Social responsibility and freedom of press?

Taking a glance at the publications displayed at any newsstands in Hong Kong will give you a rough idea of how shallow and bad taste our popular culture is. The most popular publications dominating the eye-catching corners are gossipy magazines, presented themselves as pornography with naked women and sex hitting the cover story in almost every issue. The worst of all is that these magazines are easily accessible to young people of all ages. The present law restricts the sale of pornographic materials to young people under the age of 18 by making it mandatory to wrap the magazines in a plastic bag with a printed warning. This may not stop the sale of these materials but at least making them less easily available to young people. However, the law has no effect on gossipy magazines, which are freely accessible to kids and young people.

Based on my observation, these popular magazines do have detrimental effects on the value and moral development of young people. The purposeful degradation of the role of women as sex objects and showing dolls with emphases on their figure gives our young people the wrong message on the social role of women. If you pay a visit to any secondary school in Hong Kong on a hot summer day, you will find a weird phenomenon – the girls always put on their sweaters no matter whether the temperature is 30ºC or 35ºC. Do they feel hot and uncomfortable? Yes, but they still want to keep their sweaters on because they don’t want their figure been seen. They have their self-image solely built upon the so-called ‘perfect figure’as depicted in these popular magazines. What a shame we have a popular culture of teasing women based on their appearance and figure in such a modern city as claimed by our officials. Apart from damaging the morality of our students, the spread of this culture may aggravate the problem of eating disorders. Despite the lack of scientific evidence showing the correlation between this culture and the occurrence of eating disorders, I do see a rise in the cases of eating disorders in some schools under the influence of this culture.

Should we have a tighter scrutiny on the contents of these popular magazines? It is a controversial issue inviting debate over the balance between social responsibility and freedom of press. Hong Kong is proud of her freedom in all aspects except the right of universal suffrage. If we maintain the status-quo, putting no strict scrutiny on the possible pornographic contents available in these magazines, believing that our young people can make the right judgment, we actual assume that our schools and families will do the job of proper guidance. However, how valid is this assumption? It’s time for us to think about this issue and society as a whole to reach a consensus on tipping the right balance between social responsibility and freedom of press.