Class Happenings

For two of my classes, Media Ethics and Media, Culture and Society, I have the same professor, Lisa. Both classes have been talking about objectivity, fairness and truth in the news and it has been a rather exciting week in class. In Media Ethics, Lisa invited a reporter from the Apple Daily Newspaper, who was at the Manila hostage situation, to come and talk to us about that event while focusing on being truthful and objective. And today, the Media, Culture and Society class visited Cable TV. These were both great hands-on experiences and provided insight into the journalism world of Hong Kong.

The reported from Apple Daily spoke in Cantonese so Lisa translated for me. He talked about being in Manila while the hostage was taking place and what he as a reported had to go through to get the right story because at the time many different things were being said. He had to deal with informing the public about this breaking news but also respecting the rights of the wounded and dead. One thing he mentioned was actually not reported- I forget if he talked to this woman or somebody else, but this lady was wounded and felt extremely guilty because she was late to the bus and by being late the gunman was able to get on the bus so she felt like the hostage was her fault. The reporter said they didn’t report this because they didn’t want to bring more stress or attention to the woman.

Outside Cable TV

This morning though, I went to Cable TV, one of the local TV stations in Hong Kong. I was so excited to go because I had never been to a TV station before. We were given a tour of the studio by one of the producers. We were lucky enough to be there while they were doing a live broadcast, so we were able to watch it for about ten minutes from the control room. It was amazing. I never really considered what goes on behind the scenes in airing a news segment- so much planning. In one of the smaller studios we talked about the blue background they use. Anchors aren’t allowed to wear blue because it blends in with the background and viewers would only be able to see their head- think Harry Potter’s invisible cloak. The producer actually had a blue blanket and showed us what it would be like- it was so cool.

Cable TV's version of Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak

We then got to sit down with one of the news directors and he talked a lot about the Manila hostage and what it was like for the station to report the news. The computer in the room had a program where they have news segments from years ago. We were able to watch the ones from August 23 when the hostage was first reported. The anchor was informed about the hostage during the middle of the broadcast and then had to report it to the viewers, so for a good moment, she’s just starring at the ground listening to her producer tell her about the situation via her ear bud; it was very interesting to watch, especially after just being in the control room. The news director also talked about being truthful and objective especially in breaking news. When the hostage situation was developing, there were a lot of different versions of the story going around and they waited until they got exact details to report to news. Although they had to wait to break the news, he said they didn’t want to misinform the public or worry the wrong people, so it was worth the wait.

Blurry picture of control room

It was great to see a TV station as well as talking with a reporter. After taking two journalism classes at HWS last semester, I hated journalism and wanted nothing to do with it, but these two experiences definitely opened my eyes to a different view of journalism/broadcast…

The entire class with our professor, Lisa.

Most of the class with the news director