Why Hong Kong broadcast news has no credibility?

The other day both of Hong Kong's local television news aired an CCTV piece about the outrage of local Chinese community in Los Angeles over the remarks of CNN commentator Jack Cafferty. A group of Chinese protestors stood outside CNN Los Angeles office with signs calling CNN lairs and demanding the sacking of Cafferty. The CCTV crew in America found one person, who happened to be an African American man, to call Cafferty's remarks racist. To cover up the lack of journalistic integrity of both local stations, they took and maybe modified the original script before one of their reporters did a voice-over. One could instantly tell it is from CCTV as the CCTV logo and markings were at the top right corner of the screen.

It should first be said that CCTV is a Chinese state-owned television network. This is clearly a Chinese propaganda piece and not legitimate news. Both ATV and TVB, Hong Kong's two independent television stations, should be shamed of themselves for airing such a piece. Had they done their homework beforehand, they would have realized it was pure propaganda. A simple Google news search yielded a result of pre-dominantly pro-Beijing news source. Only a right wing blog site and the LA Times were not. The right wing blog site actually fact checked and found Cafferty's remarks largely on target. The LA Times simply reported the protest without researching the accuracy of Cafferty's remark. The visible absence of international English news coverage regarding those remarks only further reinforces the impression that the CCTV piece was pure propaganda. The major American networks completely ignored it, the major wire services like Reuters and the Associated Press and the international English press like CBC, BBC or the Australians reported nothing on it.

In the case of ATV, they lost their credibility in November last year when they got the office held by Yasuo Fukuda wrong. The reporter reported him as Foreign Minister; to compound the mistake, Fukuda was never Foreign Minister. In parliamentary politics, the Prime Minister shuffles people around like a casino dealer shuffling a deck of cards. To those who are unfamiliar with parliamentary politics, Lord Patten, former European Commission and the last governor of Hong Kong, wrote that whenever government changes after an election, opposition politicians usually find themselves catapulted to ministerial offices. Between elections, the Prime Minister sends politicians from one job to another, sometimes literally on the eve of a major policy debate. So, it was perfectly understandable if Fukuda was Foreign Minister before taking the Premiership a few days earlier, but he was not and had been Prime Minister for over a month at the time of this mistake. So much for ATV's journalistic credibility.

As for TVB, their credibility went out of the window when they aired the CCTV piece. The CCTV piece has a number of critical flaws or questions that would make viewers question the journalistic independence of TVB. If the piece was so racially charged, why the CCTV crew in America was unable to find more people to condemn Cafferty's comments? Secondly, was the lone interviewee put up to say what he said? Also, did the lone interviewee knew or was aware of the comments in question before CCTV interviewed him? Usually, objective journalists bring a portable DVD player with the controversial moment ready for playback if the interviewee needed reminding or was unaware of the moment in question. Hence the next issue with the CCTV piece about the lone interviewee's outrage with Cafferty's comments, did CCTV show the interviewee the entire unabridged version of Cafferty's comments or did CCTV summarized Cafferty's comments to the interviewee? If the interviewee was unaware of the comments in question or the context under which they were made and CCTV gave him a summary, it would be pure propaganda and not journalism because CCTV could and would have spun Cafferty's comments in such a manner that would have elicited the response CCTV wanted. Lastly, why only one person was interviewed? I mean, if they interviewed more people, why did they choose not to air those interviews?

Furthermore, it would have been fine, if both stations choose to only air the piece on their Chinese channels. There was already blanket coverage on Cafferty's remarks in the mainland, which had incited protests in Beijing and Shanghai calling CNN lairs. In any case, the local Chinese newspapers in Hong Kong would fill their pages with this story. In other words, the journalistic harm done would have been minimal. By airing this piece in the English broadcast news using their own reporters for voice-overs, the harm to the journalistic integrity of their news services was much greater. The absence of news coverage in the United States already suggest Cafferty's use of thugs and goons in his remarks was directed solely at the Chinese government and not at the Chinese people. American media today are very sensitive to the slight perceived racist remark. A case in point, the American media leapt all over a detective's racist slur in the double murder trial of OJ Simpson. It is largely cited as a case in which race played a major contributing factor. Similarly in the beating case of Rodney King, the mere fact that four white policemen committed this act of police brutality provoked outrage. If Cafferty's remarks had been that racist in nature, as the Chinese government said, there would have been a far greater outcry.