Seasoned crusader sitting pretty in old haunt

FIVE years after she left RTHK in a much-publicised fury over self-censorship in the government-run network, journalist Lorna Workman is back hosting a new Saturday phone-in programme with policy-makers in the hot seat.

'What is the point of staying in a job when everything you do is deliberately undermined by people who are more concerned about playing politics than professional standards?' she raged to a local magazine at the time, after some critical comment on the then Governor, Sir David Wilson, was trimmed from her programme.

So, what has changed in the meantime? Herself, Workman says, more than the set-up at RTHK or in the Hong Kong media. The once famously 'feisty' - the word she chooses to describe herself - journalist who was the first woman to present Hong Kong Today, who grilled the great and the good on her own show, Workman This Week, has mellowed.

'I don't get so angry anymore. I'd have burnt out if I did. But it is only in the last 18 months that I have learnt to let go. I have had to accept that I can't change the world.' But her journalistic instincts are still very much alive, and despite all her reservations about press freedom, Workman hopes the new show will 'be a chance for the public to question those who decide our future'. And that, for her, makes it worth doing.

The return to Radio 3 started gradually with a highly successful phone-in she hosted two weeks ago, when Secretary for Transport Haider Barma came on Open Line to talk about his proposals for curing Hong Kong's traffic problems. 'I think he acquitted himself very well. It is good PR for officials, it shows they are made of sterner stuff than others,' says Workman.

The line-up for the new show has not been firmed up yet, but Workman has approached Police Commissioner Eddie Hui Kee-on and Xinhua (the New China News Agency). 'I think Xinhua could do a lot to reassure non-Chinese residents planning to stay in Hong Kong after 1997, those running small businesses and so on, who are being scared away. It would be tremendous PR for them,' she says.