeeping role (Rodan 2002, p. A11). It was a position it was prepared to reinforce with periodic investigations of local hardware, as when Singapore’s internal security agency secretly scanned 200 000 computers to trace a virus allowing hackers to steal computer passwords and credit card numbers (Sesser 1999, pp. 1 and 9). This was reinforced by panoptic state surveillance and sporadic intimidation that reinforced well-established practices of self-censorship (Gomez 2000). On the legal front, a new Internet Code of Practice also meant the government could outlaw vast sections of the Internet on the vague grounds of ‘public interest, public morality, public order, public security (or) national harmony’, including content that ‘advocates homosexuality or lesbianism’, and material that ‘gloriﬁes’ ethnic, racial or religious intolerance. The government stated that the rules governing the use of the Internet to express political views during elections would remain, but it was open to adjusting its policies to take into account the evolving Internet technology (Today 2006). Singapore’s defamation laws also remained an important part of the government’s legal arsenal, and a way the government sought to defend its reputation and contribute to social stability. The criminal defamation investigation launched in July 2002, marked a signiﬁcant ratcheting up of the government’s confrontation with the Malay community, usually left to the auspices of Menadaki, the PAP-organized Malay ethnic body. It focused on Muslim rights activist Zulﬁkar Mohamad Shariﬀ and his Fateha group, already the subject of government angst after post-September 11 criticism of the ruling elite and its treatment of the Malay Muslim community of Singapore. Zulﬁkar’s criticism of a headscarf ban in schools, added to his suggestions that Malays should question the Singapore government for allying itself with the West against Muslim radicals. Zulﬁkar had questioned the JI arrests in January 2002, and suggested that the Singapore government’s alignment with the United States and Israel was insensitive to the feelings of local Muslims and, indeed, prompted the terrorist intentions of the JI. The arrest of Zulﬁkar exempliﬁed and reinforced what the state strategy towards the Internet involved. It was a clear move by the government to maintain control over the Internet space, and an indication that any commitment to deregulating Singapore’s media and entertainment industry is more concerned with securing the wandering attention of Singapore’s youth than a move towards greater pluralism. It was also a deliberate move

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to curtail the activities of any new Muslim group operating outside the framework of social management vial racial harmony and ethnic bonding bodies like Mendaki. While the established local and international media had leant on the developmental pact, globalization and rapid progress in mass communications technologies, like the Internet media, provided ‘opportunities for communication among civil society groups on a scale and in a way which had not been possible before’ (Ooi 2000, p. 192). The Internet provided a space the government found hard to control, in particular cross-border. As a result, discussions groups like those of the new Sintercom, were housed on servers outside Singapore. Sintercom moved overseas when the original shut down rather than face new Internet regulations with relation to the registration of political websites (Tan Tarn How 2002, p. H10). Other sites were housed oﬀshore, including the serious sites set up by opposition parties, such as Delphi.com and the Think Centre, as well as the risqué (Sammyboy.com) and the comedic (Talkingcock.com). Should the site owners ﬁnd themselves within the Singapore government’s sphere of inﬂuence, any criticism was stiﬂed. As the May 2005 libel threat that forced a Singapore student to shut his blog down indicated, the government was still watching (CPJ 2005).11 Nevertheless, Singapore’s mass media was not immune from certain of the trends impacting upon the global industry. Commercial imperatives were forcing media companies to move down market, embracing attention grabbing headlines, and doing little to give stories their correct context. Singaporeans had a growing taste for instant news and information in the modern, online media world, but they were just as tempted as their neighbours by the salacious and the sensational (Chua Lee Hoong 2000, p. 32). There also appeared to be more space for critical discussion in the established media of controversial subjects. The ‘fearful bureaucrats . . . [who are] habitually evasive and defensive’, from both government departments and government-linked companies (GLC), felt the criticism of local media reporters wary of direct criticism of the ruling elite (Straits Times 5 July 2002, p. 30). DBS Bank, as the ﬁrst GLC to be run by a non-Singaporean, received increased and often unfavourable media attention in 2001 and 2002, particularly surrounding the takeover of Overseas Union Bank (OUB). Where the government had been singing the siren song of global best practices in areas such as transparency and corporate governance on behalf of corporate Singapore, it indicated that it too was prepared to move in that direction – but only as far as it deemed necessary to attract foreign capital. GLCs generally adhered to international accounting standards, and even the MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore), and the GIC (Government

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of Singapore Investment Corp.), had become more open, but national interests were cited for limits to this transparency (Chua Lee Hoong 2001; Pritchard 2001). The Singapore government also made moves in the ﬁrst decade of the new century to relax its stricter censorship laws. For example, bungee jumping was no longer illegal, and much was made of the fact that table top dancing was allowed. Film censorship was also relaxed. The Media Development Authority (MDA) even joined forces with local production house, Teamwork Productions, to organize the Asian Festival of First Films (AFFF), to showcase ‘the best new Asian ﬁlms’, according to Seto Lok Yin, director of industry development at the MDA (Tan J. 27 April 2005). But should the media feel the shackles were loose, K. Bhavani, press secretary to the Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts, warned it to stick to the party line: for every local newspaper, ‘both its explicit editorial line and in the implicit point of view of its reporting, its stance should be a Singaporean one’ (I-S Magazine 2005). There were also signs that the government was considering relaxing a number of laws concerning sex – gays were oﬃcially welcomed into government departments. In an article in Time, Vivian Balakrishnan, the government oﬃcial in charge of the Remaking Singapore Committee, was quoted as saying Singapore would do ‘whatever it takes’ to attract talent. Prime Minister Goh said his government allowed gay employees into its ranks, even in sensitive positions. ‘The change in policy, inspired at least in part by the desire not to exclude talented foreigners who are gay, is being implemented without fanfare, Goh said, to avoid raising the hackles of more-conservative Singaporeans’ (Elegant 2003). Singapore’s gay community dismissed this as a Wayang show – a PAP shadow play to make Singapore appear more attractive to potential immigrants and that, while same sex acts remained criminalized, this amounted to little more than economic pragmatism (Tan C.K. 2005). Indeed, by 2005, it was felt that the attitude to homosexuals had become too permissive: Senior Minister of State for Health, Dr Balaji Sadasivan, banned the annual Nation parties, claiming they attracted a predominantly homosexual crowd, and could be linked to the sharp rise in new HIV cases in 2004. He suggested the parties were an opportunity for gays from societies with high levels of the disease to ‘fraternize with local gay men, seeding the infection in the local community’ (Sadasivan 9 March 2005). It is worth noting, however, that the government tended to defer its enforcement of many of the laws connected with sex. For instance, while possession of pornography was illegal, no known checks were made on its access. Neither has the government tried to enforce a rule stating that oral sex be performed only as a precursor to sexual intercourse.

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However, Singapore advocates a system of communitative justice – justice as punishment not fairness. According to the UN SecretaryGeneral’s quinquennial report on capital punishment (UN document: E/CN.15/2001/10, para. 68), for the period 1994 to 1999 Singapore had a rate of 13.57 executions per one million population, representing by far the highest rate of executions in the world. This is followed by Saudi Arabia (4.65), Belarus (3.20), Sierra Leone (2.84), Kyrgyzstan (2.80), Jordan (2.12) and China (2.01). Despite this continued authoritarian stance, the government clearly sought to diﬀerentiate itself from its neighbours in Asia and attract international investors and global talent to help make its companies winners (Saywell and Plott 2002). Singapore believed it could engineer an entrepreneurial culture, something that sat uneasily with liberal critics who argue this approach to capitalism was incoherent. The critics insisted Singapore’s entrepreneurial culture was stiﬂed by the aura of ‘authoritarian capitalism’ which, they claimed, ‘suppresses individualism and intellectual freedom and will greatly impair the formation of entrepreneurs . . . [and] in the long run . . . are unlikely to sustain the levels of high performance recorded in recent years’ (Lingle 1998). Yet, Singapore’s economy continued to ﬂourish, notwithstanding the engineering, clear evidence that the pragmatic approach worked.12

9/11 AND THE TIGHTENING OF MEDIA SURVEILLANCE The government’s illiberal stance was strengthened by more than just economic success. Singaporeans became increasingly noisy, at least in Cyberspace – 11 September and the American war against ‘terror’ provided Singapore’s governors with a reason for cementing over some of these cracks. The government continued its crackdown on individuals alleged to be linked to terrorist organizations. By 2006, 34 Singaporeans were being held without charge or trial under the Internal Security Act (ISA), with little complaint even from formerly sceptical western governments. The discovery in 2001 of a video tape seeking al-Qaeda support for plans to bomb targets in Singapore validated the crackdown. Initially there were 15 local arrests.13 Later detentions saw, at one time, 36 men held under the Internal Security Act.14 The government armed itself with a new weapon in its battle to silence dissident views on the Internet. Legislation introduced in November 2003, gave Singapore’s security new powers to take pre-emptive action against cyber terrorists. Amendments to The Computer Misuse Act allowed the

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scanning of electronic networks for possible threats, and the arrest of suspected computer hackers and virus writers based on ‘speciﬁc intelligence received of an imminent attack against our critical infrastructure’ such as power and water facilities according to Ho Peng Kee, the junior minister for law and home aﬀairs. The amendments were criticized by Ho Geok Choo, a government member of parliament, as a cyber-space equivalent of the ISA – which permitted indeﬁnite detention without trial (Burton 2003). To ensure that the government could continue to check the growing cyber traﬃc, in early 2005 it announced a 24-hour monitoring centre, for analysing data entering and emitting from Singapore. The National CyberThreat Monitoring Centre, the ﬁrst of its kind in the region, monitors computer activity round the clock to look for viruses and other threats, as part of the Government’s Infocomm Security Master Plan. Deputy Prime Minister Tony Tan said about Singapore’s heavy reliance on technology, ‘it is no exaggeration to say that the nation’s infocomm infrastructure has become the nerve system of our economy’. He maintained that a successful strike against that infrastructure would be devastating: ‘Infocomm security is as important in protecting Singapore as is physical security at our borders’ (Tan 2005). These eﬀorts were facilitated, ironically, by the new western concern with the impact of the information age on criminal, terrorist and social activist organizations and their capacity to wage netwar in cyberspace. Indeed, in the post 9/11 world, the government has found some unlikely western bedfellows in its clampdown on dissent. Asian values were once the talisman used by the Singapore government to ward oﬀ what it saw as the worst eﬀects of globalization – the move towards liberal democracy and the questioning of the legitimacy of its surveillance society. The attacks on the US and later on its allies, Australia (in Bali), Spain and the UK, the global ﬁnancial fallout from both the telecommunications stock price meltdown, and the Enron-inspired corporate scandals have, however, tested the commitment of even the strongest proponents of globalization. Open border policies and cross border investment ﬂows are under question by more than just nationalists. What is important to note for this thesis is that, with many in the West now aware of the need for increased surveillance of the ‘fast world’ because of its utility for terrorists, the Singapore authorities have found some unusual allies in its eﬀorts to control, change and counter opposition. Thus the ‘war on terror’ increasingly serves to reinforce Singapore’s garrisonstate mentality even in virtual space, providing a ﬁllip to virtual authoritarianism and in conﬂict with global, open media policies of the 1990s. It is of particular importance that, as indicated the Bush administration’s eager grant of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in May 2003, the Singapore

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government was more closely aligned to the Republicans in the US and the Liberal government in Australia than it ever was with the liberalizing human rights agenda of the Clinton administration. And the two governments have continued to move closer (Hoong 2005). In what was described as a ‘breach of usual diplomatic etiquette whereby governments don’t comment on the other countries’ electoral choices’, Singapore was among the countries that gave ‘barely veiled government support’ for Bush. Bush shared Singapore’s view of the Islamist threat, and Lee Kuan Yew said the US needed a President who could ‘withstand the pressures of protectionism, pressures from outsourcing, [and] is able to keep free trade going’ (Asian Wall Street Journal, 1 November 2004). There remained a strong line separating the political and the public sphere. As a result, challenges to the PAP-style of top-down initiatives, particularly in policy areas, from a society with ‘its new divides and the greater and faster access to information and the views of others’, were unlikely to lead to democratic pluralism (Ooi 2000, p. 191). Despite the vision of becoming a Renaissance City, supported by a vibrant cultural scene where Singaporeans could ‘ﬁnd latitude for the expression of their beliefs and ideas here, to pursue self-fulﬁllment’ (MITA, Renaissance City Report), the government sought to conﬁne this expression in extent and to sponsored platforms (Gomez 2000, p. 4). Political sensitivity to the Singapore context and culture continued to aﬀect news judgement. Thus, while the communications media had been operating with fewer direct constraints, and the local media, faced with operating in a more competitive environment, moved to serve an increasingly demanding and informed audience, particularly the younger (MTV) generation, this was all structured by Singapore’s culture of restraint and responsibility. It was positioned in the Singapore context as deﬁned by the PAP. Thus, the style may have changed, but the political substance had not. The Government of Singapore was well-versed in ‘sophisticated media management’ (George 1993, p. 133). With its long experience of public campaigns, Singapore was leading the way in the region, not only with its media policies, but in its sophisticated use of PR. As we shall see in the next chapter, integrated public relations campaigns and the eﬀective use of PR consultants like Burson Marsteller have proved more valuable in defending Singapore’s image in the face of threats from SARS to security, than its usual practice of berating Western governments for decadence and decay. Besides, the middle class of Singapore was an audience ‘eﬀectively in thrall’ (Jones 1997, p. 149), and the PAP’s track record meant it has been given a lot of latitude by Singaporeans. But, despite this ability to spin the media to its own ends, the government has shown it is prepared to forcefully

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defend the limits to freedom of expression in the face of any ‘premonitory snuﬄings of civil society’ (Jones 1998, p. 163).

SINGAPORE: JUST NOT LISTENING Events post 9/11, however, suggested that the government needed to allow more critical engagement with issues that were threatening regime continuity around the region, in particular the challenge militant Islam represented to stability in Paciﬁc Asia. The limited coverage of alternative perspectives by the mass media, partly because of their preparedness to bow to local controls and partly because of a process of dumbing down, clearly played a role in the failure of both Singapore and neighbour Malaysia to recognize the extent of the coherence and cohesion of the politically radicalized Islamic opposition in their own backyard (Cloud and Solomon 2002; Pereira and Go 2002). Even following the local arrests in the wake of the 9/11 attack, the Singapore media continued to embrace the status quo and dismiss views that did not enjoy a smooth ﬁt with the government’s perspective. When the Fateha raised its criticisms of PAP policy, it was dismissed as a fringe group, with nonsensical and dangerous views, threatening racial and religious harmony in Singapore (Straits Times 21 January 2002, p. 1). The government’s attacks on Muslim moderates and the investigations of July 2002, indicated its continued policy of no tolerance toward opposition within Singapore’s society. Given its tendency to follow the government line, the mass media in Singapore oﬀered few avenues through which the dispossessed and disenfranchised could vent their unease. The government seemed inﬂexible on this point, even though its embrace of globalization had given rise to disillusioned groups that evidently believe their only resort is ‘a rabid response to colonialism and imperialism and their economic children, capitalism and modernity’ (Barber 1995, p. 11). Control, therefore, remained the strategy, reinforced by the bombs in Bali, Jakarta and Southern Thailand. The government’s rhetoric was no longer directed at the acceptance of western views as it was in the 1990s. For the garrison state, the external threat assumes a conveniently Islamist guise. At an ASEAN Home Ministers conference on Terrorism, held in Kuala Lumpur in May 2002, Singapore’s Home Aﬀairs Minister Wong Kan Seng gave voice to the government’s concerns about radical Islam. He suggested Singapore had a problem keeping ‘foreign trends from inﬁltrating Singaporean minds’, bemoaning the fact that it was not possible to stop

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Singaporeans ‘from going overseas . . . from being exposed to television, from reading books and listening to tapes’ (Ahmad 2002, p. A7). Singaporeans, long apprised of the threats surrounding their small country, were all too ready to fall back into the protective embrace of the PAP: comfortable and familiar. As the election in May 2006 indicated – when the PAP won its tenth election in a row and the opposition won a mere two seats – the PAP is backed by a high degree of popular consent, as ‘the PAP’s Brave New World in which a pampered and politics-shy public is led by strict but benevolent leaders, seems to make Singaporeans pretty happy’ (The Economist 13 May 2006, p. 70). Yet, despite the general understanding in Singapore that the PAP would continue to deliver rising standards of living, ‘coercion, nevertheless, remains one of the pillars of PAP dominance’ (George 2005). Singapore preserves and from where ‘surveillance is permanent in its eﬀects, even if it is discontinuous in its action’ (Foucault 1977, p. 201). So, while rapid technological change in areas such as the development of broadband telecommunication services in East Asia is leading to more ‘complex bargaining relationships’ (Langdale 1997, p. 128) between global companies, local ﬁrms, citizens and their national governments, in Singapore, any liberalization of freedom of expression is driven from above, and ‘democratization thus involves the expansion of political participation and consultation within the limits deﬁned by the state’ (Jones 1995, p. 84). Signiﬁcantly, in late 2006, the Singapore government proposed to tighten laws governing the Internet and public gatherings, giving it broader statutory authority to prosecute oﬀenders and to punish them with higher ﬁnes, in a move seen by critics as ﬂying in the face of promises by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, to promote an ‘open society’. The new laws on public gatherings, which were already tightly controlled and forbidden without a police licence, would no longer require the government to prove in court that those committing the oﬀence were intending to cause a disturbance. But more interesting are the attempts by the Singapore government to tighten its controls of the Internet, which it said was to help it combat crime, such as credit card fraud. Government research had indicated that 65 per cent of Singaporeans between 15 and 49 were at least moderate Internet users, and one third of people in the same age group produced Internet content such as blogs (Media Development Authority of Singapore 2006). The timing of government plans to crack down on what was being seen as an alternative to the state-controlled media was unlikely to have been a coincidence. Under the new laws, Internet users were to become liable for defamation and ‘statements that cause a public mischief’ and for sending documents over the Internet (Burton 10 November 2006).

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And should the PAP’s hold on power look like slipping, the PAP’s leader gave due warning to opposition politicians – they would not be allowed to succeed. Singapore’s MM said the election of an opposition government would trigger Singapore’s collapse: ‘You’ve seen the candidates who have turned up. If they win, this place goes down . . . [and] the army might have to come in and stop it if a freak election result gave the opposition power’ (Burton 4 October 2006).

CONCLUSION Across Southeast Asia, there are distinct and diverse reactions to the perceived problem of the globalization of the media, and the implied threat to the region’s often illiberal and suspicious elites. New communications technologies, whether in the form of roads, railways, or information superhighways are often accompanied by unwelcome visitors that can undermine traditional cultural practices. The Information Age raises major questions on issues of national sovereignty, cultural inﬂuence and change, and internal stability, as well as the theories of development and democratic pluralism. It is no longer possible to discuss politics in any meaningful way without considering how the mass communication industry has impacted and transformed political behaviour. The mass communication media is a political actor and institution in its own right, and while media content in the era of global commercial operations holds out little room for the controversial or challenging, its inﬂuence is ambiguous but undeniable. It takes on a special character in Southeast Asia and in Singapore, in particular, because as a technology, media is value neutral. The Singapore grip demonstrates how a technocratic elite can spin the media to serve its own longterm proactive development goals. After the changes in telecommunications technology of the 1980s, Singapore faced a distinctive set of liberalizing pressures that the media and globalization facilitated. The Singapore PAP state, itself an illiberal capitalist project, responded remarkably eﬀectively. Managing a broad array of tools and situations, through legal means, through establishing a notable compact or contract with the western business media, through image management through eﬀective PR, as we will see in the next chapter, and through harnessing the global forces opposed to the rise of al Qaeda, it was able to reinvent the garrison state in virtual space. With a keen understanding of the mass communication media as both a commercial animal and a political tool, the Singapore government has ensured it remains a stern and eﬀective gatekeeper, barring much that might

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be obviously threatening to its ‘surveillance state’ (Jones and Smith 2002). It has become less brutal stylistically. Indeed, many would suggest it has shown remarkable ﬂexibility despite its essentially managerial framework. The PAP has changed its image to accommodate media fashion without relinquishing any control. It assumes a media-friendly style, but the politically illiberal message remains the same. The terrorist attacks that followed in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy have encouraged the government to adjust its controls. It risked alienating the disillusioned and discontented who already felt excluded from a Singapore society where ‘political cohesion is based much more on conformism brought about by private consumption rather than by a sense of identity rooted in a vigorous civil society’ (Zolo 2001, p. 417). However, this is a government and ruling party that is conﬁdent in its power, and aware that violent radicalism has also bought it many new supporters, both within and without its borders. Signiﬁcantly, the external western pressure for Singapore to liberalize dwindled as the US administration looked for support in its ‘war on terror’, preferring ‘prayers to politics, avoiding at all costs debate, both within its own ranks and in the public arena . . . silence and secrecy, punctuated with disingenuousness consistently its preferred modus operandi’ (Scharma 2002). Those who once called Asia’s governments to account for human rights abuses fell silent when they saw their overseas assets threatened by instability. The US ‘war on terror’ gave authoritarian governments around the world renewed hope that they could successfully achieve economic growth without recourse to open societies and a pluralist media. So, although some observers suggested that pressures continued to build in the region for greater press freedoms (Williams 2000, p. 5), in Singapore the clamour was deﬁnitely muted despite the access to an increasing number of media outlets. As the terrorist attacks around the region reinforced the garrison state, political change in this part of Paciﬁc Asia looked unlikely to ‘constitute an authoritarian response to pressure from civil society nor [reﬂect] an emerging demand for the polymorphous delights of an independent media and political pluralism’ (Jones 1997, p. 200). Thus, not only has the growth in the communications media not produced signiﬁcant diversity, but the media remained at ‘the center of new modes of image production and cultural hegemony, the political struggles of various groups and the restructuring of capitalist society’ (Kellner 1990, p. 129). For Singapore’s ruling elite, the media had a key role in its nonliberal vision for the future: a ‘contemporary antipolis’ (Zolo 2001, p. 407), where the market economy and economic liberty work successfully but political freedoms are truncated. As we shall see in the next chapter, as we examine the use of public relations in Southeast Asia, Singapore’s

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government has managed to achieve this adjustment in its authoritarian controls because of its sophisticated grasp of the changing and increasingly complicated communication environment. It is an achievement its neighbours hope to emulate and a possible model for western democracies, their stability threatened by globalization, their welfare states and democratic pluralism collapsing.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

14.

www.fateha.com. Pressure begun by the senior management of Singapore’s DBS Bank, angry with Lee’s constant criticism (author). Soh (2004b). See http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article-southeastasia.asp?parentid=29947. See articles such as Lydia Lim (2005) and Paulo (2005, p. 4). See reports such as Lo (2006). Reported by Burton, (15 October 2006, p. 6). See Amnesty International (2003). http://www.mda.gov.sg/wms.ftp/media21.pdf. www.ida.gov.sg. See CPJ 2005. According to the government, Singapore’s economy grew at almost 8 per cent in 2006, and was likely to register a more moderate rate of between 4.5–6.5 per cent in 2007, http://www.singaporebudget.gov.sg/budget_2007/budget_speech/downloads/FY2007_ Budget_Highlights.pdf. Thirteen of the 15 persons arrested by the ISD in December 2001 for terrorism-related activities were served with Orders of Detention for two years under Section 8(1) (a) of the Internal Security Act on 6 January, 2002. Singapore Government press statement on ISA Arrests, 11 January, 2002, http://www2.mha.gov.sg/mha/detailed.jsp?artid=215& type=4&root=0&parent=0&cat=0. White Paper, The Jemaah Islamiya Arrests and the Threat of Terrorism, The Singapore Minister of Home Aﬀairs, 7 January, 2003.

9. Managing perceptions – from shooting the messenger to dodging the questions: the role of PR in Southeast Asia INTRODUCTION While the US ‘war on terror’ has eased liberal western pressure on Southeast Asia’s authoritarian political elites and engendered local support for continued political and economic stability, their awareness of the growing challenge to their policy of media control due to cross–border media ﬂows and both the conglomeration and celebriﬁcation of the media industry has seen the region’s governments adopt a more sophisticated appreciation of the perception industries. There has been a shift from media control to public relations (PR) across the region. Led by Singapore, the most eﬀective user of the perception industries, Southeast Asia’s illiberal governments have begun to adopt a more nuanced understanding of the media and, through PR, to learn how best to use the available technology to communicate to their various stakeholders both external to, and within their borders. It is here that the most dramatic changes are being made to their policies of control. By examining the case study of Singapore, and with reference to developments elsewhere in the region, this chapter will examine how Southeast Asia’s political elites are working to win the hearts and minds of these stakeholders and, where their control of the medium is challenged, to continue to control the message. The citizens of Singapore have been in thrall to the governing People’s Action Party and its senior ﬁgure Lee Kuan Yew for almost 45 years. Served by a pliant media brought to heel by a combination of legislative and ownership controls, the PAP has been eﬀective in limiting the space for debate while successfully conveying its own internal messaging aimed at securing the state and its own political longevity by creating the image of Singapore as an island of Chinese-led stability and prosperity, ever under threat from more restive neighbours. But, in the face of the emerging threats to this control posed by new information technology and the exigencies of the 242

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global economy, the government has been forced to become increasingly sophisticated at managing perceptions and minimizing controversy. By using Singapore as a case study, this chapter seeks to illustrate the direction Southeast Asia’s illiberal governments are beginning to take in their desire to maintain a policy of controlling the media in the face of the dramatic changes the industry has undergone. This chapter, then, examines how the Singapore government has successfully met these challenges in a public relations triumph, eﬀectively winning the battle for the hearts and minds of its internal audience, as well as shoring up the image of ‘Fortress Singapore’ and appeasing external allies in the ‘war against terror’, thus keeping Singapore critics in check and neutralizing any external political support for domestic political movements. When the then Prime Minister of Singapore, Goh Chok Tong, received an unprecedented welcome during his visit to the US in April, 2004, it was the outward manifestation of the success of a comprehensive campaign by his government to win hearts and minds within his own country and to persuade important external observers that Singapore was a fortress of stability in a region of uncertainty. The resolution of 28 April, 2004 expressed gratitude for Singapore’s support as a ‘steadfast partner’ in the global campaign on terrorism, and reaﬃrmed the friendship between the two countries. The ‘high value’ meeting with President George W. Bush further underlined the message: Singapore, in the words of US Ambassador to the Lion City, Frank Lavin, is viewed as ‘a good friend but with its own perspective’ (Chua Mui Hong 6 May 2004). A little more than a year before, as the bombs in Bali and those that destroyed the entrance to the Marriott in Jakarta placed the ‘war on terror’ ﬁrmly within the borders of Southeast Asia, things could have been very diﬀerent. The terrorist attacks that came in the wake of 11 September, were a ﬁrm reminder that, at a time when the US and its major allies see militant Muslims as one of the main threats to global security, Singapore sits on the doorstep of the largest Muslim country on earth. Already in the grips of the worst recession in its 36-year history, an adverse reaction from the global business community could have presented the PAP state with a destabilizing ﬁnancial crisis. Singapore is well aware of its precarious position. The carefully nurtured devotion with its roots in the distress of internecine strife and external pressures, and secured in the creation of the most successful economy in Southeast Asia, has ensured that the governing People’s Action Party (PAP) has enjoyed an unprecedented political reign, virtually unchallenged for almost 45 years. The PAP has relished its role of protector, barricading what it perceives to be a delicately-imagined community against forces within and without

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that it believes seek to undermine it. The PAP has harnessed the means of communication available in the strategically-positioned island state to this end. Served by a media cognizant of its developmental responsibilities, the PAP has been eﬀective in limiting the space for debate while successfully conveying its own internal messaging. This messaging is aimed at securing both the state and its own political longevity by creating the image of ‘Fortress Singapore’, beset on all sides by neighbours whose economic and political uncertainty can lead to outbreaks of violence, often directed at local Chinese minorities who are perceived as the source of ﬁnancial exploitation. But, in the face of the emerging threats to this control posed by new information technology and the exigencies of the global economy, the government has been forced to become increasingly sophisticated at managing perceptions and minimizing controversy. This chapter examines how the government successfully met this challenge, even burnishing its public image in the face of 9/11 and the emergence of concerns over militant Islam in Southeast Asia, rehabilitating itself with Western governments, many of which must secretly envy Mentor Minister Lee’s success, both economic and political. Long known for an unusual sensitivity over its image as portrayed internally and externally by the mass media, 9/11 and, in particular, the bombings in Southeast Asia that followed, set the Singapore government on a charm oﬀensive: a PR campaign to secure support both inside and outside Singapore. The methods it used in its eﬀorts to nullify internal democratic pressures and limit sites of contestation, as well as to secure inﬂuential allies overseas, indicate a mature and sophisticated appreciation of crisis management by the Singapore government, and an understanding of the growing diﬃculties of conveying its messages in a complex mass communication environment with multiple audiences. They are also indicative of the central role that professional consultants are assuming in continuously interpreting and monitoring public opinion, and in the image management of political parties and governments in the region. This represents an area of study that is both relatively new and on which there currently is a dearth of research, particularly where Southeast Asia is concerned. As has become clear from the preceding chapters, the media, and television in particular, has a central place in Southeast Asian societies and a major impact on the political process in the region, where elites have used the means of mass communication since independence. By 2006, like many of their counterparts in the West, these elites were ﬁnding that ‘the management of visibility and self-presentation through the media has become an integral and increasingly professionalized feature of government’ (Thompson 2001, p. 180).

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Asia, with its anti-US protests and armed Islamic extremists, is seen in the US, in particular, as a ‘risky place’ (Pesek 2003) . Given the importance of the American market to the Singapore economy and its importance as a military ally to Singapore’s stable future in the region, the Singapore government has been forced into a public relations charm oﬀensive to portray Singapore as a ‘safe’ destination for FDI, and a hub for security/ intelligence exchange, indeed a much needed ally and counsellor in the face of the rise of militant Islam in Southeast Asia. Let us examine ﬁrst the growing impact of PR on politics, before looking more closely at its Singapore manifestation.

THE RISE OF THE IMAGE MAKERS Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power. We are governed, our minds moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind. (Bernays 1928, p. 47)

With his roots in the patter of the circus barker, and his practices honed by techniques nurtured in the World Wars of 1914–1918 and 1939–1945, the public relations professional, while having more status than at any time in the industry’s short history, remains a controversial ﬁgure, treading a ﬁne line drawn ‘between propaganda and public relations’ (Ward 1995, p. 47). Public relations is most often deﬁned as the management function that aims to: Establish and maintain mutually beneﬁcial relationships between an organization, commercial or non-commercial, and the audiences or ‘publics’ on which the success of these entities depends. These publics may include any of several possible constituencies: customers, investors, employees, suppliers, legislators, competitors, government oﬃcials and other ‘inﬂuentials’. (Bates 2002)

There are those who suggest that public relations has a vital role to play in the modern democratic process, and that the ‘conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society’ (Bernays 1928, p. 47). In this way, public relations is an integral part of the civil society function as, through

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its focus on media relations and building relationships with stakeholders, civil society organizations are able to ‘reach various publics with information and create links between like-minded people’ (Taylor 2000, p. 3). This argument purports that, where nation building is best understood as a communication process that emphasizes the creation and maintenance of relationships at various levels in society, public relations becomes central to this process and to the role of groups and organizations in mediating between the government and the public. It suggests that, ‘ultimately, successful nation building is premised on the development of civil society structures that meet the needs of an assortment of publics rather than simply serving those in power’ (Taylor and Kent 2002, p. 19). There are others, however, who maintain public relations is not a neutral ‘technology’ that is available to all, even to those who wish to achieve socially responsible ends. It is, rather, something ‘hidden and sordid’ (Stauber and Rampton 1995, p. 14). At its heart is the conscious manipulation of the public, upon which ‘corporations and government feel compelled to spend billions of dollars every year’ (ibid., p. 206). But, public relations continues to insert itself ﬁrmly into day-to-day life, whether it is an intricate part of the democratic process working to ‘grapple directly with the public’s scepticism, self-consciousness, and weariness of images and ﬁnd new ways to frame mass appeals’ (Jackall and Hirota 2000, p. 227), or a one-sided struggle over ‘what is reality and how people will see and understand reality’.1

PERCIPI EST ESSE The perception industries around the world have grown alongside the expansion in importance of the mass communication media. As the media has moved to take its central place in daily life and ICT has sent information racing around the world at ‘Netspeed’ (Friedman 2000, p. 218), governments which once felt they had secured the means of communicating to their people, now ﬁnd they compete for attention in a noisy market place buzzing with the clamour of everything from Bloggers and NGOs, to global consumer brands. The growth of the PR industry, as mentioned in earlier chapters, has created massive revenue earners as the industry has consolidated.2 This is partly because, alongside the communication media, the industry is having an increasingly profound impact on the political process and political institutions. Just as the development of the communication media has ‘altered the publicness or visibility of actions in a fundamental way’ (Thompson 2001, p. 179), making elections media events, the political process has

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become suﬀused with the trends and techniques of ‘political marketing’ (ibid., p. 178). The powerful have embraced the public relations practitioner in order to get their messages across amidst the glare of public attention. From psychology and commercial advertising to opinion polls and political campaigning, the multimedia strategies employed to get elected seem to ‘aim more and more overtly as forms of “subliminal persuasion” ’ (Zolo 2001, p. 415). Public relations, or the communication of information to inﬂuence viewpoints or actions, has a long history that can be traced back to the earliest civilizations whenever there was the need to muster public support at time of ‘power conﬂicts and crises of change’ (Cutlip 1994, p. 24). In the form we know it today, it is analogous with the growth of the advertising industry, when companies such as Hill & Knowlton and Burson-Marsteller crossed the Atlantic in the 1950s, becoming the ﬁrst PR transnationals and quickly assembled global networks of oﬃces. In the 1960s, Hill & Knowlton again innovated by oﬀering lobbying as a service to its clients, and the hiring of PR agencies to promote a country’s image abroad began to become an indispensable part of modern diplomacy: ‘it is perhaps no exaggeration to say that today half of power politics consists of image making . . . hardly anything remains in the open conduct of foreign policy that does not have a propaganda or public relations aspect’ (Hertz 1982, p. 187). Thus, just as PR found its seat in the halls of commercial power, it has secured a place inside the door of those who wield, or seek to wield, political power. An essential part of the political party’s apparatus, PR skills became increasingly important in politics as populations grew and voters became ‘more and more out of reach of the stump speaker, and mass communication was inevitably pushed to the fore’ (Cutlip 1994, p. 29). This undisputed inﬂuence in the political process makes many uncomfortable, as ‘governments have shown a growing tendency to professionally package and present information via the mass media’ (Ward 1995, p. 165). This is a tendency that has increased over time.3 In recent decades the PR and advertising industries have begun to consolidate. A small number of large conglomerates, such as WPP Group and Omnicom, have been buying up the largest players and oﬀering integrated corporate communications services. Only one of the top ten PR companies, Edelman PR Worldwide, is still independent. This has led to growing concerns that ‘the power to manipulate democratic political processes through managing public opinion . . . is triﬂing compared to the potential power now residing in integrated conglomerates like WPP and Omnicom’ (Beder and Gosden 2001). Moreover, the dwindling resources available to the news media amidst the increased requirements for the constant ﬂow of new ideas and

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information in a 24/7 industry, have seen the development of a symbiotic relationship between PR professionals and journalists. PR practitioners have become skilful at engaging both the media and the commercial world through a pattern of services which include issues and crisis management, the provision of press releases, news tracking video new releases, and satellite distribution. The industry has become increasingly sophisticated, ‘built on a foundation of routine news practices which it attempts to direct’ (Fishman 1980, p. 15), and such is the connection between PR and the media that it is claimed ‘the practitioners of public relations have managed to usurp authorship of the news . . . a capacity put to the highest bidder’ (Ward 1995, p. 158). Of course, many groups attempt to inﬂuence public opinion and the political process using the same techniques, as the ‘modern publicity process has generated a more media-centric model of pressure group activity’ (Blumler 1990, p. 105). The high cost of the skilled professionals means, however, that real inﬂuence is something that only a few can aﬀord. Critics see this as creating an environment for the manufacture and control of public perception by an alliance between corporations seen as increasing proﬁts with disregard for public interest, politicians seeking political inﬂuence, PR professionals who are seen as practising deceptive methods, and journalists too accepting of PR sources and willing to bow to the companies that pay the bills. This, it is suggested, leads to an imbalance and the ‘overall management of public opinion and policy by the few’ (Stauber 2000).

THE IMAGINING OF NATIONS – THE POST COLONIAL STATE AND PUBLIC RELATIONS While the advanced western democracies are well known users of PR, and names such as Dick Morris and Gould Greenberg Carville/NOP are almost as famous as the politicians they support, what is less well known is the increasing reliance of new nation states in the developing world on the image makers as technicians of sentiment and ‘discerners and purveyors of key emotional pushes to action’ (Jackall and Hirota 2000, p. 17), to shape their image. Indeed, PR has become an integral part of the day-to-day process of governing most nation states around the world as, for the nation state, PR increasingly ‘comprises communicative acts of a government’ (Kunczik 1997, p. 13).4 This has played out, in part, as government eﬀorts to persuade their citizens to accept policy, but also both as part of their eﬀorts to manage their international image and attempt to inﬂuence the large global powers, in particular the US administration. And, it is the

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western PR agencies that have become central in massaging their image for western consumption. Indeed, since the World Trade Center bombing and beginning of the Bush Administration’s war on ‘terror’, eﬀective PR in the US may now be a prerequisite for the long-term survival of a government in the Islamic world. Both Pakistan and the Philippines, two countries in the thick of George Bush’s ‘crusade’, hired Weber Shandwick subsidiaries in 2002. Pakistan was paying Sterling International Consulting Group US$50 000 per month to create a more favourable image for the country in the US, and the Philippines was using Rhoads-Weber Shandwick Government Relations to facilitate its communications with the Pentagon (Corporate Watch April 2003). Saudi Arabia, home of most of the September 11th hijackers, has also been directing large sums at ‘rehabilitating its tarnished image’ in the US (Corporate Watch April 2003). It hired Qorvis Communications to advertise its eﬀorts to help the US in combating terrorism and to place pro-Saudi articles in the press, spending a record $14.6 million between April and September 2002. Patton Boggs, the law ﬁrm associated with Qorvis, undertakes lobbying for the Kingdom in Congress. Patton Boggs’ more than 170 registered lobbyist employees serve a long and diverse list of clients, including Pakistan and the Philippines, and former US Ambassador to Singapore Timothy Chorba is on staﬀ (Centre for Media and Democracy 2005). Since July 1997, the Chinese and Hong Kong governments and government-controlled companies and organizations have spent at least a combined US$19 million lobbying the US government. WPP tops the earnings list among ﬁrms that lobbied and did public relations on behalf of mainland China and Hong Kong during that time. So far, WPP has received US$5 million. Its aﬃliated ﬁrms Wexler & Walker Public Policy Associates, Hill & Knowlton, Inc. and Burson-Marsteller have extensively represented the interests of the Hong Kong government in the United States (Guevera and Williams 2005). Other Asian nations have also hired US lobbyists in their desire to have their voice heard in Washington. Lobbying ﬁrm Cassidy & Associates has been associated with the Taiwan Political and Economic Research Institute (TPERI) (Chu 2001, p. 4). Top Republican lobbyist and PR ﬁrm DCI Group has been associated with Union of Myanmar (Burma) State Peace & Development Council,5 and the Hong Kong Trade Development Council is listed as a client of Wexler and Walker Public Policy Associates, a Washington DC lobbying and consulting ﬁrm specializing in international aﬀairs and trade advocacy. It is an independent unit of PR ﬁrm Hill and Knowlton,6 itself associated with China and Indonesia (Stauber and Rampton 1995, p. 150). In fact, given the trend of industry consolidation,

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the big PR ﬁrms have sought a slice of Washington’s most inﬂuential lobbyists, in order to service their clients, both corporate and government (Birnbaum 2004). Signiﬁcantly, Singapore has also been active in Washington. According to public records, Singapore spent more than US$2 million dollars lobbying on Capitol Hill between 1998 and 2004, ranking 22nd amongst lobbyists. Interpublic was the main representative, earning more than US$1 million over that time period. What is most interesting is that Singapore was particularly busy on The Hill in 2003, spending more than three-quarters of a million dollars in registered funds, up from less than US$200 000 in 2002 (The Centre for Public Integrity June 2005). This commitment to the use of PR is part of an understanding rooted in the development of many of the nations which came into being after the Second World War, and reﬂects the Deutschian view on the centrality of communications to social coherence (Deutsch 1953). The technology of communications allowed the mass distribution of the ‘necessary illusions’ (Chomsky 1988) that made the imagining of nations possible. As we have seen, part of the ambiguous impact the media has is to be able to ‘extend and consolidate traditional values . . . nourishing [a] sense of identity and sense of belonging for individuals’ (Thompson 1995, p. 194). Indeed, ‘the very conception of the newspaper implies the refraction of even world events into a speciﬁc world of vernacular readers’ (Anderson 1983, p. 63). While the embrace of the PR industry was slower in coming, it is now seen as a pressing concern as elites look to utilize its techniques as they ﬁnd their inﬂuence over the communication media slipping and their messages competing for space in a business marketplace of ideas. Having enjoyed a monopoly on the media, particularly the broadcast media which was closely controlled by the newly-independent governments and given a central role in nation building, local political elites have found their control strategies threatened by the international media giants who, seeking proﬁtability through scale, have taken their place alongside local producers. As we have seen, as these media companies have extended their reach across Asia, eroding monolithic state ownership in an apparent profusion of choice and ownership, they have begun a trend of concentration of ownership in the face of growing industry competition (Keane 1991). As we have also seen from the preceding case studies, however, the global media, rather than inspiring democratic ideals, has tended to be locked in its own battle of competing interests, rarely sowing the seeds of political conﬂict (McCargo 1999). The mass media and communications technology continues to have a huge impact on politics in Southeast Asia. Here, as with much of the rest of the world, the communication media, and the perception industries so closely connected with it, are altering the very nature of

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politics and the ways in which political leaders relate to those over whom they rule. Consequently, the region’s elites are becoming ‘increasingly sophisticated at manipulating their public images’ (Thompson 2001, p. 173). We have seen in previous chapters how governments around the region have begun to use PR to boost their image. In Malaysia, Mahathir ally and former Finance Minister Daim put together a PR team to counteract foreign reporting in 1999, which he said were ‘strenuously painting a negative picture of the Malaysian economy, politics and local leaders’, to counter misinformation on Malaysia (Wong 2000, p. 136). For Philippines’ President Arroyo PR was important in helping create her internal and external image from the early days of her candidacy for the Senate through to Presidential trips around the world. President Arroyo hired former radio talent, advertising boss, broadcast station executive and publisher, Dante Arevalo Ang, in 1995, to help her with her senatorial campaign. Once in power, Ang was given a cabinet position and role as Arroyo’s personal publicist, and helped Arroyo appoint supporters in the government run media companies, as well as bringing in journalists as communications advisors in government controlled companies. Arroyo also used international image consultants, bringing in Burson-Marsteller to help advise on a promotional tour of the UK, Canada and the US, to ensure her image was presented in the appropriate way for those markets – more in the line of an Asian CEO as she was looking to attract foreign investors, rather than the ﬁlm star able to woo local voters in the Philippines. Thailand and Indonesia have also worked to spin their agenda. Thailand’s ﬁrst public dip into political PR is said to have begun with lowproﬁle campaigns in the 1980s, and then more publicly in 1996, with an eﬀort to soften and internationalize the image of prime minister Banharn Silpa-archa. Even so, it was really Thaksin who took the use of public relations to new heights in politics, according to Dr Panitan Wattanayagorn, an academic adviser to the Prime Minister in foreign aﬀairs and an associate professor of international relations at Chulalongkorn University. Panitan described Thaksin’s eﬀorts to keep his name in front of the Thai voters even after his ouster as a ‘sophisticated and orchestrated eﬀort with ﬁngerprints of a big corporation’ (Fry 2007). When Thailand’s former Prime Minister made an approach to buy English football team Manchester City in 2007, he was quick to ﬁnd a PR company to help improve his image. Thaksin had failed to secure control of Liverpool FC in 2005, during his time as Thai Prime Minister, with his background said to be the key reason for the deal falling through. Thaksin, ever a savvy media operator, employed Holborn PR to help position the new £100-million bid (Quainton 2007, p. 2). Even the military government

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of Thailand which came to power after the 2006 coup, announced in April 2007 that it had hired a US public relations ﬁrm to improve its image (BBC 30 April, 2007). To help clean up its image, after a ‘litany of well-documented human rights concerns has increasingly isolated the Indonesian military on the world stage’, the Indonesian government has also turned to US-based PR and lobbying ﬁrms, including Hill and Knowlton and Burson-Marsteller. This includes working to rehabilitate its image after the Indonesian military’s 1991 massacre of hundreds of peaceful protesters in East Timor, to working to create a positive view of Indonesia with the US Congress, Administration and Department of Defense in 2001, in order to get the embargo lifted on spare parts for the C-130 military aircraft. More recently, the war on terror has been Indonesia’s PR theme. In 2003, the government retained APCO Worldwide to conduct an integrated PR campaign working with a broad sway of key opinion leaders including politicians, academics and the media. Indonesia’s most inﬂuential ally may be former US Senator Bob Dole – special counsel with lobbyists Alston & Bird. In January 2004, Indonesia hired Dole as a lobbyist in its image making eﬀorts (Farsetta 2005). Thus, due to the unholy trinity of globalization, technological change, liberalization and reform, political elites and associated companies now ﬁnd they are playing on a world stage, amidst sophisticated communicators, and they have to ﬁght for their usual place on the front pages of even their local newspapers. Indeed, governments in Asia have ‘tendered for public relations assignments longer and more consistently than corporations’ (PR Week 9 April 2004), but both are encountering a communication media potentially more aggressive and less deferential. This has encouraged a general change of attitude towards communications, and a general expansion of the PR industry with Asian characteristics. While accurate ﬁgures for the size of the PR industry in Asia Paciﬁc are increasingly hard to come by as none of the companies are publicly audited in the region, and while proﬁts took a hit in the wake of the SARS crisis in 2002, the industry has bounced back (PR Week 19 July 2004). It is particularly notable that Chinese companies, traditionally operating behind closed doors, have turned to PR consultants as they seek foreign capital in overseas markets. HK-based IPR Asia increased staﬀ from eight in 1999 to 40 in 2004, to handle Mainland business, and it is a similar story for WPP’s Oglivy Public Relations in Beijing, and Incepta Group’s Citigate Dewe Rogerson, as international calls for corporate transparency meant more business for public-relations companies in China, which were ‘stepping up to help Chinese companies handle bad publicity’ (Fowler and Song 2004).

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Although most of the governments making use of the PR industry would probably argue that they are honing their techniques of persuasion, Jowett and O’Donnell drew a distinction between the ‘communicative process to inﬂuence others’, and the ‘manipulation of behaviour and behavioural patterns’ (Jowett and O’Donnell 1999, pp. 27 and 45). Clearly, they are seeking, by controlling information ﬂows, to manage public opinion; shaping perceptions through strategies of informative communications. The shift to PR is how the region is managing the liberalizing threat. It is Singapore that has managed this most eﬀectively, and that is why we will use it, here, as a case study.

SINGAPORE EMBRACES PR – FROM SINGAPORE GIRL TO SARS As a modern state, Singapore has been no stranger to public campaigns and global advertising. In 1973, a western advertising agency developed one of the most signiﬁcant Asian brand icons, Singapore International Airline’s (SIA) Singapore Girl (Chan 2000). The interventionist government prides itself on its social engineering, using social marketing to lead ‘changes ranging from massive economic restructuring to social leaps in literacy and standard of living’ (Wong and Yeoh 1996). But, from 1970, when the Institute of Public Relations of Singapore (IPRS) was founded as a nonproﬁt professional body, to the founding of the PR Academy in June 2002,7 the use to which the government has put PR, and the sophistication with which it has used public information campaigns, changed dramatically. As the media environment became more challenging and new technologies enabled the development of global news and information organizations, the Singapore government was forced to rethink how it delivered its messages to internal and external audiences. The communication media has been an important part of the government’s arsenal for national development since it became an independent nation in 1965. A comprehensive campaign in the 1970s using the law courts, ownership and inﬂuence saw the taming of the media and the ‘depluralization’ of Singapore (Quah et al. 1985, p. 61). The government justiﬁes these actions by arguing that it is the responsibility of the press ‘to forge consensus and not foment confrontation, facilitate nation-building and not fray the social fabric’ (Straits Times 12 November 1995). It has been encouraged to remain within a ‘virtuous cycle of consensus politics’, as the former Information and Arts Minister, George Yeo, warned Singaporeans and the press, suggesting they should not presume to talk as if ‘equal to those in authority’ (Seow 1995).

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As a result, the communications pattern of Singapore has been ‘largely a one-way ﬂow from the leadership to the masses’ (Kuo and Chen 1983, p. 102). The one-way model of communication was symbolized not only by the developmental media but also by the public education campaigns for which the Island State is so famous. Whether it be the early Keep Singapore Clean Campaign in 1968, or the ‘Make it Singapore’ Campaign at the end of 2003 – part of a S$15million to boost the city’s share of the business travel, meetings and incentives market (MEDIA 2003), the government’s statutory boards (83 autonomous government agencies set up by act of parliament), played the major role in the government’s post-independence development strategy, and their activities usually served multiple economic and political goals.8 This model of communication began to change, however, when Goh Chok Tong became Prime Minister in 1990, and Lee became Senior Minister. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the idea of consensus and participation was introduced into politics. The local print media became a valuable pressure valve allowing citizens to let oﬀ steam through their letters pages. There was also an increase in public consultation which the government deemed necessary to sell in its policies, from ‘Meet the People’ sessions for MPs, to feedback groups and public forums. The new model reﬂected the government’s understanding that, as it embraced the global economy in the 1980s, economic and social change had created a diﬀerent audience and a diﬀerent communication environment. This was underlined more than a decade later when Lee Hsien Loong was made Prime Minister. His father, Lee Kuan Yew, made it clear that his son had to persuade a new generation of Singaporeans who were better educated, well travelled, wellinformed and had ‘absorbed Western ideas and they also demand that they be heard, so he has to hear them’ (Goh Sui Noi 22 June 2004). Indeed, in one of the regular panegyrics on Lee that publications and broadcasters seem to feel obliged to put out, Time Asia published an interview with Lee, ‘The Man Who Saw It All’, that was a clear example of how Singapore’s leadership had absorbed the lessons of communicating in a complex environment (Elegant and Elliot 2006). Lee recounts how he dealt with a communist student sit-in in school, and compared it to the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown in China. Lee mentioned to China’s then Premier, Li Peng, the disaster of staging such a ‘grand show’ in front of the world’s media. To which Li Peng, apparently, answered: ‘We are completely inexperienced in these matters’. Discussing the possibility of continuing peaceful change in China, Time asked: Is that what it is all about then: Keep the people fed and watered and they won’t bother you? To which Lee answers: ‘With rural folk, yes. With the town folk, that’s a diﬀerent problem. As China moves to a majority urban society [where people have access to]

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satellite TV, Internet, cell phones, the town, have to be governed diﬀerently’ (Elliot et al. 2006, pp. 30–31). The Singapore government, then, could no longer ignore the importance of informing, persuading and inﬂuencing its stakeholders, and PR was the interface through which it worked to communicate with its citizens, build consensus and enhance understanding and support of its actions and policies: ‘the government understands that it needs to connect, consult and explain. Policies are not just disseminated downwards but increasingly a two-way communication process has to be adopted to ‘ensure better public acceptance’ (Lee Boon Yang 2004). Indeed, from the early 1990s, this was institutionalized into the fabric of government, as standards of communication improved in government and public bodies as part of the increased eﬀorts to communicate and educate the public, to engender understanding and support for the ruling PAP’s programmes and policies. Until the early 1990s, there were no formal PR oﬃcers in government bodies. In 1990, the Information Division of the MCI (Ministry of Communications and Information) and the Cultural Aﬀairs Division of MCD (Ministry of Community Development), together with other associated departments and statutory boards, united to form the Ministry of Information and the Arts. BG (NS) George Yeo was MITA’s acting Minister, and subsequently its ﬁrst minister. At that time, MITA began training information oﬃcers. These were seconded from MITA (Now MICA – Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts), to all 14 government ministries. In six, these oﬃcers are also press secretaries to the Ministers. In this way, a network was created enabling the government to be more eﬃcient in its crisis management and to handle with panache threats to Singapore posed by the SARS epidemic, ﬁnancial crisis and the current regional security issues. The Government of Singapore has consistently used brains rather than just brawn to get its messages across (George 2004). When the Auditor General turned up irregularities to the tune of $1 billion in an audit of the Ministry of Defence for the 1999/2000 ﬁnancial year report, it was buried in the inner pages of the media (Chang Ai-Lien 13 October 2001). In line with the best in strategies for a bad news day announcement, news of a hike in the local Goods and Services Tax (GST), in the May 2002 Budget, came amidst the most severe economic downturn in Singapore’s independent existence, but it was eﬀectively buried under the popular uproar surrounding the contiguous announcement of a police clampdown on the wearing of seat belts in the back of motor vehicles and the banning of the use in cars of the ubiquitous and popular mobile phone without a hands-free device. Likewise, August 2002’s media coverage of Newater, Singapore’s recycled answer to its dependence on neighbours Malaysia and Indonesia

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for the supply of water, was carefully timed to coincide with bilateral negotiations with Malaysia, in early September. More recently, the transfer of power mid-2004 between Goh Chok Tong, Singapore’s second prime minister, and Lee Hsien Loong, was another example of this sophistication, accompanied as it was by a cacophony of positive media messages, both about how smooth the transfer was, how well timed it was, and what a great job Goh and the PAP had done in bringing Singapore through some challenging economic times.9 Likewise, the suitability of Lee for the role was consistently reinforced through positive stories in the media.10 PR professionals have become involved in the policy planning process, and media skills training has become required, particularly for top bureaucrats. In fact policy makers, as a whole, have been encouraged to be better communicators – not just their PR people. Cabinet papers had to take account of the possible public repercussions and how best to communicate the message. By 2000, communication skills became an important part of the career development of senior members of the government, and milestone training programmes were included as part of career planning. The comments made by outgoing PM Goh in his ﬁnal National Day Message indicated these priorities as he admitted his worries about his abilities in front of the media, particularly television, when ﬁrst appointed to lead the government (Chua Mui Hong 13 August 2004). A key message from the new Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, was the commitment of the government to be more open and inclusive in its approach. ‘Singapore today is more vibrant, open, resilient and cohesive’, he said, adding, ‘it is in sync with the times, and ready for tomorrow’s challenges’ (Zuraidah 2004), and that Singaporeans ‘should feel free to express diverse views, pursue unconventional ideas, or simply be diﬀerent . . . have the conﬁdence to engage in robust debate, understand the problems being faced and oﬀer fresh solutions’ (Today 13 August 2004). The embrace of PR since the early 1990s had been, if not enthusiastic, at least rigorous. The government is coping with the challenging communication environment, and responds faster to changing expectations and the public demand for more information. Many statutory bodies have PR consultants on retainer, and all do media training with external consultants. There are still diﬃculties between PR companies and the government: Ministries feel PR companies misunderstand government needs, and the tendency to secrecy when security is perceived to be an issue is hard to change. As a result, these situations tend to be dealt with internally.11 Public campaigns, however, increasingly use PR consultants, and the government favours the large multinationals. Weber Shandwick, the largest PR company in the world and a part of the Interpublic Group, has been

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used by Singapore in various campaigns including STB’s Clean Toilets initiative and providing media training to Contact Singapore. Another early example was the use of Ogilvy & Mather Public Relations for Singapore’s environmental ‘Clean and Green’ campaign which began in 1990 (Lewis 1991). And in 2007 the STB, which had been using the Keene PR, was looking for agency backing for a campaign to attract more medical patients to its shores. This is part of the government-backed plan to maintain Singapore’s position as the leading Asian medical hub (Quainton 4 May 2007, p. 4). But, it is the Singapore government’s relationship with BursonMarsteller, one of the world’s leading PR consultancies, which has shown the most remarkable evolution of the PR image maintenance of Singapore PLC. Burson-Marsteller (BM), was given the high-proﬁle job of cleaning up the image of the Singapore Prison Service, which included not only a stand-out advertising campaign to promote the lot of ex-cons, but also putting together a non-proﬁt company with S$1 million to encourage small businesses and cooperatives to hire people with criminal records. This relationship culminated in the award winning SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) crisis management and recovery programme in 2002–2003. BM, which also worked on the Hong Kong government’s SARS campaign (O’Dwyer 2003), was awarded the IPRS’s 2004 Prism Excellence Award for Crisis Management, for its work in 2003.

SINGAPORE’S SARS CAMPAIGN This campaign deserves careful study. The SARS crisis came as a shock for Singapore, which had escaped the worst of the Asian ﬁnancial crisis of the late 1990s, but was slipping into severe economic recession. Singapore’s economy was hit hard in 2001, as economic slowdown in the United States, Japan and other key trading partners reduced demand for the city-state’s electronics exports. The economy contracted by an estimated 2.2 per cent in 2001 after growing by 9.9 per cent in 2000, and as many as 25 000 Singaporeans lost their jobs during the year (Freedom House 2002). BM’s campaign, which was successful in minimizing the impact of the crisis, employed many of the classic elements of an integrated public relations campaign, elements which can increasingly be seen in the government’s ongoing management of the regional security issues. First of all, it was important to get the fundamentals right and control the spread of the disease, at least in the perception of all target audiences. This was achieved amongst both the internal and external audiences by instituting various controls which clearly showed both the political will and

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technical ability to limit the risks of contamination. These included temperature checks at the workplace, and at immigration a special treatment centre was set up to isolate patients, and legislative powers were used to limit the spread and to ease public concerns. This was all carried out with unusual transparency, a fact government oﬃcials continued to reinforce, led by PM Goh, who underlined the fact while in Japan as the SARS epidemic began to take hold in East Asia in March 2003 (Straits Times 27 March 2003). Subsequently, the image of a city beset by ‘plague’ needed to be changed, and people had to be persuaded back onto the streets and into public places. The government’s ‘Step Out Singapore’ campaign which included street concerts and outdoor events helped to provide a more favourable backdrop for television pictures of Singapore than that of empty streets peopled only by a few scurrying ﬁgures in surgical masks. It was also important to involve key opinion leaders, particularly for international positioning: the international media (here, growing ties between global media organizations with their Asian headquarters in Singapore really paid oﬀ), international health organizations and international business leaders. The chairman of British bank Standard Chartered, Sir Patrick Gillam, was quoted as having no qualms about ﬂying into town as planned. Likewise, the fact that German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder did not alter plans to visit Singapore and other countries in Southeast Asia was covered in the media (Teo 2003). Also signiﬁcant was the World Health Organization’s approval: Singapore avoided being put on a ‘travel warning’ list alongside Toronto, Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Beijing. Mr Ali S. Khan of the World Health Organization praised the Republic’s eﬀorts in ﬁghting the spread of the disease: ‘I think the Singapore Government has done an excellent job and I really would not characterise it as draconian . . . I would say they have put in state-of-the-art public health measures, with complete transparency’ (Lee 2003). Singapore’s thanks for this conﬁdence was to sponsor a WHO conference on crisis management and disease in Singapore in September 2004, a chance for the government to burnish its image a little further. Statutory boards and government organizations all followed the script BM established. The Economic Development Board (EDB) and International Enterprise Singapore gave daily updates to all their clients. EDB chairman, Teo Ming Kian, even wrote to CEOs of major companies around the world to reassure them of Singapore’s determination to stamp out the virus. The American Chamber of Commerce was one international organization in Singapore that praised the government’s handling of the crisis. The chamber’s chairman Kristin Paulson said: ‘Singapore has taken a leadership role, globally, in the ﬁght against SARS and its approach is a model to be adopted by other countries’ (Teo 2003).

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Singapore’s decision to focus on the public health aspect of the problem and resist having a huge economic stimulus package also received a nod from The Asian Wall Street Journal in an editorial headlined ‘Sars bail-outs are a bad idea’ (AWSJ 26 March 2003, p. A7). The Journal admitted that it has sometimes been critical of Singapore’s degree of protection of civil liberties but lauded Singapore for being transparent and proactive in ﬁghting the spread of SARS. Clearly eﬀorts to ensure regular and positive coverage on the international stage proved fruitful. The BBC also signed up to admire Singapore’s campaign. It was not the electronic tagging of quarantine breakers which was highlighted, but rather a celebration of temperature checks at immigration and Singapore’s other eﬀorts to contain the virus. The British broadcaster’s ﬂagship 10 pm news bulletin devoted the entire ﬁrst part of one programme to what the Republic was doing to combat the SARS virus (Lee 2003). These articles were included in the SARS website put up by the Government to keep investors, visitors and Singaporeans up to date with its eﬀorts to combat the virus.12 The success of the campaign was such that a global award accompanied local and international recognition. In July 2004, Tan Tock Seng Hospital received a Golden World Award for excellence in public relations from the UK-based International Public Relations Association (IPRA) for its campaign to restore conﬁdence in the health system of Singapore during and after the SARS crisis.13 Indeed, there are suggestions that Singapore’s communication management around SARS serves as a guide for future infectious disease control measures: A close look at the history of public health campaigns, the collective culture of Singaporeans, their willingness to spend on advanced technologies and their strategy of dealing directly with the consequences of fear demonstrate that Singapore was as prepared and able to deal with this infectious disease as any country in the world. (Auyash 2005, p. 210)

Most important of all, the Singapore government proved a good learner. The PR techniques honed from integrated communication campaigns like that against SARS, have been brought to bear on what is probably Singapore’s greatest challenge since independence, the ‘war against terror’.

WINNING SINGAPORE’S WAR AGAINST TERROR The US ‘war against terror’, like the SARS crisis, did not come at a good time for Singapore. The Bali blasts in October 2002, that killed 202 people, the August 2003 suicide bombing at the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta that

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left 12 people dead, and the Bali attack of 2005, were even more threatening to Singapore’s economic well being and political stability. The economy was struggling with deep structural problems, and ill prepared for either the slowdown that came with the end of the tech stock bubble, or the regional impact of SARS. Where, a decade ago, Singapore was close behind China in attracting foreign investments to Asia, by the end of 2003, China received nearly seven times as much, and India was also an emerging competitive threat as Singapore’s share of global trade became either ‘stagnant or shrinking’ (Burton 12 August 2004). At the same time, the importance of the US to the Singapore economy and to the healthy functioning of its neighbours was undiminished. The US was the biggest foreign investor in Southeast Asia with direct investments of nearly US$90 billion, and its third largest export market valued at $US50 billion. And, international concern about the security situation in Southeast Asia was acute. In the middle of 2004, President of US-Asean Business Council Ernest Bower organized a trade mission to the US led by the region’s US ambassadors. The missions heard concerns raised at meetings in Washington and elsewhere in the US about terrorism in the region (Today 21 June 2004). At the same time, a new study by Australia’s Department of Foreign Aﬀairs and Trade, ‘Combating Terrorism in the Transport Sector – Economic Costs and Beneﬁts’ indicated that investors were already wary. The impact of a reduction in foreign investment would have been severe (Urquhart 2004). The media in the US, moreover, painted a bleak picture of the security situation in Southeast Asia. An article about global port security described Indonesian ports close to Singapore as falling well below new security codes: ‘In the Indonesian port of Batam, a 45-minute ferry ride from Singapore, almost anyone can walk in with a wave to unarmed guards. Motorcycle taxis roar throughout the port, and street vendors sell food from tiny stalls next to ships unloading cargo. The closest security guards are 400 yards away at the port’s main entrance’ (Clendenning 2004). And with bombs and terrorist training camps continuing to rend the reputation of some of its ASEAN partners, the region looked to be a risk too far for many investors.14 Singapore’s crisis management team swung into action. With security traditionally the government’s number one concern, it sought advice from global consultants, this time PR ﬁrm Ruder Finn, which was working closely with the Homeland Security Department in the US. Singapore, from the outset, showed that it was prepared to act swiftly and decisively when dealing with terror threats. In the wake of 9/11, the government cracked down on individuals alleged to be linked to ‘terrorist’ organizations, detaining 34 men without charge or trial under the Internal Security Act (ISA),

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with little or no complaint from formerly critical liberal western governments and media. Indeed, Rohan Gunaratne – terrorism specialist and coauthor of the Singapore government White Paper on Terrorism,15 gave the ISD credibility and the ISA now appears quite ‘legal’. Most of these alleged members of Jemaah Islamiyah (blamed for the blasts in Bali and at the Jakarta Marriot, and said to have been plotting to attack US facilities in Singapore post 9/11), disappeared into the air-conditioned ISD interrogation centre oﬀ Whitely Road; no legal niceties or complicated proceedings were needed to put suspects behind bars as there were in Indonesia, where Muslim Cleric Abu Bakar Bashir deﬁed prosecutors keen to link him to a series of attacks including the Bali Bombing (McBeth 2004). Dr Tony Tan, the Coordinating Minister for Security and Defence, outlined a new national anti-terrorism strategy in July 2004, and a plan to get the new National Security Coordination Secretariat and its two agencies up and running quickly.16 Singapore indicated that it was prepared to go above and beyond the call of duty, for example in the requirements of the international maritime security code to safeguard ships against terrorism and start tracking the movements of virtually every vessel in its waters. The code applies only to bigger ships, but Transport Minister Yeo Cheow Tong told an international conference for the maritime community that small vessels matter, too. He reminded them that the United States Navy warship, USS Cole, was attacked by two suicide bombers in a small boat in Yemen in October 2000 (Straits Times 5 August 2004). It was a similar story for airport security: speaking at the SATS Security Services conference, in April 2004, Second Minister for Transport Dr Balaji Sadasivan said Singapore was working for an audit from International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and would ‘work to have a standard even higher than what the audit requires’ (Tor Ching Li 2004a). The government left the US in no doubt where it stood in the ‘war against terror’, with statements of unequivocal support for, and close cooperation with the US administration. Dr Tan, by now a familiar face at the Pentagon in Washington where he regularly met US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, emphasized the need for close international coordination to break up global terrorist networks. Rumsfeld, in return, emphasized the value the US administration put on this cooperation: ‘It is a very close relationship, not just military to military, but a political and economic relationship, which we value greatly,’ he said (Mitton 2004). These close ties included allowing American warships to call in to Singapore for repairs and stopovers, and the same went for US military aircraft. The March 2001 completion of the deep-draft pier at Changi Naval Base, constructed entirely at Singapore’s expense, provided support for a continued US presence in the region.17 There was also a US communications

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and logistics unit based in Singapore to coordinate the stopovers. Singapore also sent police trainers, transport aircraft and other support equipment to Iraq to add its name to the list of allies occupying the country after the ouster of Saddam Hussein (Straits Times 22 April 2004). And when others – even close neighbours and fellow members of ASEAN – faltered, Singapore stood ﬁrm alongside its key ally. A statement from the Foreign Ministry emphasized its support for Washington’s position that coalition forces in Iraq not make any concessions to hostagetakers: ‘Succumbing to such threats will only increase the dangers, weaken the Iraqi government, and delay Iraq’s reintegration into the world economy’ (Straits Times 5 August 2004). The comments came soon after a decision by the Philippines to accelerate the planned departure of its troops from Iraq in order to secure the release of a hostage. Singapore’s government even went as far as to suggest, in April 2004, that US-led forces might be needed to help police the Malacca Straits, seen as a key target for terrorists given its strategic importance. While Dr Tan was at the Pentagon his colleague, Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean, told a meeting of marine and military experts that that there was not enough security in the 900km sea-lane to stop a terror attack there. Saying that the measures taken by Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia were not enough, he then painted the nightmare scenario of what would happen if such an attack took place, given that one-third of the world’s shipping and half of its oil pass through the Straits. The Rear-Admiral (NS) said: ‘the littoral states are obviously not the only stakeholders in the Malacca Straits. Other users have a strong economic, if not also strategic interest in ensuring that the Malacca Straits is kept open and safe . . . they could contribute resources needed for the ﬁght’ (Tor Ching Li 2004b). Malaysia quickly quashed the idea, but the tripartite security relationship between Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore was extended to include the ﬁve members of the Southeast Asian Defence Alliance, which agreed to increase training to prevent a terrorist attack in the Straits. The FPDA – signed in 1971 to protect the Malay Peninsula from invasion – comprised Australia, the UK, Malaysia, Singapore and New Zealand. The move was seen as an ‘alternative’ to US involvement, and plans to post US special forces in the strategic waterway remained on the backburner (Burton 8 June 2004). As US President George W. Bush announced a reshuﬄing of troops in Asia, Singapore announced new unilateral moves to deepen its defence ties with Washington. Dr Tony Tan, speaking at a press conference at the Istana Palace in August 2004, said that Singapore was negotiating a ‘strategic security framework’ with the United States and that Singapore supports the presence of the US military in the region because it adds an element

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of stability in Southeast Asia (Agence France Presse 17 August 2004). Singapore also worked hard to have its voice heard on the international stage. It had the only Asian member of the UN anti-terror team, appointed in April 2004 (Andrew 12 April 2004). Singapore also secured its place as the chosen venue for the annual security conference of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). The ‘Shangri-La Dialogue’, named after the hotel in which it had been held was, at the time, the only intergovernmental forum in Asia focusing on defence and security-related topics (Boey 2004c). Key opinion leaders were also primed to take Singapore’s part. Rohan Gunaratne, from his position in Singapore as Associate Professor at IDSS (Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University) and Head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Research in Singapore, speaking in April 2004 at an international security conference, said that the Singapore government had been eﬀective at neutralizing local terror groups and reducing the terrorist threat in stark contrast to the 100-fold increase in worldwide terrorist threat since Saddam’s overthrow, and in Indonesia, in particular, where he suggested JI posed a ‘signiﬁcant threat’ (Today 15 April 2004). Despite its earlier record in the mid-1990’s as a proponent of Asian values, all such arguments were dropped in the post 9/11 environment. Singapore was determined to be seen as secular if not western. The government made a show of embracing a liberal reform process through accepting the advice of parliamentary committees such as that which considered ‘Remaking Singapore’. A country that employs gays in the government and sanctions dancing on bar tops surely is a friend of the liberal west, if not almost liberal itself (The Guardian 18 April 2004). Singapore even began a campaign to become the regional centre for NGOs. While, strictly speaking, NGOs are not new to Singapore, independent organizations had not been welcome, and painted by the senior Lee as the ‘fads of contemporary activists who copy Western ideas, with little impact or relevance on the business of Singapore and its development’ (Straits Times 16 October 2001). But, as security concerns forced organizations like Helen Keller International to leave their regional home in Indonesia, Singapore oﬀered itself as a new regional base (Tan 2004). And, just in case the international media should recall the capricious legalism of the 1990s, a new softly, softly approach formed an important part of Singapore’s image management. Where once Singapore would have made headlines in the West for lambasting foreign media reports it did not like, and forcing editors to run the government’s line or ﬁnd their distribution in Singapore threatened and their staﬀ in the country’s tough libel courts, a more subtle approach was adopted for fear of alienating its new

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allies. When old sparring partner the Far Eastern Economic Review ran an article headlined ‘Singapore – Fiscal Predator’ (1 July 2004), which ‘charged that Singapore’s hidden ﬁscal surpluses enriched the state but impoverished the private sector’, despite the government’s extreme sensitivity to criticism, the only censure it drew was a letter to the editor despite having been what the DPM’s Press Secretary described as disingenuous (Straits Times 13 May 2004). And should the international media not stay on message, there were Singapore’s familiar defamation laws to hand to remind, as The Economist discovered in September 2004 (Soh 2004b). The right messages were also placed in the local media, not only keeping account of its security campaign, but of the continued economic advantages of investing in the island state.18 Should Singaporeans feel that the government had been too successful in dealing with terrorism, the work continued through the local media to maintain Fortress Singapore, justifying the position of the ruling PAP, and ensuring the political legitimacy of its rule. From Tony Tan’s warning of the threat to small densely populated countries such as Singapore from rogue scientists who use their knowledge to create deadly biological agents (Boey 2004a), seeking Interpol’s help to deal with cyber terrorists (Ho Ka Wei and Nadarajan 2003), or the, by now familiar, refrain warning of JI plots (Straits Times 5 August 2004), the excuse to maintain tight controls at home remained ﬁrm. Where the legal requirements did not exist to ensure that the perimeter and ﬁrewalls were well buttressed, they were quickly introduced. The changes to the Amendments to the Computer Misuse Act, seen by critics as the cyberspace equivalent of the Internal Security Act, showed that the government was swift to arm itself with the necessary weapons to maintain national security and essential services, ‘further tightening of the city state’s control over the Internet’ (Burton 2003). In addition, what should be highlighted is that, should libertarian voices complain, legal experts were ready to explain that the authorities in Singapore are not alone in having such powers, and pointed out that even Britain and the United States have such provisions in their laws. Associate Professor Daniel Seng, director of research at the Singapore Academy of Law and a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore’s Law Faculty, said: ‘The USA Patriot Act is even wider in its reach, in some respects: It even has broad-ranging powers for surveillance with little, if any, focus on terrorism and other criminal activities that have an impact on national security’ (Straits Times 14 November 2004). When M.M. Lee suggested Singapore was in trouble if the US did not deal with the jihadists in the Middle East who, if successful in Iraq, he suggested would look to ‘ﬁx’ Southeast Asia, he also made it clear that while he embraced his American ally, America’s values were not for Singapore,

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making it very diﬃcult to govern a Singapore in the middle of Southeast Asia: ‘we intend to stand our ground with the Chinese and with our bigger neighbours. We are small, we are vulnerable, we can be destroyed. If we don’t stand our ground, they’ll just roll over us’ (Elliot et al. 2006, p. 32). Singapore’s strategy did not always work, as was seen by the ‘unprecedented rebuke’ the government received from the IMF and the World Bank for the ‘crackdown’ that marked part of the security measures implemented by Singapore for the September 2006 IMF/World Bank meeting, to try and avoid the violent protests that took place at the World Trade Organization meeting in Hong Kong in 2005 (Burton and Donnan 2006). The international groups said Singapore had violated the terms of its agreement to host the event, by blocking the entry of 19 representatives who, allegedly, posed a security threat. World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz described the action as ‘authoritarian’ (BBC 15 September, 2006). The word was conveniently left out of coverage in the local Singapore media (Straits Times 15 September 2006). Singapore defended its positions saying that tough security measures were necessary citing the threat of terrorist attacks in Southeast Asia, and a need to ban protests as allowing foreign protests while not allowing local ones would cause political problems for the government. However, in line with its control policies, it did provide an oﬃcial site for protest, a 14 by 8 metre space within the conference centre, something that did not seem to impress the NGOs (Channel News Asia 2006). It was, however, good enough for the Bush administration. There is no doubt, the warmth and goodwill with which Singapore has been received by the US is indicative of the success of this huge PR campaign on security (Chua Mui Hong 2004a). The ﬁnal US seal of approval on Singapore’s tough stance on terrorism was the decision by the Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, to attend Singapore’s annual National Day reception in Washington, a ﬁrst for a cabinet-level US oﬃcial (Far Eastern Economic Review 19 August 2004).

CONCLUSION As the mass communication media moves to the centre of daily life, its globalization is creating a complex communications environment. The technology that makes this possible also allows the creation of electronic networks that oﬀer alternative methods of mobilization and accurate targeting, politicians around the world are left to compete with everything from soap powders to banks to get their messages to the consumer. It is a challenge they are meeting, increasingly, with the help of PR professionals.

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These are the image makers who help market ideas in a mediated world where the celebriﬁcation of politics threatens to exchange discussion of policy and political choice for designer labels and branded slogans; they have ‘stolen our dreams and returned them to us as privileged illusions’ (Stauber and Rampton 1995, p. 206). To suggest that communications campaigns in South East Asia can ‘educate and empower, level the playing ﬁeld, and bring the nation to a state of equilibrium whereby all people have the opportunity to develop the fullest potential’ (Taylor and Kent 2002, p. 22), is something that needs more careful situational analysis. Instead of truly creating something new, diﬀerentiated and exciting, we instead slip into a post-modern, illusory world where everything becomes advocacy in a managed reality: such an ‘epistemological Hobbesianism makes doublethink and doublespeak respectable’ (Jackall and Hirota 2000, p. 27). The various elements of the perception industries have become a powerful source of inﬂuence and information. They are a useful tool for the powerful as they attempt to inﬂuence their constituents. And, while the increasingly cynical modern audience does play an important role, putting their own interpretation on what they receive (Keane 1991, p. 38), it is equally clear that the techniques being used by the persuaders are both increasingly sophisticated and, often, insidious (The Economist 2 May 2002). The Singapore government, with its long experience of public campaigns is leading the way in the region, not only with its media policies, but in its sophisticated use of PR. As the number and frequency of its campaigns dropped and the government of Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong shifted its policy from its previous top-down approach to a more participatory style, persuasion has taken a diﬀerent and more subtle form enhanced by the perception industry process, as is evident from the way the government has dealt with recent challenges to Singapore stability and prosperity. Integrated public relations campaigns have proved more valuable in defending Singapore’s image in the face of threats like disease and terror, than its usual practice of berating Western governments for decadence and decay. To be voted the ‘safest city in the world’ (Conde Naste Traveller 2004), as another bomb exploded at the Australian embassy in Jakarta, can only reinforce the success of its strategy. The rewards are obvious, from the Congressional salutes and US Administration photo opportunities, to the bilateral Free Trade Agreement, a concrete sign of Singapore’s successful rehabilitation. Indeed, in the post 9/11 world, the government has found growing Western admiration rather than the brickbats of the liberalizing 1990s, in its clampdown on dissent. The attacks on the US and the global ﬁnancial

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fallout from both the telecommunications stock price meltdown and the Enron-inspired corporate scandals have tested the commitment of even the strongest proponents of globalization. With many in the West now leery of its ramiﬁcations, as the Singapore authorities continued their strident eﬀorts to control change and counter opposition, they found themselves back in the fold amongst their former Cold War allies, with the noise from liberal governments greatly reduced. This provides further evidence that the ‘war on terror’ serves merely to reinforce the garrison-state mentality, providing a ﬁllip to authoritarianism and in conﬂict with the global, open media policies of the 1990s. Singapore’s charm oﬀensive is symbolic of the growth in the role PR is playing in politics in Asia. While 9/11 has helped to silence critics internally and externally, Singapore’s government has displayed sophisticated communication skills and an ability to manage perceptions in face of challenges from SARS to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism – eﬀectively neutralizing critics as well as dissuading external agencies or political forces from supporting local political/civil society movements. A ‘battle for the hearts and minds of Singaporeans’ is now being fought beyond its shores.19 The PAP is not the only member of the regional political elites with a view to protecting its image. As we have seen in this chapter and in earlier case studies, Southeast Asia’s political elites are increasingly familiar with the use of PR. A close follower of Singapore’s control policy, Thailand’s deposed prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, employed global PR independent Edelman, as he tried to organize his return to his country. The Thai aﬃliate of Edelman, Spindler & Associates (S&A), terminated links with the global PR company in early 2007, after it emerged Edelman had been advising Thaksin. The aﬃliate said representing Edelman would mean it would have to act against Thailand’s best interests, something it was not prepared to do (PRWeek 2 February 2007). Spinning the media in Thailand is nothing new. The monarchy has proved itself surprisingly eﬀective at the practice for such a traditionalist institution, from the early days when Mongkut and Chulalongkorn mastered the symbols of modernity and used the nascent media to build their dynasty in the face of challenges from the European colonialists and, internally, potential usurpers. This approach was institutionalized by Chulalongkorn’s heir, Vajiravudh as he ‘popularized his concept of the state in the media and the arts’ (Handley 2006, p. 36). But it was the current King who, with his advisers, has mastered the art as they built the image of the monarchy through ritual imagery. They have restored its centrality to the state after a shaky start as a military controlled ﬁgurehead, by creating the King in the image of the traditional dhammaraja, the wise Buddhist ruler able to restore balance. In order to show his

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serenity and suﬀering, vital elements of the selﬂess ruler, ‘canny palace advisers made sure no one published a photograph, or even a drawing of King Bhumibol smiling’ (Handley 2006, p. 7). Likewise, the decision by the leaders of the 2006 military coup to woo foreign journalists, concerned about the role the international media had in portraying Thailand to its external investor audience, gave a nod to a relatively recent problem faced by Thaksin when he was prime minister. The world’s largest pension fund, CALPERS, withdrew its investments in Thailand in 2002, after a US State Department human rights report criticized Thailand. This marked not only a clear recognition of the importance of image by the military leaders, but also an understanding that to use traditional methods of media control were more likely to create the condition they were concerned about, and make Thailand a pariah to the international investment community. Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines have also all displayed a growing understanding that the centrality of the media in their societies and the increasing complexity of the communications environment do provide challenges to their rule, but also oﬀers them unique opportunities to inﬂuence their stakeholders. In addition, by using PR rather than merely relying on their traditional control strategies to ensure their messages are carried in the media, they are less likely to throw sand in the face of their more liberal US ally, when such irritations can threaten the protection and ﬁnance that relationship oﬀers. The Singapore way has not remained unchallenged – even in Asia there are those who see the strategy for what it is. The liberal enclave that is the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club (HKFCC), joined forces with global NGO, Amnesty International, and feted the stand made by The Review in taking on Lee Kuan Yew and his son Lee Hsien Loong in the Singapore courts. The Review was banned in Singapore, but Editor Hugo Restall was awarded ﬁrst place in the magazine category of the Club’s annual Human Rights Press Awards (The Wall Street Journal 27 March 2007). Despite these occasional hiccoughs, with a keen understanding of the mass communication media as both a commercial animal and a political tool, the Singapore government has ensured that it remains an eﬀective gatekeeper, barring much that it considers threatening to its enterprise association and corporatist approach to development. It has become less brutal stylistically. Indeed, many would suggest it has shown remarkable sophistication in maintaining its brand value. The PAP has changed its image to accommodate media fashion without relinquishing control. It assumes a media-friendly style, but the politically illiberal message remains the same.

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As this case study has shown, the government has been successful in not only shoring up Fortress Singapore in the eyes of its internal audience, but managing to assuage eﬀectively the concerns of its external allies in the ‘war against terror’, despite eﬀorts by the international media to paint an increasingly gloomy picture of the security situation in Southeast Asia. It has put in place an integrated public relations campaign that has helped Singapore to reclaim its position as ‘Guardian of the East’ and, as such, it acts as a role model for regional media development to sustain the illiberal character of regional political development, even though, as this book will now discuss, new developments in ICT mean a continuing challenge to their position.

NOTES 1. 2.

3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Stewart Ewen quoted in ‘Public Relations and the Lobbying Industry’, Corporate Watch UK, April 2003. Omnicom, which includes Fleishman-Hillard, Ketchum, Porter-Novelli, Weinstock and Gavin Anderson, made almost US$162 million in the third quarter of 2005, up 11 per cent year-on-year (http://ld.livedelivery.com/F/2260067/_OC235095946.pdf). The Interpublic Group, which includes Golin-Harris and Weber-Shandwick Worldwide made US$1.4 billion for the same period (http://investors.interpublic.com/phoenix. zhtml?c=87867&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=780754&highlight), and WPP Group, which includes Burson-Marsteller, Hill and Knowlton and Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide reported revenue of more than 1.3 billion sterling in the third quarter of 2005, up 26 per cent year-on-year (http://www.wppinvestor.com/performance/pdf/2005_q3_press_ release.pdf). See PRWeek 19 September 2005. A government like that in the UK employs about 3200 press oﬃcers. In Whitehall departments there are 1815 press oﬃcers and public relations staﬀ. A further 1444 were employed by 200 quangos and agencies funded by taxpayers. In 2006, the government defended a huge increase in press oﬃcers in the previous decade, blaming the 24/7 news culture and the phenomenal growth in the Internet for the need to employ more staﬀ to explain and market its policies (Hencke 2006). http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=DCI_Group. Centre for Media and Democracy: Wexler and Walker. http://www.mita.gov.sg/pressroom/press_020628.html. See http://www1.moe.edu.sg/ne/Archives/Episodes%20from%20the%20Singapore% 20Story/1st_Keep_Clean/ﬁrst_Spore_Clean.htm) and other examples such as the Courtesy Campaign (http://www.singaporekindness.org.sg/courtesy/c_history.htm), Speak Mandarin Campaign (http://mandarin.org.sg/smc/home.php), Romancing Singapore Campaign (http://www.romancingsingapore.com/home/main.asp). For example, Soh (2004a), Paulo (2004, p.1), Straits Times (12 August 2004). See Te Hwee Nak (2004a, pp. 1–2), and Tor Ching Li (2004c). Information gathered from conﬁdential interviews with Singapore government oﬃcials conducted by the writer. www.sars.gov.sg. See http://www.ipra.org/services/200%20Winners%20list%20for%20press%20release. pdf. See examples such as Associated Press (23 August 2004, 26 August 2004, and 24 September 2004, p. 3) and Bangkok Post (13 October 2004, p. 1).

270 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

The media and political change in Southeast Asia See White Paper, ‘The Jemaah Islamiyah Arrests and The Threat of Terrorism’, published January 2003. See http://www.pmo.gov.sg/NSCS/FightAgainstTerror.pdf. See globalsecurity.org. For example see Chuang Peck Ming (2004) and Aggarwal (2004). Singapore’s Trade Minister, Brig. Gen. George Yeo (2001).

10. Subverting the media: piracy, surveillance and the battle for control in Southeast Asia INTRODUCTION Despite the sophisticated media strategies of Southeast Asia’s illiberal elites, with information racing round the world at ‘netspeed’ (Friedman 2000, p. 218), their eﬀorts to deﬁne their social institutions, their relationship to these institutions as well as their relationship with the global economy, continues to be a challenge. With the Information Superhighway central to the global economy, market economies have to be connected. Governments across the region have tried to put the Internet to use in developing their economies, as falling costs mean access has become a reality for many in the region’s more developed areas (Minges 2001). As a result of its growing importance, no study of the role of the media in political change in Southeast Asia is complete without some consideration of this new medium and the latest developments in its use. The emergence of the Internet as an inﬂuential medium has concentrated the minds of Asia’s elites, and they have moved to adapt to the new media mainly in terms of censorship and control, and to project the administrative state into hyper space. As regional instability has risen post 9/11, and the use of the Internet develops, it is a struggle that requires constant adjustment to an irrevocable process of change. As the global economy has moved online, governments in the region continue to face a global ‘Catch 22’. There is a general understanding that they need to open up their economies, indeed, establish virtual connections, to have any chance of partaking in the ﬁnancial beneﬁts of the global information economy. Yet, in so doing, they ﬁnd themselves seemingly helpless in the face of the forces of change that are riding roughshod over their borders, with serious social and political ramiﬁcations. For, while the information technology boom is seen to have done wonders in industrialized economies, boosting productivity, growth and job creation, the Internet’s impact is, clearly, not limited to the economic sphere. 271

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The Internet volatizes established business and political models as the power of information and networks is harnessed by individuals keen to do everything from chat to new friends to exchange the latest in explosives technology. And, despite the obvious unequal distribution, falling costs mean that communications technology is generally accessible. The collision of computing, always-on communications and physical mobility undermines traditional communities as it creates new ones, particularly where it ‘articulates a mood of dissent’ (Sorlin 1994, pp. 33–5). Information and communications technology (ICT) is just as happy enabling people power in the Philippines and providing the wherewithal for rise of techno-terrorism as it is at reinforcing the ‘surveillance state’ (Jones and Smith 2002), and enabling new areas in the erosion of privacy with the encroachment of government and commercial interests. Asia, as a whole, is witnessing the most signiﬁcant increase in ICT penetration compared to any other region in the world, at any other time. A late developer in the communications infrastructure world, Asia has often been able to make a competitive leap ahead of more developed countries as it built up its telecommunications industry using key learnings to choose cutting edge technology. Research by the Economist Intelligence Unit suggests that a number of Asian governments have helped push digital development as part of the eﬀorts to remain globally competitive, singling Singapore out as a particular example, and ranking the country sixth out of 100 in e-readiness. Its neighbours do not do as well, with Malaysia at number 36, Thailand 49, Philippines 54 and Indonesia 67 (EIU 2007). As we have already seen, countries like Singapore became leaders in the broadband space as rapid economic growth and a continually improving regulatory environment facilitated greater investment. Growth in AsiaPaciﬁc is set to put it at the centre of the industry, with 46 per cent of the 3.7bn total global telecoms subscriptions coming from Asia-Paciﬁc at year end 2005 while by 2010, around 2.35bn of the global 5.63bn subscriptions will come from the region.1 In Southeast Asia, Singapore was the ﬁrst country in the world to deploy digital subscriber lines (DSL) commercially when SingTel launched its service in November 1997. The government launched the ‘Singapore ONE’ initiative, a collaborative eﬀort between the government and industry to implement a nationwide broadband network and to provide multimedia services to the Singaporean population in 1996. Ten years later, the country had become a serious player in the virtual space, with more than 65 per cent of Internet households having broadband access. It has positioned itself well for the development and adoption of a full range of triple play and Next Generation (NGN) services.

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In Malaysia, eﬀorts by the government at encouraging the wider community to embrace technology had met with limited success. The level of interest in broadband Internet was low and broadband household penetration was less than 8 per cent in early 2006. Compared with many of its Asian neighbours, the Philippines has also been moving slowly on the adoption of Internet. Of the estimated 6 per cent of the population who are Internet users, only a small fraction (probably around 5 per cent) used a broadband connection to go online. Broadband household penetration was an insigniﬁcant 0.5 per cent. Whilst Internet had been popular in Thailand for some years (user penetration of around 14 per cent), broadband access was languishing. Nevertheless, in the 2004/05 period, the number of broadband subscribers suddenly increased more than tenfold. By end-2005, Indonesia had an estimated 16 million Internet users. This, however, represented only about 8 per cent of the population. Broadband services were still in their infancy, with less than 150 000, mainly DSL, subscribers.2 Between 2006 and 2010, however, the number of broadband-enabled SMBs in Southeast Asia (SEA) was projected to increase by over 850 000. Emerging countries such as Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam would fuel this growth, with adoption by small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in these countries comprising over 55 per cent of overall broadband SMBs in the region. Spending on broadband by these SMBs was expected to exceed US$2 billion by 2010, with Indonesia contributing the lion’s share of spending (Hoskins 2006). A record 12.5 million new digital set-top boxes were installed in Asia in 2006, with net new digital subscriptions expected to peak at 30 million by 2010. Regional pay-TV penetration was expected to top 50 per cent of Asian households after 2011, and 55 per cent by 2015, while regional broadband household penetration was predicted to scale up to more than 30 per cent by 2015 in ASEAN (Leahy 2007). As a result of the new online reality, by 2006, Internet nations were emerging across the region: virtual communities of interest which recognized neither traditional geographic borders, nor those of class, tribe or family. If the traditional global media companies were perceived by the established regimes in Southeast Asia as a challenge to their authority, as information poured across porous national borders, the increasingly unfettered access to ICT has seen national governments seemingly aligned with the global media giants, both trying to protect their threatened interests. The latest developments online were not lost on the elites in the region, fully versed as they were on the importance of information technology in nation building and political persuasion. They sought to reclaim the media

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space, the new as well as the established, in an attempt to control the changes sweeping through their societies. Governments and other inﬂuential elites have long been keen to control technologies such as the Internet through law and regulation, just as wrangling over data protection has been ongoing since the birth of information technology (IT). Their success in taming ‘the information beast’ tended to be limited and constrained both by technological ability (often a reﬂection of ﬁnancial as well as intellectual power), and by the political culture in which the intrusions take place. The debate over individual privacy, while not new, was heightened, underlining diﬃculties such as problems of deﬁnition, as well as diﬀerent positions vis à vis the relationship between the state and the individual. After the attack on the World Trade Center in September 2001, however, this debate took place against a changing political environment, in which a number of trends were identiﬁable. These trends included increased communications surveillance and search and seizure powers; weakening of data protection regimes; increased data sharing; and increased proﬁling and identiﬁcation. While none of these policies were new, the speed with which many of them gained acceptance, and in many cases were pushed through to law, was notable (Privacy International 2002). Indeed, in the wake of 9/11, control policies toward the Internet quickly ‘gained acceptance and, in many cases, become law’ (Gomez 2004, p. 2). Thus, the Internet could be added to the list of ‘collateral damage’ caused by the general increased focus on security, as the anti-terrorism drive threatens virtual freedoms worldwide. RSF said in 2002 that illiberal governments used the pretext of the ‘war on terror’ to curb basic freedoms or crack down on their domestic opponents using the Internet, leading, it claimed, to an ‘unprecedented abuse’ of individual rights and freedoms (RSF 2002b). Despite the economic advantages, the perceived political implications of embracing the Information Age clearly remained of concern to governments in the region. Even Singapore, a model for control and constraint, was vocal about losing its grip in the face of the latest technological developments, in particular, the growth of the Internet. The leadership of the indomitable People’s Action Party (PAP), exclaimed that its sway over the communication media was slipping (Kuo and Peng 2000, p. 420). This chapter, then, will assess the implications of the impact of the latest developments in the Information Age and its attendant communications technology on Southeast Asia, as it provides space for local strategies. It will consider how the same technology networks terrorist and democratic movements, and how the ‘war on terrorism’ following the attacks of 11 September, 2001, is giving governments in the region an excuse to restrict

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free expression and political dissent on the Internet. Indeed, despite the threat posed by the Internet to the control strategies of Southeast Asia’s political elite, the surveillance state has not abandoned its surveillance role. The chapter will ask whether or not the citizens of Southeast Asia, like many around the world, are prepared to exchange their democratic rights and freedoms for safety and security, while a frustrated opposition is pushed towards militant fundamentalists, enabled by the new technologies of communication? It will examine whether or not the latest democratizing trends attributed to ICT developments are really changing the mass media, and if this oﬀers an insurmountable challenge for local political elites keen to maintain their control strategies? Or are those seeking to curb the ﬂow of digital traﬃc likely to ﬁnd growing support both internally, from the quiet majority seeking protection, and externally, from the West? Despite improved surveillance techniques, the centrality of the globalized communications media in everyday life and the fact that the new media enables those less constrained by the precedents of tradition to challenge established forms of power and authority – commercial as well as political – seem to compound the region’s security dilemmas. All the while the media, in particular the new media, are viewed by the local elites as carrying change to the heart of their societies.

SUBVERTING THE MEDIA SPACE As we have seen in the previous chapter, even in Singapore, Southeast Asia’s model of sophisticated media control, the Internet provided additional and less controllable space for political expression not necessarily sanctioned by the government. While the established local media knew their place, and many international media companies were prepared to bow to political pressure in order to protect distribution, by 2006, globalization and rapid progress in mass communications technologies, like the Internet, was providing ‘opportunities for communication among civil society groups on a scale and in a way which had not been possible before’ (Ooi 2000, p. 192). As regimes were forced to be more open, and journalists to be more risqué, the disintermediation of the communications media due to ICT had ‘changed the playing ﬁelds – or at least the game’ (The Economist 26 February 2005, p. 22). As we have seen in the preceding chapters, satellite ﬂow of information across the region had broken down isolation, exposed the region to extremes of behaviour with the Internet oﬀering everything from pornography to fundamentalism, and created a sense of identity or belonging in what was a profound impact as multiple TV channels provided

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a window into cultures that were dramatically diﬀerent, and where ‘inadvertent imagery . . . can induce a certain restlessness’ (ibid., p. 21). As use of the Internet has grown and metamorphosed, its political use in Singapore developed. By the 2006 election, when the PAP saw its percentage of the vote fall from 75.3 in 2001 to 66.6, blogs, vlogs and podcasts, the medium of citizen journalism, provided Singapore’s citizens with alternative political content, as the local media ‘lost its privileged position as the sole source for information’ (Gomez 2006b, p. 28). Singapore is not alone in struggling with the growing volume of opposition expressed in the online space. This is a global phenomenon which has the full attention of Southeast Asia. From corporate blogs attacking Fortune 500 companies (Clark 2006), to its use by Islamists to show executions, recruit new supporters and share resources,3 the Internet had become a powerful propaganda tool, allowing groups to project their image in a challenge to the established elites, providing a stage on which the expression of dissatisfaction and dissent could run free and a space where the organization of opposition could happen ‘virtually unhindered’ (Huband 2004). And there were more local lessons of what could be achieved through ICT. In China, moves to restrict foreign TV broadcasts only led to more Chinese watching them illegally thanks to a thriving black market for pirated satellite technology (Murphy 2002, pp. 28–9). And, despite China maintaining one of the most unbending policies of media censorship and control, the Falun Gong movement had managed to hack into satellites broadcasting into the country (Financial Times 22 November 2004). Southeast Asia had an early place in the history of the subversive use of ICT. Beginning with 23-year-old Filipino student, Onel de Guzman, who sent one of the ﬁrst global computer viruses, the ‘Love Bug’, Asia had been a source of cybercrime. This was not always seen by the governments as something to be ashamed of. The Manila Standard captured the national mood around de Guzman’s creation with the headline ‘Yes, the Filipino can!’, describing Guzman as the country’s ﬁrst ‘world-class hacker’ (Mydans 2000). This nationalistic element developed, and the attacks often became more coordinated. In 2005, Asian hackers targeted US and UK businesses and government departments. Nearly 300 government departments and businesses vital to British infrastructure were subjected to an attack for several months. The hackers used so-called Trojan Horse viruses, which are hidden inside attachments to emails. These emails have a subject line, which makes them look like normal correspondence. The emails appear to come from people known to the recipient. Once the email attachment is opened, the Trojan enables a hacker to take control of the recipient’s PC. In 2005, the

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UK’s Hi-Tech Crime Unit was working with the authorities in a number of Asian countries to identify and shutdown the Internet addresses the attacks were coming from (BBC 16 June 2005). And these attacks were sometimes directed intra-regionally. In 2005, hundreds of Malaysian websites were targeted by hackers during a row with Indonesia over a longstanding dispute over the oil- and gas-rich area in the Ambalat region of the Sulawesi Sea. At least 256 Malaysian websites were broken into with, supposedly, Indonesian hackers leaving what Malaysia’s Computer Emergency Response Team, or MYCert, which monitors Internet security, said were messages of ‘hatred or dissatisfaction against the government of Malaysia and its ministers’ (Malaysia Today 2005). What was increasingly clear was that the Internet and other ICT developments were providing dissenting voices in Southeast Asia, whether bent on perﬁdy or politics, with an additional weapon in their armoury of opposition. With the increased focus on Muslim fundamentalism and terrorists in the region, it was also clear that ICT oﬀered radical groups new ways of inﬂuencing and persuading those who might oﬀer support and resources. The Internet provided not only a powerful networking tool, but a unique way for these groups to construct a new reality by putting their own spin on events, as they sought converts to their cause. As Southeast Asia’s political elites looked to create an alliance with the US-led, western governments, this had become a further source of concern as Southeast Asia’s governments considered their security dilemma.

THE USE OF ICT BY RADICAL GROUPS Clearly there have been links between al-Qaeda and the region. Intelligence sources insist that Osama bin Laden ﬁrst focused on Southeast Asia in 1988, when he sent his brother-in-law Mohammed Jamal Khalifa to set up a ﬁnancial network in the region. Then starting in early 1994, several cells of expert terrorists, mainly believed to be Arab Afghans, were established in the Philippines, from where al-Qaeda was able to extend its inﬂuence to Malaysia and Indonesia. The inﬂuence can be seen through the interlinked ideologies of al-Qaeda and al Jemaah al Islamiyah (JI), advocating global and local jihad campaigns that have ‘profoundly transformed the region’s threat landscape’ (Gunaratna 2005). Part of this interlinkage has involved the absorption of ideas from radical groups such as al-Qaeda, relayed through the Internet. As research by Bräuchler (2003) and Lim (2003a, b; 2004) on the use of the Internet by radicals in Indonesia shows, even where there is limited distribution of ICT, warnet (Internet cafes), mediators such as imams in local mosques, and

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more generally available ICT like videos and copier machines, have allowed subversive information to be circulated broadly among the population (Lim 2003a, b). In the internecine conﬂict in the Moluccas, the Internet provided means for the parties involved to present their views of the conﬂict and, at the same time, construct imagined communities and identities. The Moluccan Christians have been primarily represented by the Crisis Center of the Diocese Ambon (CCDA, Catholic) and Masariku Network (Protestant) providing information through a mailing list (http://groups.yahoo.com/ group/masariku), the Muslims by the FKAWJ (an Indonesian organization formed by a group of hardline Muslim leaders in early 1998 to promote ‘true Islamic values’) and its web sites and mailing lists including those dedicated to the Laskar Jihad (http://www.laskarjihad.or.id/, until October 2002). Both parties, the Christians and the Muslims, have claimed the Internet was the only means to counterbalance one-sided reporting in the national (Muslim-dominated) or international (Christian-dominated) media, and in their search for help and support they further inﬂuenced the conﬂict as cyberspace became ‘the extension for the identity politics of the religiously oriented Moluccan cyberactors’ (Bräuchler 2004). The Internet, thus, became a major technological factor in not only forming new identities but allowing communities to access global sources of information while interpreting them in local contexts through local sources. The local online communities in Indonesia interacted with external agencies, traditional media, Internet or other such as Jihadi movements in the Middle East, which allowed them to ‘develop or carry plausible stories of how and why particular social conditions have come to pass’ (Lim 2004). Lim also noted that not only was there a lot more media freedom during this early post-Suharto period, ensuring an increase in local content, but also traditional media felt able to freely cite any information from the Internet, including material about which the validity could not be veriﬁed. In the case of the anti-US movement, the Republika newspaper published a story based on an email with the headline ‘4,000 Israeli absent on the day of WTC attack’ (ibid.). Following 9/11, and fed by the US invasion of Afghanistan, Islamic forums like Da’arut Tauhid, Laskar Jihad, Islam-Net (Isnet) and Hidayatullah were able not only to encourage a local critical response to Israel and the US, but also inspired the Indonesian anti-globalization movement. This practice was not limited to Southeast Asia. Indeed, experts at The Norwegian Defence Research Institute, which has one of Europe’s leading teams of researchers into the growing phenomenon known as ‘online Jihadism’ or al-Qaeda-inspired extremism on the Internet, suggest

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governments have been slow to wake up to the enormous potential for jihadists to recruit over the Internet, but it is now believed that the Internet has become one of the ‘prime means of radicalization and recruitment’ (Gardner 2006). Working with the US, in particular, to stop cybercrime has become a political issue. Singapore was the ﬁrst Southeast Asian nation to establish a cybercrime unit. SingCERT was established in 1997, and was one of the founding members of the Asia Paciﬁc CERT (APCERT) grouping, as well as working with the CERTs of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as part of plans that were agreed by ASEAN in 2003 (Reuters 19 September 2003). In 2006, Malaysia announced an initiative, seeking to bring together governments and the international private sector to deal with increasing threats in cyberspace. Known as the ‘International multilateral partnership against cyber-terrorism’, or ‘IMPACT’, it was Malaysia’s attempt to attract more business to Cyberjaya, its cyber-city, while being seen to do its part in combating what the Prime Minister Badawi described as a ‘global threat’ (Fernandez 2006). These concerns are shared in the West. Cyberterrorism was the subject of an urgent debate at a meeting of European security and interior ministers in the UK, in October 2005. In a move that seemed to be a reaction to suggestions that Europe was falling behind its more proactive American counterparts in combating online terrorist activities, the meeting agreed to cooperate in monitoring websites in an eﬀort to combat Internet terror traﬃc, and ‘make the internet a hostile environment to the terrorist’ (UK Home Oﬃce 2006).

THE DIGITAL PROJECTION OF POWER Of course, politics has not been the only context in which the region is witnessing a resurgence of virtual surveillance and scrutiny. As the global citizenry migrates into the digital world, it leaves its privacy behind in the analogue world, something that will only be reinforced by the use of broadband. In the broadband age, commercial imperatives as much as political initiatives will drive much of the invasion of privacy. Most of us seem to shrug oﬀ these increasing incursions as a small price to pay for convenience. Every purchase we make is an ‘electronic confession’ (Dogg 2001). Merely using a credit card allows a bank, and anybody else who obtains access to the data, to know where the credit card is being used and on what. Likewise, advanced mobile telephony is an obvious convenience, but it also means a

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user can be traced geographically, perfect for pushing an advert for the latest sale in a nearby shopping mall, or monitoring ‘unacceptable’ activity. Likewise, Internet use is subject to increasingly sophisticated methods to watch what users are doing, in an attempt to make e-commerce pay (Ward 2002). This is the technology and strategy that greases the cogs of modern commercial life. Similarly, the eﬀorts of governments to provide e-citizens with easy ways to pay bills, apply for licences and the like, mean that as we interact with the modern capitalist system, so we register our virtual existence on computers around the world. Thus, many of the innovations in communications technology come with huge opportunities for surveillance. There are no hiding places on the Net as governments around the world sift through digital data. This is meat for conspiracy theorists, and myths abound about the abilities of governments to monitor our every electronic word. From Echelon, described by privacy groups as a global surveillance network that intercepts all kinds of communications for redistribution among the primary partners in a decades-old UK–US alliance that also includes Australia and New Zealand, to the FBI’s Carnivore, an Internet wiretap that looks at packets and records those it considers suspect, from the chatter on- and oﬄine, the tools for almost Orwellian surveillance possibilities seem to be in place and, as we shall see, many of these policies are copied by America’s allies in Southeast Asia (Darklady 2002; Oakes 2002; Poroskov 2002). Myth or reality, the row over encryption, including calls by the US authorities for a global ban on all encryption software, implies a thread of truth worming its way through the tales of Echelon and Carnivore. And, what is an even more tangible forum for control, is the Homeland Security bill signed by President George W. Bush on 25 November, 2002, which ‘eﬀectively drafted corporate America to serve in the war against terrorism – with Internet service providers among those on the front line’ (Swibel 2002). The ability of radical Islamists to follow up the successful 2001 strike on New York with attacks from Europe to Southeast Asia, oﬀered further encouragement to law-abiding citizens to trust their governments with ever increased powers of scrutiny. The most vigorous debate on the scope of this authority was in the US, where privacy groups questioned the Patriot Act, the new Oﬃce of Information Awareness (OIA), which was part of the Homeland Security Act and Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System). Despite this public scrutiny, the US has led the way in giving federal oﬃcials greater powers to trace and intercept communications both for law enforcement and foreign intelligence purposes.4

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The digital projection of power, then, is one which increasingly preoccupies most traditional elites. And, the US and its allies are prepared to take their arguments to the Internet as they work to combat this threat. In modern warfare, the control and dissemination of information is as important if not more so than any previous propaganda battles waged alongside wars of the past. The US might look as if it is losing the propaganda war against al-Qaeda and other enemies, but it is aware it needs to modernize its methods to win the minds of Muslims in the ‘war on terror’.5 Slower to react, but still as keen as the US to wage the information war more eﬀectively, European governments said they would seek to crack down on people using the web to share information on explosives or spread propaganda. At the UK G6 meeting in 2005, European interior ministers were clearly ready to wage a war for hearts and minds and aimed to use the Internet and other media to target young audiences with messages from ‘secular Muslim’ role models, rather than those believing in radical ideologies. Interestingly, the meeting also considered VAT fraud and other criminality where funds are funnelled back into terrorist activities (BBC 26 October 2006).

THE BATTLE AGAINST PIRACY, COUNTERFEIT AND CYBER CRIME It is this link between terrorism and other criminality which also draws Southeast Asia into this global political debate. This is particularly the case when the issue of piracy is under the spotlight. The crossover between piracy and organized criminal gangs has been long identiﬁed. In the US, Chinese triad gang Yi Ging has been pirating CDs and DVDs alongside their business in drug traﬃcking and loan sharking (Bryan-Low 2006). But reports that terrorists are increasingly joining forces with pirate gangs have increased the urgency with which the US authorities, in particular, are viewing the battle against piracy in both the virtual and the real worlds. There is a thesis that maintains that traders in illicit materials are merely trying to grab a piece of the economic action. Where they are excluded from oﬃcial globalization (for whatever reason), they will ﬁnd another way to join the universal hunt for proﬁts, making Southeast Asia part of a regional culture of subversion, and piracy in Asia a ‘rebel library of ideas and art’ (Matuszak 2004). Whatever the reasons, piracy takes many forms across the Asian region. Shopping malls from Hong Kong to Singapore bustle with everything from counterfeit designer handbags to pirated software. Approximately 7 per cent of world trade is in counterfeit goods, with 40 per cent of brands

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counterfeited composed of a list of only 25 brands. According to The International Chamber of Commerce (2006, p. 44) there is $600 billion worth of illegal trade. Piracy, especially optical disc piracy, is big business in the Asia-Paciﬁc. The Motion Picture Association (MPA) estimates that Asia-Paciﬁc piracy costs the US motion picture industry over $US718 m a year in potential revenue. This does not include the impact piracy has on employment and the cost imposed on countries in terms of lost tax revenues and missed investment opportunities. Piracy still cannibalizes media and entertainment sales in many markets, and although its incremental impact on legitimate sales has shrunk due to the eﬀorts of industry trade associations, greater government action, the advent of convenient licensed alternatives and improved economic conditions, in the TV distribution market in Asia Paciﬁc, piracy remains a signiﬁcant problem showing no signs of improvement (PricewaterhouseCoopers 2006). A number of factors are driving piracy in the region. The increased inﬂuence of organized criminal gangs with global manufacturing and distribution networks, the reduced cost of entry into piracy via easily available disc burners, the increasing penetration of broadband and peer-to-peer networks and a lack of adequate and eﬀective copyright protection have all helped to turn piracy into a multi-million dollar industry. As the DVD and VCD industries mature, the pirates’ methods of operating have evolved. Illegal factories producing millions of counterfeit discs have been replaced by networks of small producers that each contribute thousands of discs to an organization. This has made anti-piracy operations more diﬃcult as authorities must now target many diﬀerent locations rather than a few large-scale production sites. In the ﬁrst half of 2004, the MPA investigated over 10 660 cases of piracy – up 42 per cent compared with a year earlier – and assisted law enforcement oﬃcials in conducting nearly 4000 raids in the Asia-Paciﬁc region. These activities resulted in the seizure of around 11.8m illegal optical discs and the initiation of over 2000 criminal legal actions. Malaysia is one of the top three Asia-Paciﬁc markets for seizures of pirated VCD and DVD products, alongside mainland China and Hong Kong. Where software piracy is concerned, China and Vietnam are the worst oﬀenders in Asia. Software piracy in Asia costs the industry $US7.5 billion in 2003 (Screen Digest 2004). Finally, television piracy in Asia costs pay-TV broadcasters more than $US1 billion a year in lost potential revenue, and local industry association. An industry survey warned that the total is 6.6 per cent higher than losses in 2005 for broadcasters and operators outside of Japan and mainland China, while illegal connections grew 20 per cent in 2006, to an estimated 5.2 million. The biggest losses were in India, where

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piracy will cost the industry $685 million in 2006, the survey estimates (Fowler 2006). Even in Singapore, the temptation to watch English Premier League matches and other pay-TV programmes for free has drawn many people to use illegal decoder boxes, even as the law is changed to jail those who do so. Singapore laws are being toughened to punish not only sellers of unauthorized decoders, but also anyone who uses them to receive pay-TV programmes. The approximately 10 000 illegal decoders in use in Singapore are believed to cost distributor StarHub at least US$3 million (S$5 million) a year (Siew 2004). Another area is pharmaceutical piracy. It is diﬃcult to gauge exactly how big a business this slice of piracy is since, as Harvey Bale, director general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations puts it: ‘the evidence is eaten’.6 However, it is a growing problem for drug companies who face losing revenue, and for many unfortunate patients who consume these counterfeit products which are at best useless, or at worst damaging, medicines. The World Health Organization suggests that the counterfeiting of medicines amounts to about 10 per cent of the global medicines market. Developing countries are a particular focus with estimates of 25 per cent of the medicines consumed believed to be counterfeit and as much as 50 per cent in some countries. The Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, in the United States, predicts that counterfeit drug sales will reach US$75 billion globally in 2010, an increase of more than 90 per cent from 2005.7 Moreover, there are suggestions that some global companies turn a blind eye to piracy of their products, particularly in China. When, in 2002, Microsoft and China decided to settle their diﬀerence over copyright and pricing, via a three-year, $750 million memorandum of understanding, the largest deal ever between the Chinese government and a foreign software company, there was a ‘glaring lack of a copyright enforcement clause in the new deal’. This rekindled suspicious speculation that a proprietary software company such as Microsoft might actually beneﬁt from illegal copying because it creates a critical mass of users. Conversely, the more users a software product acquires, particularly a consumer-oriented software product, the more valuable it becomes. This is especially true for operating systems, which require signiﬁcant third-party support from application developers to stave oﬀ obsolescence. In other words, ‘casting a blind eye toward piracy may simply be good business’ (Williams 2002). In 2005, however, the entertainment industry did persuade Congress in the US to pass legislation that made it illegal to camcord ﬁlms in cinemas and stiﬀened the penalties against piracy. A Supreme Court ruling decided that Grokster, one of the most popular peer-to-peer networks for music,

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could be held responsible for copyright infringement committed by its users. The ‘Grokster decision’ not only shut that service down, but paved the way for a number of settlements including an agreement, in July 2006, by Sharman Networks, owner of another sharer service, Kazaa, to pay $US115 million to the entertainment industry and to work on new technologies to prevent ﬁle sharing, as the ﬁght against piracy ‘racked up some headline grabbing legal victories’ (Chaﬃn 2006, p. 20). As electronic borders between countries dissolved, computer crime became increasingly global. But there were signs of growing cross-border cooperation helping the authorities to counter piracy and cyber crime. A Malaysian who ran a website that charged users to watch pirated ﬁlms was ordered by a California court to pay US$23.8 million to movie studios. Tan Soo Leong and the company MasterSurf which operated the website Film88.com, previously operated a similar set-up out of Taiwan until authorities shut him down. The servers for the new site were in the Netherlands and Iran, and their closure in Holland was secured by the Motion Picture Organization and the Dutch authorities (Agence France Presse 25 November 2004). Indeed, in 2005, cybercrime was ranked behind terrorism and espionage by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, as crimes caused more than $US14 billion in damages to businesses around the globe in 2005. An FBI eﬀort to reach out to local enforcement agencies and local authorities not only to track computer crime cross-border, but deal with it eﬀectively in the courts when computer criminals were arrested, was proving eﬀective. When the creator of the 2000 Love Bug was found in the Philippines, he was never charged because local legislation did not cover virus writing. In comparison, ﬁve years later, FBI agents successfully had the writers of the Zotob virus (which facilitated malicious software to be implanted on computers allowing the theft of credit card numbers and passwords) tried in courts in Morocco and Turkey (Bryan-Low 2006).

THE DIGITAL PROJECTION OF THE SURVEILLANCE STATE In Southeast Asia, the surveillance and interception of communications continued, unlike in the West, with relative impunity. Even Echelon, the US government’s data-sifting software, was reported to be in action gleaning information from America’s allies in the region.8 Not that those allies had been slow to do their bit in the ‘war on terror’. In the wake of 9/11, Malaysia and Singapore arrested nearly 40 alleged Islamic militants, most of whom were reported to have admitted belonging to JI (Shari et al. 2002, p. 22).

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Where they could, the governments of Southeast Asia moved to take advantage of the Internet’s ability to censor and stiﬂe reform and debate. RSF’s report on the spread of Internet censorship suggested the world’s more authoritarian regimes had not remained powerless in the face of the explosion of online content. By contrast, many had been ‘eﬃcient and inventive’ in using the Net to spy on citizens and censor debate (Ward 2006). And, despite turning the occasional blind eye in the interests of local political and ﬁnancial interest, piracy was something on which Asian governments ware forced to focus as an ‘on-going threat . . . which continues to hinder growth throughout Asia/Paciﬁc, [and] where eﬀorts to stem the tide have had only limited success’ (PricewaterhouseCoopers 2005). Singapore, as part of its eﬀorts to secure its position as ally of the West in the war on terror and a secure haven for FDI, again led the way, with the introduction of strict new copyright laws against the illegal downloading of music, movies and software. The government claimed these were not speciﬁcally targeted at the home user with the Intellectual Property Oﬃce of Singapore (Ipos) director-general Liew Woon Yin saying the law would only kick in when anyone downloaded any illegal digital material in signiﬁcant volume which had a high monetary value and would cause substantial ﬁnancial loss to the copyright owner. The proposed new amendments to the Copyright Act, introduced in Parliament in October 2004, were designed to send the message that ‘we don’t condone rampant piracy’, Liew said. The law did not, however, set limits on what would or would not be prosecuted. Under the amended law, users and companies guilty of illegally downloading digital material could be ﬁned up to $20 000 and/or face a six-month jail sentence. For subsequent oﬀences, there was a ﬁne of up to $50 000 and/or jail up to three years. In a related development, Ipos announced the launch of a scheme to help small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) which would be hard-pressed under the new laws to aﬀord expensive original software. Under the scheme, ﬁve major software companies – Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia, Symantec and Autodesk – oﬀered Singapore SMEs discounts of up to 40 per cent on their products (Chua Hian Hou 2004). Where the use of the Internet by opposition groups was concerned, the Singapore government’s intentions could not have been clearer. PAP Member of Parliament Denise Phua stated her concern over the negative coverage of the PAP online in the run up to the 2006 elections, and warned that the PAP must ‘take this into account . . . and manage this channel of communication’.9 As we have seen from Chapter 8, while the PAP is keen to build a globally connected economy, it is not prepared to let its citizens use the Internet to create a virtual stage for political rallies against the ruling party.

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Singapore is leading the way in successfully restricting the free ﬂow of information-related commodities and related cultural products such as news, movies and television programmes, even over the Internet, while continuing to compete at the highest levels (Wong 2001). From the government’s ‘intelligent island’ initiative (National Computer Board 1992) to more recent e-initiatives (including the $S1.5-billion Infocomm 21, www.ida.com.sg), the government sought to exploit information technology for economic growth, while working to maintain its position as gatekeeper for information and media access for its citizens. It has one of the highest computer and Internet penetration rates in the world with about 60 per cent of households equipped with a PC (Chen 2001), and Internet users growing from 240 000 in 1996 to more than 1 940 000 users in 2001 (SBA.gov.sg.com). It has also led the way in the region in working to control this new source of instability and dissent. Given its control over the broadband infrastructure and its preparedness to monitor and act visibly and without hesitation to punish dissent on the Internet (again, see Chapter 8), the Singapore government managed to maintain the surveillance state even in the ether. And, when the opposition chatter became too loud, the government showed it maintained a strong grip over Singapore’s Internet space with the criminal defamation investigation launched in July 2002, against Muslim rights activist Zulﬁkar Mohamad Shariﬀ. On the legal front, the 1997 Internet Code of Practice,10 allowed the government to outlaw vast sections of the Internet on the grounds of ‘public interest, public morality, public order, public security (or) national harmony’, including content that ‘advocates homosexuality or lesbianism’, and material that ‘gloriﬁes’ ethnic, racial or religious intolerance. Singapore’s defamation laws also remained an important part of the government’s legal arsenal, and a way, the government insisted, to defend its reputation and contribute to social stability. And, in a move seen as ‘signalling the end of an era in Singapore, during which authorities have been gradually releasing their grip on social restrictions’ (Ellis 2001), the government required all ‘political’ web sites to register with the Singapore Broadcasting Authority ahead of the November 2001 elections. As use of the Internet developed, the PAP had tailored its response. The Singapore government proposed further tightening of the laws governing the Internet and public gatherings, giving it ‘broader statutory authority to prosecute oﬀenders and to punish them with higher ﬁnes’. This was seen by critics as ﬂying in the face of promises by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, to promote an ‘open society’. The new laws on public gatherings, which were already tightly controlled and forbidden without a police licence, would no longer require the government to prove in court that those

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committing the oﬀence were intending to cause a disturbance. But, more interesting were the attempts by the Singapore government to tighten its controls of the Internet, which it said were to help it combat crime, such as credit card fraud. New government research showed 65 per cent of Singaporeans between the ages of 15 and 49 were at least moderate Internet users, and one third of people in the same age group produced Internet content such as blogs (Media Development Authority of Singapore 2006). The timing of government plans to crack down on what was being seen as an alternative to the state-controlled media was no coincidence. Under the new laws, Internet users would become liable for defamation and ‘statements that cause a public mischief’ and for sending documents over the Internet (Burton 10 November 2006). And, while use of the Internet had grown in Singapore, there was little in the way of public outcry to the state’s new policies. Singapore’s political culture was ‘founded on political indiﬀerence mixed with high anxiety’, and a middle class which does not demand a pluralist society, given that the selective cultivation of tradition high cultural values and passivity and group conformity, and their subsequent promulgation through universal education programs militate against individualism, the rule of law and critical public debate’ (Jones 1998, p. 163). The hardening of attitudes towards the new media throughout the region should, however, be put in context. As with the traditional media, it is clear that most states in Southeast Asia will ﬁnd it hard to replicate the Singapore model of control, which required ‘the development of a mutually reinforcing set of institutions comprehensively subordinated to ruling party interests’ (Rodan 2002, p. 10). Despite this, authoritarian regimes around Asia continue to look to Singapore as a model of control, particularly in the wake of 9/11 and the Bali Bombings. While it was not possible to tar the whole of Southeast Asia’s citizenry with Singapore’s cultural brush, elements of pluralist democracy struggled to make headway across the region. Where the Southeast Asian state was not as technologically sophisticated in its surveillance, or its citizenry too unconnected to be electronically monitored, the military often took a more direct role in support of the surveillance state (Jones and Smith 2002, p. 147). Besides, memories of the chaos that infected their post-independence years were still fresh, and Southeast Asians allowed their rulers to draw a far more ambiguous line between liberty and safety. Whether they could continue to provide the security their citizenry so desperately desired remained to be seen. Few outside the region have much conﬁdence that ASEAN would step up to the breach, with conﬂicting national interests and mutual suspicions ensuing few coherent strategies for dealing with the

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region’s chronic problems and ‘unresolved territorial boundaries and demands for self-determination by minorities have stoked simmering conﬂicts on the margins of the region’s constituent states’ (Vatikiotis 2004). Malaysia, despite having, as we have seen in Chapter 3, a Western-style media in form but not content, tightly controlled by the political elite, was probably among the most liberal in its policing of the online world. The desire on the part of the Malaysian authorities to encourage the development of its information industries and attract foreign players to the Multimedia Super Corridor meant the government of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed promised in 1996 not to censor the Internet. As a result, the medium became a focus for those dissatisﬁed with the bias of the local conventional media. Despite one well-publicized court case (Ibrahim and Kaur 1998), Mahathir’s commitment not to censor the Internet appeared to hold true, at least until close to the time that he stepped down in 2003. As part of the regional trend to tighten the free ﬂow of information, the Malaysian Home Ministry drew up plans to impose a ‘code of content’ and a licensing system for website operators. These proposals would enable the authorities ‘to discourage the abuse of the Internet by irresponsible users’ and to address national security concerns (Loone 2002). The government’s attitude towards the Internet also appeared to harden further, when Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi issued a warning against those who spread ‘incorrect information and slander’ on the Internet (AMCB July–August 2006). Moves by UMNO-controlled publisher, New Straits Times Press, to sue two bloggers for defamation in early 2007, reinforced UMNO’s position to end the use of the Internet as a forum for opposition views. Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) noted that the two bloggers sued, Jeﬀ Ooi11 and Ahirudin Attan, had been ‘actively exposing ethical issues pertaining to the traditional media that – because they are all government owned and controlled, or linked through close business and political associates – give little room to dissenting views’ (SEAPA 2007). Among Singapore’s other ASEAN neighbours, attitudes to Internet content tended to reﬂect general media policies. In the Philippines, the communications media was, by many established criteria, one of most robust in the world (Zubri 1993, p. 187). Discussion of the issues facing the Filipino media ranged from its overriding inﬂuence and the scrutiny of media ownership and control and its eﬀect on editorial decisions, through the murder and imprisonment of crusading journalists and poor quality work and petty corruption, to sex selling the media and television news being repackaged as entertainment, with ratings driving production considerations. But these discussions also tended to mention the general health of the media, and positives such as the use of the Internet for political debate.

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However, President Arroyo’s discomfort with the traditional media threatened to spread to the Internet. Although the low computer penetration meant the Internet remained limited in impact, there was a growing suspicion that blogs were reaching those who did not have access (Limpag 2005). When President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was forced to admit her telephone conversations about an alleged conspiracy to tamper with the results of the 2004 elections in June 2005, had been wiretapped, it was blogs like Yuga and the Protagonist that helped bring the issue out into the open, forcing public discussion.12 Like the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia both had a much less developed technological infrastructure than Singapore. Given its growth potential, Thailand’s Internet population was expected to exceed both Malaysia and Singapore in size. By 2006, however, access remained predominantly an urban phenomenon and conﬁned to the capital.13 There were concerns that given the apparent propensity of the country’s ousted prime minister to follow Singapore’s lead, Thaksin looked set to introduce similar measures to fence oﬀ the Internet. Thaksin’s Shin Corporation had signiﬁcant interests in the communications infrastructure, but regulations imposed by the Ministry of Communications and Transportation had ensured the state-owned Communications Authority of Thailand received free of charge a 35 per cent stake in all private Internet service providers (Swan 2002, p. 21). In November 2006, Thailand’s military government pushed through draft legislation on computer-related crimes which included provisions that could ‘curtail freedom of expression on the Internet’ (SEAPA 2006). Critics said that the military was keen to push through the legislation, which had been originated by the Thaksin government, in order to silence online criticism of the coup. The Thaksin government had faced strong criticism over eﬀorts by the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT), to block or close down sites critical of the government. At least one local English-language Thai blog was ordered to shut down for running content contrary to the new military government guidelines for media and speech. The Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) reported, at the time, that hundreds of community radio stations had also been shut down and self-censorship had increased across the board as the media situation in Thailand deteriorated (OpenNet Initiative 22 September 2006). The military junta was particularly irked about any coverage of the populist former prime minister. The military forced cable provider UBCTV to pull the broadcast of CNN’s interview with Thaksin in January 2007, and blocked access to interview on the website (SEAPA 2007). In Indonesia under Suharto, the Internet, which became accessible in Indonesia from 1995, allowed the relatively free ﬂow of information in a

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tightly controlled media environment as we have seen in Chapter 6. Post Suharto, the role of the Internet changed as the regime loosened its tight grip on the media. The Internet played a major role in toppling the Suharto regime, and remained a technology of democracy in the public imagination. Its use in the 1999 election process served to further ‘authenticate the newly-emerging democracy’ (Hill 2002). However, the days of an unfettered Indonesian media also seemed to be over, despite a 1999 law that prohibited censorship. Four years after restrictions on free speech ended with Suharto’s fall, Indonesian reporters were pointing to a government crackdown as a signal of a return to the repressive ways of the past (Timberlake 2002). And a new anti-pornography bill pushed before parliament by the government in 2006, under pressure from Islamic parties and following violent demonstrations which marked the release of men’s magazine Playboy in Indonesia, also threatened to allow Indonesia’s traditional political elites to tighten controls over the Internet (Sadhwani 2006). The Indonesian government and the House of Representatives also looked at legislation aimed at tackling online crime, with Information and Communications Minister Sofyan Djalil stating that the country still lacked the legal infrastructure necessary to protect Indonesians from cybercrime. Sofyan said Jakarta was deeply concerned over the increasing prevalence of cybercrime, ranging from pornography, child and women traﬃcking, illegal drug trading and defamation, to hacking, fraud, money laundering and terrorist ﬁnancing, and the negative impact it was having on the country (Straits Times 14 April 2007). With as many users as Singapore,14 in the early part of the new century, Indonesia’s attitudes to the Internet were clearly in a ﬂux. While it was seen as an important element in the development of democracy in the country, there were concerns that, as with many of its neighbours, Islamic radicals were using the Internet and that email and websites had become the tools of terrorism (Straits Times 21 November 2005). In addition, the Internet had a developmental role and was seen as an important tool for poverty relief, as part of a broader regional development agenda which had its roots in 1980s India, where rural telephony projects began despite debate as to whether or not a telephone was of any use to a rural villager. As a result of these early successes, technologies such as the Internet and broadband wireless telecom were seen as an eﬀective weapon against underdevelopment. By 2006, they were providing Indonesian farmers with access to local weather conditions, soil-testing techniques and other expert knowledge that helped increase productivity as training programmes empowered local farmers to beneﬁt from the latest technology with the long-term goal of alleviating poverty in Indonesia (Harsaputra 2005).

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Thus, the Internet provided not only a link to the global economy, but a way to help improve the lot of the rural poor, often an important constituency for many of Southeast Asia’s political elites. It was this contradiction inherent in ICT that was, again, causing uncertainty over policy for elites across the region and reinforced the ambiguity of the media.

THE FUTURE EATERS: THE POWER OF USERGENERATED CONTENT However eﬀective the political elites were at maintaining digital surveillance, by 2006, the Internet was still causing fundamental changes. These were changes that David Weinberger of Harvard University’s Berkman Center described as truly subversive, as the Internet seemed to be changing traditional commercial models of the media. ICT was threatening to eat into the power of global media conglomerate as consumers used ICTs to take these media institutions and ‘turn them into conversations’ (The Economist 22 April 2006, p. 4). Changes in mobile phone technology, which had put relatively highresolution cameras into the hands of millions of people, were beginning to create some of the most powerful news images. From footage of the shocking impact of the Asian tsunami to shots of passengers stumbling along dimly lit tracks after 2005’s terror attacks on the London Underground, mobile-phone pictures have relayed events before the arrival of professional camera crews and reporters. Revolutions in technology are no respecter of tradition and, with the newsroom being ‘one of the most conservative bastions in communication . . . this [was] a real cultural revolution’ (Gibson 2006b). The social networks like Youtube and Myspace also marked part of this change in the use of the Internet. Not satisﬁed with being passive users of the media, the great democratization of society which had led to the end of deference meant everybody felt they had a right to be heard. The new social network sites were providing the spaces. If it were a country, by the beginning of 2007, MySpace would have been the seventh biggest, ahead of Russia and Bangladesh. Though not all users are active, MySpace had 153 339 321 users, a ‘like-minded media generation will grow up interacting instantaneously: globalization personiﬁed’ (Keegan 2007). While attracting global users, speciﬁc social networks have a tendency to skew in popularity in diﬀerent regions. Friendster, which has Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Bahasa language sites, attracts a signiﬁcant proportion of its visitors (89 per cent) from the Asia-Paciﬁc region, as does Orkut (43 per cent).15

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And there was no respect for ownership. It was no longer just a matter of downloading the latest tunes or a movie from the Net, Netizens were remaking the content. As well as blogs and vlogs, amateur ﬁlm editors could subversively recut movies and adverts, in mashups which attracted almost as much attention as the originals. Many media organizations also, initially, viewed the might of the web as a threat, but were beginning to try to mould it in their image, and yoke its communal aspects to their powerful brands (Gibson 2006). In July 2005, News Corp, the company run by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, made one of its ﬁrst major Internet purchases. It bought Intermix Media, owner of Myspace.com, the ﬁfth most-viewed Internet domain in the US and owner of other sites for $580m (£332.85m). This marked what was seen as the ﬁrst really substantive part of the new strategy swung into action, as News Corp set up a new Internet unit. Mr. Murdoch was quoted as saying that newspapers had been slow to respond to competition from the Internet (BBC 19 July 2005). This was soon followed by news that Google was buying videosharing website YouTube for $1.65bn (£883m) in shares (BBC 10 October 2006). Aware that social networking sites like MySpace and YouTube were attracting the key youth audience, and aiming to maintain their inﬂuence over future generations of consumers, marketers were also aggressively seizing the initiative. From seeking to seamlessly blend relationships with products and brands to actually venturing into virtual worlds, commercial marketers have been working to engage in the virtual space (Park 2006; Cane 2007). Where, once, marketers such as those in the music industry saw the Internet as disintermediating their business model, they are using it to access the attention of young people who increasingly turned to computers rather than television and the music press. The Internet has enabled targeted marketing and deeper relationships with fans (Gibson 2006a). While corporate sallies into the virtual world were not always successful, as companies like General Motors found (Bradbury 2006), what is of particular note for this thesis is that the move by the political and business elites to assert their control over these new technologies is in line with Tester’s 1994 study, representing the struggle by the political and economic elites over other social groups to maintain their hold over the mass media as an important instrument of inﬂuence and persuasion, co-opting new developments when they were perceived to be threatening. It also ﬁts with Kellner’s assertion that there is a constantly renegotiated alliance between business and political elites and the global transnational companies, to reinforce their control strategies in the face of ICT developments (Kellner 1990). By the second half of the ﬁrst decade of the twenty-ﬁrst century, communications-savvy politicians were already venturing online. For while the

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political impact of the Internet was still the source of much debate, the unique elements that consumer marketers were coming to grips with were increasingly recognized in the political forum as making it an indispensable campaigning tool. From Hilary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama, who announced their candidature for the 2007 presidential race online, to the regular vlog run by UK opposition leader David Cameron, high-proﬁle politicians were ‘harnessing the potential power of the internet to woo voters directly’ (Westcott 2007). Given Korea’s leadership in the broadband space, it was no accident that South Korea’s Roh Moo-hyun, a noted human rights lawyer before being voted as President of South Korea in 2003, was probably the ﬁrst politician to show what the Internet was capable of in terms of political campaigning. In the 2002 campaign, he eschewed mass rallies and traditional campaign tactics and reached out to voters via his website that featured regular webcasts and audio broadcasts by disc jockeys and rock stars. He also ran one of the world’s most sophisticated e-mail campaigns, drawing millions of young people to his site and attracting thousands of e-mails per day from voters passing on policy ideas. In this way, Roh created a community of support from among South Korea’s young voters who had ‘been apathetic politically, bored by the country’s traditional, political machinery’ (Westcott 2007). Southeast Asia’s politicians had also embraced the web to engage their citizens. Again, Singapore was at the forefront of this strategy. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s National Day speech in August 2006 acknowledged the emergence of the digital age and how it was changing Singapore (Singapore Government 2006). Lee’s government has moved to establish an eﬀective online feedback mechanism with REACH.16 This was set up in October 2006, as part of the restructuring plans for the Feedback Unit to move beyond gathering public feedback, and to become the lead agency for engaging and connecting with citizens. The government said that, with the Feedback Unit celebrating its 21st anniversary in 2006, it was timely to set up REACH to engage and reach out to as many Singaporeans and permanent residents as possible, and that the new unit signiﬁed its renewed commitment to develop and promote an active citizenry through citizen participation and involvement. The PAP was not alone in understanding the importance of the Internet as a communication tool. Ousted Thai Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, attempted to use the Internet to ensure he remained foremost in the mind of Thai voters. His website was blocked in Bangkok in June 2007.17 The government had blocked and unblocked the site several times already that year (Bangkok Post 2 June 2007). Malaysia’s prime minister had a website, as did Philippines’ President Arroyo.18

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Important questions remain about the advent of citizen journalists, and the value of the content they create from a news media point of view. Some analysts maintain it is neither entertaining nor informative, even if it is cheap. This represents a major concern for those concerned with the state of the news media. When citizen journalism became a cheap, default option for cost-conscious TV channels: ‘the worry is not the wondrous addition of citizen media, but the decline of full-time, professional, monitoring of powerful institutions . . . what free press in democracies is supposed to be for’ (The Economist 22 April 2006 p. 9).

CONCLUSION Southeast Asia has seen massive growth and change from both economic expansion but also the technological change that has helped provide the foundations to the growing wealth and development in the region. The explosion of communications media technology, from broadband to other ICT developments like mobile telephony, has linked Southeast Asians, always living in a physical corridor to global movement and trade, to each other and to the rest of the world in a way that is unprecedented. It is apparent from this study of the region’s main economies that the challenge to traditional authority has been energized by the new communications media, from those who seek to use ICT for poverty alleviation and education to those who would turn it to crime and violence. From the peasant to the politician, people are leveraging these new technologies to enhance their power, providing a challenge for the traditional political and economic elites. But what is also apparent is that there are deeper, more vital changes being wrought in the fabric of the societies and on their political cultures that are almost incidental as the new technologies open the sluice gates to allow new ideas to ﬂood in. As the newspaper once did, and as the radio and television so ably served the Southeast Asian states in ensuring, the Internet is creating new relationships between people. These virtual communities can reach beyond nation, beyond state, and beyond anything that could be imagined 20 years ago. Perhaps this is why it is so suited to jihad, since it creates a condition that corresponds to the mythical umma of Salaﬁsm (Touboul 2005). ICT has turned up the volume on what Sreberny-Mohammadi (1996, p. 180) terms a complex syncopation of voices. Despite inequalities in terms of access, the emergence of local strategies of opposition, from local cultural production to piracy and terrorism’s e-jihad, has heightened the challenge to traditional authority in all sectors of social life as these new technologies support both a concentration and a dispersion of power.

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The Internet is having a remarkable impact. Even though the numbers who use it remain small, not only are they growing fast, but the Internet has the eﬀect of magnifying their discourse in such a way that blogs often generate mainstream media content. However, as with the more traditional media, when the authoritarian governments of Southeast Asia decide to turn their mind to it, they are proving adept at co-opting both the technology and seeking to monitor and silence those who seek to use it as a platform for communicating their opposition. From new legislation to well worn state violence and brutality, Asia’s political elites might have taken a step back to consider how best to handle the changes, but they are now on the front foot, once more, working to ensure the longevity of their inﬂuence. And, in the face of the rise of the surveillance state, the silent majority remains that, settled in its quietude seeking protection, security and the continuity of economic growth which has brought a general sense of positive development and well-being throughout much of the region. Indeed, the war on terror has strengthened the hand of those seeking to silence debate, and governments around Southeast Asia, from the dominant PAP in Singapore to the re-emergence of the military authorities in Thailand, are once again reasserting their control. The Internet is symbolic of the changing communications technologies Southeast Asia has experienced since the ﬁrst boats were built to carry migrants and trade from the peninsula and throughout the islands. In the last 100 years, Southeast Asians have seen the introduction of the train, the car and the plane. They have newspapers, radios, televisions, mobile phones and computers. Southeast Asia elites have, however, always moved to adapt the new technologies and, where ICT is concerned, it will facilitate their censorship and control as much as providing strength to the arm of those who challenge them. The Internet is allowing political and economic elites to project the administrative state into hyper space. And, while there is regional instability and an irrevocable process of change, conﬂict and breakdown, they are proving remarkably resilient at coping with it. Indeed, while they are operating in a diﬀerent world from that in which they ﬁrst came to power nearly half a century ago, Southeast Asia’s models of authoritarian control are not only surviving, they appear to be ﬂourishing.

NOTES 1.

Highlights from the Seoul and Tokyo Asia-Paciﬁc workshop, 26 October, 2006, www.pyr.com.

296 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

The media and political change in Southeast Asia Paul Budde Communication Ltd (2006). The site on which a video was shown of the beheading of Nick Berg, an American contractor captured in Iraq by a group linked to al-Qaeda, Al-ansar.biz, was hosted in Malaysia. For details of the USA Patriot Act see Doyle (2002), also Holtzman (2003) and The Economist (23 November 2002, p. 33). In what he described as a ‘war of ideas’, former US defence chief Donald Rumsfeld demanded that Washington and the military respond faster to events and learn to exploit the Internet and satellite TV, as its ‘enemies had skillfully adapted’ to the media age. In a speech to the Council of Foreign Relations in early 2006, Rumsfeld said some of America’s most critical battles were now in the ‘newsrooms’ as victory in the battle for public opinion became a new front for the Bush administration (BBC 17 February 2006). Quoted in Andrew Baxter (2006, p. 10). http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs 275/en/. See Nicky Hager, Secret Power, 1986, quoted in Simbulan (2000). Derrick A. Paulo, ‘PAP must address negative Internet’, Today, 24 May 2006, quoted in James Gomez, (2006b, p. 28). http://www.sba.gov.sg/sba/i_codenpractice.jsp. Winner of the RSF Freedom Blog Award for Asia 2004, http://www.rsf.org/blog-awardsen.php 3. See http://www.yugatech.com/blog/, http://blogged.the-protagonist.net/. See AC Nielsen, ‘Thailand’, report in SIAM Partner, US Chamber of Commerce, http://www.thaiusbusiness.com/overview_sub.asp?subid=3. http://www.insan.co.id/internet-stats.html. See http://www.pipl.com/statistics/social-networks/size-growth/?l=1142. http://www.reach.gov.sg/. http://www.hi-thaksin.net/index.php. See http://www.pmo.gov.my/website/webdb.nsf/vfs_utama1?openframeset and http:// www.macapagal.com/gma/.

11. Conclusion As we examine, via our case study methodology, how the mass communication media has played itself out across the non-liberal states in Southeast Asia, a regional model of media development emerges. The media, in this model, exists in the close embrace of local elites who feel keenly the threat, perceived or real, of a technology that is growing in importance in information-sensitive, young states. The media, in other words, is an institution rooted in the creation of the modern post colonial state: the voice of nationalism, independence and development. The mass communication industry, in line with the argument about modernity outlined by Thompson (1995) and Giddens (1990, 1991), has become central to Southeast Asian society. In so doing, it has impacted and transformed political behaviour in Southeast Asia, and is an important resource of power and inﬂuence. Despite the ambiguity of the relationship between the media and democracy, the links between the increased ﬂow of information and entertainment products into Southeast Asia and pressures for change in the region are apparent. Southeast Asia’s major economies have not been able to escape these pressures, particularly those driven by external inﬂuence and dominated by Western values and ideas. Consideration, then, of whether or not the media, and the globalized media in particular, has a liberalizing eﬀect or becomes subject to elite control in Asia, and the role of the global media, particularly given its conglomerization and commoditization, is central to any discussion of political development in the region. This is particularly the case where concerns about the media’s inﬂuence heighten the security dilemma to which the region’s elites are perennially exposed. An important factor in play here is the Asian developing state’s reluctance to agree on cross-border mergers and acquisitions which might allow the creation of regional champions to compete with Western and Middle Eastern global players. So, the media in Asia has not become globalized, but nor has it or the local political elites proved defenceless in the face of more powerful international media players. Rather they have crafted innovative ways to maintain their control policies. The region’s elites have always seen the media as central to political and social control, playing an important role in the formation of national consciousness as opposed to a colonial mindset, and helping transform that 297

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incipient nationalism into building the new nation. Subsequently the media helps to maintain central control over the state. In this context, the Japanese experience has been a powerful informative inﬂuence in the outlook of many of the region’s political elites, pioneering a ‘model of consolidated ownership and cozy government–media ties that shaped the dissemination of information’ (Gamble and Watanabe 2005). Nevertheless, media production and reception is complex. The media remains a contested space, subject to various pressures, from the inﬂuence of corporate ownership and advertising censorship, through the input of staﬀ and consumers, to the socio-political environment in which the production and reception occurs. In this battle for control, the division of power and resources is unequal, weighed towards ownership of the means production, although other groups may negotiate access to media spaces, and have become increasingly good at it. Indeed, the media is a tool that a variety of groups increasingly seek to use to inﬂuence audience perception, and access is not conﬁned solely to the powerful. To this end, it can be a part of the arsenal of opposition, providing a forum for alternative voices. Indeed, in some forms, it has proved itself an eﬀective organizer of resistance and unrest in countries around Southeast Asia, encouraging those theorists who consider the mass media intricately linked to the development of democratic pluralism. Paradoxically, although many Southeast Asian governments might fear links drawn by the modernization theorists between capitalist market development, the free ﬂow of information and the development of liberal institutions, their worries in this area are generally unfounded. The media has changed arrangements, and internal and external forces present states with challenges to their generally illiberal character. They have, however, managed to play the media in a way that neither conventional democratic theory nor Marxist explanations anticipate. Indeed the universalism of these theoretical approaches obscures the complex local processes at work in Southeast Asia in an era of global interconnectedness. Consequently, the way the media has been managed in Southeast Asia has not previously been adequately explained. Dominated as it is by large transnational industrial conglomerates, the international media in Southeast Asia remains concerned primarily with returns for shareholders rather than political change. Globally, the communication media have been subject to a number of trends, including their commercialization. This process involves the commodiﬁcation of news and entertainment products, reducing the overall diversity of programming as media companies converge. They follow commercial strategies built around synergies between their media and other commercial interests. It turns information into a commodity to be managed and manipulated,

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increasingly subject to the inﬂuence of the perception industries, notably the transnational public relations companies that manage political image, so that even the provision of news and information is warped into infotainment according to the considerations of politics and proﬁt. As spectacle replaces substance, the media audience is presented with a diet of unchallenged cliches and stereotypes. Thus, industry trends in a Faustian embrace with internal sensibilities and vested interests ensures sensitive issues are not covered. Relentless commercialization and the political cultures of the Southeast Asian region do their part in dissolving any vestiges of liberal industry institutions like professional ethics, leaving journalists increasingly powerless in their struggle for inﬂuence, playing into the hands of the illiberal elites. At the periphery of these states, many of them subject to enduring lowlevel instability since the colonial era, journalists have always been at risk. They continue to be so. Where central inﬂuence frays, local alliances between political and military leaders who have little concern for their international image means they are prepared to resort to strong arm tactics to ensure the media does not report activities they do not want reported. Consequently, regional programming is increasingly driven towards reality television and tabloid journalism. Serious commentary is dropped as members of the international media are clearly prepared to curry favour with regimes in order to protect their proﬁts. Even the Internet giants kow tow to commercial reality in their eﬀort to secure markets in Asia (Zeller 2006). Despite concerns about cultural hegemony, there is no conspiracy behind emerging patterns of corporate control besides the logic of capitalism, but the dominance of Western cultural products, with the messages, ideas and beliefs inherent in their texts, is shaking up many communities in the region, and both demanding and receiving a response. Indeed, in the early twentyﬁrst century, the threat to elite control in Southeast Asia from the Internet and new ICT developments could still prove a potent challenge to the authority of established elites. In this context, some commentators see decolonization not as the termination of the imperial process, but merely reconﬁguring a geo-political web which has been spinning since the Renaissance. The new media have the power to penetrate more deeply into a receiving culture than any previous manifestation of Western technology (Said 1993, pp. 352–3). From a historical perspective, Southeast Asian states settled into a postcolonial political system where traditional political elites, the military and, as they emerged, new business interests, coalesced around a strong central ﬁgure at the head of a developmental state. This occurred in every country case study used in this book. In all of them, at least for a time, this proved

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to be a durable and often positive economic and social arrangement, helping raise standards of living and providing relative political stability. The legitimizing contract with their citizens demanded this – at least the perception of improvement of their situation. The 1980s saw wages rise, and new technology linking Southeast Asia into the global economy. When corruption and cronyism prevented these beneﬁts from being spread around suﬃciently, the political elites were prepared to renegotiate the distribution of power, creating in some states, like Indonesia, acute instability and further reducing the economic beneﬁts available to promote unity. The same technology that connected Southeast Asia to the global economy also erased borders, allowing media products into these relatively new states, heightening the perception of threat to their authority. The regional political elites saw their control over the means of communication dissolve in the course of the 1990s and new ideas drive local expectations amongst their citizens. The Asian Financial Crisis of 1997–98 further delegitimized the developmental state model in Southeast Asia. It also revealed a growing lack of control over the ﬂow of information, creating a political crisis for the region’s ruling elites. The AFC threatened to break up many old alliances. As governments fell or their hold on power loosened, the media, emboldened by the growth in distribution of the previous decade and enabled by new technology, provided an avenue for the forces for change, both for internal actors challenging traditional elites and for external pressures generated by the demands of modern ﬁnance capital. This did not, however, establish the conditions for pluralist democracy, as classical liberal or neo-Marxist theories would suggest. In fact, the case studies in this book show that regional political elites successfully regrouped and, in various stages of development and with varying degrees of success, restored control over the media and even extended it into the virtual space. This has been achieved through a familiar mixture of ownership and legalism, as well with the occasional threat of violence. Increasingly, however, with an eye to securing Western economic and political support, there has been a conscious move to promote a softer, more palatable, external image. As a result, political elites in Southeast Asia have increasingly followed a sophisticated media strategy, using the techniques espoused by the perception industries and by public relations consultants to ensure they communicate eﬀectively in an increasingly complicated media environment. Even where the media is more robust and critical, as in the Philippines, this has not meant the development of a pluralist political culture or the constitutionalizing of the rule of law. Instead, the embrace of the cult of personality by an anomic urban audience, combined with the role of the

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publicity machine and television, leads to the celebration of the ephemeral: pushing personality forward in preference to ideas in the creation of a karaoke political culture where elections resemble beauty contests. It is here that we ﬁnd the close and growing connection between the media and celebrity, and its increasing impact on the political process. The role of celebrity is central to modern society, where meaning is in short supply in an increasingly disenchanted world. Where the ideologies of the twentieth century have failed to lead to the perfect society, technology has proved singularly uninspiring and capitalism is proving functional rather than inspiring, people look to the media for meaning. The communication media, and television in particular, have thus assumed a leading role in providing the ‘agreed on and instituted form of value and understanding, implicit orders, stories and images in which a culture crystallizes its sense of the struggle with the realm of necessity and the reality of pain and death’ (Clark 1999). When modernity is driven by strictly ﬁnancial considerations, and economists are the high priests of society, we worship at the feet of commercial brands. The faces that represent those brands, particularly in the area of media and entertainment product, can turn celebrity into political power and inﬂuence. The region’s elites are, therefore, turning to the media more than ever before, acknowledging the inﬂuence of the media, and television in particular, in generating electoral support and anointing their celebriﬁcation. Somewhat diﬀerently, the Internet has increased the available media space and, since access is still relatively cheap, it is an environment where challenges to centres of control can be mounted. The media, here, has proved a useful resource to those who seek to bring down traditional structures and authority. Governments in Southeast Asia and beyond continue to be faced with major questions on issues of national sovereignty, cultural imperialism and the future of local cultural products, as much as by the development of democratic pluralism. New technologies, whether they be roads, railways and information superhighways, all bring change, bringing often unwelcome visitors which threaten old ideas, old laws and old ways. As we have seen, the use of information technology superhighway is not a one-way street, cordoned oﬀ by the state and major corporations. As Islamism presents an alternative in some states to Southeast Asia’s karaoke culture, it is hard to control every aspect of information technology. And then there is the use of ever-cheaper, ever-more-powerful information technologies to mobilize constituencies, from al-Qaeda’s recruitment videos1 to the new, unregulated satellite TV channels like al-Jazeera, which have become important global players.

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Again, however Southeast Asia’s governments have not been passive. Pressure to liberalize and open up the virtual space has been managed by Singapore best. The PAP has shown it can eﬀectively assert its gatekeeper role when it wishes, and as McCombs shows, the PAP successfully use the mass media not only to tell their citizens what to think about, but also how to think about it (McCombs and Shaw 1972). Singapore, where the market economy works successfully, represents a managerial model that western democracies might move towards as globalization threatens stability, and welfare states and democratic pluralism collapse. It oﬀers a model of a society along the lines laid out by Zolo (2001), where the social contract revolves around private consumption, and it is here that Kellner’s theoretical framework is particularly useful, allowing us to trace the way that the region’s political elites are succeeding in the face of the challenges to their rule. Even where rapid technological change has led to more complex bargaining relationships between global companies, local ﬁrms, citizens and their national governments, Southeast Asia’s elites are responding with new alliances. Any liberalization of freedom of expression is driven from above, and ‘democratization thus involves the expansion of political participation and consultation within the limits deﬁned by the state’ (Jones 1995, p. 84). They have been further helped in this cause, after 9/11, as Western governments became openly supportive of high-level controls in authoritarian but secular regimes. Another common trait that must be highlighted in a regional context is the beneﬁts all the Southeast Asian states discussed here have gained from being an ally of the US. Whether it was the ﬁght against communism after the Second World War, or the ‘war against terror’ at the turn of the century, US military aid and physical resources, as well as the US media, could help local political elites extend their geographic reach, help prop up weak Southeast Asian states, or reinforce the positions of those who are already well dug in. In addition, should liberal voices complain about reinvented regional authoritarianism, local elites can now point to Western practices like broad-ranging power for surveillance under the USA Patriot Act, and the treatment of terror suspects held in the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay without trial. And yet, while the ‘war on terror’ is giving hardliners in Southeast Asia the backing they need to try to clamp down further on dissent within their communities, these actions could serve to undermine their own positions. Post 9/11 events have indicated the need for the governments in the region to engage more critically with issues that are threatening the continuity of their regimes, particularly the challenge militant Islam represents to stability in Paciﬁc Asia.

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The limited coverage of alternative perspectives by the mass media, partly because of their preparedness to bow to local controls and partly because of a process of dumbing down, clearly played a role in the failure of both Singapore and its neighbour Malaysia to recognize the extent of the politically radicalized Islamic opposition in their own backyard. There are no signs of a more liberal attitude. Control remains the preferred strategy – even if it is a ﬂawed one. Coercion by the region’s illiberal governments is being ‘calibrated for maximum eﬀectiveness with minimal costs’ (George 2005, p. 4). Thus, given the apparent ﬂexibility of local elites in forging new alliances with both internal and external interests, their growing understanding of the complexities of the communications environment and preparedness to embrace the techniques of international PR consultancies alongside more established gatekeeping techniques, and the support of western governments keen for local allies in the ‘war against terror’, the illiberal governments of Southeast Asia’s major economies, with Singapore at their head, are enduring. Indeed, not only has the PAP created a prototype of a more controlled social experiment that could suggest a model for political arrangements in the developing and the developed world, but the response by political elites in Southeast Asia more generally indicates the enduring capacity of the media controlled state. This underlines an old PR adage: used skilfully, the media can be a powerful tool for shaping positive perceptions, and if you are not prepared to speak for yourself the world will believe what others say about you and they may not necessarily have your interests at heart.

NOTE 1. See www.ciaonet.org.

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Index 9/11 terrorist attacks and advertising revenues 28, 82, 117 and Indonesia 167 and Malaysia 106–7, 108 and public relations industry revenues 33 and Singapore 217–18, 219, 237, 243, 244 and surveillance 274 and television 29 and Thailand 210, 211 see also ‘war on terror’ ABS-CBN 130, 132, 133, 134 Aceh 154–5, 163, 164, 165 advertising 27–8, 41, 42, 46, 50, 52, 198, 200, 203, 225, 247, 253 advertising revenues 28, 34–5, 64, 66, 81, 82, 117, 205, 225 agenda setting 13 Aglionby, J. 80, 110 al-Qaeda 107, 210, 234, 277, 278–9 alternative media 127, 128, 149, 191 Amnesty International 79–80, 227–8, 268 Anderson, B. 94, 143, 250 ANTARA 146 Anwar, Makarim Nono 143, 145, 147 Anwar Ibrahim 89, 90, 92–3, 100–102, 104, 107, 112 AOL Time Warner 28–9, 34 Aquino, Benigno 127, 128 Arroya, Gloria 122, 123, 132, 133, 134, 136–7, 251, 289, 293 Arroyo, Jose Miguel (Mike) 132–3 Asian Financial Crisis and Southeast Asia 56–8, 65–6, 79, 80, 300 Indonesia 57, 58, 141, 149–50, 151, 173 Malaysia 57, 87, 89–90, 93, 99, 112

Philippines 57 Singapore 57, 65–6 Thailand 57, 58, 66, 176, 193, 201–2 Asian values 78–9, 95, 188, 227, 235, 263 Asian Wall Street Journal, The 188, 198, 206, 225–6, 236, 259 Astro 95, 96, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 110 Atkins, William S. 3, 57, 58, 64, 82, 93, 96, 121, 225, 228 Australia 109, 117, 155, 162, 163, 262 authoritarian control 79, 125–8, 181–2, 188, 212–13, 214, 215, 217–18, 219, 234, 239–40 authoritarian regimes 61, 299–300 Ayoob, M. 58, 59, 112, 151, 152 Badawi, Abdullah Ahmad 109–12, 113, 279, 288 Bali bombings 136, 142, 166, 168, 217–18, 243, 259–60, 261 Bangkok Post 127–8, 188, 196, 200, 204, 205, 206, 211 Banharn Silpa-archa 200–201, 251 Barber, B. 55, 83, 85, 116, 237 Barisan Nasional (BN) Party 90, 109 Barnett, Steve 22, 42, 46, 47 BBC 5, 34, 43, 45, 50, 58, 64, 190, 195, 210, 211, 212, 229, 252, 259, 277, 281, 292 Bernays, Edward L. 245 Bhumibol, King 181, 183, 187, 206, 267–8 blogs 50, 51–2, 276, 288, 289, 295 Blondel, J. 153, 179 Blumler, Jay G. 32, 55, 248 Boorman, Jack 151 Boorstin, Daniel 47, 119 Bowring, Philip 93, 226–7 brands 50, 51, 118–19, 282, 301 351

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Bräuchler, Birgit 277–8 Britain 14, 45, 50, 69, 189, 221, 222, 262, 276–7 broadband 27, 28, 52, 76–7, 96, 230–231, 272, 273 Buddhism 181, 183, 197, 209–10, 267–8 Burma 78, 79, 207–8, 249 Burson-Marsteller 236, 247, 249, 251, 252, 257 Burton, John 108, 222, 235, 238, 239, 260, 262, 264, 265, 287 business elites and Internet 292, 295 Thailand 175–6, 178, 183–4, 188, 190–191, 192–3, 194–5, 196, 202–3, 204, 205, 212, 214 Business Week 37, 41, 55, 111, 218 cable television advertising revenues 34–5 Asia 65, 68, 69, 73, 76, 77, 117 Indonesia 162, 172 Philippines 130–131 Singapore 220, 228, 229 Thailand 190, 195 UK 69 US 69 CAGR (compound annual growth rate), global media and entertainment industry 27–8 capitalism 3, 14, 17, 298, 299 Catholicism 123, 127, 155, 278 CBS-Viacom 38, 40 CDs 281 celebrity and brands 118–19, 301 commodification and commercialization in Asia 4, 115 and consumer culture 47, 48, 118–19 growth and development of media and entertainment industry 46, 47–9, 300–301 and media politics in Southeast Asian context 80–82, 117–21 Indonesia 141, 160, 161, 169, 172 Philippines 81–2, 121–3, 129, 133, 134–5, 137–9

political leaders as celebrities 49, 120, 133, 134–5, 141 politicization of celebrities 116, 160 and television 48–9, 119–20 censorship Asia 78 Indonesia 145–6, 159, 161, 171 Malaysia 96, 97, 100, 101, 103, 113 Philippines 127 Singapore 218, 221, 222, 223, 225, 231, 268, 286–7 Thailand 185–6, 187–8, 190, 191, 192, 200, 209, 212–14, 289 and global reach 41, 43 Internet 231, 285, 286–7, 289 and media conglomeration 41 Chadhu, Kalyani 41, 56, 84 Chandler, David P. 181, 182, 184 Chen, Peter S.J. 223, 225, 254 China and AOL 34 censorship 41, 43 digital content 27 dumbing down 44 foreign investment 260 Internet usage 52, 53, 68, 70, 71 media and entertainment market 82 mobile phones 52, 53–4 piracy and counterfeit 282 print media 67 public relations 249, 252 television 67, 68, 72, 73, 74, 75, 276 Chongkittavorn, Kavi 176, 177, 186, 187, 188, 195, 196, 200, 202, 211, 213, 214 Christianity 123, 127, 151, 155, 156, 158, 278 Chua Lee Hoong 221, 232, 233 Chua Mui Hong 229, 243, 256 Chulalogkorn, King 182, 183, 184, 189, 196, 267 cinema 131, 223, 224, 281, 283, 284 citizen journalism 50, 51, 52, 291, 294 civil demonstrations and political unrest ICT and Internet 272, 275–6 Indonesia 147, 149, 150, 155, 252 Malaysia 100–101, 106

Index Singapore 276 Thailand 58, 176, 178, 180, 186–7, 190, 195, 196, 200, 214 CNBC 34, 36, 64, 90–91, 96, 99 CNBC Asia 65, 90–91, 99–106, 112–13 CNN 34, 40, 44, 64, 96, 101, 102, 190, 195, 289 commercial concerns celebrity in Asia 115 and dumbing down 82, 84, 118 and lack of diversity in television programmes 41, 42 media in Southeast Asia 298–9 Indonesia 172, 173 Malaysia 95–6, 98, 104, 112–13 Philippines 129, 137–8 Singapore 228–9, 232–3 Thailand 213 Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) 161, 192, 199, 232 commodification 4, 10–11, 30, 33–8, 46, 48–9, 82, 115, 120, 298–9 communalism 90, 91–2 Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) 127, 128 community radio 191, 192 competition 38, 63–7, 228–9, 236 computer viruses 231, 276–7, 284 computers 28, 33–4, 50, 51, 53, 131, 230–231, 286 see also broadband; Internet concentration of ownership 34–8, 82, 129–30, 158–9, 160, 172, 222 see also conglomeration conflict of interest 191, 207, 208–9 conglomeration 34–8, 39–42, 48, 129–30, 190–191, 247, 249–50, 298–9 see also concentration of ownership consumer culture 46, 47, 48, 118–19, 137–8 consumers 64, 65, 198 control of information, by news anchors 49, 120 control of media Indonesia 140–141, 142, 145–8, 150, 154, 157–62, 168–9, 171, 172, 173, 290 Internet 274 by journalists 9–10

353

Malaysia 92, 93–4, 95–7, 98, 100–104, 110, 112, 288 Philippines 125–8, 132–3, 289 by political elites 10–12, 292 by political elites in Southeast Asia 3, 22, 43, 57, 60, 63–4, 69, 78–80, 82, 84, 273–4, 297–8, 303 Singapore 64, 217, 220, 222, 223–30, 231–2, 234–5, 238, 239–40, 242–3, 268, 274, 285–7, 302, 303 television 86 Thailand 176, 185–6, 187–8, 189–93, 194–6, 199–200, 201, 202–3, 204–8, 209, 210, 212–14, 289 see also concentration of ownership; conglomeration Coronel, Sheila S. 1, 23, 122–3, 125, 128, 131, 133, 135, 136, 138, 139 corruption Indonesia 151, 152 Malaysia 93, 100, 109, 110, 113 Philippines 126, 135 Thailand 183, 191, 200–201, 202, 206, 212, 213 counterfeit 281–4 Crispin, Shawn W. 1, 191, 192, 194, 206, 207, 210–211 critical media studies 7–8, 11–12, 13–14 crony capitalism 125–6, 212 Crouch, Harold 173, 179 cultural change 30, 55, 83–4, 299 cultural hegemony 11, 86, 299 cultural imperialism 39, 46 cultural products 25, 115, 118, 172, 299 Curran, James 5, 8, 43 currencies, and Asian Financial Crisis 57–8 current aﬀairs programmes 44–5 Cutlip, Scott 247 cybercrime 231, 234–5, 264, 276–7, 279, 281, 282, 283–4, 284, 285, 289, 290 Dahl, Robert 61 David, R. 125, 129, 132, 133, 134 Davies, J.C. 179 defamation see libel and defamation

354

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

democracy and celebrity 49 conditions for 60–63 and ICT development and growth 11, 50–54, 290, 291 and media 8–9, 14 Southeast Asia Indonesia 141, 142, 146, 149, 155, 170, 171, 173, 290 Malaysia 87 Philippines 134–5, 137–8 Singapore 218–19, 302 Thailand 58, 176, 177, 178, 180, 186–7, 198, 213, 214–15 and Southeast Asia 25–6, 61–2, 63, 80 Democratic Action Party (DAP) 89, 97 Dennis, Everette E. 3, 94, 189, 223, 224, 226 deregulation 37–8, 46, 190–191, 214, 233 Deutsch, Karl W. 8, 223, 250 developing countries 31, 248–9, 283 developmental journalism 126–7 developmentalist state model 56, 299–300 Di Palma, Guiseppe 6, 62, 63, 141, 171 Diamond, Larry 61, 82, 93 digital technologies 27, 29, 50, 117, 272, 273 see also cable television; computers; Internet; mobile phones; satellite communications; satellite television digital television 4, 273 Disney 34, 35, 36, 40 distribution of resources 61, 300 Dixon, Wheeler W. 48, 115, 118, 119, 120 Donnan, Shawn 155–6, 165, 166, 265 Dow Jones Inc 57, 66–7, 90, 99–100, 199, 207, 226, 229 dumbing down and advertising revenues 81 and commercialization 82, 84, 118 eﬀects of television 31 and growth and development of media and entertainment industry 42–7, 48, 299 Indonesia 148 by international media 82, 84

Malaysia 98 news media 22, 42, 44, 45, 81, 133 Philippines 129 Singapore 228 Thailand 203, 206 see also celebrity; media filter; sensationalism DVDs 281, 282 East Timor 148, 151–2, 153, 155, 157, 159, 161, 162, 163, 165, 173, 252 Echelon 280, 284 economic development 60, 61, 64, 87, 88, 90–91, 92–3, 219–20, 271–2, 290–291 economic growth 56, 141, 147–8, 149–50, 151, 173, 195, 271–2, 299–300 economic slowdown 28 see also Asian Financial Crisis; ‘tech bubble’ collapse Economist, The 1, 12, 29, 32, 35, 39, 41, 43, 44, 50, 56, 57, 82, 111, 155, 157, 158, 163, 164, 168, 173, 193, 199, 207, 218, 238, 264, 266, 275, 291, 294 elections and celebrity in Philippines 81–2 and democracy 60–61 eﬀects of television 31–2 Indonesia 142, 149, 156, 167–8 and Internet 293 Malaysia 88–9, 90, 97, 103, 104, 109–10 and people’s journalism 52 Philippines 134, 135, 289 Singapore 222, 226, 238, 239, 276, 285 Thailand 176, 201, 203, 204, 209 electoral misconduct 88–9, 110, 201, 204 electronic information 28 electronic media 28, 33–4, 64 emotional responses, eﬀects of television 31 Estrada, Joseph 121, 122, 123, 133, 134, 138 ethnicity Indonesia 143–4, 147, 151, 155, 171–2, 173

Index Malaysia 87, 88, 90, 91–2 Singapore 221, 231, 243, 244 Thailand 178, 183, 197 Europe 36, 279 families 147, 158, 159, 181 see also Lopez family; paternalism; patriarchy Far Eastern Economic Review, The 101, 192, 198, 199, 205, 207, 218, 225–6, 227, 230, 264, 265, 268 Federal Communications Committee (FCC) 37–8, 40 film 112, 131, 198, 233, 282, 283, 284 Financial Times 39, 41, 66–7, 111, 220, 227, 275 Finer, Samuel E. 178–9 Fiske, John 11, 12, 15, 31, 45, 59, 118 foreign investment 57, 64, 67, 166–7, 207, 232–3, 234, 245, 260, 285 foreign media see international media Foulkes, Nicholas 48, 138 Fox 4, 38, 40, 44 France, Paul 101–2 Frankfurt School 7, 9–10 free press and media Asia-Pacific 69, 78, 79, 80 Indonesia 141, 146, 154, 169–70, 289–90 Malaysia 105–6, 288 Philippines 128–32 Thailand 176–7, 184–5, 200, 201–2, 213, 214 free press and media violations Asia-Pacific 69, 78, 79 Indonesia 78, 145, 150, 154, 157–8, 159–60, 163–4 Philippines 127, 128, 133, 135–6 Thailand 176, 192, 199–200, 201, 203, 205, 207–8, 213–14 freedom 21–2, 61 Friedman, E. 6, 62, 63, 213 GAM (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka) 154, 155, 163, 164 Garnham, Nicolas 13, 42, 80 GE 35, 40, 100 Gibson, Owen 4, 292 Giddens, Anthony 3, 6, 12, 14, 16–17, 297

355

global communications 55, 83, 85, 86 global consumer culture 46 global financial assets 4–5 global media see international media global reach 23, 34, 35, 37, 39–41, 43, 56 global spending, on online and wireless channels 27 global television 34–8, 55 globalization and dumbing down 46 electronic viewing media 33–4 and Indonesia 150–152, 172 and media 3, 16, 33–41 and political change 62–3 and public relations 244, 252, 265–6 and Singapore 221, 225, 237, 239, 302 and Thailand 197–200 GMA 130, 132, 133 Goh Chok Tong 217, 224, 243, 254, 256 Golding, P. 7, 8, 11, 35, 86 GOLKAR Party 147, 152, 160 Gomez, James 80, 95, 104, 133, 220, 231, 236, 274, 276 Google 37, 43 growth and development of media and entertainment industry celebrity culture 47–9 democracy and the new ICTs 42–7 dumbing down 42–7 globalization, conglomeration and commodification trends 33–8 globalization and global reach 38–41 growth statistics 27–9 perception industries 32–3 television 29–32 Guantanamo Bay 108, 113, 302 Gunaratne, Rohan 3, 145, 146, 182–3, 184, 185, 186, 188, 189, 190, 195, 261, 263, 277 Gurevitch, Michael 32, 55 Habermas, Jurgen 9 hacking 231, 276–7 Handley, Paul 178, 183, 184, 187, 188, 267–8 Harsono, Andreas 145, 146–7, 150, 160, 162

356

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

Harymurti, Bambang 140–141, 159, 160 hegemony model 16–17 Heuvel, J.V. 3, 94, 189, 223, 224, 226 Hiebert, Murray 96, 101 Hill, David T. 146, 148, 149, 150, 170, 290 Hill & Knowlton 247, 249, 252 Hiroto, Janice M. 246, 248, 266 Hong Kong 52, 53, 57, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 104, 117, 249, 282 Hughes-Freeland, Felicity 81, 141, 169 human rights 87, 89, 95, 108 human rights violations 79–80, 108, 113, 142, 210–211, 240, 252, 265, 268, 302 Human Rights Watch 89, 108, 154 Hume, Andrea Richter 151 Humphrys, John 30, 31, 42, 45 Huntington, Samuel F. 2, 14, 61 Ianucci, Armando 31 ICT Asia-Pacific 78, 272 Indonesia 149, 150, 172–3, 272, 273 Malaysia 88, 94–5, 96, 97–8, 194, 272, 273 Philippines 127, 128, 129–30, 131, 272, 273 Singapore 194, 220, 225, 230–232, 234–5, 242–3, 272, 286 Thailand 193–6, 272, 273 and cultural change 299 and demise of global newspaper industry 50 and democracy 11, 50–54, 290, 291 inequality of access 84 and local opposition 85, 275–6 and political elites 10, 292 and power 9, 294 and public relations 244, 252, 265–6 and quality of information 22–3 and radical groups 277–9 and surveillance 279–81, 284–91 see also broadband; cable television; computers; digital technologies; Internet; mobile phones; satellite communications; wireless technology

image Philippines 122–3 political leaders and elites 11–12, 83, 299, 300 Singapore 225–6, 236, 239, 240, 243, 244 television and celebrity 119–20 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 57, 58, 59, 93, 151, 153, 169, 201, 265 India 27, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 131, 260, 282–3 Indonesia alternative media 149 and Asian Financial Crisis 57, 58, 141, 149–50, 151, 173 celebrity and media politics 80–81, 141, 160, 161, 169, 172 civil demonstrations and political unrest 147, 149, 150, 155, 252 control of media 140–141, 142, 145–8, 150, 154, 157–62, 168–9, 171, 172, 173, 290 corruption 151, 152 cybercrime 290 and democracy 62, 63, 141, 142, 146, 149, 155, 170, 171, 173, 290 economic growth and development 141, 147–8, 149–50, 151, 173, 290 elections 142, 149, 156, 167–8 ethnicity 143–4, 147, 151, 155, 171–2, 173 foreign investment 167 foreign media 148, 150, 154, 159, 161–4, 165, 166, 172–3 free media 79, 80, 141, 146, 154, 169–70, 289–90 free media violations 78, 145, 150, 154, 157–8, 159–60, 163 freedom rating 21 geography 142, 143–4, 150, 151 and globalization 150–152, 172 human rights issues 142, 252 ICT 76, 131, 149, 150, 172–3, 272, 273 Internet 70, 71, 131, 149, 157, 273, 289–90 legal challenges and warnings 140–141, 157–8, 159–60

Index legislation 145, 147, 156, 158, 159, 161, 290 libel and defamation 140–141, 157–8, 159–60, 163–4, 168–9 and Malaysia 109 middle-class 142, 148, 149, 151 military 142, 146, 150, 152–6, 157, 159, 161, 164, 166, 168, 173 nationalism 145, 146 New Order 146, 147, 152, 170 news media 146, 161, 162–3 ownership of media 147, 158–9, 160, 172 pancasila 144, 147, 152, 155–6, 165 and Philippines 273 political history 143, 144, 145–6, 152–60 (see also Megawati Sukarnoputri; Suharto; Sukarno; Wahid, Abdurrahman (Gus Dur); Yudhoyono, Susilo Bambang) political opposition 149 and pornography 170 print media 140–141, 143, 145–6, 147, 148, 154, 156, 157, 158–9, 160, 165–6 public relations 252 radio 143, 146, 156, 157, 160 religion 143–4, 147, 150, 153, 155, 156, 158, 163–4, 165, 166, 167–8, 169, 172–3, 261, 277, 278 security 153, 166, 168, 171, 172, 262 sensationalism 160, 172 separatist movements 148, 151–2, 153, 154–5, 157, 159, 161, 162, 164, 173 stability issues 147, 150–152, 157, 159–60, 169, 300 television 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 118, 130, 144–5, 147, 148, 154, 156–7, 158, 159, 160, 161–2, 172 and terrorism 136, 142, 166, 167–8, 173, 217–18, 243, 259–60, 261, 266 and US 155, 165, 166–7, 168, 172, 252

357

and ‘war on terror’ 136, 142, 155, 164–70, 173, 252, 262 inequality of ICT access 84 influence 12, 39, 51–2 infotainment 23, 42, 45, 48–9, 118, 120, 129, 133 Innis, Harold 12 international business news media 57, 65, 66 International Federation of Journalists 133, 135 International Herald Tribune 45, 66, 67, 198, 225–7 international media and Asian Financial Crisis 57 conglomeration 34–8 content 40, 45, 55, 83 control by political elites 82, 84 dumbing down 82 local content 55, 85 and public relations 250–251 security dilemma 58 and Southeast Asia 64 Indonesia 148, 150, 154, 159, 161–4, 165, 166, 172–3 Malaysia 87, 88, 89, 90, 94–5, 96, 97–8, 99–106, 108–9, 110–113 Philippines 127–8, 131 Singapore 220, 223, 224, 225–7, 228–9, 263–4 Thailand 190, 195, 197–9, 205, 207–8, 212, 214, 268 international news publications 66–7 Internet advertising 27–8, 50, 52 Asia 52, 53, 64, 68, 70–71, 117 Indonesia 70, 71, 131, 149, 157, 273, 289–90 Malaysia 70, 71, 97–8, 105–6, 110, 131, 194, 273, 288, 293 Philippines 70, 71, 128, 129, 273, 289, 293 Singapore 52, 53, 65, 70, 71, 194, 220, 230–232, 234–5, 238, 264, 272, 274, 276, 285–7, 293, 302 South Korea 52, 53, 293 Thailand 70, 71, 131, 193–4, 196, 273, 289, 293

358

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

civil demonstrations and political unrest 272 consolidation 36–7 dumbing down 98 and economic growth and development 271–2, 290–291 electronic viewing and globalization 34 global usage 28 legislation 231, 234–5, 238, 264, 274, 285 and marketing 292 and political elites 273–4, 276, 292–3, 295 and political opposition 275–6 poverty alleviation 290–291, 294 and radical groups 277–9 and social networking 272, 291, 292 and surveillance 98, 231, 234–5, 235, 238, 264, 274, 280–281, 284–91 US 68, 293 and ‘war on terror’ 274, 280–281 see also blogs; cybercrime; usergenerated content investment, in IT in Asia Pacific 78 IPTV 75 Iraq War 29, 40, 44, 108, 262, 263 Islam Indonesia 143–4, 151, 155, 156, 165, 166, 167–8, 169, 172–3 Singapore 237 Thailand 183, 195 see also Muslim states; radical Islamic fundamentalism iTV 190, 191, 192, 205, 206 Jackall, R. 246, 248, 266 Jakarta Post 141, 154, 158, 159, 168, 169 Japan broadband usage 52 developmentalist state model 56 digital content 27 Internet usage 52, 53, 54, 70, 71 media and entertainment market 82 mobile phone usage 54 television 65, 68, 72, 73, 74, 75, 117 and Thailand 182, 185 JI (Jemaah Islamiah) 210, 211, 231, 261, 263, 277, 284

Job, Brian L. 58, 59 Jomo, K.S. 93, 95, 104 Jones, David Martin 14, 218–19, 220, 221, 222, 236–7, 238, 240, 272, 287, 302 Jones, Sydney 163–4, 167 journalists 9–10, 29–30, 32, 42, 43, 46–7, 96, 299 see also citizen journalism; free press and media; free press and media violations; reporters justice system, Singapore 234 karaoke culture 25, 301 Kaviori, Anadam 41, 56, 84 Kazmin, Amy 176, 192, 204, 206 Keane, John 8, 12, 31, 34, 42, 43, 80, 148, 250, 266 Kellner, Douglas 6, 10, 11, 16–17, 30, 46, 86, 138, 141–2, 170–171, 217, 240, 292, 302 Keyes, Charles F. 183, 185, 188, 189, 197 Kompas 154, 158, 160, 166 Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange 89, 90 Kuo, Eddie C.Y. 220, 223, 225, 254, 274 Lane, Timothy 57 Lee Hsien Loong 226–7, 238, 254–5, 256, 268, 286–7, 293 Lee Kuan Yew 221, 224, 225–8, 230, 242–3, 254, 268 legal challenges and warnings Indonesia 140–141, 157–8, 159–60 Malaysia 96, 100–101 piracy and cybercrime 283–4 Singapore 218, 225–8, 231–2, 268, 286 Thailand 204–5, 209 legislation Indonesia 145, 147, 156, 158, 159, 161, 290 and Internet 231, 234–5, 238, 264, 274, 285, 286–7 Malaysia 88–9, 94–5, 98, 100, 107 Singapore 222, 223–4, 226, 229, 231, 233, 234–5, 238, 242, 260–261, 264, 285, 286–7 Thailand 176, 185, 187, 190, 289

Index libel and defamation Indonesia 140–141, 157–8, 159–60, 163–4, 168–9 Malaysia 96, 101, 288 Philippines 131, 132–3 Singapore 218, 223–4, 226, 227–8, 231, 238, 263–4, 286, 287 Thailand 176, 185, 208 liberalism 8, 11–12, 13–14, 298 liberalization 14, 218–19, 228–9, 239, 240, 263–4, 297 licences 145, 158, 190, 192, 220, 222, 228 Lim, Merlyna 277–8 lobbying 247, 249–50, 252 local culture 84–5 local media 11, 23, 56, 57, 60, 64, 82, 96 local media content 39, 55, 67, 85 local opposition 11, 85–6, 275 Lopez family 126, 129, 130 Lubis, Mochtar 144, 145 Lull, James 12, 67, 85, 117 MacGregor, Brent 30, 49, 58, 120 Mahathir Mohamad 87, 88–9, 90–91, 92–3, 95–6, 97, 98, 100–106, 107, 108, 110–111, 112, 113, 251, 288 Majod, Tehranian 84, 85, 166 Malacca Straits 25, 262 Malaysia and Asian Financial Crisis 57, 87, 89–90, 93, 99, 112 civil demonstrations and political unrest 100–101, 106 commercial concerns 95–6, 98, 104, 112–13 communalism 90, 91–2 control of media 64, 92, 93–4, 95–7, 98, 100–104, 110, 112, 288 corruption and cronyism 93, 100, 109, 110, 113 and cybercrime 277, 279, 284 democracy 87 dumbing down 98 economic development 87, 88, 90–91, 92–3 elections 88–9, 90, 97, 103, 104, 109–10 ethnicity 87, 88, 90, 91–2

359

films 112 free media 79, 105–6, 288 free press violations 78 freedom rating 21 geography 91 human rights issues 87, 89, 95, 108, 113 ICT 76, 88, 94–5, 96, 97–8, 131, 194, 272, 273 and Indonesia 109 international media 87, 88, 89, 90, 94–5, 96, 97–8, 99–106, 108–9, 110–113 Internet 70, 71, 97–8, 105–6, 110, 131, 194, 273, 288, 293 legal challenges and warnings 96, 100–101 legislation 88–9, 94–5, 98, 100, 107 libel and defamation 96, 101, 288 market economy 87, 88, 90 mobile phone usage 76 ownership of media 94, 95–6 patronage 95–6, 98 piracy and counterfeit 282, 284 political history 91–3 (see also Anwar Ibrahim; Badawi, Abdullah Ahmad; Mahathir Mohamad) political opposition 88–9, 92–3, 97, 102, 106, 108–9 poverty eradication 90–91, 92 print media 67, 93–4, 97, 108–9, 110–111 public relations 95–6, 251 radio 94, 95, 110 religion 87, 90, 91, 92, 106, 107–8, 113, 277, 278, 284, 303 security 106, 262 surveillance 98, 284, 288 television 67, 68, 69, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 90, 92, 94, 95, 96, 110, 117, 118, 130 CNBC Asia 90, 99–106, 112–13 and Thailand 109 and US 107–8 and ‘war on terror’ 106–9, 113, 262, 284 Marcos, Ferdinand 125–8 market economy 87, 88, 90, 302 market research 42, 43

360

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

marketing 42, 292 see also political marketing markets, for media and entertainment 43, 64, 65, 82 Marshall, David P. 49, 116, 119, 120 Marxism 7, 8, 9, 10 Masalog, Crispin C. 123, 125, 129, 131–2, 134 McBeth, John 153, 155, 167, 261 McCargo, Duncan 177, 181, 184, 185, 186, 187, 195, 199, 213, 214, 250 McChesney, Robert W. 8, 35, 43, 86 McCombs, Maxwell E. 13, 14 McLaren, Malcolm 25 McLuhan, M. 6, 12–13, 15, 84, 215 media and globalization 3, 33–41 growth and development (see growth and development of media and entertainment industry) and politics 5–7, 8–17 scale of operation 35, 82 theories 7–17 media filter 12, 49, 118, 120 media imperialism 55 media in Southeast Asian context and Asian Financial Crisis 56–8, 65–6, 79, 80 celebrification and media politics 80–82 competing for access 63–7 control by political elites 57, 60, 63–4, 69, 78–80, 82 global reach of local media 56 and political change 60–63, 80 security dilemma 58–60 and television in Asia 67–9, 72–80 Megawati Sukarnoputri 153–5, 156, 157–8, 161, 163, 171 Mendaki 231, 232 Microsoft 35–6, 283, 285 middle-class Indonesia 142, 148, 149, 151 and media in Southeast Asia 64, 65 Philippines 123 Singapore 225, 287 Thailand 176, 186, 187, 195, 198, 201, 203, 205, 209, 212, 213, 214

military characteristics 153, 179–80 Indonesia 142, 146, 150, 152–6, 157, 159, 161, 164, 166, 168, 173 Philippines 125, 126, 127, 133, 136, 137 power 178–9 Thailand 175, 176, 178, 179–80, 185–6, 187, 188, 189–93, 195–6, 200, 207–8, 211–12, 213, 214–15, 251–2, 268, 289 MITA 220, 229, 255 mobile phones 27, 28, 53–4, 76–7, 128, 130, 131, 196, 279–80, 291 modernity 8, 14, 15, 16, 297, 298 modernization 59, 88, 90, 92, 151, 298 monarchy, Thailand 175, 181–2, 183, 184, 187, 188, 189, 190, 196, 199, 200, 206, 207, 209, 267–8 Mongkut, King 182, 183, 184, 196, 197, 267 monitoring the media 98, 100, 101–3, 131, 213–14 Moro movements 127, 128 Mulder, Niels 183, 184, 188, 190, 213 Muntarbhorn, Vitit 181, 183, 184, 189, 190, 191, 197, 200, 214 murder 127, 128, 135–6, 154, 192, 200, 211 Murdoch, G. 7, 8, 11, 35 Murdoch, Rupert 4, 17, 38, 41, 43, 81, 292 music industry 281, 283–4, 292 Muslim states 61–2 see also Islam; radical Islamic fundamentalism MySpace 291, 292 Narathiwat Community Radio (NCR) 191, 192 Nation, The 178, 188–9, 199, 202, 203, 204, 205, 209, 210 nationalism 145, 146, 196–7, 198, 203, 221, 222, 297–8 NBC 40, 90, 99, 100 negative news stories 31, 45, 162–3, 166, 195, 199, 201–2, 206, 207, 208, 212, 214 New Audience Research approach 12 New People’s Army (NPA) 127, 128

Index New Straits Times 94, 102, 109, 110, 288 New York Times 38, 40, 66–7, 220 news anchors 49, 120, 129 News Corp 35, 38, 40, 41, 44, 292 news filter 49, 118, 120 news media and celebrity 49, 119–20 control by journalists 9–10 and democracy 8–9 dumbing down 42, 44, 45, 81, 133 Indonesia 146, 161, 162–3 Philippines 127–8, 133 power 45 and public relations industry 247–8 radio and television 28, 29–30, 31, 49, 119–20 see also current aﬀairs programmes; international business news media; international news publications; negative news stories; news anchors; news filter; newspapers and magazines; war reporting newspapers and magazines Asia 65, 66–7, 68 Indonesia 140–141, 143, 145–6, 147, 148, 154, 157, 158–9, 165–6 Malaysia 93–4, 97 Philippines 125, 127–8, 129, 130, 132, 133, 136 Singapore 218, 222, 223, 224, 225–7, 228 Thailand 184–9, 195, 198, 199–200, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 213 eﬀect of ICT 50 profits 51 Owen, Norman G. 126, 186, 187 ownership of media Indonesia 147, 158–9, 160, 172 Malaysia 94–5 Philippines 125, 129–30, 131 rules in US 37–8, 40 Singapore 222, 223, 224, 242 Thailand 189, 190–191, 192–3, 194, 204, 205, 214

361

Paiboon Damrongchaitham 204, 205 Paribata, S. 58, 59, 60 Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) 88–9, 92, 97, 106, 107, 109 paternalism 124, 181–2 patriarchy 123–5, 129–30, 131, 181–2 patronage 95–6, 98, 124–5, 191, 200 pay television 67, 68, 72, 76–7, 110, 117, 273 People’s Action Party (PAP) 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 225, 227–8, 230, 231, 236, 238–9, 242–4, 256, 264, 267, 268–9, 274, 276, 285–7, 293, 302, 303 people’s journalism 50, 51, 52, 291, 294 perception industries 32–3, 83, 118–21, 299, 300 see also celebrity; image; propaganda; public relations (PR) personal power 124 pharmaceutical piracy 283 Phibun Songkram 185, 189 Philippine Daily Inquirer 127, 129, 130 Philippines alternative media 127, 128 and Asian Financial Crisis 57 celebrity and media politics 81–2, 121–3, 129, 133, 134–5, 137–9 cinema 131 commercial concerns 129, 133, 137–8 consumer culture 137–8 control of media 125–8, 132–3, 289 corruption 126, 135 and cybercrime 276, 284 democracy 134–5, 137–8 developmental journalism 126–7 elections 134, 135, 289 free media 79, 128–32 free media violations 127, 128, 133, 135–6 freedom rating 21 geography 123 ICT 76, 127, 128, 129–30, 131, 272, 273 image 122–3 international media 127–8, 131 Internet 70, 71, 128, 129, 273, 289, 293

362

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

libel 131, 132–3 middle-class 123 military 125, 126, 127, 133, 136, 137 mobile phones 128, 130, 131 ownership of media 125, 129–30, 131 patriarchal families 123–5, 129–30, 131 political culture 122–3, 124–5 political history 123–4 (see also Estrada, Joseph; Marcos, Ferdinand) power 124–5 print media 68, 125, 127–8, 129, 130, 132, 133, 136 public relations 136–7, 249, 251 radio 125, 127, 129, 130, 136 regulatory and monitoring bodies 131, 132 religion 123, 127, 128, 136, 277 surveillance 289 television 68, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 104, 125, 127, 129, 130–131, 133 and US 123, 125, 128, 129, 136, 137, 249 and ‘war on terror’ 136–7, 249, 262 phones 28, 68 see also mobile phones piracy 281–4, 285 political change 60–63, 80 political control 58, 297–303 political crafting 62, 63, 141, 171 political culture 60, 61–2, 122–3, 124–5 political economy 10–11 political elites control of media 10–12, 292 control of media in Southeast Asia 3, 22, 43, 57, 60, 63–4, 69, 78–80, 82, 84, 273–4, 297–8, 299 and democracy 62 and ICT 10, 292 image 11–12, 83 and Internet 273–4, 276, 292–3, 295 public relations 116, 118 and security 58, 59 political freedom 61 political leaders 49, 83, 120, 133, 134–5, 141 see also political elites; politicians; individual political leaders

political marketing 32, 33, 116, 246–7, 299, 300 political opposition and democracy 60, 62 Indonesia 149 and Internet 275–6 Malaysia 88–9, 92–3, 97, 102, 106, 108–9 Philippines 127 Singapore 228, 239, 285–6 Thailand 192, 193, 194–5, 196, 199–200, 204 politicians 32, 160 Pongsudivak, Thitian 177, 185, 186, 190, 191 pornography 170, 225, 275, 290 poverty alleviation 90–91, 92, 290–291, 294 power 9, 11, 43, 45, 46, 85, 86, 118, 124–5, 178–9, 266, 294 Prem Tinsulanonda, General 178, 183, 187, 188, 195 Press Foundation for Asia, The 126–7 press freedom see free press and media; free press and media violations PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) 27, 28, 282, 285 print media Asia 64, 65, 66–7 Indonesia 140–141, 143, 145–6, 147, 148, 154, 156, 157, 158–9, 160, 165–6 Malaysia 67, 93–4, 97, 108–9, 110–111 Philippines 68, 125, 127–8, 129, 130, 132, 133, 136 Singapore 218, 220, 222, 223, 224, 225–7, 228 Thailand 176–7, 184–6, 187–9, 195, 198, 199–200, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 209, 210, 213 profits 45, 46, 47, 48, 51, 118 see also commercial concerns propaganda 185, 189, 190, 191, 193, 200, 201, 203, 204, 205–6, 276 public relations (PR) and celebrity 49, 120 China 249 defined 245

Index developing countries 248–9 and global media 250–251 and globalization 244, 252, 265–6 Hong Kong 249 and ICT 244, 252, 265–6 Indonesia 252 and lobbying 247, 249–50, 252 Malaysia 95–6, 251 Philippines 116, 136–7, 249, 251 and political marketing 32, 33, 116, 246–7, 299, 300 and power 266 role 245–6 Singapore (see public relations (PR) in Singapore) Thailand 205–6, 208, 251–2, 267–8 and US 248–50 and ‘war on terror’ 249–50 see also image; perception industries; propaganda; public relations (PR) industry public relations (PR) in Singapore and foreign media 263–4 growth and development 253–7, 266 image 225–6, 236, 239, 240 lobbying in US 250 SARS campaign 236, 257–9, 267 and ‘war on terror’ 239, 250, 259–63, 264–5, 266–7 public relations (PR) industry 32–3, 46, 83, 246–50, 252 quality of information 22–3 see also dumbing down racial strife see communalism; radical Islamic fundamentalism; separatist movements radical Christian groups 278 radical Islamic fundamentalism and authoritarian control 79 and Internet 277–9 and public relations 249–50, 261, 264 and Southeast Asia 302–3 Indonesia 153, 155, 156, 158, 163–4, 168, 261, 277, 278 Malaysia 87, 90, 91, 106, 107–8, 113, 277, 284, 303 Philippines 128, 136–7, 277

363

Singapore 231–2, 237–8, 243, 244, 245, 284, 303 Thailand 209–10, 211 and surveillance 284 radio Asia 65 Indonesia 143, 146, 156, 157, 160 Malaysia 94, 95, 110 Philippines 125, 127, 129, 130, 136 Singapore 222, 223, 228 Thailand 180, 189, 190, 191–2, 195, 205 consolidation 37 information transmission 28 US 68 Rakyat Merdeka 157–8, 164 Rampton, S. 246, 249, 266 reality 12, 30–31 regulation 37–8, 40, 132, 159, 190 religion Indonesia 143–4, 147, 150, 153, 155, 156, 158, 163–4, 165, 166, 167–8, 169, 172–3, 261, 277, 278 Malaysia 87, 90, 91, 92, 106, 107–8, 113, 277, 278, 284, 303 Philippines 123, 127, 128, 136, 277 Singapore 224, 231–2, 237–8, 243, 244, 245, 284, 303 Thailand 181, 183, 195, 197, 209–10, 211, 267–8 reporters 49, 120 see also citizen journalism; free press and media; free press and media violations; journalists Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) 69, 78, 79, 142, 154, 157, 160–161, 167, 274, 285 resource constraints 30, 44–5 resources, and brands 51 Reuters 44, 161, 168, 178, 229, 279 revenues advertising 28, 34–5, 64, 66, 81, 82, 117, 205, 225 public relations industry 33, 246, 249, 250 Reynolds, C. 182, 196, 197 Rimban, Luz 121, 129, 133 Robison, Richard 141, 147, 171

364

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

Rodan, Gary 3, 17, 82, 95, 98, 99, 214, 219, 220, 222, 223, 225, 227, 230, 231, 287 Samudavanija, Chai-anan 58, 59, 60 SARS 217, 236, 257–9, 267 satellite communications 29–30, 149, 192–3, 194–5, 196 satellite television Asia 4, 64, 65, 67, 68, 74, 76, 77, 104, 117 China 276 Indonesia 148 Malaysia 95, 96, 99–106, 110 Philippines 104, 130 Singapore 220 Thailand 190, 192–3, 194–5 and television news production 29–30 see also individual companies Scarpello, Fabio 160, 161, 164, 172 SCV (Singapore Cable Vision) 228, 229 secrecy 153, 179, 240 security and globalization 39 Southeast Asia 22, 58–60, 166–7, 287–8 Indonesia 153, 166, 168, 171, 172, 262 Malaysia 106, 113 Singapore 217–18, 219, 220, 224, 231–2, 234–8, 240, 243–4, 260–265, 266–7 Thailand 178, 179, 209–11 Sen, Krishna 146, 148, 149, 150, 170 senior management, control of media 102–4 sensationalism 160, 172, 181, 188, 202, 213, 232 Seow, Francis T. 222, 223, 225, 253 separatist movements 148, 151–2, 153, 154–5, 157, 159, 161, 162, 173 sexual issues 170, 225, 233, 263, 275, 290 shareholder power 43 Shaw, Donald L. 13 Shin Corp. 192, 194, 206, 207, 289 Singapore advertising 225, 253 and Asian Financial Crisis 57, 65–6

authoritarian control 217–18, 219, 234, 239–40 and Britain 221, 222 cinema 223, 224 civil demonstrations and political unrest 276 commercial concerns 228–9, 232–3 competition 228–9 control of media 64, 217, 220, 222, 223–30, 231–2, 234–5, 238, 239–40, 242–3, 268, 274, 285–7, 302, 303 and cybercrime 231, 234–5, 279, 285 democracy 218–19, 302 deregulation 233 dumbing down 228 economic development 219–20 elections 222, 226, 238, 239, 276, 285 ethnicity 221, 231, 243, 244 film 233 foreign investment 232–3, 234, 245, 260, 285 foreign media 220, 223, 224, 225–7, 228–9, 263–4 free press and free press violations 79 freedom rating 21 and globalization 221, 225, 237, 239, 302 human rights violations 265 ICT 52, 76–7, 194, 220, 225, 230– 232, 234–5, 242–3, 272, 286 Internet 52, 53, 65, 70, 71, 194, 220, 230–232, 234–5, 238, 264, 272, 274, 276, 285–7, 293, 302 justice system 234 legal challenges and warnings 218, 225–8, 231–2, 268, 286 legislation 222, 223–4, 226, 229, 231, 233, 234–5, 238, 242, 260–261, 264, 285, 286–7 libel and defamation 218, 223–4, 226, 227–8, 231, 238, 263–4, 286, 287 liberalization 218–19, 228–9, 239, 240, 263–4, 302 middle-class 225, 287 mobile phone usage 76–7 nationalism 221, 222 ownership of media 222, 223, 224, 242

Index piracy and counterfeit 283 political history 221–2 (see also Goh Chok Tong; Lee Hsien Loong; Lee Kuan Yew) political opposition 228, 239, 285–6 print media 66, 67, 218, 220, 222, 223, 224, 225–7, 228 public relations (PR) (see public relations (PR) in Singapore) radio 222, 223, 228 religion 224, 231–2, 237–8, 243, 244, 245, 284, 303 security 217–18, 219, 220, 224, 231–2, 234–8, 240, 243–4, 260–265, 266–7 sensationalism 232 and sexual issues 225, 233, 263 surveillance 231, 234–5, 264, 284, 285–6 television 65–6, 67, 68, 69, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76–7, 117, 118, 130, 220, 223, 228, 229, 230 and terrorist attacks 217–18, 219, 235, 237–8, 240, 243, 244, 245, 266 and Thailand 176, 193 and US 235–6, 240, 243, 245, 250, 260–263, 264–5 and ‘war on terror’ 217–18, 219, 234–8, 240, 243, 250, 259–65, 266–7, 284, 285 SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses) 273, 285 Smith, Michael 14, 218–19, 240, 272, 287 social change 12, 59–60 social construction 12, 47 social control 297–303 social culture 60 social networking 272, 291, 292 social problems 195 society 31 software piracy 282, 283, 285 Sondhi Limthongkul 204, 205, 208, 209 Sony 35, 36 South Korea 52, 53, 57, 58, 62, 65, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 293 sovereignty 55, 83, 85, 86 spin 122, 236–7

365

stability issues, Indonesia 147, 150–152, 157, 159–60, 169, 300 Star TV 17, 34, 44, 64, 65, 66, 81, 117, 162 Stauber, J. 246, 248, 249, 266 Steinberg, D.J. 91, 124, 125, 144, 152, 221 Straits Times 109, 217, 222, 229, 232, 237, 253, 258, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 290 structuration theory 14 Suchinda Kraprayoon, General 195 Suharto 145, 146–8, 151, 152, 155, 158–9, 161–2, 164–5, 167, 168, 170, 171, 172, 289–90 Sukarno 145, 146–7, 152 surveillance 98, 231, 234–5, 235, 238, 264, 274, 280–281, 284–91, 302 Taiwan 52, 53, 57, 62, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 259, 284 Tan, Tony 235, 261, 262–3, 264 Tasker, Rodney 199–200 Taylor, M. 246, 266 ‘tech bubble’ collapse 28, 33 technological development 12–13, 14, 15–16, 29–30, 39, 42, 46–7, 84, 215 television Asia 4, 64, 65–6, 67–9, 72–80, 117–18, 273 China 67, 68, 72, 73, 74, 75, 276 Hong Kong 67, 68, 69, 72, 73, 74, 75, 104 Indonesia 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 118, 130, 144–5, 147, 148, 154, 156–7, 158, 159, 160, 161–2, 172 Malaysia 67, 68, 69, 76, 90, 94, 95, 110, 118, 130 CNBC Asia 90–91, 99–106, 112–13 Philippines 68, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 104, 125, 127, 129, 130–131, 133, 134 Singapore 65–6, 68, 69, 76–7, 117, 118, 130, 220, 223, 228, 229, 230 Thailand 65, 66, 68, 77, 117–18, 130, 180, 189–91, 192–3, 194–5, 203, 205, 206, 208

366

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

and celebrity 48–9, 119–20 commercialization, and lack of diversity 41, 42 control 86 and globalization 33–4, 39 growth and development 29–32 information transmission 28 local content 39 piracy 282–3 UK 69 US 34, 39, 55, 56, 68, 69, 86, 99, 100 television news 29–30, 31, 49, 119–20 Temasek Holdings 192–3, 194, 218 Tempo 140–141, 154, 159 terrorism and Indonesia 136, 142, 166, 167–8, 168, 173, 217–18, 243, 259–60, 261, 266 and Internet 277–9 and Singapore 217–18, 219, 235, 237–8, 240, 243, 244, 245, 266 and Thailand 196, 209–10, 211, 243 see also 9/11 terrorist attacks; ‘war on terror’ Tester, Keith 10, 292 Thai Journalists Association 203 Thailand advertising 198, 200, 203, 205 alternative media 191 and Asian Financial Crisis 57, 58, 66, 176, 193, 201–2 authoritarian control 181–2, 188, 212–13, 214, 215 business elite 175–6, 178, 183–4, 188, 190–191, 192–3, 194–5, 196, 202–3, 204, 205, 212, 214 celebrity and media politics 81 civil demonstrations and political unrest 58, 176, 178, 180, 186–7, 190, 195, 196, 200, 214 control of media 176, 185–6, 187–8, 189–93, 194–6, 199–200, 201, 202–3, 204–8, 209, 210, 212–14, 289 corruption 183, 191, 200–201, 202, 206, 212, 213 and cybercrime 289

democracy 58, 176, 177, 178, 180, 186–7, 198, 213, 214–15 deregulation 190–191, 214 dumbing down 203, 206 economic growth 195 elections 176, 201, 203, 204, 209 ethnicity 178, 183, 197 film 198 foreign investment 207 foreign media 190, 195, 197–9, 205, 207–8, 212, 214, 268 free press and media 176–7, 184–5, 200, 201–2, 213, 214 free press and media violations 69, 78, 176, 192, 199–200, 201, 203, 205, 207–8, 213–14 freedom rating 21 geography 182–3 and globalization 197–200 human rights violations 210–211, 268 ICT 77, 131, 193–6, 272, 273 Internet 70, 71, 131, 193–4, 196, 273, 289, 293 and Japan 182, 185 legal challenges and warnings 204–5, 209 legislation 176, 185, 187, 190, 289 libel and defamation 176, 185, 208 and Malaysia 109 middle-class 176, 186, 187, 195, 198, 201, 203, 205, 209, 212, 213, 214 military 175, 176, 178, 179–80, 185–6, 187, 188, 189–93, 195–6, 200, 207–8, 211–12, 213, 214–15, 251–2, 268, 289 mobile phones 77, 196 monarchy 175, 178, 181–2, 183, 184–5, 187, 188, 189, 190, 196, 197, 199, 200, 206, 207, 209, 267–8 monitoring the media 213–14 nationalism 196–7, 198, 203 negative news stories 195, 199, 201–2, 206, 207, 208, 212, 214 ownership of media 189, 190–191, 192–3, 194, 204, 205, 214 political history 181–2, 185–93, 200–201

Index (see also Banharn Silpa-archa; Phibun Songkram; Prem Tinsulanonda, General; Suchinda Kraprayoon, General; Thaksin Shinawatra; Thanom) political opposition 192, 193, 194–5, 196, 199–200, 204 print media 176–7, 184–6, 187–9, 195, 198, 199–200, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 209, 210, 213 propaganda 185, 189, 190, 191, 193, 200, 201, 203, 204, 205–6 public relations 205–6, 208, 251–2, 267–8 radio 180, 189, 190, 191–2, 195, 205 religion 181, 183, 195, 197, 209–10, 211, 267–8 security 178, 179, 209–11 sensationalism 181, 186, 188, 202, 213 and Singapore 176, 193 social problems 195 television 65, 66, 68, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 117–18, 130, 180, 189–91, 192–3, 194–5, 203, 205, 206, 208 terrorist attacks 196, 209–10, 211, 243 and US 182, 207, 210–211 and ‘war on terror’ 209–11 Thaksin Shinawatra 69, 81, 175–7, 178, 188–9, 190–191, 192–3, 194–5, 196, 199–200, 202–11, 212–13, 214–15, 251, 268, 289, 293 Thanom 186–7 Thompson, John B. 6, 7, 12, 14, 15, 16–17, 32, 33, 55, 83, 84, 118, 244, 246–7, 250, 251, 297 Time Magazine 225–6 Time Warner 34, 35, 36–7, 40 transparency 58, 93, 153, 201, 217 truth 40, 45 Ubonrat, Siriyuvasak 180, 189, 190, 198 UMNO 87, 88–9, 90, 91, 92–3, 94, 96, 98, 109–10, 111, 112, 113, 288 UNESCO 55 US advertising revenues 28, 34

367

consolidation of media industry 36–7 dumbing down 45 human rights violations 108, 113, 302 and Indonesia 155, 252 Internet usage 68, 293 investment in Southeast Asia 166–7, 207, 245, 260 media portrayal 45 ownership of media rules 37–8, 40 phone usage 68 piracy and counterfeit 283–4 and public relations 33, 248–50 radio usage 68 relations with Southeast Asia 302 Indonesia 155, 165, 166–7, 168, 172, 252 Malaysia 107–8 Philippines 123, 125, 128, 129, 136, 137, 249 Singapore 235–6, 240, 243, 245, 250, 260–263, 264–5 Thailand 182, 207, 210–211 (see also 9/11 terrorist attacks; ‘war on terror’) surveillance 280–281, 284, 302 television 34, 39, 55, 56, 68, 69, 86, 99, 100 user-generated content 50, 51–2, 54, 291–4 Vatikiotis, Michael 199–200, 288 VCR 97, 131 Viacom 4, 34, 35, 36, 40, 41 video phone technology 29–30 Wahid, Abdurrahman (Gus Dur) 156, 158, 160 Wall Street Journal 66–7, 220, 268 ‘war on terror’ and Internet 274, 280–281 and public relations 249–50 and Southeast Asia 24–5, 302 Indonesia 136, 142, 155, 164–70, 173, 252, 262 Malaysia 106–9, 113, 262, 284 Philippines 136–7, 249, 262

368

The media and political change in Southeast Asia

Singapore 217–18, 219, 234–8, 240, 243, 250, 259–65, 266–7, 284, 285 Thailand 209–11 war reporting 29–30, 40 Ward, Ian 245, 247, 248 Weber Shandwick 256–7 Western culture 23, 55, 61–2, 83, 85, 116, 299 Williams, Louise 3–4, 94, 222, 240 Williams, Raymond 4, 83, 86 wireless technology 27, 28, 54 Wolf, Michael J. 40, 47, 116 Wong, K. 94, 95, 96, 98, 251

World Bank 2, 56, 59, 141, 151, 153, 265 World Health Organization 258, 283 WPP 247, 249, 252 Yeo, George 253, 255 YouTube 291, 292 Yudhoyono, Susilo Bambang 142, 155–6, 166, 168–70, 171 Zolo, Danilo 32, 219, 222, 240, 247, 302 Zulfikar Mohamad Shariﬀ 231–2, 286

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