DATELINE: HONG KONG
The poodles of the
press
Hong Kong's media was already being brought under control, even before China began administering the colony.
That was the view of Steve Vines, a former editor of the defunct quality Hong Kong broadsheet, the Eastern Express. Mr. Vines, currently the Hong Kong correspondent of the British Independent newspaper, was speaking at the Commonwealth Journalists Association conference.
Mr. Vines said that most of the Hong Kong media were owned by corporations which had very significant investments in mainland China. In at least a third of the cases, they were not even predominately media companies; rather they had property in China and trade interests there.
"These are not going to be the heroes of press freedom, I can assure you," he said.
"They are not going to allow their television stations in particular, which have a bigger audience than they have in Hong Kong, to be heroes of press freedom".
It was not a question of self censorship by journalists, he said. Rather there was a very firm move by China with the co-operation of the corporation owners to bring Hong Kong media under control. China was adopting the Singapore model:
"In other words you have the form is preserved. If you look at Singapore media, it actually looks quite good but the content is duller than dishwater and on a good day it makes the People's Daily look objective.
Mr. Vines said there was already evidence of a siege mentality emerging in the incoming regime.
"The spokesman for Mr. Tung Chee-Hwa [Hong Kong's Beijing approved Chief Executive] when I went to organise an interview with him had already started to talk about the need to vet the journalists who were going to see him.
"This is what is rather scary. Because the forms will be maintained while the content is removed, it will be easy for people who want to operate in a way which is sycophantic. For those people who are trying to do their job in ways we understand as standard, their job will become more difficult.
"There are poodles among the foreign press just as their are poodles among the local journalists, "Mr. Vines said.