Happy
New Year to all my dear readers! Hope
everyone had a wonderful and relaxing holiday break! J
One
of the New Year’s resolutions I set for myself this year is to do a better job
keeping up with and updating this blog, as I realize that I slacked off a bit
last year. My schedule will be just as
busy this year as it was last year, but hopefully I’ll be able to set aside
more time to work on this blog and finally be able to post up the stuff that I’ve
been working on but never found time to finish.
Once again, a sincere THANK YOU to those who continue to support my blog
– not only by reading the stuff I post, but also being patient with me when I
fail to respond to comments timely (I actually DO read all the comments, but unfortunately
I’m not always able to respond as timely as I would like…). I’m also hoping to
do better with this in 2014…
Ok,
so now that I got that out of the way – on to my first official post of 2014…
I
came across the below article yesterday that I really wanted to share with
everyone. Sure, it may not be directly related
to the HK entertainment world per se, but technically, the content of the
article DOES include entertainment news as well.
The
article recaps a survey conducted by Chinese University in HK in which Hong
Kongers were asked to rate the Media outlets in terms of which ones they felt
were the most credible. This survey is actually
not a new thing, as it’s done every once in a while and the results are
released publicly – it’s just that I never paid a whole lot of attention in the
past because the results are generally similar in that the Media outlets that
already have a reputation for being credible are usually still at the top of
the list. This year though, I actually
took the time to look at the analysis and noticed some very interesting things –
a few of which I would like to share below:
.—The
survey is broken up into 2 main categories:
HK Media organizations (i.e. TV / radio stations) and News outlets (i.e.:
newspapers and other Media that ‘officially’ report news). Based on the overall scores (for all Media
outlets combined), it’s obvious that the credibility of HK Media outlets as a
whole has continued its downward trend, as the combined overall scores are way
lower than what they were 3 years ago (when the survey was last
conducted). Though I’m not surprised at
all with these results, it’s definitely not good news for Hong Kongers, since
this means that the Media environment in HK continues to be dismal.
.—In
terms of the TV/radio station category, RTHK continues to remain #1 on the
list, which I guess shouldn’t come as a surprise, since that radio station IS
government-funded and so to some extent, they have a certain ‘social
responsibility’ and probably higher standards that they must follow because of
it. The interesting thing is that RTHK
has been in the number one spot since 1997 – wow…
Other
than RTHK being in the number one spot for the past 16 years, the other thing
that sticks out the most to me is that the credibility of both free TV stations
in HK (TVB and ATV) has dropped significantly this year. TVB went from being #2 (a position which they
had held since 1997) to #4 (dropping two spots) while ATV went from being #5
(they’ve wavered between #4 and #5 over the past 16 years) to #8 (dropping 3
spots to the very bottom of the list). Of
course, I’m not surprised that TVB and ATV scored poorly, as public opinion of
both stations has been on the decline for years…but it looks like this year,
the impact was the greatest because their positions dropped so much. It’s actually kind of pathetic if you ask me….
The
rest of the positions in the TV/radio station category didn’t change a whole
lot, though CRHK (Commercial Radio) did take the #2 spot this year, which is
the highest it’s been for more than a decade.
Looks like their position keeps going up (they went from being #5 back
in 2006 to #3 in 2009 and 2010, reaching the #2 spot in 2013), so I guess this
means they’re doing something right?
.—In
terms of News outlets, South China Morning Post continues to dominate in the #1
spot (that’s good to hear, since that’s where I get a lot of my news articles
from…LOL).
Ming
Pao dropped to #3 this year (they’re usually #2 on the list) – though being in
the top 3 isn’t bad, the fact that they did drop a bit is concerning, since
that’s another outlet where I get the majority of my news from. Not exactly sure what happened, but hopefully
this is only a one-time thing, as I would hate to see them take a downward
spiral….
Oriental
Daily moved up to #8 this year (they were #9 in 2010 and #11 in 2009), so it
looks like they are moving upward once again.
I personally still don’t like the way they put together some of their
articles and I still manage to find a lot of ‘sloppy’ reporting when I read
their stuff, but the fact that they continue to move up the list shows that
they are at least making the effort to be more credible….I guess that should
count for something…
Not
surprisingly, Apply Daily continues to be near the bottom of the list (they
fell to #17 this year, versus being #14 or 15 in previous years). I’m actually kind of glad to see them so far
down the list because it shows that more and more, Hong Kongers are starting to
‘wake up’ and realize just how bad that newspaper is (for those who don’t know,
Apply Daily is part of the Next Media empire – need I say more??).
Lastly,
Wenweipo and Da Kung Po came in at #19 and #20 respectively (wow, they pretty
much dropped to the bottom of the list!).
I remember many years ago, someone had told me that Wenweipo and Da Kung
Po were among the ‘more credible’ ones in terms of news media agencies – I guess
that’s no longer the case because their credibility is pretty much ‘in the
toilet’ as far as this particular poll is concerned (though it doesn’t look
like they were ever that high to begin with).
Luckily I don’t get much of my news from either of these 2 outlets, so
doesn’t affect me too much.
Full
article translated below…
.--.
Chinese
University Survey: The Credibility of
Hong Kong News Media Outlets Continues to Decline
Source: The House News
Translation: llwy12
Chinese
University’s Media and Public Opinion Center recently conducted its survey of
local media and news outlets in HK. The
results of the survey indicate that the credibility of HK’s news media outlets
overall has continued to decline compared to 3 years ago. Individually, majority of the media outlets’
average scores are lower than previous years -- amongst those, the drop in HK’s
two main free-to-air TV stations’ (TVB and ATV) scores are the most obvious: TVB dropped from second place (in previous
years) to fourth place while ATV dropped 5th place to last place
(#8) on the list. In terms of news
agencies, South China Morning Post continues to take the #1 spot on the list.
Overall,
majority of the news outlets’ positions didn’t change a whole lot, which
indicates that the fundamental ecology of Hong Kong’s Media as a whole has not
changed much over the years.
Chinese
University’s survey was conducted between November 27th , 2013 to
December 9th, 2013 – during this time, 917 HK citizens were
interviewed via phone and asked to score the Media outlets – both as a whole
and individually -- using a point scale of 1 – 10 points (with 10 being the
highest). Based on the phone calls, citizens gave ‘HK
Media as a whole’ a score of 6.18 points, which is 0.18 points lower than the
last year the survey was conducted (2010).
In terms of individual scoring, the average score of all Media outlets
combined was 5.82 (a 0.22 point drop from 3 years ago).
Amongst the individual Media outlets whose credibility scores dropped this year, the ones who saw the most significant drop in their scores were: TVB (0.4 point drop), ATV (1.6 point drop), Hong Kong Commercial Daily (0.35 point drop), Apple Daily (0.29 point drop), Wenweipo (0.48 point drop), and DaKung Pao (0.46 point drop).
The
Media outlets who saw the highest increase in their scores include: HK Broadband Network (0.26 point increase),
The Standard (0.21 point increase), and The Sun Times (0.16 point increase).
The
10 most credible Media outlets based on the poll are as follows:
Below
is the complete list of all Media outlets’ scores:
