SINGAPORE - About $320 million has been disbursed to SPH Media Trust (SMT) across the 2022 and 2023 financial years, after it met some of its performance targets, said Minister for Communications and Information Josephine Teo.

In anticipation of a more challenging media environment, the Government has budgeted to provide SMT with about $260 million in funding for the 2024 financial year, she added during the debate on her ministry’s budget on March 1.

While SMT had maintained its overall reach and achieved a modest increase in its digital subscriptions, it did not meet key performance indicators for digital reach, youth reach, vernacular reach and average time spent on its websites and apps, said Mrs Teo.

“Accordingly, it did not receive the full funding that was committed,” she said. 

In February 2022, the Government had said it would provide up to $900 million in funding support to SMT over the next five years. Mrs Teo said then that up to $180 million would be disbursed annually.

Responding to MPs’ questions on government funding of SMT, which comes under the Ministry of Communications and Information’s (MCI) budget, Mrs Teo reiterated on March 1 that the funding is targeted at three main areas: talent, technology and vernacular capabilities.

They reflect the importance the Government has placed on quality journalism, digital transformation and upholding multiculturalism, amid severe disruption of the media industry, she said.

The ministry requires SPH Media to report regularly on its performance in these areas, and to comply with relevant audits to ensure oversight of how the funds are spent. This also ensures ownership and public accountability on public service media outcomes, she added.

“So far, the funding disbursed has been put to good use,” she said. “SPH Media has been strengthening its digital systems to improve its outreach, in line with what other global publications have done.”

SPH Media had adopted a new digital content management system to support online news coverage, and launched mobile apps across its English and vernacular news titles, she noted. It had also made extensive efforts to improve talent retention and newsroom quality, such as through training, scholarships and fellowships, she added.

“More importantly, these results show that the efforts made thus far are just the beginning,” said Mrs Teo.

“SPH Media will need to do more to maintain its relevance in this challenging media environment, and will need continued support as it strives to get onto firmer footing.”

While SMT did not meet all of its targets, Mrs Teo stressed the importance of sustaining investment in public service journalism amid an information landscape where truths compete with falsehoods.

On issues that deserve public attention, such as critical global events, community news in vernacular languages or parliamentary proceedings, profit-driven platforms may have no interest except to sensationalise or add their own spin to reports, she said.

“We also need public service media to tell Singapore stories, and project Singapore’s voice. We cannot expect media organisations elsewhere to do so for us,” she added.

“At stake is our ability as a people to have a shared understanding of issues of the day, to know where our national interests lie, and what we must do to ensure our continued success.”

That is why such investment is a “have to do” and not a “nice to do” if Singapore wants to uphold quality journalism that supports the public good, she said.

Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh asked for more information about the performance indicators that SPH Media has to meet, so that the public can know where it is doing well, and where it is not.

Mrs Teo agreed that the public would benefit from more information about how public service media entities are doing, and said the Government would find more ways of putting out information.

Fundamentally, the Government is supporting public service media so that Singaporeans have media sources that they can trust, she said.

She referred to the findings of the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023, which showed that the top five most trusted media brands in Singapore were all public service media entities, and such entities made up eight of the top 10.

“If you then use that as the lens of thinking about why and how we should continue to resource our own public service media, I think in some sense, that beats all the indicators that we can put in place,” she said, adding that the current key performance indicators remain important.

The annual Reuters report found that The Straits Times continued to top media brands here in terms of offline reach, ahead of Mediacorp’s CNA and Channel 8 News. The ST website continued to have the third-largest online reach in Singapore, after Mothership and CNA online.

Ms Hany Soh (Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC) urged MCI to widen the indicators it considers, to include public trust and how titles such as The Straits Times and Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao reflect to the outside world Singapore’s brand and identity.

Mrs Teo acknowledged that current indicators do not fully reflect what is needed of the public service media entities. It is also difficult to measure the international standing that these news titles have, and how much they foster identity and unity among Singaporeans.

“We’re very cognisant of the fact that the set of indicators that we use today are probably going to be very inadequate, so we are constantly also in discussion with our public service media entities (as to) whether there are better ways to reflect their progress,” she said.