Ordinary Gweilo

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Distasteful II

Jan 19, 2004

Yesterday’s Apple Daily has a large photograph on its front page of an elderly woman who was killed by a falling window. The photograph shows her lying in the street in a pool of blood, either dying or already dead. Her face has been pixellated, but her identity can hardly be a secret. I don’t want to see that when I am eating my dim sum, and I can’t even begin to think how her family and friends must feel.

This is not unusual for Apple Daily (and its rivals), and pictures of accident victims regularly appear in Hong Kong newspapers. The photographers rush to the scene and try to get pictures before the ambulance service has arrived and placed a blanket over the body, or if the victim is taken to hospital they will be taking photographs as the patient is carried into the ambulance, and again when they arrive at the hospital. I am amazed that the emergency services tolerate this, because it must make their job more difficult, quite apart from being distressing for all concerned.

Truthfully, I am a bit baffled by Apple Daily. Do front pages such as today’s help to sell newspapers? Or are people interested in the story and regard it as nothing unusual to see the full gory details?

Whilst there seems to be no legal obstacle to printing these pictures, Apple Daily cannot emulate British popular newspapers such as The Sun or the Daily Star by printing photographs of topless women (or at least not without pixellating them). However, this didn’t stop the popular HK papers writing about pornography and prostitution in a way that would certainly not be acceptable in so-called family newspapers in Britain (I don’t count The Sunday Sport and Daily Sport in this category).

The Hong Kong government did announce plans to legislate against the practice – not by making it illegal, but slightly bizarrely by requiring such newspapers to print a diagonal red line on every page. This threat prompted the newspapers to tone-down their coverage, but the legislation has now been dropped due to lack of public support, so presumably they are now free to carry on as before.

No sign of any legislation against pictures of accident victims being printed in newspapers, though.

Posted in Media

7 responses to “Distasteful II”

Michael

Jan 20, 2004

Hong Kong “newspapers” aren’t allowed to carry images of topless women like the British papers do? How come? Was this also the case during the coloniel days? I was under the impression that they could carry “indecent” pictures but not “obscene” pictures.
Also softcore porn Cat III movies on TV and movies seem to be okay.
Are magazines like Hustler or Penthouse illegal in Hong Kong?
I read about the proposed anti porn law that was dropped in HK, it seemed to discuss adult manazines as well as newspapers featuring adult content so that’s what I’m a little confused about.
I guess the reason why I’m curious is because I run a business that offers traffic brokering and billing solution. While my firm doesn’t directly publish or distribute adult material, it does provide billing solutions to both adult and mainstream companies.
As far as I know none of them focus on Hong Kong though, and this particular division does business in the states not in Hong Kong.
Anyway to me showing pictures of a dead person is much more “obscene” and distasteful to both the public and the family of the victim than showing a topless woman if it happens to be a magazine that happens to cater to that kind of thing.

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Simon

Jan 20, 2004

Nothing compares to the Apple Daily’s step by step chart of the German “cannibal” murder a few months back. It makes me sick just thinking about it.

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BWG

Jan 20, 2004

It’s a mystery.
A while back I wrote on my site of the hypocrisy of the way people approach death. On the one hand, no one wants to mention it, hear it, talk about it, or even go into a funeral home unless they have to.
On the other they read papers like the Apple Daily where suicides and their messy ends are splattered all over the front page.
For a culture that doesn’t like to discuss death, there sure is a grim fascination with it.

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PC PLOD

Jan 20, 2004

As a serving Police officer I have to deal with numerous suicides and near suicides in my daily duties. One aspect when handling these cases is the presence of the local press who always seem to be loitering around.
I remember one surreal incident when we were talking to a distressed woman who was threatening to jump from a road flyover. The photographers were initially swarming over the place but then mysteriously disappeared. The woman was later dragged to safety & on investigating where the press had gone I peered over the edge and found them all at the bottom staring up at me. They were just waiting for the woman to jump so that they could get the best pictures of her at the point of impact. Words fail me.

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Chris

Jan 20, 2004

Michael,
I’m not an expert on this subject, but I can give you my understanding. The rules about newspapers haven’t changed, as far as I am aware, and the Obscene Articles Tribunal must date back to colonial days. Magazines have to carry a large warning if they contain indecent material, and this seems to (sometimes) catch publications such as GQ, Loaded, Cosmopolitan. If they are deemed to be obscene they are banned, or the relevant pages may be removed. At one time the Standard used to carry several pages of official announcements about which magazines were officially obscene.
As you say, soft porn (Category III) movies are allowed, and can be shown on cable TV, but anything stronger than that is illegal. I believe the rules in the UK have become less strict in recent years, but nothing has changed here.
Terrestrial TV channels have a rating system that means that shows such as The Sopranos or Sex and the City are either shown after midnight or cut. Not as bad as Singapore, I suppose!

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Chris

Jan 20, 2004

Hello PC Plod,
You certainly have my sympathy in dealing with the gentlemen of the press. I think I have only seen them doing this once, when someone was threatening to jump from an apartment in the estate next door to ours. I was walking past on my way home and noticed the randomly “parked” Apple Daily car and a lot of excitement, and later discovered what had been happening. Fortunately the guy decided against jumping.
I don’t suppose anyone is going to post a comment here supporting the popular press, so I am none the wiser about whether this coverage is in response to popular demand. Maybe it’s like voting for Mrs Thatcher – lots of people did it, but most of them denied it afterwards.

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Chris

Jan 21, 2004

I didn’t see the Apple Daily coverage of the cannibalism trial, but I can imagine what it was like. The irony is that guy would probably love Apple Daily!

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