Notes
Notes Chapter 1 1. We use “journalists” in a broad and generic sense. The majority of them are undoubtedly technical staff of television, including engineers, camera people, electricians, and producers. This total figure is based on applications made to the Government Information Services (GIS) of the Hong Kong government for media accreditation. How many of them did actually come is unknown, but even half of the 8,000 people would be considered very formidable. 2. The New York Times editorials had given Hong Kong sustained attention before 1997, but rarely commented on Hong Kong after the handover. In contrast, it has given substantially more prominent coverage to China in the late 1990s. 3. As the subject matters and themes call for, not all chapters involve the analysis of all national media systems. Chapter 5 is exclusively an analysis of the U.S. media, chapter 6 is primarily an analysis of the British media in comparison with the PRC media, while chapter 7 is an analysis of the media systems in three contending Chinese societies. Chapter 4 does not include Japan, but the general theoretical points still hold. Chapter 2 1. In fact, eight years before 1997, some media in Europe already contacted Hongkong Telecom about renting satellites during the handover period. The Japanese media have also started to book satellite time a few years ago. As a result, Hongkong Telecom has spent U.S.$6.5 million to upgrade its facilities. Between June 15 and July 10, Hongkong Telecom rented out 5,000 hours of satellite time, which is about double the normal demand. It has a team of 300 people to serve the eight huge satellite dishes in its Stanley transmission station (Apple Daily, July 1). Chapter 5 1. However, human rights abuses of similar magnitude committed by U.S. allies have been played down (Mahlasela, 1990; Herman and Chomsky, 1988). The reductive 223 themes of anti-Communism in the Tiananmen reports also missed many historical and sociological dimensions (Wasserstrom and Perry, 1994). 2. They are Edward Gargan (Hong Kong bureau chief and formerly, Beijing bureau chief), Seith Faison (Shanghai bureau chief), aided by Patrick Tyler (Beijing bureau chief), Nicholas Kristof (former Beijing and, in 1997, Tokyo bureau chief) and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn. Kristof and WuDunn won a Pulitzer Prize for their reports of the Tiananmen movement. 3. For the ten days before Rather arrived in Hong Kong, from June 15 to 24, CBS offered ten brief stories about the handover, all measured in seconds, including an announcement of his trip to Hong Kong. The 25 longer stories, from June 25 to June 1, were all measured in minutes. He also anchors a one-hour live special on the handover ceremony (June 30). 4. During the eight-day interval before Shaw’s arrival (from June 15 to June 22), CNN’s daily one-hour Worldview news program broadcasts only five stories related to Hong Kong’s handover, but after his arrival it offered a total of 45 such stories (from June 23 to July 1). 5. Lee (2000a) argues, contrary to writers such as Tuchman (1978), that the media in Hong Kong use “strategic rituals” not so much to reify the established order, but to create journalistic space in a politically turbulent environment. 6. On July 6, 1997, CBS News analyst Laura Ingraham muses on the significance of Independence Day: This past week two countries celebrated their independence from British rule, but for two very different reasons. Where America honors liberty, China crushes it. Hong Kong, once one of Asia’s freest cities, is now under the control of the one of the world’s most repressive regimes. So many of the images of the transfer last week were of smiles and dancing and parties . . . The mobs celebrating in Tiananmen Square might lull us into believing that the clampdown of ’89 was an aberration. China should serve as a constant, haunting reminder to us that the cause of liberty has not yet triumphed. She continues to argue that while big business is making big money in China, American foreign policy makers should not be blind to “all that China has done to its own people, and maybe later to the people of Hong Kong.” Chapter 6 1. In the 1964 WorldYouth Forum, Moscow deliberately included Hong Kong and Macau in a resolution on the elimination of colonies in Asia. China accused the Soviets of “interfering in the internal affairs” and reiterated its intention of recovering Hong Kong and...
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