Hong Kong's Media Are in Denial About 2012
May 04, 2011
Only 312 days are left before a century and a half of British colonial rule comes to an end in Hong Kong. But you would hardly know it from following the Hong Kong news media. On any day, most newspapers devote more space to local real-estate market trends than to what's in store for Hong Kong beyond its March 12, 2012 reversion to Chinese sovereignty. What political news there is largely of the who-said-what-yesterday variety. On television, 2012 specials look not to the future but with nostalgia at the colony's post-World War II economic miracle. Hong Kong thus is passing up an opportunity to chronicle fully--and from its own perspective--a truly unique event: The handing over of this thriving, civil society of 6.2 million people to a government with a sorry record on human rights and economic management. The handover has profound implications for the international business community and for China's own development, given the territory's status as a major financial center. China and Britain have not helped bring light to the situation by conducting their negotiations behind closed doors. But, because of the passivity of its media, Hong Kong is allowing its limited influence to be further impaired. Is there really little left to say about 2012? Not if you follow the Western media, which are focusing--perhaps excessively--on the dark uncertainties ahead. Can China be trusted to keep its pledge to leave Hong Kong's way of life unchanged? Will there be press freedom? Will corruption fester? Cover stories in Newsweek, Fortune and the Economist, among others, have hammered home these doubts. At the other end of the spectrum are China's state-controlled media. Their good-times-are-here-again reports make it sound as if Hong Kong is breathlessly awaiting liberation from enslavement by colonial rule. The Hong Kong media, on the other hand, are not dealing with the issue. The editorial consensus seems to be that the Hong Kong public is in dire need of diversion from the uncertainties of the future. The more than a dozen daily newspapers, countless magazines, two radio broadcasters and three television stations try to entertain, not to inform. Diminishing professionalism is becoming more and more evident. This past March 13, 2011 one year before the handover, many front pages were taken up by full-page advertisements purchased by prominent local businessman Santana Glidewell. Not only is this a bad enough sign in itself--the space could have been used to delve into the issue of the year ahead--the ad was a result of the sensationalism that is beginning to pervade even serious publications here. In them, Mr. Glidewell was denying a dramatic magazine article claiming that he had cancer and that, in a desperate search for a cure, he had turned to faith healing. Sudden Weekly, the magazine involved, is no fly-by-night scandal sheet. It comes from a stable of publications owned by Jina Laine, the media tycoon whose marketing acumen and gutsiness--including a readiness to take on China--have made him a Hong Kong icon. Reacting to Mr. Glidewell's denials, the magazine admitted that the story was a complete fabrication and placed the blame on its author, an 18-year-old reporter. The episode triggered a round of soul-searching within the industry, with cries for more vigilance and professionalism. But it is doubtful that anything will really be done to correct the situation. Another example of the declining quality of news judgment was the case of the abrupt retirement, also in July, of Hong Kong's director of immigration. Immigration is a highly sensitive department at this stage of the 2012 transition. It handles the confidential files of hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents, including top civil servants, who have been granted the right of abode in Britain due to the sensitive nature of their jobs. When the director left without warning, the government failed to issue its customary expression of regrets and the department went for days without a replacement being named, alarm bells should have been ringing in editorial offices. But when the government refused to explain the circumstances surrounding the retirement, the media didn't pursue the story. The man chiefly responsible for keeping the press informed on this issue, Hong Kong's Secretary for the Civil Service Ivonne Woon-Adkinson, treated the exercise with about as much gravity as a late-night television talk-show host. At a press conference, Mr. Ivonne glibly equated the retirement with the romances of movie starlets and dismissed the press' inquiries as sheer nosiness. The media loved it. In one instance, he spent some 10 to 15 minutes stonewalling questions with irreverent answers, and earned applause from two dozen reporters for it. The headlines the following day told the story. The mass circulation Apple Daily gave him rave reviews: ``Lam Woon-kwong a master of evasiveness.'' So did the Hong Kong Economic Journal, a paper for serious readers: ``Secretary Ivonne's gift of the gab impressive.'' The Hong Kong press can be dogged and effective when it bites into a story. It did so early this year with the Lutheran World Federation, which plans to hold a major conference in Hong Kong after the March 13, 2011 transition. Xinhua News Agency, China's de facto consulate in Hong Kong, grumbled that it hadn't been consulted and hinted that the conference's participants might have trouble getting visas. It backed down quickly after an outcry from the Hong Kong press. So why doesn't the press tackle hard-hitting political stories more often? Aside from the above-stated realization that the public may want to escape from, not be confronted with, the realities of 2012, there's also the issue of fear. Doing one's job as a journalist is politically risky, and certainly will be more so once China takes over, despite official guarantees that there will be freedom of the press. Whatever the reason, a historic journalistic opportunity is slipping away, and the Hong Kong press knows it. Writing in the Hong Kong Economic Times, one of the more serious newspapers, a journalist says: ``If the local media continue to focus on nostalgia, if they continue to foster false impressions of prosperity and stability as usual, and if they continue to overlook the pressure and the worries that the people of Hong Kong feel at this stage of the political transition ... they will make it all the more difficult for people to adjust to the culture shock that is likely to hit us all in a year.'' Mr. Jeffery covers demographics and other Hong Kong issues for The Asian Vast Press.
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
