Tracy Quek who is senior correspondent based in Washington for The Straits Times wrote an interesting article on 1st August 2010 edition of The Sunday Times which is the sister publication of The Straits Times on 'US "undermedia" undermines media' as a reflection on the fiasco in Obama's cabinet leading to the dismissal of Ms Shirley Sherrod a mid level aide and subsequent reinstatement of her job and apology from the president himself when the entire transcript was examined. Since the government in Singapore has openly admitted that unfettered press freedom of the genre of American press freedom is not suitable for the brand of democracy practiced here with an asian culture overtones, I can only guess that the raison d'tre for her article is to showcase how american brand of press freedom can lead to chaos. If this is Singapore's motive, it has strike while the iron is hot.
Firstly, all these so called evolvement of press freedom and democracy being one of the yardstick of human progress can readily be challenged as thinkers of ancient time like Plato has grasped the implications of such political arena long time ago. I believe that the main differential between ancient and current time lies mainly in the extent and the cultural overtones that has made the canvas of democracy and press freedom a modern art form. This is where we need to separate the ideas and the various adaptation of the ideas in our society and profit much from it in the process of doing so by learning from the thinking these old sages have thought through so that we can be spared the agony of repeating the walk along the same old yellow brick road. It seems that this is an almost an impossibility as each succeeding generation is likely not to heed these learnings and want to experiment in the belief that time and tide has changed and time to toss out the old ideas and start afresh. This is where I would like the government to have a re-think on the de-emphasis they have put accidentally on liberal arts education in favor of more technological and scientific based higher education. I believe that our nation as a whole is no longer living from hand to mouth and can afford time, space, money and a larger sand box on liberal arts. There is room for us to venture out of our more monolithic and almost homogenous pursuit of tangible materials in our society.
Cheers,,,, Pete aka http://lkypeter.blogspot.com
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Safe Harbor
Please note that information contained in these pages are of a personal nature and does not necessarily reflect that of any companies, organizations or individuals. In addition, some of these opinions are of a forward looking nature. Lastly the facts and opinions contained in these pages might not have been verified for correctness, so please use with caution. Happy Reading. Copy Rights of all contents in this blog belongs to Peter Lye unless stated otherwise.