As Singapore devised ways to mold the domestic press, it also struggled with how to manage foreign reporters. One principle was clear: Foreign media were in the country as a privilege, not a right. Second, they had no right to interfere in the country’s internal politics. “To start from first principles,” Lee Hsien Loong said, “foreign newspapers have no right to circulate in Singapore.” ^[18] He elaborated:

Singapore... does not object to foreign correspondents reporting about [the country] in any way they choose to foreign audiences, provided they get their facts right... Their ideological biases or political slants do not matter to us... But when foreign based journals with significant circulations in Singapore start to report on Singapore for a Singapore audience, the Government has to take care. We do not want such foreign journals to take sides on domestic political issues... The foreign press has no part to play in what should be a purely domestic political process.

Professor Yuen-Ying Chan , director of the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong, disputes that argument. She concedes that “in general, we cannot transplant ... American standards to this part of the world, given its different culture, given its history. You need to adapt international standards to local realities.” But “there are certain standards that are universal,” she adds. “The basic principles of journalism, I believe, are universal. That’s my position. There’s one journalism. There’s good journalism and bad journalism.” ^[19] Plott concurs:

The question arises, why does someone like Lee Kuan Yew fear this kind of reporting? And, you know, I can’t answer that question for him, but one of the concerns I have is that it reflects a fear of his own people. A fear of how his own people will respond to critical views of him.

Newspaper Act. Whatever the reasons, Singapore had long circumscribed the operations of Western news organizations with legal restrictions and punitive measures, such as circulation caps and libel suits. The foreign media had learned to steer clear of certain hot topics like race and corruption, and to be careful about sourcing potentially sensitive stories. But in the mid-1980s, the government extended controls.

On August 1, 1986, with only two votes opposing, Singapore’s parliament passed an amendment to the 1974 Newspaper and Printing Presses Act. The revised law, which went into effect in September, obliged any newspaper published outside of Singapore to obtain the “prior approval” of the Minister of Information and Communications to be imported, sold or distributed in Singapore. ^[20] The law also gave the minister the right to “restrict sale or distribution” of any foreign publication found to be “engaging in the domestic politics of Singapore.” ^[21] The minister needed to give no reason for this determination, and anyone found distributing or in possession of more than five copies of an unapproved publication was liable to a stiff fine, imprisonment or both. ^[22] Western critics immediately noted that the law allowed no appeal of the minister’s decisions, and that it jeopardized Singapore’s aspiration to become Asia’s information hub. ^[23]

The new law came at a crucial point in Singapore’s economic development. Wooed by the country’s technological advancements and the strategic location of its spacious port, foreign publications—the Economist , the International Herald Tribune , and many others—had set up printing presses in Singapore and were using the country as a base for their regional operations. Time magazine, for example, printed its entire Southeast Asian print run—some 100,000 copies—in Singapore. Others, like the Asian Wall Street Journal and Asiaweek , depended on Singapore’s urban, literate population for a large percentage of their total circulation. In the fall of 1986, FEER too, which relied heavily on Singapore’s domestic market, transferred 65 percent of its printing operations from an overcrowded Hong Kong. ^[24] As Professor Chan puts it:

Why do it in Singapore? Singapore is not the most central place... Hong Kong is more central; Bangkok is more central. Well, because Singapore gave them a good deal.