tim's experiment

There are times when the government has what we used to call a credibility gap. Not everything it says is easy to believe. But the explanation given for the abolition of by-elections floated over a credibility Grand Canyon. I suppose the luckless spokesperson who was put up to say that the government was abolishing by-elections so that the people’s will might prevail had no choice in the matter. He didn’t look as if he believed it and I didn’t either.

The proposal is that instead of holding a by-election the government will simply appoint the loser who collected the most votes in the last election. Clearly this has nothing to do with reflecting the people’s will. If we wished to preserve the election result we would appoint the person next on the list behind the legislator who has died, resigned, or whatever. But of course the People’s Will has nothing to do with it. Nor despite the helpful suggestion from the TVB reporter covering the matter, is this anything to do with the allaged cost of the multiple by-elections which were Not A Referendum, according to the Comrades. I thought the figure given for this was grossly exaqggerated. Anyway our government is not short of money.

What was bothering them, clearly, is the discovery that if a legislator dies, resigns, falls under a bus, is jaled for having an illegal structure on his rooftop or whatever, then the resulting by-election is in effect run on a first-past-the-post basis. There is only one seat on offer, so there is no room for the elaborate electoral subterfuges adopted to compensate for the low levels of support enjoyed by the DAB. Every time the democratic camp will win, unless they contrive something suicidal like running two candidates against each other.  When Anson Chan prevailed over Regina Ip in a by-election this could be put down to personal factors. Ms Chan was famous and Ms Ip had a controversial history. But in the by-elections which were Not A Referendum all the democrats, including the ones you had never heard of, effortlessly prevailed. So this will happen all the time.

Not only does this mean that every time there is a by-election the government and — indirectly — the Comrades will be humiliated. It also means that if the legislators who disappear happen to be government supporters then its automatic majority in the chamber will gradually shrink. And we can’t have that, can we? No such perils attend by-elections in the Functional Constituencies so by-elections there will continue. What a give-away.

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Many observant readers of the SCMPost will have noted, perhaps with more amusement than dismay, that the paper managed to mark the demise of Osama bin Laden by breaking the first rule of journalism and spelling his name wrong.  Having fed the conspiracy theorists the idea of Obama bin Laden the paper then made another error in the correction, which suggests that someone was perhaps not concentrating. This sort of incident generally serves as a peg for age-encrusted former reporters like me to hang a gloomy tirade about the fact that times have changed for the worst and young people in the news business are not as careful as we were.

Well you are not going to get that here. I do not know if the Post prints more mistakes than it did when I first worked there in the early 80s.  But if it does, this is not a result of an increased human failure rate, but changes in the way things work.  In the days when a computer was a mysterious object with a room to itself at the local university, a piece of news was the work of many hands, all of them attached to functioning human brains. Your reporter typed on a piece of paper. In some offices he was expected to produce a carbon copy (known as a black) as well, but usually there was just one copy of the copy. The pieces of paper were intentionally small, because the story would have to be split up and put together again later in the process. So your story, now a pile of pieces of paper, would be passed to the News Editor, or some such title, who overlooked the reporters. He would probably glance at it to make sure that the story had lived up to its possibilities, and pass it to a person picturesquely entitled the Copy Taster. This person would assign it a space on a page, according to its comparative importance and other considerations. It would then go to a page designer, who would attach to it a series of instructions which would produce the desired shape on the page when the story was translated into type.

Then the story, plus instructions and pictures or other adornments, would be passed to another editor who would go through it in exquisite detail, correcting errors and adding instructions to the printers, to whom it goes next. But first, at least on careful newspapers with time, another editor would look through it to make sure the finished result made sense. Then, typically, you would drop it down a hole. The printing machinery was always on the ground floor because of its weight, the eidtorial was upstairs and one-way communication was often achieved through a vertical tube running down the building.

At this point the story fell into the hands of the type-setters and compositors. These were skilful and literate artisans whose training took much longer than ours did. The standard apprenticeship for a journalist was three years; for a printer it was seven. This was a cherished opportunity for bright working class kids who would be urged by older relatives to “learn a trade” to ensure their lifetime employability. Only males did it. Nowadays one would wonder why this was so but in those days it was a common feature of skilled manual jobs and we did not question it.

Your story would at this point be split up, because any part which needed a different type size or column width would have to be done on a different machine. After the type-setter had turned it into a lot of small pieces of metal they would be passed to a table called the random, each still accompanied by its original  piece of paper. Here the story would be reassembled. Its metai version would go in a tray called a galley, from which a galley proof could be made – which is where that phrase comes from. The proof and the original story on paper, would then be passed to another department, known formally as the Correctors of the Press and less formally as the proofreaders. In some newspapers this department was used to meet government requirements that a certain proportion of disabled people should be included in a firm’s employees, so everyone in the room seemed to have a limb missing. In other newspapers the overwhelmingly male atmosphere in the printing department was countered by the recruitment of lots of young women as proofreaders, leading to occasional complaints from their supervisor if the copy was too raunchy, in his view, for young ladies’ eyes.  In theory the proofreaders’ only job was to ensure that the type as set had followed the original copy. In practice a detailed examination of the story often disclosed other problems which could at this stage still be corrected. Meanwhile the story in type form would travel to a place called “the stone” because a slate-topped table was the traditional piece of furniture. Here a whole page would be assembled. At this point there would also be an editorial representative called the Stone Sub. In theory his only job was to resolve problems in fitting the stories into the page according to the plan provided. In practice the stories usually had to be cut a bit, so the Stone Sub would read the proofs as they arrived with an eye to parts which could be pruned without sending the whole story back for resetting. So again, another pair of eyes, another chance to rescue Mr Obama from a terrorist’s tomb stone.

I must not give you the impression that this system produced infallibly correct results. In fact when produced in this way The Guardian included so many misprints that even its own staff called it The Grauniad. But on the whole the system worked. Unfortunately from the point of view of avoiding mistakes most of it has been replaced by the computer. There is no paper copy, there are no type-setters or compositors, there is no Stone Sub and there are no proofreaders. Careful readers will note a small tragedy lurking here, with eager young men spending seven years learning a trade which was wiped out overnight by the microchip. Technology marches on, leaving mangled bodies in its trail. All these people who no longer have to look at a story leave more opportunities for error. To compensate we get the spell checker, but that is, as you might say, knot mulch kelp because it misses a mis-spelling if the erroneous word is a legitimate one in its own right.

A less technological question is the way we produce reporters these days.  When I started it was unusual to meet graduates in the business (outside the Financial Times) and only one UK university offered a journalism degree. Most reporters started on local newsopapers where they did rather boring and repetitive jobs reporting things like whist drives and school sports days, which did not do much for the writing skills but cultivated accuracy about names and numbers. Being a reporter was exciting but not prestigious and it attracted enterprising types who had had discipline problems at school. Nowadays you get complaints, at least in English-speaking countries, that the switch to a graduate in-take has filled the business with fully paid-up members of the middle classes who can draw an inverted pyramid but lack the skills or the inclination to hang about in grubby pubs on the scent of a good yarn. It would be easier to dismiss this as the wails of a few dinosaurs if the newspapers now staffed entirely by graduates and computers were not losing readership in most places…

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Who are they? Who is this “Concerned group of financial professionals” who can afford to rent acres of local newsprint to beg victims of the minibond scam to let by-gones be by-gones? After all if you are going to pose as a friend of all the world, defender of humble shopkeepers and timid tourists, we are entitled to know whether this is a sincere piece of public-spirited peace-making, or a hypocritical attempt to dress financial interests in the garb of concern for public order. There are times, we all know, when honest man may wish to express an opinion pseudonymously. But the Financial Professionals are not seeking to criticise the PRC, call for independence in Tibet or seek the liberation of the latest jailed “subversive”.  The pursuit of peace and quiet on Central pavements is not controversial. So why are we left to ponder the possibility that the people now calling for peace are the same sorry crew who caused the problem in the first place?

Personally I do not go to Central that often, but I must say that I have never been intimidated or otherwise distressed by the protests going on there. It is a cherished right of the ripped off to demonstrate outside the premises of the bandit concerned, and I am quite willing to make whatever small sacrifices may be involved for the rest of us if people exercise that right.

The financial professionals are, it seems, a pretentious lot. I am not sure that anyone in the finanncial business is a professional in anything but the broadest sense. Mostly they sell things. On the whole the suiting is better than in brush sales but the principles involved are the same. Professionals in the more restricted sense are people with ethical obligations which over-ride their personal interests. Can you say “ethical banker” without giggling?

Certainly our financial professionals are not hampered by any old-fashioned notions about truth. The interesting thing about their advertisement is the way it starts with something we can all agree with and gradually escalates the rhetoric. Of course there are protesters in Central, sometimes dressed in funeral garb, sometimes carrying coffins, sometimes talking through bull-horns and usually just sitting on the pavement. This, the financial professionals believe, is making Hong Kong a laughing stock the world over. Well really? Everywhere from Belize to Beijing morning coffee is interrupted by raucous laughter at the spectacle of Hong Kong minibond protests? Pull the other one.

A couple of paragraphs later the amusing crowds have turned into “howling mobs”.  Through the howling mobs “sophisticated international customers” have to push. This is making them so uncomfortable that they are taking their business elsewhere. Rubbish! International business is driven by the same greed that motivates the local variety. Your sophisticated international customer is not going to go home to his sophisticated international boss and say he missed a good deal in Central because he was too intimidated by a mock funeral on the pavement.

The verbal escalation then continues. We are now dealing with “violent uncivil protests”. Two examples of the boodcurdling violence involved are provided. People have resorted to “lying down or sprawling across the roadways” and “camping out at the Cheung Kong Centre”. On the basis of this threatening behaviour “visitors are right to question whether Hong Kong is still a safe and friendly tourist city.” Are they indeed?

Others may find it more interesting to ponder what is going on here. Do the banks think that it is bad for their business to have a grzphic reminder on their doorsteps of the facts that investments may go down as well as up, and that this is a point on which your salesman’s advice is unreliable?  Or is there some deeper significance in the fact that the only detailed complaint is about the Cheung Kong Centre?

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During my occasional run-ins with the anti-smoking loonies I have occasionally suggested that they were by now so addicted to making decisions for other people that they would be opposed to smoking even if a version of it emerged which was entirely healthy. This was necessarily a hypothetical statement, and one which I did not really expect to see in the real world. Traditional snuff is quite harmless compared with the inhaled versions, but that did not save it from being banned. Still it does at least have nicotine in it.

Happily, however, on Tuesday my point was elegantly demonstrated. A company called Shortcut has begun to market a rather expensive gadget which looks like a cigarette, but isn’t one. There is no tobacco in it whatsoever. The user inhales flavoured water vapour. I suppose some people might go on to the real thing. But then some people might not. Some smokers might find that sucking something else helped them to quit. Despite these uncertainties, though, the Post’s intrepid reporter had no difficulty in finding members of the tobacco Taliban who wanted the new gadget to be regulated, or better still banned.   An assistant professor at the HKU School of Public Health (was no real professor available?) said there was “no good evidence that e-cigarettes were safe to use”.

I fear the School of Public Health and the rest of us are not going to see eye to eye until the school gets its head round the idea that we ban things which are proven dangerous. We do not ban things because they have not been proven to be safe to use, at least when ostensibly harmless activities like inhaling water vapour are concerned. Of course what was bothering the True Believers was the effect of the new gadget on young people. Puritans who wish to curb adults’ freedom of choice always claim to be motivated by the desire to protect young people. Heavens, they might get the idea that sticking something in your mouth and sucking it was pleasant. On this basis we shall I suppose soon see calls for a ban on oral sex…

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The news that one of our senior officials has to be hooked up to a gadget every night to make up for the deficiencies of his kidneys unleashed a wave of heartrending stories about the hard life led by ministers. Recent casualties were enumerated, and touching quotes provided about the difficulty of being constantly answerable to the public. Some officials were reported to be working 14-hour days, some to be wilting from overwork.

Well hold your tears. This is predominantly a government of mature to elderly men. Such men generally have the odd medical problem. There is no evidence that being a minister in the Hong Kong SARG is more dangerous or wearing than other jobs commonly taken by men in their 50 and 60s. There is no evidence that appointees are sicker as a group than others of a similar demographic make-up. Nor is there any evidence that being answerable to “the public” is any more difficult and stressful than being answerable to some individual boss who may have his or her own prejudices and caprices.

I also doubt that they actually have that much to do. The big decisions are made in Beijing. I presume people would not have accepted appointment to our puppet regime if they were not happy with that. The small decisions can be left to one’s ever more numerous underlings and assistants. Anyone who is finding himself bowed by an excess of real work needs to sort out his priorities.

But on closer inquiry one finds that they are not bowed by an excess of real work. When you ask how the Secretary for Sewage can possibly justify working 14 hours a day you are told that he has very time-consuming social obligations. So the secretarial day goes something like this. The clock starts at 8 am, when he is collected by the office car and driver. By 8.30 he is in the totally unnecessary daily meeting known as “morning prayers” with all the  other bigwigs. At 9.30 he gets back to his own office and spends a couple of hours with the correspndence, emails, files, etc. Then it’s off to an official luncheon of the Sewage Conractors Association, at which he is the guest of honour. The afternoon is spent on an official visit to the North Kowloon office of the Department of Sewerage Services. Here the staff have spent the last two months making sure he will have a good time. Half an hour before he arrives a lift has been reserved for his exclusive use. The toilet seat has been warmed and the champagne has been cooled.

In the evening we are off to another formal dinner or two. Leading to our hero arriving home about 10 and feeling that he has clocked 14 hours on the job, after a strenuous day of meeting, eating, inspecting and adding to his collection of souvenir plaques. Now of course I realise that this is not as much fun as it sounds. Going to parties as a job sounds wonderful. It soon palls, even on reporters with a well-developed taste for free beer.  On the other hand, and considering the remuneration and the perks involved, the secretary’s routine  certainly beats a great many other jobs you can think of.

So one can offer two suggestions for ministers who feel the job is killing them. One is “get organised”. Send your deputy to morning prayers, limit your engagements, delegate. You are part of a municipal government, not a global empire. Rule one is don’t sweat the small stuff.  Rule two is: it’s all small stuff.

 The other possible course of action is to resign. You can then relax, take a lucrative job with the company which builds Hong Kong’s sewers, and explore the world’s golf courses. Do not be dissuaded by the argument that the government will have trouble finding a talented, enterprising and effective replacement for you. Why should they? How many of your present colleagues are talented, enterprising and effective? Conformist mediocrity is what they really want, and of that there is no shortage.

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While driving home the other day I found myself leading – or at least preceding – a white Ferrari. I had some difficulty in identifying it at first, because you rarely see a white Ferrari. Many Hong Kong drivers will not consider white for a car because it is the colour used for the government fleet.  I suppose if the car you are painting is a Ferrari then that question does not arise. Anyway, the traffic was heavy and neither of us was racing. He did not seem to be in a hurry and I am too old for that sort of thing. So we remained more or less in formation from the traffic lights in Waterloo Road to the traffic lights before the bridge over the Shing Mun river in Shatin, though by that stage he was in front of me. When the lights changed we both advanced, and I was treated to the music of his four exhaust pipes. I noted that he had to change gear twice before we reached the speed at which my Prius, with no prompting from me, abandoned the pretence that it was an electric car and started the petrol engine.

Now clearly a Ferrari — supposing I could afford one — would be an impractical choice for me. I often want to carry more than one passenger. Even if that were not the case I could not consider a car which could not accommodate a bass drum in the boot. The Ferrari drinks petrol, it is far more polluting than my Prius, and it would not fit in my garage. There is no road in Hong Kong where you can legally approach its maximum speed. And yet… I felt that little irrational burst of suppressed emotion. It’s impractical; it’s expensive; it’s polluting, but what red-blooded male – or for that matter female – would not like, at least for a while …?  This makes no sense, but then many instinctive feelings about cars make no sense.

Consider Jeremy Clarkson, whose work – both broadcast and print – I enjoy and admire. He nurtures a violent hostility for the Prius. On one programme he took great delight in destroying one with a heavy machine gun. And I understand the hostility. When you drive a Prius you finally lose contact with the old world in which “motoring” (so called to distinguish it from “driving”, which meant steering horses) was fun. The Prius does not pretend to be a sports car. It does not make those lovely noises. It does not make the nice smells. It is as far as you can get from the old days when the roar of the exhaust drowned out the non-existent radio, the wind ruffled your hair and the characteristic odour of Castrol R tickled your nostrils. The Prius admits that modern travcl is functional. It is a good car to drive in a tunnel queue. It doesn’t have a rev counter but it does tell you how much petrol you are using. It is a sort of metrosecxual motor – practical but in touch with its feminine side.

No wonder Mr Clarkson hates it. It is the wave of the unwelcome future. Mr Clarkson’s affection for a world in which drivers changed their own gears, rode with the roof down and frequently let the tail hang out round a corner is charming, eminently shareable and totally anachronistic. It is on a par with the nostalgic yearning for sailing ships, aeroplanes with four wings and steam locomotives. The world is changing and future cars will increasingly take over the work now done by the driver. This is a pity if you happen to enjoy the work, but on crowded roads enjoyment is anyway in short supply. Where in Hong Kong can you really drive a Ferrari as it ought to be driven?

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Interesting column by Albert Cheng on Saturday urging us all to “unite against violence”. This started with the observation that vulgar language and radical action were OK if within the law, and went on to say that civil disobedience had a moral basis, whether the public agreed with it or not. So far, I thought, rather radical for the SCMPost. Mr Cheng went on to strongly condemn violence in terms which few people would quarrel with, citing as unacceptable the attack on him some years ago, and also the suggestions by people who thought his opposition to the link Reit was costing them money that the attack should be repeated. He also said the media had been remiss in not condemning this suggestion more forthrightly, which may be true; frankly I don’t remember. Mr Cheng went on to say that the media had not improved since, and it became apparent that some long-overdue reference to a current event which had sparked this line of thought was now going to forthcome, as it were.

Here it was. During a protest outside the Legco building one group had staged a “street drama” in which an actor representing Mr Li Ka-shing and other actors representing his bodyguards were attacked by another group of actors representing an angry mob. Mr Cheng’s objection to this performance was that it was “encouraging the public to use violence”.

To which the only possible answer is “Oh no it wasn’t.” Protest is protest, real life is real life, and drama is drama. People do not imitate what they see in dramas. Teenage couples do not emerge from Romeo and Juliet feeling suicidal. Ladies do not go home from performances of Antony and Cleopatra to clasp an asp to their bosoms. The “Rape of Lucrece ” is not generally considered Shakespeare’s best effort but it has never been accused of encouraging sex crimes. Violence is used in drama as a metaphor. Viewers have no difficulty in distinguishing it from real life. I do not suppose the simulated overthrow of Mr Li Ka-shing was very good drama, but it was drama, not violence. If Mr Cheng wants a peg in which to hang a condemnation of violence it should be a specimen of real violence, not a piece of artistic expression, however low in quality.

I was left wondering, actually, if he was really up to something else, and perhaps the objection to the street theatrics was not so much to the violence as to the fact that it was rude about Mr Li. No doubt there is a perfectly good column to be written about how Mr Li is a nice man who is kind to children, dogs and needy universities,  though readers will not find it here.  Probably there is also a good column to be written to the effect that local media are not appropriately vociferous in their condemnation of violence. But that needs better evidence than the fact that street theatrics are reported without comment.

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A strange change has taken place in the meaning of a previously well-understood phrase, “light pollution”. Light is not a pollutant in the normal sense because it is, in most circumstances, entirely harmless. Astronomers, though, complained that the quantities of light leaking into the sky from modern cities made it impossible for them to pick out small, distant features of the night skyscape. Nobody has ever suggested that a practical sollution to this would involve curbing the use of artificial light to restore the opportunities for city-centre astronomy. Serious astronomers now site their telescopes on mountain-tops as far from built-up areas as possible. Astronomy continues, though no doubt with less contributed than before from eager amateurs with telescopes in their suburban back gardens.

However that is not the kind of light pollution which has been making headlines in Hong Kong. This started, at least in the English-language press, with a lady who had bought as investments some flats in the Masterpiece, a new and hideous high-rise in Kowloon. She complained that these flats were illuminated in the evenings by the bright lights on a nearby shopping centre. She might, as a result, have to lower the rent she was demanding from tenants. I confess that I am a landlord in a small way myself. All the same I found it difficult to sympathise. The Masterpiece is in a commercial area. It was always likely to be surrounded by shopping malls. Also the tenants can console themselves with a compensating feature of their view: from inside the building they enjoy views unblemished by the Masterpiece itself. One must also reflect that this form of pollution is not only harmless in its effects – I mean flashing lights on your ceiling may be irritating but hardly a health threat on the scale of noise or dirty air – but also an eminently solvable problem. If the air is polluted we all have no choice but to breathe it. If your neighbour is remodelling his bathroom you can try earplugs or hi-tech earphones, but basically you are defenceless against the thundering of his jackhammers. However if some nearby retailer is shining nocturnal lights on your window there is a well established low-tech solution. It is called the curtain.

Actually I thought the complaining landlady had a nerve. A fact of life in Hong Kong that we all have to live with is that your rights as a property owner end abruptly at the edge of your property. The owner of the adjacent plot may obstruct you seaview, or indeed access to daylight, with whatever monstrous edifice he chooses to erect. The government may run fly-overs within feet of your windows. Faced with ventilation shafts, rubbish collection points or incinerators you may solicit the help of your disctrict board but your own legal rights are non-existent. Among the beneficiaries of this system, or lack of one, are the owners of the Masterpiece itself, which would never have been built in its present form in a city where land use was controlled properly in the public interest.

I concede the point that very bright lights are probably wasting electricity, but somehow I do not think this was the thought which had landlords and landladies up in arms. And shops are businesses after all. Presumably they know what works for them and if bright lights attract customers they are a legitimate ploy. I feel less confident about the light show which the government puts on every evening in the harbour for the amusement of mainland tourists. Several eager environmentalists complained about this as another form of light pollution. But we have to consider Hong Kong’s credibility as a mainland city. One of the nice things about the mainland is that every city offers an evening boat ride with some sort of light show on the riverbank buildings. Hong Kong was lacking in this important piece of civic infrastructure before the Handover but I noticed it appeared soon after. Just as all serious English cities have a cathedral (and some have two) so all serious mainland cities must have a boat ride and a light show. I suppose the light shows are a bit of a waste. So are the cathedrals.

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I must apologise for neglecting this little blog for a while, as I have been away at a Scottish dancing event in Budapest. Yes I know Budapest is not in Scotland; it’s a long story. This happy event was held in a hotel built in an historic building, of roughly the same vintage as our own beloved 1881, alias the former Marine Police HQ. The New York Hotel in Budapest (yes I know New York is not in Hungary either; explanation coming) was originally built as an office block for an insurance company. It takes its name from a cafe built into the ground floor, which has some claim to historic fame as a hang-out for artists, literati and such people. It seems an early proprietor was art-loving and indulgent; he accepted small sketches in lieu of payment of bills, which naturally attracted the Bohemian crowd. So the cafe is still one of the city’s attractions. The hotel has been lovingly restored in its original style by the owners, an Italian hotel chain. Oddly enough they somehow missed out the three floors of expensive shopping which would no doubt have appeared in a Hong Kong version, though there is a modern annex tucked away at the back with meeting rooms, some bedrooms, and a ballroom fit for jigs and reels.

The interesting thing about this is that the hotel is not, like our 1881, an isolated specimen surrounded by shining examples of the 20th century developer Phillistine style.  The city is full of 19th century buildings, an increasing number of which are being carefully restored to their original outside appearance. This probably has something to do with the fact that the whole city centre has a height limit, which seems to click in about the sixth floor. Viewed from a convenient hill the city centre (and the word centre is interpreted expansively) still presents the spectacle of a patchwork of rooftops punctuated by the high points of church towers and other aspiring ornaments. This means that if you are the owner of a five-story building in Budapest you may, if you wish, demolish it and replace it with a modern one. But the modern one will be the same size as the one you had before. So sprucing up your antique is an attractive option. Hungarian owners seem quite happy with the idea that the ownership of a fivc-story building entitles you to the five-story building of your choice. Only in Hong Kong, it seems, does ownership of an old building confer on the proprietor the sacred right to replace it with four floors of underground carpark, three floors of shops selling expensive handbags to dumb tourists, and 30 floors of luxury boltholes for mainland money-launderers.

Personally I have never understood the logic of this. It is not the system followed elsewhere. Many European cities have limits on what you can do with old buildings. Height limits are also common.  The result of all this is that Budapest is beautiful and Hong Kong, generally, is not. Upon my return the newspapers were full of complaints from Mr Li Ka-shing about the hostility directed at real estate developers. Apparently he finds this surprising. Personally I think they’re lucky if they can walk the streets without being spat at.

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What sort of people are becoming journalists these days, I wonder? I say this because last weekend the Hong Kong Journalists Association called for all local journalists to be recalled from Japan, apparently because it was too dangerous. Even more surprisingly, later in the week it was reported that most of the local reporters had in fact returned to Hong Kong. This seems to me to be a shameful episode. The events in Japan are a tragedy. They are also, as tragedies often are, a tremendous story and journalists should be eager to cover it. Hong Kong people are entitled to know what is going on, and that knowledge is best provided by Hong Kong reporters who speak the local language and share its culture and interests. Reporting natural disasters is demanding and occasionally dangerous. It is also an important and necessary service which journalists perform for the rest of the community.
The Hong Kong Journalists Association has a legitimate role in this area, in urging employers to ensure that journalists who are sent on potentially hazardous assignments are properly prepared, equipped and insured. It is not the Associaton’s job to chicken out on behalf of its members.   I am afraid the leadereship of the association is in danger of appearing a bunch of pretentious pussies pontificating about points of ethics, while forgetting some basic reporting rules, like “get to where the action is.”  I am not suggesting that reporters should be encouraged to be rash and foolish. But ruling a whole country off the map because of a potential nuclear problem is going beyond caution to cowardice. For reporters who think this was a good idea I can only recommend PR.

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