Media practices self-censorship. how far can it go?

The media can influence the mass populance and the new media mainly make up of the internet, TV and the radio. As i am blogging now, i am also spreading information to the masses via Internet- blogging. However, the government has the rights to intervene to limit the contents broadcast by the media.

For example Mr brown, a famous singapore blogger had his column been remove from the papers due to the sensitive issues raised. This shows that the government understands the great inflencing power that new media holds and strictly follow up on the content made by journalist or bloggers to prevent them from disseminating the wrong values.

content:
On 30 June 2006, mrbrown wrote an article, titled "S'poreans are fed, up with progress!", for his weekly opinion column in Today newspaper concerning the rising costs of living in Singapore. [3] Three days later, on 3 July, an official from the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA) published a response letter on the same newspaper calling mrbrown a "partisan player" whose views "distort the truth". [4] On July 6, the newspaper suspended his column.[5] Mr Miyagi subsequently resigned from his column.
Later, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong responded to the unhappiness raised in MICA's handling of the incident. He stated that "mrbrown had hit out wildly at the Government and in a very mocking tone", and that the government had to respond to such criticsms for fear of them eventually being treated as true. He also stated that national issues should not be debated in such a fashion (referring to mrbrown's article). In spite of that, PM Lee claimed that Singapore was an open society.[6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrbrown


Variety shows like desperate housewife and ugly betty are also scheduled to air on late at night so as to deter young people from viewing such shows.Though these shows are deemed to be popular american series in Singapore, the content of the show may not be suitable for kids. People who are older are more mature to preceive the Western culture of co-inhabitation or pre martial sex as taboos in Singapore. However if the children are exposed the such Americanized lifestyle, they may grow up to behave like one and lose their sense of culture in singapore.