Freedom from FEER

The Far Eastern Economic Review is in trouble with the Lees for a piece it ran on Chee Soon Juan a while back. Incidentally, the author of the article, Hugo Restall (who's also the editor of FEER) is a Dartmouth graduate (class of 1992); in college, he ran The Dartmouth Review -- a publication which often got itself into, ahem, trouble with the administration. (I've written about the Review quite a bit on Dartobserver -- just search the archives.)

I always wonder just how effective these libel suits are in helping to preserve the ruling party's favourable reputation. Their logic goes something like this: if we don't act quickly to do something about the offensive piece, its premises and conclusions will entrench themselves as facts and cause irreparable harm to our prestige. But you don't have to be a lawyer to realise that this argument is flawed: repeatedly suing people and publications for criticising you is going to give you a bad reputation among a lot of people (myself included), who will question your rationale for adopting such heavy-handed methods of dealing with dissent and perhaps even infer that you have something to hide from the public at large. Look, if Singapore is as in good shape as you say that it is, a little glasnost isn't going to bring the country down. Try ignoring what your critics have to say for once (most governments do) -- your reputation may even improve!
Posted by kungfuzi at 1:49 pm |