The Worrying State of Hong Kong Media

Will i-Cable be able to retain its integrity with its latest leadership shuffle?

On the same day that Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai Chee-ying was being arrested along with seven other people including activist Agnes Chow Ting, some executive shuffling was happening at i-Cable, a paid TV station that elicited some raised eyebrows.

Oscar Lee (right) conducts fawning interview with Chris Tang

Edna Tse Yin-na, who was the former head of the Hong Kong International Business Channel, the English channel under i-Cable, officially took charge of the news department as deputy general manager. She replaced Fung Tak-hung, who now has an advisory role.

Oscar Lee Tsun and Anderson Chan Hing-cheong will report to Tse as department controllers.

Lee and Tse don't exactly garner much respect in the newsroom, while Chan worked with Tse at ATV.

First Lee, who is known for being a television anchor and parenting influencer. He was widely mocked on social media after a recent interview with police chief Chris Tang Ping-keung which critics said was overly fawning and deferential.

Tse did not think Louis Cha's death was newsworthy enough

Meanwhile many question Tse's editorial judgment. When famous and respected novelist Louis Cha Leung-yung, best known by his pen name Jin Yong, passed away on October 2018, Tse downplayed his death as not important.

She also seemed to not be familiar with Chinese human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang who was detained in August 2015 and wasn't put on trial until three and a half years later. While he was convicted of subverting the state in 2019, he was finally released in April this year, in large part thanks to his wife who relentlessly lobbied for him.

Fung hasn't escaped criticism for his editorial decisions either that are blatantly pro-Beijng. Last June he tried to postpone a show related to the June 4 crackdown, but he retracted his decision following protests inside the newsroom.

Then during this year's anniversary of June 4, an interview on i-Cable with Zhang Xianling, the mother of a 19-year-old who was killed in Tiananmen Square in 1989, was shortened to remove her comments on Hong Kong's national security law and similarities to restrictions in China.

Zhang Xianling's comments about NSL were cut from story

Last year a New Year's segment was edited to take out the chanting of the protest slogan, "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time" and was replaced with archival footage of a New Year countdown.

Observers say i-Cable's decline began after it was sold in 2017 to investors, real estate moguls Henry Cheng Kar-shun, and David Chiu Tat-cheong, both of whom have close business ties to China.

Then the broadcaster began diverting resources to focus more on business news in China, while sensitive news items were reported less.

These changes have left reporters in a difficult situation.

"It feels very draining when most of your time is spent on futile fight resisting the collapse of the institution instead of doing actual journalism," said a reporter at i-Cable. "I feel like I am fighting alone. I would also like to leave, but with similar scenes playing out across newsrooms in Hong Kong, where else can I go?"

Bruce Lui Ping-kuen, a senior journalism lecturer at Baptist University, questioned whether the latest appointments were made based on political loyalty.

Jimmy Lai was arrested Monday from his home

"Fung is one of the most experienced veterans in the industry. Although he has sparked controversy after rejoining i-Cable's news department, he only took up the position a little over a year ago," he added.

"He was also replaced by a less experienced colleague. With a big difference between them, this makes me question if political loyalty was the consideration behind Fung's replacement, instead of experience, or was Fung not doing enough in showing his political loyalty?"

As the vast majority of news outlets in Hong Kong are owned by pro-Beijing business owners, reporters and editors have to walk a fine line between serving the interests of the public's right to know, while trying not to offend or get their bosses in trouble.

Which is why Apple Daily, which holds everyone accountable, is such an important barometer for Hong Kong; if and when it goes, press freedom will truly be gone too. Who would be willing to take up that mantle?

A Literary Giant Passes Away

Wuxia novelist Louis Cha or Jin Yong has died in Hong Kong at 94 years old

Big apologies for not blogging everyday -- I have been on a cruise where internet service is spotty not to mention expensive!

But before I continue writing about my trip to Italy and Spain, there's sad news in Hong Kong that Chinese martial arts novelist and journalist Louis Cha Leung-yung has passed away at the age of 94 after a long illness.

Tributes have been pouring in from the likes of Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor to Alibaba chairman Jack Ma Yun.

I only knew Cha as a wuxia novelist who used the pen name Jin Yong and lots of people loved reading his stories about kung fu masters in ancient China that combined Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. His novels -- over 100 million copies sold worldwide -- were transposed onto the big screen and even made into video games and graphic novels.

Only now did I know that he was the founder of the Ming Pao newspaper, after having made money from serializing his novels in the New Evening Post. Ming Pao was apparently started by four people in 1957, including Cha, who was its editor-in-chief and the paper was mainly a vehicle to serialize his stories.

Cha was born in Hangzhou in 1924 and graduated from the Law School of Suzhou in 1948 in international law with the intention of becoming diplomat. To make some money as a student, he began working as a journalist and translator for Ta Kung Pao newspaper in Shanghai and then a year later continued working for the same paper in Hong Kong.

He then left Ta Kung Pao in 1955 and published his first martial novel, The Book and the Sword in the New Evening Post that became an instant success, which spurred him to write 14 other very popular martial arts novels, the last one called The Deer and the Cauldron in 1972.

On appreciating his novels, Cha admitted readers would need "some training in Chinese thinking to understand", describing his books as "traditional Chinese novels in their themes, morals or philosophies".

Cha's 15 novels have been translated into English, French, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese, Malay and Indonesian.

"Martial arts for me are just an instrument, a sugar coating. They can be used as a way of expressing my artistic ideas," Cha said. Those ideas, according to him, were distinctly anti-feudal and liberal.

When it comes to his political stance it seems it was not so straight forward.

His editorials in 1966 were critical of China's Cultural Revolution, writing that it threatened the destruction of Chinese culture and tradition. He was said to be on a list of prominent people targeted for assassination that was published in left-wing newspapers during the 1967 riots in Hong Kong because of his critical stance against Beijing.

However, when China and Britain reached an agreement on Hong Kong's handover in 1997, Cha was appointed by Beijing in 1985 to be a member of the Basic Law Drafting Committee, Hong Kong's mini constitution. But after the Tiananmen Square massacre, he resigned in protest in 1989.

He later was part of the Preparatory Committee set up by the Chinese government in 1996 to monitor the transfer of sovereignty. Perhaps it was because then leader Deng Xiaoping was a fan of Cha's novels; Cha was the first non-Communist member from Hong Kong to meet Deng.

But others felt the best-selling author was a sell-out for agreeing to Beijing's proposal of that the first three Hong Kong chief executives should be elected by a "broadly representative" committee, a move that hindered the timetable for universal suffrage.

Nevertheless, Cha will be remembered more for his novels that transported readers into a chivalrous fantasy past and his massive contribution to Hong Kong and China's contemporary literary culture.