Instead, barely 10 days later, Restall and Dow Jones CEO Richard Zannino received a letter from Singapore’s Ministry of Information and Communications. The Ministry, the letter said, had decided to standardize its legal approach to foreign publications; it was therefore imposing a new set of conditions on FEER in order for it “to operate on consistent principles with other offshore newspapers.”

The Review had been circulating as a foreign newspaper since it was gazetted in 1987. When the law changed in 1990, FEER, like many other foreign publications, was categorized as an “offshore publication.” Several news publications, including FEER, had been granted exemptions from the requirements to retain local counsel and post a S$200,000 security deposit. Meanwhile, FEER in 2004 had moved into a separate category when it revamped its editorial structure, transforming itself from a weekly to a monthly publication. The 1990 amendments to the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act applied only to dailies and weeklies.

In a press release which accompanied its August 3 letter, however, the Ministry wrote that the government now felt “it is an anomaly for FEER, which is a declared foreign newspaper, not to be subjected to the conditions that apply to the other declared foreign newspaper [sic].” The Ministry decided simultaneously to revoke the exemptions from the 1990 provisions of several other offshore publications. From now on, the International Herald Tribune , the Financial Times , Newsweek , and Time would also have to name a local solicitor and post a S$200,000 deposit with the Ministry of Information.