12 July 2025: SPH and state propaganda

I'm writing this newsletter at 2am on Saturday morning because I've just spent my entire Friday proofreading Mekong Review's August–October 2025 issue. It's a tedious, time-consuming job that, if done well, leaves no trace of itself for readers to pick up on. People only ever find the typos that proofreaders have missed; no one will ever know about the errors we caught! #ProofreaderAppreciationDay

If you're wondering about the levels of fact-checking and pedantry I got into today (okay, by this point, yesterday), here's an incomplete list of things I spent hours Googling today:

• For style purposes, are fans of BLACKPINK "Blinks", "BLINKS" or "BLINKs"?
• How do you write Viet Thanh Nguyen's name with full diacritics? (And then, after I found the answer—Việt Thanh Nguyễn—I decided that the context doesn't really call for diacritics... or does it?)
• Hyphen or no hyphen: "side by side", "first-ever", "upper caste" (as opposed to "upper-caste privilege"), "long-dead", "fruit-seller"
• Why does the Oxford English Dictionary say it's "postcolonial" but "anti-colonial"?
• If "too" appears in the middle of a sentence, commas are used to separate it from the rest of the sentence, like so: "As their conversation went on, he realised that she, too, did not like pineapples." But if "too" is at the end of the sentence—"she hated pineapples too"—a comma is not necessary but could be used as a matter of writer preference.

SPH Media took a little jaunt to China earlier this week. Their press release described it as an "official visit", referenced the 35th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral ties between Singapore and China, and mentioned a desire to "build on the positive momentum of this bilateral cooperation and deepen sharing and exchanges with our counterparts in China"—which is rather strange framing for a media company that's supposed to not be part of the state machinery. Like, hello, you're not part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (or any other ministry)?

While in China, SPH Media's senior execs met with Chinese media outlets like China Media Group, People's Daily and Xinhua News Agency to learn about the challenges faced by mainstream media outlets there. They also "discussed collaboration in technology, artificial intelligence and journalism development".

Xinhua was quick to release a statement after SPH Media's visit (they got the jump on SPH Media by one day), saying that they're ready to "ready to work with SPH Media to implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries, jointly tell the story of the two countries' development and people-to-people friendship, and enhance communication under the framework of multilateral mechanisms and experience sharing". According to them, SPH Media's chief executive Chan Yeng Kit said that "SPH Media is willing to work with Xinhua to promote cooperation in news reporting, artificial intelligence and other fields, tell the stories of China, Singapore, Asia and the world, and accurately and objectively reflect the development and changes of the world". This isn't a direct quote from Chan—it's Xinhua paraphrasing—but it also isn't disputed by SPH Media and was even picked up in The Straits Times's story.

Again, commitments to "implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries" are very weird coming from non-state actors. But, you see, Xinhua is part of the Chinese state—it's a state-run institution and its president is usually a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. It is not an independent mainstream media outlet; it's a mouthpiece of the CCP. Meanwhile, SPH Media does claim to be independent and has taken umbrage at suggestions to the contrary. So why is the company so openly and proudly working with a key organ of China's propaganda system?

And then we have Chan's comment. When you look at the words in isolation—"tell... stories", "accurately", "objectively"—they seem pretty innocuous and even correct. The media does tell stories, and they should be accurate (I have more issues with the notion of "journalistic objectivity", which I've written about before, most recently here)!

But what do these words mean in this context of working with Chinese state propaganda? What is China's definition of telling stories about China "accurately and objectively"? China Media Group has written about what China means when it talks about "telling China's story well":

On August 19, 2013, in a speech to the National Propaganda and Ideology Work Conference, Xi Jinping spelled out his approach to propaganda and international messaging. Even as he called for greater “innovation” of China’s external communication under the notion of “telling China’s story well,” he emphasized the notion of “external propaganda” (外宣):

[We] must meticulously and properly conduct external propaganda, innovating external propaganda methods, working hard to create new concepts, new categories and new expressions that integrate the Chinese and the foreign, telling China’s story well, communicating China’s voice well.

So, did Xinhua accurately report Chan's words and intentions, or were they shoving their narrative/talking points into his mouth? SPH Media's own statement doesn't make any reference to this "telling stories" line, but the fact that SPH Media hasn't disputed it and their main broadsheet included it in their report raises questions.

For clarity, I don't think it's a binary of 'Chinese media bad' and 'Western media good'. We've seen plenty of examples in recent years of various media outlets from Western countries shitting the bed and completely failing their readers, with disastrous outcomes (like Donald Trump back in the White House). There's plenty that's messed up about news and media from the West, which is why we all needed to acquire critical thinking, media literacy and fact-checking skills yesterday. But Western media fuckery doesn't cancel out the fact that there's also Chinese media fuckery that's a whole different ball game, particularly with a state-run news agency like Xinhua. So these are my questions:

Hasn't there been a lot of anxiety and hand-wringing about foreign interference in Singapore? Aren't we worried about misinformation and influence operations staged by foreigners? In that case, why are we getting so chummy with a literal propaganda outlet of a foreign state? And why does SPH Media seem to sound so comfortable talking about itself as if it's a state organ? Does it not feel like it's saying the quiet part too loud now?

It's TJFest next week! The Transformative Justice Collective has been hard at work to put together a vibrant, thoughtful, nourishing programme for you. There'll be workshops, panels, collective art-making, poetry, music and even a dance party.

For my part, I'll be sharing stories at the human library-esque 'Voices from Death Row' event on 19 July, then delivering a lecture on the war on drugs later that evening. I'm still writing the lecture—it's basically going to be 90% of my weekend plans—but I promise it will be done, with slides, by the 19th and it will be good, so you should totally come. All the other events are going to be beautiful too.

It doesn't matter if you haven't made up your mind about the death penalty, drug policy reform or abolitionism as a whole. TJFest is a space for questions, for conversations and for reflections. We'd love to have you.

The Singapore Independent Media Fair is coming back for its third year! I feel like the first section of this news article already demonstrates why independent acts of media and journalism are vital to Singapore, so I won't belabour the point.

This year's indie media fair will, as usual, have booths run by independent media outlets, civil society organisations, art groups, publishers and booksellers—so come ready to browse (and possibly buy)!

There'll also be three panels that are ticketed. You definitely should check them out and attend them all.

TransgenderSG is piloting a new programme, Transgender Stories. On 16 August, four trans and non-binary Singaporeans will be sharing their stories as part of an effort to raise awareness of the discrimination and prejudice that trans and non-binary people have to face in this country.

Deets are as follows...
Date: 16 August 2025
Time: 10am to 12pm (Registration begins at 9:45am)
Location: Common Ground Civic Centre, 21 Bedok North Street 1, Singapore 469659

Thank you for reading! As always, feel free to forward this weekly wrap to anyone you like, and spread the word about this newsletter!