Published images of celebrities were indecent, media watchdog tells tribunal
The publication of detailed descriptions of celebrities engaged in sex acts combined with photographs, despite the fact parts of the pictures were blacked out, constituted indecency, the media watchdog told the Obscene Articles Tribunal yesterday.
The Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (Tela) is seeking to overturn the tribunal's 'neither indecent nor obscene' ruling in relation to the 40 pictures published in February in Oriental Sunday magazine, and 94 photos published in Next magazine the same month.
Tela said the text and photos should be taken together as a whole in any consideration of whether the material published was indecent.
Senior government prosecutor Vinci Lam Wing-sai, for Tela, said despite the censoring of areas of the photographs of each individual in the published photographs, the descriptions and sexually expressive texts clearly projected sexual fantasy to readers.
Ms Lam also argued it was 'unnecessary and excessive' for Oriental Sunday to carry such a large number of censored photos of stars engaged in sex acts in an article that was ostensibly about their tangled relationships. She submitted to the court that Next Magazine had used 'pornographic, sexually arousing texts and chronologically successive pictures' to evoke sexual fantasy and voyeurism.