In a statement on Thursday, the Media Development Authority (MDA) said it had notified Project Fisher-Men Pte Ltd, a social enterprise on March 27 that its website, Mothership.sg is to be registered under the Broadcasting (Class Licence) Notification, enacted under Section 9 of the Broadcasting Act.
The government agency said it had assessed that the website meets the registration criteria and it must register by April 11.
The local website, Mothership.sg, has issued a statement on Friday afternoon to indicate that the site will accede to Media Development Authority (MDA)’s request.
Just last year, two local websites, Breakfast Network (BN) and theindependent.sg (TISG) were requested by the MDA to fill up the same forms by Dec 10, 2013.
BN, a news commentary site, declined to register and closed down the company while the other local social, political website, TISG registered with MDA to continue on its operations.
Statement by Mothership.sg
We refer to the statement by the Media Development Authority (MDA) on March 27 regarding Project Fisher-men Ltd, the social enterprise that operates Mothership.sg.
Mothership.sg is an independent news and lifestyle website with a sharp focus on local current affairs.
The concern that foreign funding or any form of foreign influence impinging on our site’s activities, integrity or operations has never been an issue. The core team behind Mothership.sg are Singaporeans who care deeply about issues that affect our country and Singaporeans. It is also our policy to post the identities of our editors and writers on our website.
In the interest of our readers and after speaking to our stakeholders, the Mothership team has decided that we will clarify our position regarding our registration with MDA as soon as possible.
We will accede to MDA’s request to register under Section 9 of the Broadcasting Act, and to comply with all laws, rules, regulations and codes of practice that have been put in place to regulate broadcasting in Singapore.
Since we started operations 7 months ago, we were fortunate to receive much support from the local online community. In the month of March 2014, one in five Singaporeans visited our site.
We hope that our compliance will allow us to continue to serve the Singapore community, without fear or favour. We also hope that this move will bring us a step closer to obtaining full accreditation as a media in Singapore and help in our effort to become a viable and sustainable enterprise.
The Mothership.sg Team
