Yahoo Singapore seeks media accreditation from government

Yahoo Singapore has applied for media accreditation from the government, a local newspaper reported on Friday. If approved, it will mean the website will receive official press statements and be invited to government press conferences like traditional news outlets, the Straits Times said. "Yahoo has put forward a request to the government ( communications) department for it to be accredited ... That is something which the government departments are looking at and assessing," it quoted Aubeck Kam, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Communications and Information, as saying at a forum. Yahoo is the only one of the 10 news websites identified by the Media Development Authority (MDA) for its new licensing scheme which is not run by a traditional media outlet. The new scheme requires each of the major news websites to be licensed individually on an annual basis. Yahoo is also part of the Asia Internet Coalition (AIC), an industry association that wrote a strongly worded letter to the ministry last month to express concern over the new scheme and ask for them to be changed. On June 5, Yahoo South-east Asia managing editor Alan Soon posted on its website that the new licensing framework would pave the way for its reporters to gain accreditation. But Soon also noted that Yahoo was already bound by existing guidelines and " further regulation is redundant." The Straits Times quoted a Yahoo spokesman as saying that the " AIC views represent those of (the) industry" and are "broadly consistent with Yahoo's stance on the issue."