Blue Pencil
The relationship between the government’s broadcasting operation – RTHK – and the rest of the administration has always had its awkward moments. I remember many years ago a senior policy secretary (equivalent to today’s ministers) coming into the office one morning with steam coming out of his ears. He had just heard on the radio that the air pollution index for that day was very high. He wanted to know why the station had given such prominence to bad news. In his view they should report either good news or keep quiet.
The relationship between the government’s broadcasting operation – RTHK – and the rest of the administration has always had its awkward moments. I remember many years ago a senior policy secretary (equivalent to today’s ministers) coming into the office one morning with steam coming out of his ears. He had just heard on the radio that the air pollution index for that day was very high. He wanted to know why the station had given such prominence to bad news. In his view they should report either good news or keep quiet.
Now this was a minor incident a long time ago and there were no consequences in terms of punishment of the individuals or the institutions which had been mooted in the first throws of ire. But it is a good illustration of the difficulties facing RTHK. Is it purely a government department whose main role is to extol the virtues of our enlightened administrative leadership, or a public broadcaster in the BBC mold with a higher – or at least parallel -- responsibility to the community at large, or is it a bit of both.
There is no doubt which way some of our legislators feel in the current climate. In their view, the station has become far too critical in the news it reports, and the stance of its journalists, and in effect is now part of the opposition. Prominent among members holding this view is Junius Ho Kwan-yiu, former president of the Law Society and chairman of Tuen Mun district council, and currently an elected member of the Legislative Council for New Territories West. In the debate on the budget in May this year he suggested that the broadcaster should be merged with the Information Services Department, and become part of the government’s PR machinery.
It is sometimes forgotten that RTHK began life as part of ISD, but was separated out in 1954 to give it a distinctive public broadcaster role.
All this by way of background to the latest story in which RTHK features prominently, and that is the high-profile arrest of Bao Choy Yuk-ling. Choy is a freelance journalist who worked as assistant producer on an RTHK documentary about the controversial incident in Yuen Long on 21 July last year. A gang of white-shirted individuals armed with staves attacked and injured passengers on an arriving MTR train, some of whom may have been protesters returning from a demonstration downtown while others were simply ordinary members of the public in the wrong place at the wrong time. With the help of that programme, plus other media inputs, the whole community now knows of serious deficiencies in the policing of the town that day. Focus initially was on the lack of response by uniformed officers – the turning away by two men at the scene; the failure to answer 999 calls in a timely manner; the slow response when those calls were eventually answered. Attention turned later to the fact that there had been a considerable plainclothes presence on the ground that day while bands of white shirts gradually congregated. What those officers observed, what they concluded, to whom they reported their concerns if any, were among the many questions not fully answered in the “milk and water” report by the Independent Police Complaints Council. Nor was the role of the aforementioned Mr Ho, seen socializing with the white shirts.
These questions can only really be answered by a full-scale independent commission of inquiry, but the police force has indicated it won’t stand for one. The government has decided not to insist. How should we view a community where the police take the lead on political decisions?
We cannot comment on the merits of the charges against Choy because her case is now before the courts. It is alleged she was using improper means to identify the owners of vehicles which had supported the armed attackers. One might however reasonably query why this enquiry was being undertaken by a journalist at all, rather than by Complaints Against Police Office detectives investigating incompetence or outright misconduct.
So, one member of the fourth estate is before the courts, now members of the judiciary themselves -- the third estate – are also facing serious criticism. Members of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, deputy leader Holden Chow Ho-ding in the forefront, have launched a systemic attack on our judges and magistrates for their handling of court cases related to the social unrest of the past 18 months. It is alleged they have been too reluctant to convict, too ready to disbelieve police evidence, too sympathetic on sentencing where there was a conviction etc. There have been strong criticisms of specific judicial officers in particular when they have dismissed police evidence as weak or even bordering on perjurous. There have been calls for a special committee to be formed including outsiders to set sentencing guidelines.
The truth is more prosaic. As guaranteed by the Basic Law and reaffirmed in the new national security law, Hong Kong courts follow the common law system. That means a presumption of innocence with the burden of proof falling on the prosecution.
It is worrying that a pattern is clearly emerging. The air is filthy, so blame the weather forecast which reports it. The facts show a poor policing performance, so blame the reporter who exposes it. Shoddy prosecution work on the back of incredible police evidence, blame the judges who find it out. Better in all cases, surely, to clean up the pollution.