tim's experiment

God, it’s worse than I thought. The Post is now prepared to lie to its readers. Today’s front page story on the “Locust protest” was mainly devoted to official condemnations of the view that there may be some number of mainland tourists which is enough, or even too many.
This didn’t leave much room for a brief summary of Sunday’s events, but we got this: “Police intervened after scuffles broke out between the demonstrators and passers-by opposed to the march.” The ordinary and natural meaning of those words is that the march was opposed spontaneously by people who just happened to be in Canton Road at the time, which is manifest nonsense. It was opposed by people who had deliberately set out to provide a counter-demonstration. Anyone who was dubious about this could simply have consulted Monday’s Standard, which featured a very nice picture of the opponents of the march, brandishing large copies of the SAR and PRC flags.

I am prepared to believe that there may still be local people who shop in Canton Road, though they don’t include me. I am not prepared to believe that such people take with them a flag on a pole in case they are suddenly confronted by a demonstration they disapprove of. We have seen enough of the loving Hong Kong people in action to know how they work and what they are trying to do, which is basically to turn any demonstration they disapprove of into a street brawl.  Whether you approve of this or not it should be reported. These are hard times for people who used to work at the Post. What used to be a source of pride is becoming something we would rather keep quiet about. An American newspaper editor once said that when you have a monopoly the difficult thing is not to stay in business but to stay in journalism. Too hard for some, apparently.