The good Times

My son is attending a liberal arts college in America where on top of his science courses he has to take other subjects as well. This semester he is reading political science for which he has to subscribe to the New York Times. He has to read the political news, he said.

That may wind up a lot of people. The newspaper has its critics not only in America. I recall a CNN interview with Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. The interviewer referred to a survey by Reporters Without Borders which claimed Singapore had one of the least free media in the world. Lee, a Cambridge man and a brilliant scholar, promptly asked the woman a counter question: Was there anything she couldn't report about Singapore? No, she said. Lee laughed. How could the media then complain of lack of freedom? Singapore welcomed the media, he said, but expected journalists to be careful when dealing with sensitive issues such as race and religion. And, he added, they should not play an "adversarial role" like the New York Times or the Washington Post.

There could be no New York Times or Washington Post in Singapore -- not because of any lack of freedom. The country is simply too small to support institutions like those. How much diversity of views can you find in a city state of 4.5 million people? There's good government, things work fine, the leadership just doesn't lend itself to the kind of caricature one sees in American and British political cartoons or the kind of personality cult that's encouraged in communist countries. Yes, the media supports official policies. But can you argue with good leadership?

But the situation may be different in other countries.

Personally, I love the New York Times and try to read it online every day.

British journalists and even some Americans say American newspapers are dull compared with their British counterparts. The American newspapers' emphasis on balance, objectivity and political correctness is said to have made them blander than British newspapers. I beg to differ. I regularly read two British newspapers online -- the Guardian and The Times. They are good. But give me the New York Times any day. It has the advantage of geography and geopolitics. America is a more "happening" place -- and how interesting is British politics to a foreigner?

It's true the Guardian and the Times have a lot more to offer besides politics. But so does the New York Times. Its book reviews and technology reports are in no way inferior to those in the Times or the Guardian. And what about the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times? They are just as readable.

In fact, the Americans produce the kind of long, in-depth stories one hardly sees in British newspapers. The Los Angeles Times recently ran a story about kindergarten teachers having problems teaching English to immigrant -- mostly Hispanic -- children. The New York Times had a memorable story about evangelical churches springing up among blacks and Hispanics. The Christian Science Monitor runs some of the most interesting foreign stories I have seen.

The British newspapers, in comparison, tend to be much more focused on the news of the day. That may be due to the fact there's more competition among London newspapers. But that doesn't make them better.