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Chapter 2 News Staging All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. —Shakespeare, As You Like It Staging is a transitory world of make-believe. —Gerald Millerson (1982: 10) For the foreign press, we won this battle. We were not just a side story on July 1. In the foreign press, we were the focus. That was our intention. —Lau Sai-leung, Senior Executive Officer, the Democratic Party of Hong Kong Help us stop 5 billion people being fed garbage. —Advertisement by a PR consultant in the South China Morning Post, referring to foreign journalists’ “rubbishing” Hong Kong International journalism is performed on a local-cum-world stage. In the literal sense, the handover of Hong Kong’s sovereignty takes place at a specific time and place. The date of July 1, 1997 was in a way set in 1842 by the Nanjing Treaty and rectified in 1982 by the Sino-British Joint Declaration. The official site makes Hong Kong a stage for the Chinese and British leaders to perform courteous but strained rituals for the invited political and social dignitaries in front of the mediated world audience. Symbolically, the Hong Kong handover is also a stage for ideological contestation between East and West, and between capitalism and socialism in the post-Cold War context. The media, representing national discursive communities, are the principal reality constructors and ideological contestants. We borrow from the literary and theatrical traditions the concept of stage and apply it metaphorically to look at the acts of the world media and journalists in the context of regime change. We shall describe and analyze, at different levels, the various news gatherers and makers as well as media scenes as 21 components of a news stage. With news stage as a macroscopic framework to visualize the roles of the media and journalists, we shall also use the literature on media sociology to make sense out of their strategies and activities. News Stage In an early handbook on the production of plays, Nelms (1958) spells out the essential theatrical elements as the stage, script, casting and actors, acting, scenery, lighting, make-up, set design, and costumes. More broadly, this “art of presentation” (Beckerman, 1990) encompasses the audience, the place (scene), the performers, the “theatrical hierarchy” (managers and playwright), and media or scholarly critics. The theory of dramatism (Gronbeck, 1980) notes that not only do the actors perform according to the scripts written in languages or symbols; other constituencies would then interpret the scripts via their knowledge of cultural rules and significant symbols. Consequently, social meanings and actions are produced within certain sociocultural contexts of scenes. In the modern setup of a television studio, Millerson (1982: 10) describes controlling the staging as “whenever we deliberately arrange or contrive a scene in front of the camera.” He further comments that “staging is a transitory world of make-believe, where the fantastic and the imaginary are given substance, where for a brief while we build an illusion.” Staging can be used to provide a background for a subject, to create an atmospheric effect, and to enhance a subject either by stressing its importance or by distracting our attention from it. Media are essential to staging a major international event like the Olympic Games. The organization of games entails marketing, security, tourism, transport , volunteers, and everything else, but the media are assumed to be “the last judges” of its success (Gratton, 1999: 122). The media televise rituals and symbols (the flame, torch, flag, ceremonies), prominent individuals and athletes, events and performances—most importantly, they also make “numerous judgments about the host country and its society and how well the Games have been organized” (pp. 130–131). That is why the Sydney Olympics in 2000 regard it as a high priority to rectify the shortcomings of the press center in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The best competition to a media event is another media event. At the time of the Hong Kong handover, there are no other major crises brewing nearby or elsewhere, so the world media can focus their attention on this tiny “giant” island -city. In June, it was rumored that Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge killer, had been captured; the Associated Press for example reassigned half of its handover staff to Cambodia, only to discover that it was a false alarm. Similar rumors spread that hell had broken loose in North Korea, diverting some media atten22 Global Media Spectacle [3.133.12.172] Project MUSE...

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