On the 15th of July 1845, an Armenian merchant named Catchick Moses launched a newspaper that would eventually become the most influential voice in Southeast Asia, yet its birth was nearly derailed by a dead editor and a bankrupt partner. The original conception for The Straits Times was a chaotic affair involving Marterus Thaddeus Apcar, who had hired an editor and purchased printing equipment from England only to watch that editor die before the machinery arrived. Apcar went bankrupt, and Moses stepped in to buy the equipment, partnering with Robert Carr Woods Sr., an English journalist from Bombay, to publish The Straits Times and Singapore Journal of Commerce. The paper began as an eight-page weekly printed at 7 Commercial Square using a hand-operated press, with a subscription fee of Sp.$1.75 per month. Woods sought to distinguish the publication from its rival, The Singapore Free Press, by including humor, short stories, and foreign news, leveraging the new steamship services that carried mail to the island. However, the venture struggled with a lack of subscribers and newsworthy items, forcing Woods to cover financial deficits by printing the first directory of Singapore, The Straits Times Almanack, Calendar and Directory, in 1846. By September 1846, the paper was given to Woods outright because Moses could not sell it, and the publication barely survived its early years. The first major political stance taken by the paper was against James Brooke, the Rajah of Sarawak, whom Woods personally resented and charged with massacring peaceful civilian merchants rather than fighting pirates. This controversy, which saw the rival Singapore Free Press defend Brooke, ultimately boosted the circulation of both papers and led to Woods petitioning the British government for an inquest in 1851, a commission that convened in 1854 and exonerated Brooke but cemented the paper's reputation as a success. The publication became a daily newspaper in 1858, marking the beginning of its long journey from a struggling weekly to a regional power.
The Thunderer of the East
Under the editorship of Alexander W. Still, who held the post for 18 years starting in 1926, The Straits Times earned the moniker the Thunderer of the East, a reference to The Times of London, and built a reputation for bold reporting and fearless commentary. Still believed that the press had an obligation to investigate and expose corruption in both government and business, famously stating that nothing filled him with greater contempt than journalism that pried into private affairs or gorged on domestic scandals. He attacked the actions of Governor Laurence Guillemard regarding back-room discussions of constitutional changes, declaring in an editorial that such secrecy was mere pompous nonsense when addressed to a free people and a free press. Despite his outspokenness, which resulted in a number of libel suits that were either lost or settled privately, Still managed to increase circulation from 3,600 in 1910 to 4,100 in 1920 and boost advertising revenues. However, this era of boldness was shadowed by deep-seated racial prejudices and a colonial mindset that ignored the socio-economic issues of the Malay, Chinese, and Indian populations. The paper focused predominantly on British and British-related events, restricting coverage of non-British events to court cases or sensationalized crimes like the Tok Janggut rebellion in Kelantan in 1915. While Still called for better working conditions for Asian laborers, he did so only on the grounds that it would improve their efficiency and productivity, and he considered the Asian population untrustworthy, suggesting they should not hold positions of power or serve in the military. Asian reporters at The Straits Times experienced discrimination in the workplace, exemplified by Peter Benson Maxwell, an Indian reporter who was quickly removed from Government House after arranging an interview with Governor Cecil Clementi. The paper cycled through four editors in the span of two years before George Seabridge took over in 1928, holding the position for 18 years and overseeing huge growth in circulation from 5,000 to 25,000 subscribers.
On the 20th of February 1942, five days after the Fall of Singapore, The Straits Times was renamed by Japan and became known as The Shonan Times, marking the beginning of its transformation into a tool of military propaganda. The first issue of The Shonan Times published a declaration by Lieutenant-General Tomoyuki Yamashita, announcing that the aim of the Japanese was to establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere to sweep away the arrogant and unrighteous British elements. The paper was run by members of the Japanese military propaganda division and included prominent writers such as the novelist Masuji Ibuse, poet Jimbo Kōtaro, and literary critic Nakajima Kenzo, who were part of a campaign called Nippon-Go Popularising Week launched in June 1942. This campaign aimed to promote the study of Japanese, introduce the Japanese state of affairs, and publish a weekly children's katakana newspaper called Sakura, which was included as a free supplement in the 10th of June 1942 edition of the Syonan Shimbun before being sold separately for one sen. The spelling of the newspaper's name changed frequently, from The Shonan Times to The Syonan Times, The Syonan Sinbun, and finally The Syonan Shimbun on the 8th of December 1943, arising from squabbles between adherents of different romanisation systems. During this period, the paper was thoroughly pro-Japanese and reported on Japan's war efforts in the Pacific, while the original editor, Seabridge, and his wife fled Singapore on the 11th of February 1942 to Batavia, where Seabridge filed a secret report for the War Cabinet in London on the failure of both military and civilian governments to hold and maintain Singapore's defenses. The government had obstructed information about the severity of the situation on the frontlines, and the paper's lead article on the 5th of January 1941 had summarized the situation as vague lines and strategic withdrawals, leaving the middle-class Asiatic population unable to combat rumors. The paper was reverted to The Straits Times on the 5th of September 1945 as Singapore returned to British colonial rule, but the scars of the occupation remained.
The Unlikely Alliance
Following the war, The Straits Times became a public limited company on the 11th of March 1950, and in 1956, it established a Malayan edition, the New Straits Times, based in Kuala Lumpur, which later became unaffiliated with the Singaporean paper after the separation of the two countries. During the early days of Singaporean self-governance, the paper had an uneasy relationship with the People's Action Party, with editors warned that any reportage threatening the merger between Singapore and the Malayan Federation could result in subversion charges and detention without trial under the Preservation of Public Security Ordinance Act. The paper had previously published cash bounties for information leading to the killing or capture of senior communists during the Malayan Emergency, and had erroneously reported that 26 suspected communist guerrillas had been shot dead by the British military, when it was later discovered that 24 innocent civilians had been executed as part of the Batang Kali massacre by the Scots Guards regiment. After Singapore gained its independence in 1965, the newspaper became largely pro-PAP, a stark reversal from its earlier anti-colonial and anti-independence stance, and its news website launched on the 1st of January 1994, making it one of the first newspapers in the world to do so. The website remained entirely free until 2005 when paid subscription became required to fully access news and commentary. The government restructured the entire newspaper industry on the 30th of November 1984, bringing all papers published in English, Chinese, and Malay under Singapore Press Holdings, which allowed The Straits Times to maintain its own board of directors and editorial staff. Despite this, the newspaper is sometimes referred to as the mouthpiece of the ruling party, with editors groomed as pro-government supporters who ensure that reporting of local events adheres closely to the official line.
The Invisible Monitor
In his memoir OB Markers: My Straits Times Story, former editor-in-chief Cheong Yip Seng alleged how the newspaper has a government-appointed monitor at the newspaper, someone who could watch to see if indeed the newsroom was beyond control, and that disapproval of the monitor could cost a reporter or editor from being internally promoted. Cheong identified the first monitor as S. R. Nathan, director of the Ministry of Defence's Security and Intelligence Division and later president of Singapore, who served as executive chairman of the Straits Times Press from 1982 to 1988. Editors were bound by out of bounds markers to denote what topics are permissible for public discussion, such as anything that may produce ill-will and hostility between different races and religious groups. The table of leadership reveals a pattern of government officials holding key positions, with S. R. Nathan serving as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ambassador before becoming President of Singapore, and Lim Kim San serving as Cabinet Minister and Chairman of the Port of Singapore Authority before becoming Executive Chairman of SPH from 1988 to 2002. Tony Tan, former Deputy Prime Minister and President of Singapore, served as Executive Chairman of SPH from 2005 to 2011, while Alan Chan, a former top civil servant and Principal Private Secretary to then Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, served as CEO of SPH from 2002 to 2017. The current editor-in-chief, Warren Fernandez, was considered as a PAP candidate for the 2006 elections, and many current ST management and senior editors have close links to the government. As of July 2025, the parent company has continued to exert editorial control and also expanded collaborations with Chinese state media such as Xinhua News Agency, ensuring that the newspaper remains a key instrument of state communication.
The Circulation Deception
In 2023, a leak published on the socio-political website Wake Up, Singapore, revealed that SPH Media inflated its circulation figures in 2022 by 85 to 95,000 copies daily across all publications, or 10 to 12 percent of the reported daily average circulation. The numbers were inflated by means such as including copies that were printed and counted for circulation but destroyed, fictitious counts, and double-counting subscriptions, a scandal that shook the credibility of the newspaper of record. Despite this, a 2020 Reuters Institute independent survey of 15 media outlets found that 73 percent of Singaporean respondents trusted reporting from The Straits Times, the second highest rating next to Channel NewsAsia, a local TV news channel. The Wikipedia community has included The Straits Times under its no consensus, unclear, or additional considerations apply source category, with its entry on Reliable sources/Perennial sources stating that given known practices of self-censorship and political meddling into coverage, news related to Singapore politics, particularly for contentious claims, should be taken with a grain of salt. The paper's archives, which go back to its founding in 1845, were digitized in July 2007 through an agreement between the National Library Board and Singapore Press Holdings, and are held in the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library and available to the public through microfilm. The scandal highlighted the tension between the newspaper's historical role as a watchdog and its current status as a government-aligned entity, raising questions about the integrity of its reporting in the digital age.