RTHK Aims To Defuse Row Over Social Media Posts

RTHK has played down suggestions that it was pressured into temporarily halting social media posts on Thursday after coming under pressure from the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau.

The broadcaster and the bureau reportedly received a complaint about a post by a staff member on an RTHK Facebook page about the removal of China’s presidential term limits, which had referred to President Xi Jinping as ‘emperor Xi’ and included apparently sarcastic Chinese-language hashtags such as #You’reReadingThisCorrectly.

On Thursday, RTHK producers were told to stop posting updates to social media, before the suspension was lifted on Friday morning.

The RTHK Programme Staff Union then issued an open letter to the Director of Broadcasting, Leung Ka-wing, questioning whether the station had overreacted to the complaint.

The union also said if the move was made as a result of pressure from the bureau, this would be a clear case of interference that would seriously damage RTHK’s editorial independence and set a bad precedent.

RTHK's head of corporate communications, Amen Ng, said in a statement that the temporary suspension was taken only because a discussion on the station’s social media policy had not been completed during a regular management meeting on Thursday.

She said all social media posts resumed on Friday morning after department heads affirmed that all such posts must abide by the station’s producer guidelines, which requires content to be factually accurate, impartial, of a high quality and in good taste.