| As one of the Four Asian Tigers, Hong Kong is known for its highly successful capitalist economy. On July 1, 1997, Hong Kong was officially returned to Mainland China by the British government. Since the transition to Chinese rule, Hong Kong has experienced a rapid redistribution of political power and a realignment of social forces. Its mass media---as a cultural commodity and ideological apparatus of modern capitalism---has undergone a dramatic transformation. Although Beijing repeatedly expresses its support for the right of freedom of expression that Hong Kong enjoys under Article 27 of the constitution of Hong Kong, guidelines and rules that limit this right are still imposed from above. The main question for journalists and media managers in Hong Kong is how to find a balancing point among freedom of speech, political pressure, and market expectations in a region where an authoritarian political system, a public and journalistic commitment to press freedom, and a commercial system co-exist.;This study scrutinizes the content of a TV program, Current Affairs Debate, produced by Phoenix TV, one of the few non-government related television broadcasters available to mainland Chinese audiences. In order to discover whether Hong Kong media manages to achieve authentic freedom of expression under the Chinese central government's control, three shows that aired on Current Affairs Debate all dealing with a sensitive topic, corruption in China, are analyzed in the study. The study suggests that the program contributed to a certain degree of freedom of speech by meeting the two criteria first established by the Commission on Freedom of the Press: It presented a diversity of participants and points of view and a degree of objectivity. This study also found that Current Affairs Debate employed three discursive strategies in order to maintain a degree of free expression while not to be too critical of the Beijing government. First, the program balanced criticisms and support towards the government by providing debaters from both sides in order to be impartial. Second, the experts who debated on the show used credible facts in their arguments, which contributed to a degree of objectivity of the program. Third, by using specific adverbs, adjectives and metaphors while touching on sensitive points, the debaters reduced the sharpness of their criticisms. The study further suggested that Mainland Chinese media might use Phoenix TV as a model that allows for greater press freedom. |
