SUNS  4320 Tuesday 10 November 1998

Singapore, Nov (IPS/Kalinga Seneviratne) -- If plans by a Singapore-based company go as scheduled, viewers around the region will by March next year, be watching a news channel with a genuinely Asian flavour.

Last week, the government-owned Television Corporation of Singapore (TCS) announced it would launch an all-news English language channel called Channel News Asia or CNA, said to be the first Asian television station to run a full English news programme. Some have called it an Asian version of the popular American cable news channel CNN.

A strong emphasis on Asia is what TCS chief executive officer Lee Cheok Yew says should set the news channel apart. "Instead of having foreign channels report on Asia from the outside looking in, we will have balanced and factual reporting paying full attention to the countries' sensitivities," he added.

The CNA announcement came on the heels of last week's decision by South-east Asian information officials here to appoint Singapore International Media, a TCS subsidiary, network coordinator of a new Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) satellite television channel to be launched next year.

The ASEAN channel, to be beamed via Malaysia's MEASAT satellite, will carry six to eight hours of programmes a day on news, current affairs, sports, information and entertainment from member countries.

CNA is an attempt by Singapore to give more teeth to South-east Asian countries' desire to see one another without what some call western filters.

"Journalism as we know of today, and news as we know of today, is a western product," observed Woon Tai Ho, the head of CNA. "Western people know of the world through their own media. Western people know of Asia through their media... Asia hasn't got a coherent media voice. Western publications and networks have started to set up shop here reporting for the region. But, if you look at them, they are really western outfits stationed here to report the region in English," he
added.

In an interview, Woon said CNA will aim to present to Asian audiences a different brand of news, and will not be competing head on with the western outfits in the region such as CNBC Asia, also based in Singapore, and CNN. "We see ourselves as quite different, as we are from the region. (Thus) our brand of news would be different," Woon said.

Paul France, CNBC Asia's president, says the emergence of a new news channel will help raise the profile of TV news stations to advertisers. He disputes, however, the argument that channels like his are western outfits transplanted to Asia. "I find it strange for us to be branded as a western news channel because we are a Singaporean company," he told IPS. "We are based in Singapore and most of our news staff are Asian."

CNBC, part of the Dow Jones financial reporting network, was first set up in Hong Kong but this year merged with the Singapore-New Zealand joint venture Asian Business News (ABN). CNBC Asia, as the network was renamed, then moved to Singapore.

France says many of its senior news editors are westerners, but argues that what matters is how they use news judgement to choose items appropriate and relevant to Asia, rather than the question where they come from.

Woon is reluctant to get into the arguments about Asian and Western perspectives in news reporting, but believes there is an Asian way of looking at news about the region. In that sense, the brand of news could be defined by who reports it. "In Asia, we are part and parcel of this landscape. When you live here, you have relatives here, you report with a certain understanding. It is different to someone who comes from outside," he explained. "They (West) say if you report with an understanding, you report the government side. It is not that .. it's about balancing," he added. Yet for many in the west, this type of journalism is often seen as propaganda or censorship, he said.

Likewise, he pointed out: "For them a good news day is a bad news day, when disaster strikes. So they move from one drama to another - they descend on Jakarta for Suharto's resignation and once the drama is over they move onto another... But when you live in the area you need to report the drama of day to day life or the mundane things... We have to report on things that matter to us, things we consider as important to ourselves, which may seem not important to global players such as CNN and CNBC."

Noting that the Singapore media has often been branded a government mouthpiece, Woon says CNA will be very conscious of this fact and will be operating as an independent entity.

TCS has allocated $12.4 million to launch the new channel next year and another $11.7 million each year for the next five years -- a small amount compared to what global media networks would use for such a project.

For instance, Japan's NHK network scrapped plans to set up a Global News Network in 1991 to compete with CNN and the British Broadcasting Corp, because it could not afford to spend $800 million a year on it.

But Woon says CNA does not have to start from scratch because it already has a sound infrastructure to tap into. TCS operates three free-to-air channels in Singapore and an international satellite channel. Its Channel Five network already produces three comprehensive news bulletins in English a day, plus hourly news updates. All CNA needs to do is use most of the footage wasted now, Woon said. While CNA will not be hiring new journalists locally, it plans to recruit from other Asian countries to beef up TCS' bureaus in Thailand, Hong Kong and China. It eyes new bureaus in Japan and India.

Mark Hukill, senior communications lecturer at Nanyang Technological University, says CNA's success will rest ultimately on the quality of its programmes. "The new channel needs to offer news with a different perspective. The larger audience needs to get genuine information with many sides to an issue," he said.