Tuning in to radio waves

Almost 20 years after it was published, in 1986, the Broadcasting Review Board's report still makes refreshing reading. Read in the light of the recent row over whether Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen had a hand in RTHK's decision to axe its horse racing programme, the board demonstrated a deep understanding of the dilemmas faced by a government-owned public broadcaster.

It observed: 'As long as it remains a government department, RTHK will be viewed with suspicion by some both inside and outside government. Some, understandably, feel that RTHK must be subject to government pressure. Whether or not this is true is not the issue. The harm is done if a substantial number of people believe it to be true.'

More fundamentally, the board felt that 'the proper role of government should be not to actively participate in public broadcasting, but to create the climate for the independent growth of the industry'. It therefore recommended that RTHK be turned into an independent corporation with its own board of governors. For a while, there was every sign that the government would act on that recommendation, and RTHK staff spent a lot of time deliberating how their generous pay packages as civil servants could be maintained after corporatisation.

In 1989, RTHK formulated a corporatisation proposal. Unfortunately, the political climate in Hong Kong was to change, after Beijing ordered troops to suppress the student-led democracy movement in the capital. The bloody crackdown sparked an international outcry and caused a massive loss of public confidence in the future of Hong Kong after 1997.

The government's top priorities became building a new airport at Chek Lap Kok and improving the management of public hospitals by setting up the Hospital Authority. It also emerged that Beijing was opposed to RTHK's corporatisation, regarding it as a move to deprive the post-1997 Hong Kong government of its own media organ. In 1993, the colonial government formally shelved the corporatisation plan.

During the last years of Hong Kong's transition to the handover, the pro-Beijing camp often criticised RTHK's public affairs programmes for being anti-Beijing - a charge rejected by the station. After the handover, the same critics denounced the station for being too critical of the Tung Chee-hwa administration.

In 1999, the station's long-serving chief, Cheung Man-yee, was removed as director of broadcasting and despatched to Tokyo to head the government's office in Japan. The posting was seen as a rebuke for her decision to allow the unofficial envoy of Taipei to go on air, to talk about Taiwanese then-president Lee Teng-hui's 'two states' theory, on the relationship between the mainland and Taiwan.

Against such a background, it is not surprising that RTHK staff are anxious about anything that smacks of government interference. As things stand, RTHK remains a government department. As for the denials by broadcasting chief Chu Pui-hing that Mr Tsang had anything to do with the decision to drop the racing programme, nobody can believe them.

Even so, John Tsang Chun-wah, secretary for commerce, industry and technology, says there are no plans to corporatise RTHK. He has asked broadcasting staff to listen less to conspiracy theories about government efforts to rein in the station. As long as RTHK maintains its current status, however, his calls are most likely to fall on deaf ears.

C.K. Lau is the Post's executive editor, policy. He appears regularly on RTHK as a guest commentator and interviewer