Why Individual Licenses Are Needed

Before the outbreak of millennium year, people’s primary sources of information were predominantly lies on traditional media, such as TV, radio, and newspaper. As the world changed and became more complex, the inception of Internet as medium of entertainment and information has been culturally accepted practically everywhere. The city-state of Singapore offers widest coverage of news in most areas like health, economy.

Securing Individual Licenses

According to the Media Development Authority, online news sites with wide-reader coverage that regularly delve on Singapore news is required to secure individual licenses. With this, news offered by certain sites shall remain consistent as compared to traditional news platforms.

The newly-implementing rules commenced on June 2013. This is intended for new sites with significant reach among readers and such report is regularly circulated online. In a press briefing with local reporters, Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister for Communications and Information once said that online news offers wide readership, and is directly balance news reported from traditional mass media forms such as TV, radio or newspapers.

Criteria for Getting a License

Rapid growth of news production from these traditional forms shall be strengthened. Initially, present sites were automatically mandated by Broadcasting Act. The minister explicated that under this new ruling, the sites will require individual licenses provided by two criteria.

The first is that if the sites have at least 50,000 visitors from Singapore per month or in a period of two consecutive months. And secondly, if news portals report, at least one article in a week related to Singapore in a cycle of two months. The news content highlights topic of interests in various fields in Singapore from sports, economic, social, and cultural among others, he added.