The Mirror, initially called the Malaysian Mirror, was a weekly current affairs magazine that was first published by Singapore’s Ministry of Culture (now Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts) in March 1965. The brainchild of Singapore’s then Minister for Culture, Mr. S. Rajaratnam, the magazine consisted mainly of reproduced articles from Malaysian and foreign newspapers and was distributed to public organizations and civil bodies for free. The magazine’s distribution to schools in Malaya sparked a war of words between Mr. Rajaratnam and Federal Education Minister Inche Mohamed Khir Johari in July 1965, at the height of tensions between Singapore and the Malayan Federation. Inche Johari had alleged that the Singapore government was using the magazine to spread subversive propaganda. The Malaysian Mirror was renamed The Mirror when Singapore gained independence in August 1965. In the 1970s, it was published fortnightly and contained more original articles on domestic issues written by staff from the Culture Ministry and other statutory boards. The Mirror reinvented itself again in the mid-1980s and was renamed Mirror, which targeted students. It started selling subscriptions in 1988. The last edition of Mirror was published on 15 September 1991.
