When I first became editor of the Nanyang Chronicle back in December 2007, a journalism professor told me: “If you want to do journalism, don’t do it in Singapore.”

The words struck me not only because it had come from a journalism professor, but also because I could never understand why I would ever want to be a journalist elsewhere.

Journalism is after all about public service; wages are low, hours are long and the pace is frenetic.

I could not imagine myself rendering such a service to a place where I did not belong, no matter how free or liberal the press was.

When the university dramatically pulled out an article on opposition leader Chee Soon Juan’s visit to campus on my eighth issue, it became clear why the professor had said those words to me.

To most people, the Enquirer was born overnight as a knee-jerk reaction towards the censorship of Chee’s visit in the Chronicle.

Just this month, the Straits Times described the Enquirer as “a direct response to the university’s administration” for stopping the Chronicle from reporting on Chee’s visit.

The truth could not be further than this.

As dramatic as the censorship of Chee’s visit was, it was definitely not the first time an article had to be edited or played down to avoid offending the powers that be, or in extremely rare cases such as the Chee saga, removed entirely.

Chee’s visit was however the only time in recent history that the president of the university—and the publisher of the paper by virtue of its funding—had intervened to order a removal of an article.

Most of the time, decisions to edit, downplay and censor potentially sensitive stories are made within the confines of the newsroom and the school, by the people who oversee the student editors.

In the Chronicle, all news and opinion pieces are deemed sensitive, having the potential to libel or anger someone more so than a lifestyle or sports piece could.

By this reasoning, they go through a mandatory and elaborate vetting process, requiring the clearance of the chair of the school before publication.

Some common methods of playing down a sensitive story in the Chronicle were to place it in a corner of page six, to remove an accompanying photograph or illustration to make it look as boring and unimportant as possible, or to bury the lead deep down the story.

Such actions, while nowhere as dramatic as an outright removal of a story, are equally effective in neutering contentious content.

More insidiously, it gave the illusion of a relatively free press until the Chee saga took place.

To be fair, this group of people supervising the Chronicle, some listed on the masthead and others not, are not homogeneous.

Some are highly professional, editing only to ensure fairness, clarity and accuracy. Others might even push the boundaries, allowing a critical opinion or editorial to be published.

But most of the time, the stories in the Chronicle are ultimately sanitised under the care of a teacher adviser.

Such instances of censorship are not overly difficult to spot upon close examination, and are probably still happening frequently beyond the control of student-editors today.

Take for example the trial of David Widjaja’s death. In spite of the intense public interest as well as the controversy over how the Widjaja family had disputed the findings, the story was relegated to a quarter page on page five.

Moreover, some nine out of 13 paragraphs were spent laboriously detailing the coroner’s findings before finally touching on the Widjaja family’s unhappiness over the verdict.

And somehow, the Chronicle didn’t see it fit to cover the Widjaja family’s protest over Indonesian vice-president-elect Boediono’s visit to NTU, nor his call to the coroner’s court for a fair trial in late July.

But of course, in retrospect, the Enquirer did not even manage to provide any substantial coverage of David Widjaja’s death, especially when many were expecting us to.

It was a period of great difficulty as all of us were away on our professional internship, with two of the top editors overseas in Nepal.

When the Enquirer first started, some professors at our school were concerned that it could siphon off an already sparse group of reporters.

Others believed that ultimately, pragmatism would triumph over idealism—why would students bother spending their time writing for something that offered neither extra-curricular points nor academic units?

When we returned to school after our internship some two months ago, one such faculty member remarked that he had been looking at our site, only to find nothing on it.

He added, smugly, “I told you so”.

Would it have been better then for us not to pursue this project simply because it would have been easier not to, or because it would be too difficult to succeed?

Evidently, because of various problems and challenges, we had not been able to do as much as we had first set out to one year ago.

But the in-depth reporting approach and independence of the Enquirer was key to publishing important stories that would probably not have made it into the Chronicle.

The first was an analysis of the satisfactory/unsatisfactory option, which had created a furore among NTU students when NUS started letting its students exercise the option after their grades were made known.

We sought out and interviewed the union leader responsible for leading the change at NUS, spoke with NTU’s divisional director at the office of academic services for a definitive stand from the authorities, studied other models adopted by eminent universities around the world, and came up with our own recommendation in an editorial.

Next, we dealt with the university’s president, Dr Su Guaning’s attempts at renaming the university to “Nanyang University”.

It was a story of utmost sensitivity, involving the university’s top administrator’s failed attempt to rename the university and touching on the raw nerve of Nantah graduates who saw nothing to do with the present-day university.

Despite this, we secured many interviews with Nantah graduates and even managed a comment from the provost of the university to comment on the issue (Dr Su declined numerous interview requests).

Both of these stories would never have seen the light of day in the Chronicle.

Even if they had not been shot down from the outset, the main teacher adviser would have the drafts thoroughly sanitised of any references remotely offensive to the authorities.

In addition, the authorities would not have bothered speaking to student reporters from the Chronicle, knowing full well that they could summon and speak to the teacher adviser, who is of course a staff of the university.

It happened when my reporter covered a story that had blogs abuzz about how NTU had took out online advertisements on Google under the headline “SMU Singapore” (the headline of the final story was “NTU’s quick fix for SMU search glitch”).

And it happened again when the authorities decided to downplay the inconveniences brought about by the construction work for the 2010 Youth Olympic Games (the headline for the final story was “Our chance in the global limelight”).

Effectively, the work of Chronicle’s reporters were mangled at will to please the authorities, and the student editors merely bystanders in a paper purportedly by the students, for the students.

Perhaps only a greatly watered-down version would have been published in the end, defeating the very purpose of journalism that seeks to investigate and analyse.

The Enquirer is not a response to a single instance of censorship. It is an ideal where journalists who value the freedom from non-editorial influences can fearlessly report.

It is a platform where journalists could serve their community here without compromising on their values and beliefs. Doing what we set out to do takes considerable time, effort and manpower.

If the editorial team must account for some of the failures of the Enquirer, chief among them is the failure to get student reporters excited about such journalism in NTU.

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