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Appreciate the popular press

The Young Reporter (2002, November), 35(02), pp. 5.
Author: Tim Hamlett.
Permanent URL - https://sys01.lib.hkbu.edu.hk/bujspa/purl.php?&did=bujspa0015129

By Tim Hamlett

hamlett@hkbu.edu.hk

WHEN interviewing people who want to be journalism students I usually ask them which newspapers they read.

The conventional answer to this question - given by almost every candidate - is Ming Pao and the South China Morninq Post.

Do we not, I wonder aloud at this point, occasionally glance at the Apple Daily? And it turns out that we do indeed glance at the Apple Daily quite often. What newspapers do the parents prefer? Usually the Oriental actually.

Now I do not blame interviewees for giving the answers which they believe are wanted. Hong Kong people read a lot of newspapers. It is interesting, though, that the error is always in the same direction. Nobody eagerly announces that he is an Apple reader and has to be coaxed into conceding that he sees Ming Pao occasionally.

It is odd that the newspapers which are most popular are also the ones which many people are embarrassed to be caught reading.

The popular press comes in for a good deal of criticism in Hong Kong. On one side are the people who resent it because it is not like the “quality” papers.

On the other side are those who resent it because it is not like the People’s Daily.

As a result you rarely see anything nice written about the popular press, even though the vast majority of the population happily reads it.

Journalism graduates will announce in a rather sheepish way that they are working for one of the mass-circulation papers, though this ought to be a matter for pride.

In other countries it is considered a privilege to work for a newspaper with a large readership.

Reporters for the popular papers are lavishly paid and regard their work as harder and more skilled than that of the highbrow journalists. Certainly if there is a mass electorate the popular papers are the more important ones politically.

Perhaps we are suffering from an overdose of American culture. In the US the popular papers are sold in supermarkets (and technically classified as magazines) so they do not have to be counted as part of “the Press.” Unconcerned by the finer points of public-spirited journalism they concentrate on making a profit and are regrettably willing to print stories which few of us believe: Elvis sightings, alien abductions, bombers on the moon and so on.

But a popular press does not have to be like that.

There is no reason why popular newspapers should not apply reasonable standards of accuracy and professionalism and in many countries they do. The stories, surprisingly often, are actually the same.

The difference is in the treatment. Of course the treatment is sensational. The idea is to attract the reader’s attention and hold it. Popular papers use graphics, pictures and hard-hitting language. It is easy to decry the results as simplistic and superficial. But then it is also not too difficult to depict the “respectable” press as pompous and boring.

The point is that whatever higher ambitions we have for newspapers they will not fulfill them unless they are read. Everybody is a potential reader but becoming a real reader is voluntary. Few of us read a newspaper out of a sense of duty. The rest of the population has to be persuaded.

Every form of journalism has its temptations and the sort of thing which can go wrong with popular journalism is well known because we hear complaints about it all the time. There is a temptation to use exaggeration, to snoop, to print gossip and to run stories which have nothing going for them but the magic ingredients (sex and violence) .

But we need to distinguish carefully between calls for better popular journalism and calls for its abolition.

think Hong Kong should try harder to appreciate the strengths of its large- circulation newspapers. They docover serious topics, they run foreign news, they are generally reliable on the facts and outspoken in their opinions.

Most wonderful of all is that we have more than one, so that errors or omissions in one paper are mercilessly pointed out by its rivals. Actually it is a pity the tabloids do not run more stories on the strange going-on in the quality press. But I suppose they reckon their readers are not interested. Remember, if the pop papers closed tomorrow there would not be a mass migration to Ming Pao. Most people would simply get their news from television — a sobering thought. So thank goodness for the popular papers.

I could do with less of the brothel ads and bloodstains myself, but that it a matter of taste.

Tim Hamlett

An Associate Professor from the Department of Journalism at Hong Kong Baptist University and is a regular columnist from South China Morning Post.

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