RTHK's New Head Signals New Direction

RTHK's incoming chief has no editorial experience

 

Radio Television Hong Kong is entering a new era, led by a career bureaucrat who has no journalism experience.

Veteran journalist Leung Ka-wing who has been at the helm of RTHK for over five years abruptly stepped down today, months before his contract was to expire in August.

He will be replaced by Deputy Secretary for Home Affairs Patrick Li Pak-chuen on March 1. The government claimed after a long search it could not find a suitable successor.

This is not the first time the broadcaster has been led by a bureaucrat -- back in 2015, RTHK was led by Roy Tang Yun-kwong.

Patrick Li is at the Home Affairs dept

After the announcement of the change of leadership, the government released a 157-page report, accusing RTHK, an outlet that has often been critical of officials, of lacking transparency and objectivity.

RTHK is considered similar to the BBC in that it is funded by taxpayer dollars, and its charter states it should have editorial independence.

However the six-month investigation found "serious inadequacies", including poor management and lack of editorial accountability at RTHK.

During and after the anti-government protests in 2019, the broadcaster bore the brunt of a lot of criticism, including that it was biased towards the protesters.

Earlier this month, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor slammed RTHK's performance as "unacceptable" and demanded reform to "set things right".

The report was most critical of the editorial operations, saying it lacked well-defined and properly documented process or any clear allocation of roles and responsibilities among staff.

It said that editorial accountability was weak, decisions rested on the judgment of individual production units or officers working in silos, and the editor-in-chief and other senior management took a passive role in program production.

Leung Ka-wing waves goodbye to well wishers

"There are some issues with the governance and management of RTHK, and improvement is needed in the system, execution and monitoring," said Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Edward Yau Tang-wah in a press conference today.

"While the [RTHK governing] charter, producers' guidelines and Communications Authority codes of practice have been put in place, the management failed to explain them to staff and ensure they were applied on all programs."

It sounds like there will be much more oversight in how RTHK operates, particularly in editorial decisions. This will definitely slow down how things are done at the public broadcaster, where speed is of the essence.

There seems to be also a lack of trust in how the news is gathered and disseminated.

The report came after several complaints about RTHK's satirical show Headliner for making fun of the police force, and a hard-hitting investigation into the July 21, 2019 mob attack on people in the Yuen Long MTR station that led to the arrest of one of its producers for misrepresenting herself when she requested information about some vehicles related to the attack.

Meanwhile RTHK Programme Staff Union chairwoman Gladys Chiu Sin-yan criticized the report's findings as "contradictory" and "poorly justified", saying the government had failed to grasp how the editorial department operated.

Gladys Chiu worries about editorial independence

"Since 2000s, manpower has been tight following a hiring freeze, but there are still new television services coming into the steam," she said, quoting the traditional Chinese saying, "You can't expect the horse to run fast when you don't let it graze."

She added RTHK had produced many award-winning programs and its credibility was widely recognized, none of which was mentioned in the report.

"It's an affront to our dignity," she said.

People who work at RTHK will probably soldier on the best they can -- they feel a duty to their audience to give them the latest news without bias. 

But when a bureaucrat comes in whose portfolio included overseeing such areas as national education, gambling policy, entertainment licensing, religious matters, and legislation on divorce, maintenance and wills, one has to wonder if he really is the best person for the job...