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Hong Kong politics
OpinionLetters

Letters | Why RTHK should follow editorial line set by Hong Kong government

  • Media organisations around the world are defined by the stance and political leanings of their publisher or owner. Why should RTHK journalists be exempt?
  • Controversial programmes, if they are as popular as claimed, should find a home with a commercial broadcaster

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The RTHK office in Kowloon Tong. In any media organisation around the world, “editorial independence” is not an unqualified privilege. Photo: K.Y. Cheng
Letters
With reference to your editorial on May 25 (“Re-examine RTHK’s dual role in highly politicised climate”), I wish to point out that RTHK staff are a very privileged lot indeed. They enjoy editorial independence as journalists, as well as security of tenure afforded by their civil servant status, but they are strangely immune from the constraints and obligations applicable to all other journalists and government departments.

I say this because, in any media organisation around the world, “editorial independence” is not an unqualified privilege. Media organisations have their own character-defining stance and political leanings, and these are decided by the publisher or owner, not the editor.

Any editor or journalist who cannot live with this red line would simply be told to find another job. Things like this happen all the time in the world of journalism, and no one can accuse the publisher of “exerting pressure” or censorship.

If RTHK considers itself a professional media organisation, why should its journalists and editors be exempted from the rule of their own profession?

Unlike their counterparts in the commercial sector, they need have no regard for their “owner” – the Hong Kong government, because they know how difficult it is for the government to dismiss them, both technically and politically.

Some years ago, to express their dislike for a newly appointed director of broadcasting, some RTHK staff even staged a demonstration when he arrived at the office on his first day of work. Such behaviour would be subject to immediate censure and disciplinary action in any other government department.
RTHK staff dressed in black wave placards to “receive” the new director of broadcasting, Roy Tang Yun-kwong, on September 15, 2011, as he arrives to start work at the broadcaster’s headquarters in Kowloon Tong. Photo: Handout
RTHK staff dressed in black wave placards to “receive” the new director of broadcasting, Roy Tang Yun-kwong, on September 15, 2011, as he arrives to start work at the broadcaster’s headquarters in Kowloon Tong. Photo: Handout
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