tim's experiment

OK, I promise – last one on this topic. The Post’s coverage of anti-locust protests continues to explore new areas of journalism. On Sunday there was a mini-protest in Mong Kok. Numbers on these occasions are notoriously unreliable but apparently the protesters were heavily outnumbered by the press. Meanwhile a few blocks away the Voice of Loving Hong Kong, led by chairman Patrick Ko, was collecting signatures for a “we love locusts” petition which they will send to the relevant policy secretary.
So far, pretty normal coverage, with a few quotes from both sides. Only in the last paragraph do we enter the Twilight Zone:
“Halfway through the (anti) protest Ko somehow found himself at the scene. His presence caused a commotion, with protesters hurling insults at him…”

Well reading that must have given a great deal of innocent pleasure to the demonstrators for various causes who have found themselves similarly treated by Mr Ko’s Loving supporters. The bit that bothers me is the “somehow Mr Ko found himself”. After all there is no mystery here. Having got his petition set up Mr Ko, as any normal person would, wanted to know how the opposition’s knees-up was going. Perfectly legal – nothing wrong – easily covered by some such phrase as “Mr Ko arrived”. It seems our reporter was concerned that this might imply to a suspicious mind that Mr Ko had actually deliberately gone where he went. A careful writer, our reporter might suppose, should choose a phrase which could cover other possibilities, like:

Mr Ko was heading into the Mong Kok tube station when he ran into an officious Good Fairy. “You like demonstrations,” she said, “let me send you to another one.” and Poof, Mr Ko found himself …

Mr Ko was abducted by aliens and subjected to experiments unfit for readers of a family newspaper. He was then beamed back to Earth but the careless Spock in charge of the machinery dropped him right in the middle of the protesters…

Mr Ko was struck by a falling object and wandered in a state of amnesia through the streets of Mong Kok. When he awoke, he found himself …

Mr Ko suffers from a rare brain ailment which occasionally leads to him walking helplessly and quite unconsciously towards the nearest public demonstration. When he woke up…

A simpler solution to the writing problem would have been to ask Mr Ko how he came to somehow find himself. As so often these days seekers of this information were better catered for by the Standard. Mr Ko, apparently, told their reporter he was “just passing by”. Sure he was.

Meanwhile my moles tell me that the Post management has banned the use of the words “locust” and “anti-locust” altogether unless unavoidable (which usually means in direct quotes). This is supposed to be part of the Post’s policy against “hate speech”. This is a subtle way of taking the government’s side in the matter. The use of locust is not a piece of hate speech. Locusts do not have any embarrassing habits or satanic connotations. Nor in the Hong Kong contest are they a notorious pest. All most of us know about locusts is that they arrive in huge numbers and consume voraciously. This is a pretty good metaphor for the government’s “let ’em all come” tourism policy and its consequences. Officials do not like being criticised, especially when the criticism is justified. If you haven’t a good answer for the critics it is easier to complain about their language. Support from media lackeys in this matter is very welcome and no doubt will be rewarded in the usual way.

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.

It is, or should be, a commonplace of journalists’ education that there is always more than one way of doing a story. There may be a better or worse, but as long as the facts are accurate there is no one right way or wrong way.

Having said which, sometimes the differences look a bit suspicious. On Sunday there was a protest in Tsimshatsui by people who want the number of mainland visitors curtailed or at least limited. This is an understandable sentiment: tourism as an industry makes a lot of money for a few people and inconveniences a great many others. On the other hand the issue has become something of a political litmus test: people taking this view tend to wave the old colonial flag and their opponents to wave the mainland five-star one.

The Standard had the story on its front page. The Post’s much larger front page was filled with China stories. According to Standard reporter Kelly Ip the protesters, who numbered about 100, gathered outside the Star Ferry pier and in that vicinity were confronted by several dozen members of the two pro-Beijing groups which specialise in street thuggery, the Defend Hong Kong Campaign and the Voice of Loving Hong Kong. A disorderly scene ensued, until the police separated the two groups with crowd barriers. The protest then proceeded as planned down Canton Road.

This is not the story as told by the Post’s Ng Kang-chung. Mr Ng’s version of the start of the march was “The march got off to a tense start when scuffles broke out between protesters and people opposed to the demonstration. Police had to intervene.” What, no idea who these people are at all?

Apparently not. Mr Ng, however, did find the Voice of Loving Hong Kong later; they staged a “rival ‘welcome to Hong Kong’ campaign on Canton Road. About 10 members distributed leaflets…” Interesting that he was not curious about the patriotic person in the Post’s picture, who is confronting a young man in a Brazil football shirt brandishing an anti-locust poster. The confronting person is wearing a mask. Not, I fancy, for medical reasons.

I would like to believe that this was all just coincidence. Maybe Mr Ng was a bit late on the scene and picked up the early action from other reporters. But it smells a bit off. We expect the Post to worship the Chinese government. That is its habit. Presenting the Voice of Loving Hong Kong as a bunch of pacifist leaflet distributors when they have just enjoyed provoking a good punch-up is going much further. We no longer expect balance from the Post. It would still be nice to have accuracy.

Let us see, in the public-spirited atmosphere of the festive season, if we can sort out the problems of those people who are puzzled by the continuing unpopularity of our glorious Lufsig – I mean leader.

It seems that Mr CY Leung’s advertised appearances always attract a hostile crowd, so he is reduced to unadvertised or private ones. This did not happen to previous CEs or for that matter Governors. This is the kind of coincidence which has some people smelling a malignant conspiracy, and others calling for new public order legislation to protect the majesty which doth hedge about our Mayor. Why, wondered one of these suspicious people, did Mr Leung get no credit for his achievements?

Well there are some problems with Mr Leung’s “achievements”. One of them is that some of them do not look so much like achievements as quick fixes in which important principles were sacrificed for political expediency. Another is that Mr Leung did not come into office after a long spell in opposition. Any established policy which he now seeks to correct was preserved or initiated while he was a big wheel in the two previous administrations. It is particularly difficult to work out what Mr Leung – who as Convenor of Exco was the CE’s senior advisor at the time – thought when the administration killed the public housing construction programme which he is now painfully reviving. Did he argue vociferously against this piece of social vandalism, Exco deliberations having miraculously remained secret so nobody heard about it? Did he grit his teeth and long for the day when he could correct the error? Or is he, as a post-doctoral fellow in the Liaison Office University of Yesmanship, incapable of saying “no” to anyone further up the slippery pole to advancement in the service of Communist despotism?

Be this as it may, the problem is not in what Mr Leung does, but what he is. The fact is that he cheated shamelessly to get the job in the first place. Now on the Mainland it is axiomatic that we should let by-gones be by-gones on a truely epic scale. What are several tens of millions dead in the rosy light of the Party’s glorious history? Unfortunately this is not a habit in Hong Kong, where a certain level of integrity and honesty is still regarded as becoming in our leaders. Mr Leung is in the position of those Shakespearean bastards who seize the throne by murdering the rival claimants. Nothing he can do as a ruler will expunge the manner of his arrival. It does not matter whether he does a good job. The objection is to his having the job at all.

Of course as any careful reader of Shakespeare will know, the situation is not completely hopeless. The Royal usurper can salvage his reputation and support with a successful war against the French. Unfortunately Calais is far away and Hong Kong does not have an army, so Mr Leung is reduced to picking a diplomatic bunfight with the Philippines.  I cannot recall the last time a Hong Kong Government did anything so shameful. The latest “sanctions” are not in pursuit of compensation, reparations or accountability. All these substantive issues have been successfully sorted out. Hong Kong is now starting a fight because it still wants … an apology. Polite expressions of regret from the relevant government are not grovelling enough. A fulsome apology from the current Mayor of Manila (who is as it happens the responsible official) is dismissed as “insincere”.  So we are now acting on the rather unlikely theory that you can get a more “sincere” apology out of someone if you hold a gun to their head.

And will the Hong Kong government apologise to those domestic helpers who are abused, exploited and tortured by their employers?  This is not the result of an unexpected crisis mishandled. It is a result  of policies deliberately instituted and persisted in despite, or because of, their obvious consequences in making it difficult for helpers to assert even the most fundamental human rights, of which the right not to be tortured is one. I am not holding my breath.

Goodness you get a high class of rubbish in the SCMPost these days. Picture on Saturday’s front page showed a PLA frigate passing the Star Ferry Pier, accompanied by two helicopters. Apparently there were actually two frigates. Xinhua was reported as saying that they carried out a “co-ordinated patrol across the harbour”, resulting in more familiarity with the “air-sea situation” and improved ability to handle emergencies. I take this to mean that the two frigates sailed down the harhour, and possibly back, accompanied by the helicopter which each of them carries. This is a normal thing for the PLA navy to do and they have done it before.

This was not enough for the Post’s news desk, which deployed two reporters to turn this respectable sow’s ear into a political silk purse. Clearly what was needed for this purpose was someone — anyone — willing to read into this mundane piece of military practice a political massage related to some topical issue. Enter the ever-obliging Mr Lau Yui-siu. Mr Lau has been demoted since the last time I saw him in a Post piece. Then he was a “China affairs expert”; now he is a “China analyst”. And his analysis was that the sail down the harbour was supposed to send a “strong message” to protesters. The PLA, he said ominously “wanted to tell Hongkongers that they would be ready to carry out their duties if they are needed to handle the Occupy Central movement”.

Macau-based “military observer” Anthony Wong Dong (Mr Wong has previously appeared in the Post as the “chairman of the Macau-based International Military Association: some sort of groupie?) took a different view. He said the drill had been “restrained and humble” to avoid “making the Hong Kong public nervous”. So no story then?

Wait! Coming to the rescue we have “naval expert” Ni Lexiong. I know it’s a cruel trick to Google these guys but Prof Ni is an academic in a Shanghai university. He is the leading China authority on Alfred Thayer Mahan, an American naval theorist who died 100 years go. I dare say there isn’t much competition for the Mahan franchise. Prof Ni’s take on the matter was that the drill would be a deterrent to “disobedient forces”. It was a warning that Hong Kong people “should not challenge the Central government’s authority, with military means being Beijing’s last step to maintain  Hong Kong’s stability and prosperity.”

I hate to disagree with another naval enthusiast – there are not many of us – but this is not a happy way of putting it. If Beijing ever has to resort to military means then Hong Kong’s stability and prosperity will end abruptly.

But the whole story really does not stand up to close examination. If there is a public disorder problem it may be necessary, as a last resort, to send in troops. This is dangerous, because their training and approach are not intended for this sort of situation. A brisk military approach can lead to Bloody Sunday, Amritsar Massacre, Kent State, Tienanmen etc. Still, men in the street with guns are the last resort. In circumstances of this kind the navy and air force are useless.

A PLA frigate is a submarine hunter. It is not designed or equipped to sail down Queens Road and hose down an Occupy Central protest. The helicopters might have some utility as people-movers or observation platforms, but our government is not short of helicopters. If the PLA wishes to send a message about its willingness to shovel protesters off the street it will not doubt find a few truckfulls of soldiers to do a quick circuit of the one-way system. The sailors were just practising. News, not fiction, please.

Let me say at the outset that the campaign to discourage smoking has been hailed as the greatest public health success of the last half century. It has improved many lives. Unfortunately it also attracts more than its fair share of busybodies who enjoy tampering with other people’s pleasures. And in the strong consciousness of their own righteousness these people can sometimes be less than honest.

Those of us who have been around for a while can remember when the campaign for non-smoking areas was presented as a defence of the minority who — in those days — did not smoke and did not wish to inhabit smoke-filled rooms. This was a fair request which many smokers supported. But once it could be claimed that non-smokers were a majority, the concern for minority rights evaporated. Even suggesting that people who wished to smoke were making a choice to which they had a right, and should be able to pursue without unreasonable inconvenience, became sacrilege. And so we have now reached the stage where the habit is banned almost everywhere indoors, and in a good many places outdoors as well.  Restrictions are more and more aimed not to protect non-smokers but to persecute smokers.

This brings me to the latest complaint, coming soon to an op ed page near you, which is that pubs, finding that customers who smoke have to do so on the pavement outside, have taken to providing the odd table and chair for them. This is not condemned as a threat to anyone’s health, which it isn’t. It is attacked as causing obstruction to the pavement, and involving an unlawful extension of the pub’s operating area. Now it may be that there are people out there who have for many years battled against the endemic obstructions on Hong Kong’s pavements. Goodness knows there are enough of them: bus stops, street signs, queueing enclosures, overflows from shops of various kinds, PCCW junction boxes, post boxes, litter bins … the list is endless. If such a person emerges and complains about pubs putting chairs on the pavement he should be listened to with respect. If, on the other hand, the person complaining has never shown the slightest prior interest in pavement obstruction, then we can safely conclude that the complainer is a hypocrite who is using obstruction as a convenient stick with which to continue the persecution of smokers.

It is, I know, depressing to see huddles of smokers round doorways or the outsides of pubs. But it is not their fault that they gather there. They gather there because they are not allowed to smoke anywhere else. This has no doubt contributed to smoking becoming rather a rare habit in Hong Kong. Anti-smoking fanatics now need to get their heads round an unfamiliar idea: enough is enough.

Having been writing newspaper columns for a long time I get the occasional irresistible urge to offer fatherly advice to people who came to the game more recently. This advice is ignored, of course, as is only proper. But it makes me feel better. So here we go.

If you are a columnist you should not use the space allotted to you to rebut or dispute criticisms made of you elsewhere. There are several good reasons for this. One is that your first duty to your readers is to be entertaining and informative. A recitation of your virtues is likely to be neither. Regular readers have already decided what they think of your opinions and prejudices. They are not going to change views formed over numerous readings of your previous efforts just because you say so.

Then there is a temptation to be less than explicit in stating what you are complaining about. I was flattered to find Alex Lo responding to one of my comments about his work, but the reference was carefully anonymised and I suspect a lot of readers did not understand what was going on. As I have maybe 100 readers and the Post, I think, still has about 100,000 it is conceivable that 99,900 readers were neither convinced nor entertained; they were just baffled.

Then if you do explain clearly what you are disputing, you may well introduce a lot of people to a criticism which they missed. Michael Chugani was complaining last week that some writers in the Chinese press call him a “Leung fan”. I imagine I was not the only reader to whom this came as a complete surprise. It had not occurred to me that Mr Chugani was a Leung fan, though having got the idea into my head I was not helped to get rid of it by Mr Chugani’s defence, which seemed to be that he is a fearlessly independent thinker who just happens to agree with Mr Leung about everything except television licences.  Still Mr Chugani is entitled to his opinions, whatever they are. What bothers me about him is the contrast between the fearless piranha in print, and the fawning sycophant on television. I understand that different employers want different things, but this is not a happy picture for someone who frequently accuses other people of hypocrisy.

And he went on to make a catastrophically misguided defence of media owners who curb or slant coverage because they have business interests in China and do not wish to offend the authorities there. Why, Mr Chugani wondered, was it OK to close a loss-making publication “for business reasons” but a source of bitter complaints if you modify coverage “for business reasons”? The answer to this question is simple. Because “business reasons” encompasses a wide range of possible behaviours, some of which may be objectionable while others are not. Someone who closes a loss-making magazine is merely executing a sentence already passed by readers and advertisers. No enterprise can go on losing money for ever. An enterprise which is incorrigibly loss-making has failed. It is like a racehorse with a broken leg, just waiting for the man with the bolt gun and the trip to the dog food factory.

The media owner who orders his staff to avoid “sensitive” stories, on the other hand, is responding to business reasons extraneous to the business itself. He is in fact modifying the service presented to the public in an effort to protect his personal financial interests. Journalists are supposed to avoid conflicts of interest. If your savings are invested in Megabucks Corp you will not (or at least should not) be allowed to cover their activities. Clearly if you come across a story which is going to depress the share price you will be tempted to overlook it. Coverage should not be modified to suit the personal interests of the reporter. And it should not be modified to suit the personal interests of the proprietor either. Proprietors have the opportunity (though not all of them take it) to have their pictures in the paper, to encourage policies which they conceive to be in the public interest, to choose people whose instincts they share to run the publication. That does not mean it is acceptable to trim coverage so that your widget factory in Dongguan will not be given a hard time by the locals. Journalism demands some level of honesty. A newspaper which is not making every effort to tell the truth will sooner or later start telling lies. I fear that Mr Chugani sees this coming and is preparing not to notice.