There have been many who have lauded Singapore's economic progress within the short period of a few decades. However, there have also been many critics, most notably Western thinkers and professonals, who are unable to come to terms with the fact that the press should operate under laws and guidelines set by the government, which they have labelled as draconian.

The government's stand towards the press has been seen as a way to check criticism, restrict democratic values and institutions, hamper the emergence of a civil society and maintaining the PAP's dominance of the local political scene (Fernandez, Han, and Tan, 1998).

Many, including the US State Department, in an aide-memoire reply over Singapore's handling of the Asian Wall Street Journal case in 1987, argued that the city state's leaders should allow for a marketplace of ideas and a free press, where the good will be sorted out from the bad, even if something bad was published.

However, former critics, in recent times, lauded Lee for his approach to governance. One of them is current Harvard University professor Samuel Huntington, who praised Lee in one of his books as taking great effort to build a common Singaporean identity (Fernandez, Han, and Tan, 1998). Huntington had previously said that Lee's governance style would not outlive him as it was not formulated under democratic institutions and values. According to Lee, this positive remark had indicated that Huntington recognised American values and democratic practices could not be applied universally to social and political systems (Fernandez, Han, and Tan, 1998).

Today, critics increasingly focus on the use of defamation lawsuits by PAP government leaders to silence opposition parties or public dissenters who they consider to be questioning their positions of authority in the media.

Local author Catherine Lim offered a possible reason as to why this would be so in a December 2006 Straits Times article. She critiqued the PAP government's approach towards handling the media, arguing that its leaders are not tolerant of elements present in liberal democracies, including a press that is free to publish whatever it deems fit for publication.

"It is their intense dislike of the noise, messiness and mayhem that often come with political dissent. A government that prides itself on its serious, no-nonsense style simply cannot tolerate an opponent who flaunts the very opposite attributes - flamboyance, histrionics, impudence. The demagogue and the rabble-rouser will never be allowed a place in Singapore politics. If there is anything that the PAP leaders have against liberal democracy, it is the system's tolerance of the strident individualism seen in opportunistic political activists. Noisy street demonstrations, face-offs with the police, raucous name-calling and fist fights in Parliament - nothing, in the eyes of the PAP leaders, can be more demeaning to the serious business of running a country, or more damaging to social order" (Lim, 2006)

Another reason offered by Lim was the fact that the party is vindicated through its victories at the elections, which point to quality and having the best leaders in the ranks. Hence, the tight controls are an affirmation of the party's strength as well as a signal to those outside that the tiny city-state is far from being weak (Lim, 2006).

This, she remarked, was a key component in the PAP government's policy, which has been practised since independence and looks likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Academician Cherian George, however, opines that it is due to a stark difference in political values. Critics are mainly in favour of the American press system because "the press is seen as a pure expression of democracy". Legally, the American press is protected from the government, which is assumed in the American political context to harbour undemocratic tendencies despite being chosen by the electorate (George, 2002).

But this is reversed in the Singapore context. The PAP leaders believe that the elected government is the embodiement of democratic expression. Hence, all action where possible, must be taken to protect it from the harms of the unelected press, which is susceptible to commercialism, myopic ideology and even the inflated egos of journalists (George, 2002).

This analysis can be seen in a viewpoint articulated by Lee.

"Foreign correspondents are free to report what they like. There is no censorship but they must not interfere in national affairs. Singapore reporters are free to criticise in Singapore newspapers, but no one is free to use the Singapore press to sabotage or thwart the primacy of purpose of an elected government. That is the job of a political party, not a newspaper. Singapore newspapers can report criticisms of the government by rival political parties but should not become propaganda sheets for them unless they state they are party papers" (Chew, 1987, as quoted in Seow, 1998).