Lights, Camera, Are You Getting This?
This would never happen in the States. The camera is focused on me and when the red light turns on, all I can think about is how I am about to record what would be at least number three on the list of "Top Five Quickest Ways to Kill Your TV Journalism Career Before it Starts."
When the camera starts to roll, I begin to monologue, wielding a pump-action, Super Soaker water gun and intermittently squirting it into the air. That's how I wrap up the commercial disguised as a news story for the opening of Polynesian Summer Splash, a seasonal promotion for Hong Kong’s oldest amusement park, Ocean Park. As ridiculous as it is, I want to go further as two Chinese hula girls, hired for the summer promotion, dance beside be. Welcome to TV news in Hong Kong.
My television career had begun when I got a call one morning during my second week as a summer intern at Asia Television Ltd. (ATV), one of the two main TV networks in Hong Kong. I was completely fine with the idea of running coffee all summer in the English news department, so I was more than a little surprised to hear my editor on the other line, Evan, we need you to be at the Tai Koo Shing Mall in half an hour to do a story about dinosaurs.
Click.
People get more clues on Jeopardy!
I learned that’s how most TV news assignments were conducted. After a brief description (a three-word phrase if you're lucky) of the story, the reporter is expected to race to the venue, quickly figure out what the story is actually about, direct the camera crew to film the key segments, take notes, get sound bites, perform a monologue in front of the camera and race back to the studio with footage to be edited into a story.
Today's story was about some old dinosaur bones on loan from Mainland China that were being displayed in the middle of a mall. By the time the exhibit was over, over half of the population of Hong Kong was reported to have seen it. Tthe Chinese love their malls even more than Americans!) At least it wasn't held at a press conference. Press conferences in Hong Kong are a thing to behold. Typically, they are conducted entirely in Chinese and if you are the only non-Chinese speaker in the room you're allowed two pity questions because of it. However, without those lovely press conferences, I wouldn't have learned that the Chinese give prizes to the kid whose idea gets selected to name the first typhoon of the season. I'm not kidding.
How something is "supposed" to be done is not a phrase commonly used in Hong Kong TV news. It’s now becoming a tradeoff. Owners want to tap into China's TV market, but doing so requires pleasing thee officials by reporting less negative news about the mainland’s practices and procedures. With the American press, it has become a tradeoff of conscience for currency. Independent Chinese press in the mainland is still decades away, but now Hong Kong's TV news outlets are purposefully censoring themselves so that their newscasts have a better shot at being picked up by mainland stations. They’re competing for the same markets in southern China. It’s a business decision to curry favor with mainland TV officials but journalism is suffering because of it.
This was pretty obvious from their coverage during Hong Kongï¿1⁄2s annual July 1st. Thousands of people march to celebrate the 1997 handover of Hong Kong back to China from Britain, some march to push for democracy in the region. ATV's Chinese news only shows it in a 30 second brief, whereas its English news department devotes most of its program to the protests (this leeway is granted because only a tiny percentage of Mainland Chinese know conversational English).
Alas, for Hong Kong's TV news to survive it still has to maintain that certain level of unpredictability. It can't allow the mainland to squash the fourth estate's check on Beijing's balance of power by removing the element of surprise.
That's where I come in. I felt powerful standing there with a Super Soaker with the camera rolling, knowing this could never happen at home.
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