August, 2005

Is Hong Kong's Freedom of Speech under Threat?

Rose Wu

During the chief executive election campaign, Donald Tsang Yam-kuen made a remark about Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) in which he said, as a public broadcaster, the station should not go into the entertainment business. He especially commented about their live broadcasts of horse racing and the annual Top 10 Chinese Gold Songs Award. The remarks consequently sparked people's concerns about RTHK's independence.

The controversy took a new turn on July 9 when the secretary for commerce, industry and technology, John Tsang Chun-wah, announced there would be no live broadcasts of horse racing on RTHK next season. A spokesperson for the chief executive's office admitted that Tsang had been briefly told about the plan in April or May but that he had not been involved in the discussion.

Defending the decision, Director of Broadcasting Chu Pui-hing told a Legislative Council meeting that RTHK had internal discussions on whether to continue the coverage as early as January. The reason for pursuing such a change, he said, was due to budget constraints and the proliferation of racing information via other channels. He insisted that the decision had nothing to do with criticism by government officials but yet admitted that the decision to scrap racing broadcasts on RTHK had been badly handled.

However, the lack of transparency in the decision-making process has done little to calm the public's fears about RTHK's future. According to the South China Morning Post on July 11, a source close to RTHK said it was difficult to speculate on a hidden motive behind the high-profile remarks by officials in the past few weeks. However, RTHK has been periodically attacked by local pro-Beijing figures for being too critical of the Hong Kong government since the handover in 1997.

What is at stake is not whether Tsang and government officials are entitled to have an opinion on the future direction of a government-funded public broadcaster. Rather, the core issue is freedom of speech. The community does not expect, nor want, RTHK to be a broadcaster of propaganda. Even though RTHK remains a government department within the bureaucracy, there is strong public backing for its role as a watchdog of the policies and actions of the government — not a government mouthpiece.

Another incident which also raised alarm about whether Hong Kong's freedom of speech is under threat was the sudden sacking of Commercial Radio talk show host Wong Yuk-man on July 2 after rejecting his demand for a show five days a week instead of only his Saturday night programme Rage in Town.

Many will remember the speculation after the July 1demonstration in 2003 that Wong and another outspoken radio talk show host, Albert Cheng King-hon, had stepped down from Commercial Radio last year because of a government warning that Commercial Radio's 12-year licence would not be renewed. Ultimately, after weeks of suspense, it was renewed, albeit with a review after six years. It is of concern, therefore, that Wong, who returned to Commercial Radio only a number of months ago, has now been fired as the result of political pressure.

As Cheng, now a legislator, pointed out, Wong's case is much more than just a labour dispute, for it goes against all business sense for Commercial Radio to systematically remove Wong, who is the most popular talk show host in Hong Kong and who commands large and loyal audiences.

Meanwhile, Cheung Pin-ling, chairwoman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, cited the RTHK controversy and the sacking of Cheng and Wong as indications that Hong Kong's press freedom is being eroded, and the union representative of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Michael Dobbie, urged RTHK to reaffirm its identity and said it should serve the majority of the public because its resources came from the public.

The association issued a report and made 10 recommendations to the government, including calls on Beijing not to interfere in Hong Kong's affairs and for government officials to defend Hong Kong's freedom of speech. The report also stated that the public broadcaster's editorial freedom must be maintained.

As the people of Hong Kong, we must understand that the RTHK controversy and Wong's case make it more urgent for a wider discussion in the community about the public's access to a broad spectrum of information and the idea of community broadcasting programmes, including the role of RTHK in the context of public policy and education.

Such questions were raised in the 1985 Broadcasting Review Board report, which recommended that the station should become an independent statutory corporation with its own charter, following the model of the BBC. However, RTHK's subsequent bid to become a corporation failed in the early 1990s for political and financial reasons.

In fact, there are at least two different models for public broadcasters. The European model, including the BBC, holds the public broadcaster to be a major national institution with the mission of expressing society's aspirations and fostering communication.

The second model is the American approach that regards commercial broadcasting as part of an industry seeking to satisfy the needs of the mass market while public broadcasting focuses on minority-oriented programmes that the commercial stations are unwilling to provide because they are not profitable.

Similarly, in Hong Kong, the current failure to safeguard freedom of speech at Commercial Radio has made the role of RTHK as a public broadcaster even more critical. The people of Hong Kong have every right to demand that RTHK, which is funded by taxpayers' money, open its doors wider to public participation to shape its future and defend freedom of speech — a pillar of Hong Kong's success. The Tsang administration should be doing everything possible to demonstrate to the public that it intends to uphold this value and serve the best interests of the community.