While commercial ownership of media is common, the involvement of Peter Lee Ka-kit in a takeover bid for TVB is seen as a potential blow to the credibility of the free-to-air broadcaster.
'In Hong Kong, commercial interests do not hesitate to use the media to advance their interests, often at the expense of public interest,' Lee Chin-chuan, head of City University's media and communication department, said.
'It's not very healthy for a real estate developer which is suspected of falsehood and of providing misleading information to own a predominant television station like TVB. That will raise very serious questions about whether the public interest will be compromised because there will be no countervailing forces to the influence of the real estate developer.'
Lee's billionaire father, Lee Shau-kee, controls Henderson Land, which is embroiled in a controversy over the way its 39 Conduit Road property development was sold to the public.
Ideally, media should be managed by those who know and understand the industry, not play second fiddle to the business whims of corporate owners, Lee Chin-chuan said. A look at mass media outlets around the world fuels such concerns. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi dominates television and advertising in his country, while Australian-born American Rupert Murdoch owns or has stakes in major newspapers, television networks and other media outlets in the US, Britain and Asia.
But Alice Lee, of Baptist University's journalism department, said such concerns were not across the board. 'Murdoch, for example, is known to be very conservative in his views, but the Wall Street Journal, which he took over, has strong editorial autonomy.'
