RTHK ‘must not spread hatred’
Commerce secretary stresses broadcasters’ programs should always be based on facts
Hong Kong’s commerce secretary stressed on Wednesday that no broadcaster should spread hatred, denigration or insult toward anyone on its programs, after an anti-police program on Radio Television Hong Kong led to a public outcry.
Meeting the press on the sidelines of a Legislative Council meeting on Wednesday, Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Edward Yau Tangwah said programs created by broadcasters need to be fact-based — a rule that all broadcasters should follow. If they don’t, they fail their audience, Yau said.
Yau’s comments came after the RTHKproduced program received over 3,300 complaints for making misleading and one-sided comments that tarnish the reputation of the city’s law enforcers.
The Communications Authority (CA), the body that oversees broadcasters, on Tuesday issued a warning to RTHK, ruling the program violated various provisions in the Generic Code of Practice on Television Programme Standards.
Following the verdict, Commerce and Economic Development Bureau — the department supervising RTHK — said in a press release that the situation is “very serious given that RTHK, as a public service broadcaster, has been repeatedly ruled to have breached various provisions in the code, including failure to ensure the accuracy of the factual contents in the program; remarks and content regarded as hate speech, denigrating and insulting the police; and failure to include a sufficiently broad range of views in the personal view program”.
The public broadcaster was told to “address the concerns raised by different stakeholders on its programs, management and governance. It should take positive and proactive follow-up action and give an account to the public,” the bureau said.
It demanded the station offer an apology and a full review of the program production and editorial procedure.
Freedom of speech is always protected under the Basic Law. But as a public broadcaster, RTHK must uphold and abide by the Charter of RTHK in discharging its duties, Yau stressed.
He will meet with the RTHK Board of Advisors today to follow up on the station’s production and editorial system.
Accepting CA’s ruling, RTHK apologized on Tuesday to “any police officers or others who have been offended, or who are dissatisfied with the station’s output”.
The station said it will suspend the show concerned after the current season ends, and conduct a review on how to develop the show “in an ever-changing social environment”.
Lam Chi-wai, chairman of Junior Police Officers’ Association, welcomed the verdict, calling it “belated justice” for police officers.
In a phone interview with China Daily, Lam said that as a public broadcaster, RTHK’s denigration of the police, based on inaccurate and one-sided information, was “irresponsible” and “unethical”.
Lam said he hopes RTHK can sincerely learn from the lesson, and not repeat those mistakes in future productions.
The controversy centered on an episode on Feb 14, which was widely criticized for maliciously defaming the city’s law enforcers. It will be removed, RTHK said. In that episode, the host was dressed in a style similar to a police officer, with his neck and hands wrapped with garbage bags. He emerged from a large garbage bin at the beginning of the segment, spoke while standing inside of it, and returned to the large bin and closed the lid behind him at the end of the program.
In the ruling, the authority said the segment on the garbage bin “had nothing to do with any particular conduct or the work of the police, or public concerns on the way the police exercised their authority, but to denigrate the police as a social group, and was also a gratuitous attack on that entire group”.
To the point,