Time to pat ourselves on the back!
In a report in Today on Oct 24 by my friend Derrick A Paulo, which has very pointedly NOT been reported by The Straight Times (someone correct me if I'm wrong), Singapore has inched up seven spots in the World Press Freedom Index 2005, released on Thursday by international association Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF). We are now ranked 140th out of 167 countries.
You may remember how, last year, Dr Lee Boon Yang, Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, stood up to slam the rankings for not "understanding Singapore's model" and favouring the press' role of criticism and opposition.
Well, RSF noted in this year's index report that Singapore "has a quite different style". It attributes the country's low ranking to "the complete absence of independent newspapers, radio stations and TV stations, the application of prison sentences for press offences, media self-censorship and the opposition's lack of access to the state media".
It also added a note to its index that the rankings "should in no way be taken as an indication of the quality of the press in the countries concerned.
Being the little detective that I am, I just went to snoop around on the RSF website to do a little investigation on my own. As you might know, the RSF website is blocked in China, just as Wikipedia is, but with the help of my recently-installed anonymous tunnelling programme, I can now access every fucking thing in da world! muahahah!
Guess what I found, Singapore is ranked behind Namibia (25), Mozambique (49), East Timor (58), Congo (71), Burkina Faso (78), India (106), Kenya (109), Malaysia (113), Rwanda (122), Afghanistan (125), Algeria (129), Ethiopia (131). And ranked just above Singapore is the Philippines at (139).
Fan-fucking-tastic! Makes me pretty damn proud to be a Singaporean, if you ask me. We clearly are a nation of priorities. We know how to top all the various rankings, but the RSF ranking, who cares, really.
Time to pat ourselves on the back! Well done, Lee Boon Yang! We're up seven notches! Give the man a Tiger!