But the fact is that both these papers were founded by Brits. Ching Cheong, the Straits Times correspondent in Taiwan, says that the Straits Times has always had greater prestige and a higher circulation than Chinese- and Malay-language newspapers in Singapore because that city state is a multilingual, multi-ethnic society that was formerly a British colony. English naturally became the "lingua franca" spoken between ethnic groups.
《海峽時報》駐台記者程翔說，在新加坡中、英、馬來文三種語文的報紙中，《海峽時報》的發行量一直比其他兩種語文的報紙高，因為新加坡是多語文族群組成的國家，英國又曾經是統治者，英文自然成為所有族群的「共同語言」。