Warping reality

Warping reality
Squabbles between governments and the media are nothing new. Almost every American president has complained about the press in one way or another. Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger went as far as accusing one newspaper of committing treason. Recently, the Obama administration basically declared war on Fox News Channel, with White House communications director Anita Dunn announcing that they are going to treat the news network as an opponent rather than a media institution.
On this side of the Pacific, former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa's distrust of the press is practically a known secret. Unsurprisingly, after Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen - reacting to recent attacks on him and his family - unleashed harsh words of his own against unnamed individual newspapers, it drew even more fire from the usual suspects. The obsession that a number of our city's Chinese language dailies have with the chief executive has risen to a new level. But their ferocious headlines over the past two weeks may speak more about their own dysfunction than the current state of political affairs.
While Fox News responded to Dunn's statement by saying that the average consumer certainly knows the difference between the A section of the newspaper and the editorial page, our problem appears to be that the city's three best-selling Chinese-language newspapers do not seem to be able to tell the difference. With verdicts and judgments masquerading as headlines, and the news more commentary than reporting, their lack of media ethics and respect for journalism hurt the public more than all the mistakes of the Tung and Tsang administrations combined.
The responsibilities of a free press in a free society are enormous. It must serve as a quasi-public-service institution, keeping the public informed and the government honest. The vast powers society bequeaths to the media require that it delivers credible facts and information in return. The judging is left to an informed public, and conclusions are drawn. Creative interpretations of facts belong only to the opinion pages.
A questioning and vigorous press adheres strictly to principles of truthfulness, objectivity, fairness and public accountability. A press that coerces perception and judgment, and sensationalises and trivialises information, does not act in the public's interest.
It is all too easy to blame audience taste and hide behind a perverted rationale of freedom of speech whenever a news organisation is criticised; but the onus of protecting a free press and free speech falls not only on governments and its citizens. If we are to hold our public officials to high standards of behaviour, integrity and scrutiny, then the media must also be subject to the same high ethical and professional standards.
When any one media institution rejects its social responsibility to professionalism, it makes its power to define reality and determine the political agenda vulnerable to manipulation, whether by corrupt governments or business interests. The famous dictum of Lord Acton, that power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, holds as true for the press as it does for politicians. We enjoy our freedom to freely criticise the government and that freedom must be protected at all costs.
While we may have got used to all the sleaze, blood and gore that dominate the city's best-selling but - according to the Chinese University's media survey - lowest-credibility-rated Chinese dailies, their increasing affinity towards character assassination and away from news reporting cannot be condoned. When malicious cynicism and sensationalism become the norm of journalism, reality is warped: all public policies have ulterior motives and every person is suspected of wrongdoing. Journalism of this kind ultimately undermines the credibility of the press and is a disservice to civil society.
And this may be the one thing the government cannot be blamed for.
Alice Wu is a political consultant and a former associate director of the Asia Pacific Media Network at UCLA.