Friday, November 11, 2005

Understanding Media: The Pretensions of Man

TODAY IS THE OFFICIAL LAUNCH OF SIN GALORE, MOLLY MEEK’S NEW BLOG!

In an entry in my other journal (yes, I am the Livejournal Molly Meek), I mentioned that, these days, people become the transcendental referent.

Why the death penalty (whether you are for or against it matters no more)? It’s to protect the people.

Why ban gay events? It’s because the people are conservative and cannot accept gays.

Why consider a workfare bonus? It’s for the people who are poor. Though some might suspect that any workfare bonus would not be created for the poor as much as the poor are invoked for giving the bonus.

Now, what happens when the press is not free? It’s the people who are supposed to play the role of the free press. At least, Today journalist Dharmendra Yadav thinks so in his article, “It’s your job to serve as a check” (11 November 2005).

To be precise, perhaps I should not say that the people are the ultimate referent as much as they are the ostensible ultimate referent. If the hierarchy or structure of power could be compared to a mountain, the referent being the pinnacle, then the people belong to the other end of the pinnacle—the soil that bears the weight of the entire mountain.

In a nutshell, Yadev’s argument in his own words is that:
“Voters must take on the burden of ensuring a corruption-free government, in a situation where the media does not.”

In the process of his argument, he assumes that the voters do not rely on a free press for information that would help them play the role of the Fourth Estate. He assumes, it would seem, also that, where the media plays the role of the Fourth Estate, the voters do not play any such roles—that is, the role of a free media and the role of the people to ensure a corruption-free government are distinct rather than inseparable. He assumes also that, in Singapore, although the media is not free, the voters are.

Or perhaps the third assumption is not an assumption but an illusion intended for the naïve reader. This, then, would precisely pinpoint Yadev’s argument itself. When the press (which at this point seems to be self-confessedly not free) propagates naivety amongst the very people that are supposed to replace the press’s disavowed role of the skeptic, what sort of check can the people serve?

Furthermore, one might be inclined to contend that the argument insidiously reduces the people to a role by defining them as voters—a single role that homogenizes people. An undifferentiated mass, to use a good old cliché. People are not just voters. In they are truly allowed to express themselves, they are not going to be homogeneous. There will be different interest groups and different interest groups might peacefully lobby for their causes through media. Yet, if the media were not free, would not these people be crippled? Media is perhaps not merely the extensions of man; insofar as the media could cripple the human political animal by its unavailability as a resource, it is inseparable from man.

To construct the Fourth Estate as a substitutable position is to do violence to the structure of a democratic society, a violence that is possible perhaps because democracy is alien to the perpetrator of this violence. The effect of this violence is to deny the people access to this alien structure—perhaps not to deprive the people of a fulfillment of their desire, but to deny them of their desire altogether.

What function does the article serve then? It begins this way:
“Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong, whom I regard as a political hero of my generation, recently addressed the audience at Today's fifth anniversary dinner on the key issue of media responsibility in Singapore.”

This is a valorization of the political center and a reiteration of its stance on media freedom. When did media responsibility become a key issue when the question was one of press freedom? When the political center says so. When does media responsibility become entrenched as the key issue and, in fact, the only issue? When the media itself reiterates the same point. It is also a reiteration of a reiteration. As the article says:

“There was nothing new in his [Goh’s] position, since it was something his predecessor, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, had emphasised.

“So why reiterate this?”
One can read this as “Why does SM Goh reiterate this?” One can also read this as “Why am I reiterating this?”

Regardless of the question, the short answer Yadev gives: “In recent months, Singapore has come under criticism yet again from organisations such as Amnesty International.”

“Yet again.” A fascinating phrase to use. It simply reeks of the return of the repressed. The need to reiterate ad infinitum arises from the Laius Complex. To prevent the Oedipal usurpation, Laius could, retrospectively, have castrated Oedipus at birth. In this case, the media as the extension, prosthetic or phallus must be denied to the people. The phallus must remain as Laius’ sole prerogative. Nevertheless, residual anxiety remains especially when the status of the phallic media is destabilized—for instance, when you suggest that the phallic instrument has to cease being phallic.

“No surprise here that one of the country's elder politicians rose to defend what Singapore stood for,” writes Yadev. One might suggest that, he rose (did anyone miss this Freudian slip?) not really to defend, but to define what Singapore stood for. First define, then defend. The job of defense is, of course, not the job of the ruling elite (to be figurative). Let the likes of Yadev perform the function of defense. This way, every defense would also be a diffusion and intensification of the definition. The defense would also produce new models of signification, still serving the same purpose. The idea of the people serving as the Fourth Estate demonstrates this.

But this article is not about press freedom. It is about the people being held responsible for the very conditions of their oppression—conditions over which they have no control.

The artificiality of such a responsibility can be shown in another instance of the claim to a fallacious substitutability of the Fourth Estate: the claim that one of the possible ways of checking the government is that the responsibility “falls on the Executive (that is, the Prime Minister and his team), the Legislature (Members of Parliament and, by extension, the electorate) and the Judiciary.” Yadev refers, one supposes, to the notion of a check and balance mechanism by the separation of powers between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. This is a separation generally deemed necessary, but it becomes one that is reduced to being a mere alternative or substitute to having the media as the Fourth Estate. He even naturalizes the unorthodox lack of such a separation of powers:

“In Singapore's model, there are legislative prohibitions on the judiciary's powers of review on executive decisions.
“In addition, the executive and the legislature have been in the hands of one dominant political party for as long as Singapore has been independent.”

The separation should be in the separation of powers. The media as Fourth Estate, the people actively checking the government and the separation of powers are different mechanisms that need to exist together. To turn these three mechanisms into mechanisms that are substitutable for one another is to minimize the potential checks on governmental power.

Of course, Yadev’s claim that “[t]he people . . . must hold the elected government accountable for its cleanliness, fairness and efficiency” has a definite appeal. One can call it a truth. One, however, takes exception to the presentation of this truth—a presentation defeats the purpose of the truth itself. Without a sufficiently independent media (if one finds the word “free” ultimately too naïve and without a political system that has an internal check and balance system, how are the people going to have the power to hold the government accountable. In a moment of immense irony, Yadev’s statement sounds like a massive distortion: to hold the government accountable for its cleanliness, fairness and efficiency. Who wants the government to account for these good traits? Why does Yadev not say, instead, that the people needs to hold the government accountable for all its policies and actions (which may or may not be good)?

Further violence is inflicted on the people when the article asserts the distortion to be a fact:

“This is a fact that all Prime Ministers of independent Singapore have emphasised — citizens must take their right to vote seriously, which is why the right has been linked to administrative decisions such as estate management.

The rhetoric of the importance of checking the government, in the above statement, turns into a forceful curtailment of this check itself. The scope of responsibility suddenly widens from media responsibility to the people’s responsibility (to so-called “take their right to vote seriously”). The responsibility has, in an astonishingly magical moment, transformed from the responsibility to check to government to the responsibility to the government. To link the vote to upgrading (or what Yadev sophisticatedly calls the linking of the vote to the “administrative decisions such as estate management) is cleverly turned from that which the people needs to check or question into that which the people needs to be responsible for.

How do we know if a group of voters has taken the right to vote seriously? Apparently, we know it from the person for whom the group of voters votes. If they vote for the “wrong person, he is not taking his right to vote seriously. Is this what is means to have the people playing the role of the Fourth Estate?

What happens with the news article is simply a rehash of old rhetoric that serves governmental power—except that it is a rehash cleverly (or otherwise) masked as a reminder of the people’s responsibility to check the government, to be the Fourth Estate.

The masking is carried to a ludicrous extent when Yadev talks about citizen participation quotes Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi: "The task of nation building does not rest on the government alone. Every Malaysian has an equally important role in ensuring the nation achieves further progress and prosperity." What Yadev calls for is participation indeed. Except that it is a participation that allows each individual to be co-opted into the dominant discourse.

The article trivializes the need for various checking mechanisms. Just let the people do the job, the article seems to say. Then it effaces even this last remaining mechanism. Yet, what really makes the article chilling is the note at the end of the article: “The writer, a corporate counsel, contributes in a personal capacity.” The article is not top-down propaganda, I would suggest. With such initiatives at the “lower levels,” what happens? Perhaps the state-controlled press itself is already a myth. Perhaps the state has even been freed from the trouble of controlling.

The mountain is not getting any lighter.

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*The blogger contributes this article in an impersonal capacity and holds no claims to rigorous analysis or truthful evaluation. Every statement is potentially a joke. The blogger, like Yadev, takes the right to vote seriously for the blogger believes in proper estate management.

12 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

the only comment i have, is wrt the "transcendent referent" you speak of, Sinful Molly. it is only transcendental by virtue of intersubjective recognition and interpolation: one has to willingly enter into any such recognition.

The Media is Scary precisely that way.

-- the mottled quail egg.

12:41 PM  
Blogger Molly Meek said...

Exactly, mottled quail egg.

8:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Pardon me if you think that this is excessively long for a blog comment. Also pardon my audacity to use this avenue to express a political opinion because my media will surely have no avenue for it.

But it's all pure sophistry isn't it. What's your take on their upgrading policy? This is mine.

Clearly, in a democracy, the contesting political parties are competing to prove to the people that they will make the most prudent use of the budget; there is an inherent and rightful underlying assumption that the budget policy will presuppose that all members of society are socially equal.

The contest is therefore over which party's budget policy would be for the greatest good of society and with this notion is the underlying assumption that in a democracy, 'greatest good' would first and foremost have to encompass, at the very least, the sincere and theoretical attempt to treat all members as socially equal.

It is not a question of whether the budget policy sincerely makes an attempt treat members of society as socially equal; it is a question of which most successfully does so. The question as to which party’s policy most successfully achieves this is often subjective and therefore a matter of democratic contest.

To claim that those who do not vote for the government are voting against their pockets and therefore less entitled to have their flats upgraded is tantamount to saying that those who do not vote for the government, are implicitly voting for an alternative government that would implement a budget policy that would not even encompass the aforementioned sincere and theoretical attempt to treat members of society as socially equal; and that therefore this marginalization would be a just and deserved consequence.

For that is exactly what the policy on upgrading is – socio-economic discrimination against the people who by logic of democratic ideology, do not consider your policies to be the most likely to achieve fairness.

This is clearly absurd for once again, democratic elections is where parties compete to convince the people that their genuine attempts at fairness will be most successful, not a contest over which parties will actually even make an attempt to be fair. Voters would surely avoid voting for a party that would not govern on the basic assumption that its democratic members are all socially equal.

It is a clever turning of the dispute over ‘which attempt at fairness is most viable’ to ‘which is even bothering to make an attempt to be fair’. Why? Because opposition is by definition, ‘unfair’. Wankers.

9:38 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

1 correction.

DELETE: Voters would surely avoid voting for a party that would not govern on the basic assumption that its democratic members are all socially equal.

INSERT: Rational voters who are dedicated to democracy would surely avoid voting for a party that would not govern on the basic assumption that its democratic members are all socially equal.

Was flaty contradicted by stark reality.

10:02 PM  
Blogger xenoboysg said...

Everyone is walled from one another not knowing the walls are thin. Peopled in a maze of cells.

This "people" are you, me, the next Singaporean you meet on the street. As a collective definition, the "people" of Sg are homophobic, prone to Net irresponsibility, has a naive political cultural outlook.

Very different. very different.

Journalists are not dumb. They can see but they have achieved a level of equivocation that is sublime. The reaction of the journo with the similar article to Mr Wang : her rigorous defence, her sense of honesty, willingness to subject to full investigation.

Indicative of the utter lack of confidence and more importantly, reflective of the utterly precise model of what is a Sg journalist.

2:42 AM  
Blogger Molly Meek said...

luddite, no it's not excessively long. :) Perhaps you can also inser another qualifier: "voters who get to vote"...

xenoboy, it's world-class equivocation. Maybe that's a freedom too.

3:49 AM  
Blogger Elia Diodati said...

Why am I not on your blogroll? *Pouts*

5:48 PM  
Blogger Molly Meek said...

Aww... Elia.... Molly will update her blog roll soon. Your name is so cheem, so difficult to spell.

6:23 PM  
Blogger Green Ogre said...

Laughs, an analysis that's quite a read. Man, I admire the muscles on your fingers.

9:15 PM  
Blogger Molly Meek said...

Ah, maybe Greenie would like to join Molly's finger gym? 50% discounts for friends.

9:43 PM  
Blogger Green Ogre said...

Grins. Where do I sign up? Must be free otherwise, I can't afford anything beyond S$2.00. I'm quite a cheapo.

10:16 PM  
Blogger Molly Meek said...

Since Greenie is so enthusiastic, Molly shall conduct free classes. When are you prepared for Course 101?

Course 101: Making Use of Stupidity
Ironically, the first course of the Finger Muscle Gym teaches you a skill that doesn't require you to lift a finger.

Simply speaking, it is to let stupidity speak for itself while stealing the credit for yourself.

3:21 AM  

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