tim's experiment

Since the handover in 1997 the death rate among local media has been rather higher, not because of official skullduggery by the Chinese government, but because of bumbling interventions by its local supporters.

Businessmen who wish to curry favour are prone to the delusion that they can buy some more or less flourishing media outlet, tone down the content a bit by removing items which will annoy their friends, and nobody will notice.

Most of the early casualties were small magazines. The syndrome would follow a predictable path. The buyer would be someone who had shown no previous interest in media ownership, but was well known for his connections further north. He would announce that the decision to buy the magazine was a purely business matter and there would be no change in editorial policy. This was not believed by the staff or the readers. Those staff who could find other jobs – who tend to be the best ones – departed. Quality sagged, readers deserted, and in a year or so there was another purely business decision: to close the magazine.

Of course if you start with a large and prosperous media organisation the process takes far longer. Five years or so ago most of us regarded the South China Morning Post as a durable landmark, though even then the constant comings and goings of chief editors suggested that the proprietors were not sure what they wanted to do with it. Lately a lot of people seem to think the newspaper is a shadow of its former self, prone to fence-sitting and mistakes, and weakened by misguided economies. These are, we know, hard times for newspapers everywhere, although the sort of upscale advertising in which the Post specialises will probably be the last kind to move to the internet. Anyway I am still buying the thing, though I seem to get less for my money than I used to.

I am not qualified to comment on the other local landmark of “quality”, Ming Pao, though my students’ opinions of it are not flattering. But then there is the case of RTHK, now headed by a civil servant whose media experience is non-existent. Now I realise that some government departments are the scene of a constant tussle over whether their leadership demands experience in the work of the staff, or can be exercised by an Administrative Officer whose main skill is in the drafting of an elegant memo. I remember an awful row when an AO was put in charge of the Marine Department, for example.

Previous Directors of Broadcasting were all people who might be supposed to know something about broadcasting. In the early days of RTHK the Director was seconded from the BBC. Later he (or she) was recruited from within RTHK itself. Clearly the job as it was done in those years required broadcasting experience and knowledge. The new incumbent will have to do a different job, because those items on which his predecessors exercised their knowledge and skill will have to be passed on to other shoulders. The question is whether he will feel, as all those other proprietors did, that the content can be shorn of “sensitive” items without diminishing its quality or appeal to consumers.

I rather suspect he will be encouraged to feel this way, because after all the whole point of putting a civil servant in mid-career into the job is that his independence will be curtailed by the desire to have a further career back among the mandarins. I do not suggest anything so crass as people offering threats or inducements. I am sure also that the new Director will not consciously seek to enhance his career prospects by giving his colleagues a quiet life.

Still, there is a consensus among Administrative Officers that they are wonderful in every way, and consequently the government is a wonderfully well-run organisation. If RTHK is going to propagate this curious illusion then many viewers and listeners will in the long run feel it necessary to view and listen to other stations. RTHK cannot, of course, go bankrupt. But if the audience shrinks, so will the budget. And down the slippery slope we go.