Making full use of newly declassified material, extensive interviews and specific case studies, this book examines the Hong Kong media over a forty year period, focusing in particular on how its newspapers and TV stations have struggled for press freedom under the colonial British administration, as well as Chinese rule.

This book explores the challenges to news professionalism and media autonomy stemming from the state, market pressure, the digitalization of communication, and a polarized civil society in Hong Kong. China is tightening its control over post-handover Hong Kong, which includes press freedom. Harsh market competition, coupled with shifting readership from mainstream media to digital platforms, is squeezing the business viability of media organizations. The polarization of civil society in post-handover Hong Kong had degraded consensual values upon which news professionalism relies. Journalists have had to reorient news professionalism and media power in the midst of state-society tension, market pressure, and the shifting communication mode driven by digitalization. These are the key questions for Hong Kong media. This dynamic intervention will be of interest to journalists, scholars of civil society, and scholars of Asian politics.

Studies of Hong Kong media primarily examine whether China will crush Hong Kong’s media freedom. This book however traces the root problem of Hong Kong media back to the colonial era, demonstrating that before the resumption of Chinese sovereignty there already existed a uniquely Hong Kong brand of hyper-marketized and oligopolistic media system. The system, encouraged by the British colonial government, was subsequently aggravated by the Chinese government. This peculiar system is highly susceptible to state intervention and structurally disadvantaged dissent and marginal groups before and after 1997. The book stresses that this hyper-marketized media system has been constantly challenged. Through a historical study of media stigmatization of youth, this book proposes that over the years various counter forces have penetrated the structurally lopsided Hong Kong media: independent, public, popular and news media all make occasional subversive alliances to disrupt the mainstream, and news media, with a strong liberal professionalism, provide the most subversive space for challenging cultural hegemony. The book offers an alternative and fascinating account of the dynamics between hegemonic closure and day-to-day resistance in Hong Kong media in both the colonial and post-colonial eras, arguing that the Hong Kong case generates important insights for understanding ideological struggles in capitalist media.

This second edition of Hong Kong Media Law is an authoritative guide to the laws most important to reporters, editors, news executives and other professionals working for the print, online and broadcast media—and the lawyers who advise them. Topics include defamation, court reporting, privacy, access to information, copyright, newsgathering and reporting restrictions. The book also examines legal hurdles Hong Kong and international journalists face while reporting on the mainland of the People’s Republic of China. Also featured are chapter FAQs and checklists, a glossary of legal terms, a research guide and key legislation texts.

Focusing on the global media coverage of Hong Kong's transfer from Britain to China, Global Media Spectacle explores how the world media plan, operate, compete, and produce a historical record during significant global events. The authors interviewed seventy-six print and television reporters from the United States, Britain, the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, Canada, and Japan to delve into the revealing world of writing first drafts of history from reporters' vantage points. Punctuated with witty and incisive examples, the book provides a useful description of contestation and alliance, themes and variations, and convergence and divergence between and within various blocs of nations.

Over the last twenty years Hong Kong society has witnessed dramatic change, and nowhere is this better reflected than in the realm of media and communications. Across the fields of journalism, public relations and advertising, we can see the changing trends in terms of audience consumption and interaction. From technological developments to the shift in audience participation, the expectations and functions of these professions have been greatly altered. While many of these changes are occurring worldwide, within Hong Kong the processes of change have been further complicated by recent social and political events. Through a selection of essays by field experts, this volume explores the evolution of media itself as well as the complex causes underlying these developments. It identifies not only the difficulties and opportunities for media professionals today, but also the evolving role of the audience.

This book examines the Hong Kong media over a forty year period, focusing in particular on how its newspapers and TV stations have struggled for press freedom under the colonial British administration, as well as Chinese rule. Making full use of newly declassified material, extensive interviews and specific case-studies, it provides an illuminating analysis of the dynamics of political power and its relationship with media censorship. Overall, this book is an impressive discussion of the evolving face of the Hong Kong media, and is an important contribution to theoretical debates on the relationship between political power, economics, identity and journalism.