Mothership (website)

Mothership.sg begun with Lien We King, a finance executive, proposing an online platform for young Singaporeans to Martino Tan, a social media manager for Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in 2012.[1] Together with Belmont Lay, a co-founder of New Nation, a Singapore online satirical news website,[2] the trio experimented with producing content for the website, with inspirations from the style of BuzzFeed publication.[1] Their first article in August 2013, 48 reasons why you still feel for Singapore, crashed their servers for two hours after being shared widely.[3]

In February 2014, the website was officially launched.[1] It was initially funded by social enterprise, Project Fisher-Man, which is headed by civil servant veteran, Philip Yeo. Former foreign minister of Singapore, George Yeo, was its advisor as well.[3] On 2 April 2014, the website registered for a class license issued under the Broadcasting Act.[4] After the Media Development Authority had introduced a new framework for websites with local news content in 2013, the website sought MDA for advice if it should be licensed under the framework as well. In 2015, the website was told by MDA that it met the threshold that requires the website to be registered.[5] As part of the requirements, the website had to put up a S$50,000 bond.[5]

In 2016, Mothership.sg website was registered as Bridgewater Holdings Pte Ltd.[1] This was done to change its funding structure from being supported by a social enterprise to a fully commercial media business. It was determined that without commercialising the website and depended on funding from Project Fisher-Man, the website would potentially have run out of funding by the end of 2015.[1] In 2019, Mothership was caught copying content from Today newspaper without giving proper attribution. The content was amended to include an attribution and was subsequently removed.[6]

In 2021, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism issued a Digital News Report in which indicated that Mothership was used by 42% of Singapore's population.[7] On 18 February 2022, the site made a mistake and published an infographic on the Goods and Services Tax hike ahead of an embargo of the news.[8] As a result, the site had its government press accreditation suspended for six months after an appeal was submitted to the Ministry of Communications and Information, thus losing access to press conferences and media briefings held by government agencies.[9]

In a study published in the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023, Mothership emerged as the most used online news source, surpassing mainstream competitors Channel News Asia and The Straits Times.[10] On 19 September 2023, Mothership reported on a Singapore-based Chinese influencer, Lin Lin, and portrayed her as a "tourist from China" who noticed many brands from China upon flying to Singapore, when she had been living in Singapore for eight years and had been creating "helpful" content about life in Singapore. After the inaccurate portrayal, Lin Lin became the subject of inappropriate comments, which she said was affecting her private life. Her private requests to Mothership for amendments were largely ignored, with Mothership changing only its headline to reflect the story as "woman from China" of which was viewed as "a deliberate attempt at causing controversy". She then publicly requested for Mothership to take down the "false content" and issue a public apology in a video rant, after which Mothership apologised in an editor's note on the article, and amended their article while taking down the accompanying Instagram post.[11]

On 29 September 2023, its government press accreditation was suspended for breaking embargo on an impending hike on water usage charges in Singapore with a member of its editorial team breaching the safeguards put in place after the previous break of embargo in 2021.[12][13] The suspension would be in place until March 2024.[14]

• Official website