DATELINE: HONG KONG

It is not the journalists who are self censoring themselves. These controls come down from the top: Terry Nealon.

Introduction: Terry Nealon is the Head of English Language News and Current Affairs at the government broadcaster, RTHK. A Scot who received his journalism training in Australian newspapers, Mr. Nealon came to the South China Morning Post in 1966. He joined RTHK twenty one years ago. He heads a team of about thirty journalists;the largest English language radio news team in Hong Kong. This interview was recorded at RTHK on 23.5.97.
Nealon: Locally, we operate a news diary. We send out people on assignments. We liaise with the big Chinese newsroom we have here, which is a big benefit to us. We are separate. We do our assignments separately. We do our newsgathering separately but we co-operate very closely. In a largely Chinese speaking environment, we get a huge feedback from our Chinese colleagues. So quite often they know of assignments each day that we don't know of. We liaise every morning. We catch up. We get our international news from the usual sources: the newsagencies, Associated Press, Reuter, United Press International, New China News Agency and also we have very close links with the BBC. We broadcast the BBC World Service twenty four hours on one of our channels and we have free access to all BBC World Service material.

Knight: Does a government broadcaster have particular responsibilities in a place like Hong Kong?

Nealon: I don't think [we have] any more than any other journalist. In theory, I am a civil servant. In theory. But I don't regard myself as a civil servant when I am working as a journalist. I am just a journalist. I think we tend to be a bit obsessed with accuracy but no more obsessed than the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] I would have thought, or the BBC.

Knight: But that is a quite different view to broadcasting across the border.

Nealon: News is a different commodity in China. The news organisations in China are organs of state. they do transmit information, but it is very closely controlled. However, things are changing very fast in China and a number of stations in Guandong province and Shanghai have opened up markedly in recent years.

Knight: Do you expect that news coverage could become more of a sensitive issue in Hong Kong after the handover?

Nealon: I think most journalists would expect it to become more sensitive, although we are all hoping that the promises we were given in the Joint Declaration by Britain and China and later in the Basic Law, that these guarantees will be kept. Then everything will be fine.

Knight: Surveys conducted by Hong Kong University say local journalists are more able to criticise the British than the Chinese governments. Do you think that self censorship could become an increasing problem here?

Nealon: I tend to disagree with the phrase, self censorship. I think the problem is that the people who own the media impose controls either overtly or covertly. As is the case in most of the world, the news media in Hong Kong is owned largely by businessmen who have other businesses too. In Hong Kong, these other business often straddle China. These businessmen don't want to upset China. It is not the journalists who are self censoring themselves. These controls come down from the top. You have the classic case of Rupert Murdoch in Hong Kong with the BBC world service drama. [Murdoch's Hong Kong based Star satellite television service ceased broadcasting the World Service, after the Chinese government objected and threatened advertising revenue.]

Knight: What then of the future of English language news in Hong Kong?

Nealon: The fact is that there is a very, very large international community in Hong Kong. The business community. It's growing rather than shrinking although the British proportion of it is getting slightly smaller. But the number of Australians, Japanese, Americans, Filipinos is growing all the time. We feel at RTHK that there is a continuing place for English news. The South China Morning Post, for instance, its circulation is growing very healthily and the majority of its readers are Chinese not native English speakers. We believe the majority of our listeners are also Chinese.

Knight: Do English speaking Chinese people have different news needs than the Anglo Saxon community here?

Nealon: That's a difficult question that. It's very difficult to lump together the Chinese community as a whole. There are large numbers of Hong Kong Chinese who have been overseas in Canada, America, Australia, who have spent some time there and then come back. Their outlook tends to be the same as yours or mine, I think. There are more traditional members of the Chinese community here, who are not so interested in world events, who are more interested in local events and happenings in China. By and large I think our Chinese listeners in the English stream have more of an open world view. That includes young Chinese who have not necessarily settled overseas but who have traveled extensively. There are now a large number of young Hong Kong Chinese who travel a lot. They are more aware of the outside world and more interested in what is going on.

Alan Knight