Based on the information that was found during our research for the Taiwan print media on their Election, the Singapore print media is very restricted. As Singapore government have control over the Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and Mediacorp, what is being published on print media is what the government wants us to know and propagate us. Since the independence of Singapore, the People’s Action Party (PAP) has been the ruling party in Singapore and therefore the members of parliament are mostly from PAP. Thus, Singapore print media tend to be more biased towards PAP and causes the print media to be more controlled.

Taking the Singapore general election as a case study, most reports and news published on the print media are more partial towards PAP rather than being equal towards proposition and the opposition parties of Singapore. For example, the newspaper published during the period of General Election, there was more news on PAP as compared to the opposition parties. The Singapore print media seems to be assisting in propagating the readers to vote for PAP compared to the other opposition parties participating in the Singapore General Elections by portraying PAP as a strong party in the prints.

We felt that that the Singapore print media is trying to portray PAP as a strong party to the public. It also conveyed the message to the readers that PAP is a better choice to vote for as compared to the other opposition parties.

The print media controlled by the Singapore Government has its pros and cons.  An advantage of the print media being controlled is that unnecessary information can be filtered before it reaches the readers. For example, as Singapore is a multi-racial and multi-religious country, if a news containing information about race and religion, the government can stop the media from reporting it so as to prevent misunderstandings which may arise after the publication of the news.

The disadvantage of Singapore print media being controlled is that readers will receive very limited information from the prints. For example, during the general elections in Singapore, the print media published a lot of news about PAP whereas there was limited news about the opposition parties participating. This greatly reduces the voters’ chances to understand the other parties, limiting the number of choices to consider during voting. This is unfair to the other parties and for the voters as well because in a way,  the voters are being forced to vote for PAP  as they know more about the party as compared to the opposition parties.

From the information gathered, Taiwan print media is not as restricted compared to Singapore. During their elections, news about all the participating parties was published equally. There is equality and fairness as the readers get to know about all the parties well based on the information being published on the print media. Thus, the voters will have a more thorough understanding of all the parties in Taiwan.

Utilizing the Social Responsibility Theory, Taiwan print media’s role is to serve the audience by providing the true information. It is self-regulated thus it has no restriction on the types of new being published. Whereas for Singapore print media utilizes the Authoritarian Theory. Its role is to support and advance the policies of the government in power. In this case, the government in power for Singapore is PAP, thus the Singapore print media becomes a propaganda platform for PAP.

For both countries’ elections, there are great differences in the way both countries’ media publish their reports on participating parties. We feel that to be equal and fair is important in the media because news should be objective and not biased towards any parties. This also ensures that the information released to the readers are fair and equal because all citizens of the country has the rights to choose their own trusted party during election.

In conclusion, we feel that Taiwan’s print media is a good learning example for Singapore to be fair in all news published on the print media.