Macau Forum started back in July 2011, and was aired every Sunday morning from an open stage in Jardim Areia Preta, opened to the public and gathering between three to four guests discussing for 50mn wide-ranging current affairs topics pertaining to Macao (general livelihood issues as well as various governmental consultations) and inviting questions from the public. This particular program was modeled on the very successful 45mn City Forum broadcasted by RTHK, Hong Kong’s public TV, in Victoria Park on Sundays since April 1980. Many acknowledge that City Forum has become one of the highlights of mediatized political debate in our twin SAR, and even more so since the hotly contested political reform package in 2010.
Let’s be honest: Macau Forum never managed to find a wide following. According to audience surveys, a maximum of 40% of the population would watch the forum occasionally. When one looks at the number of page views from the archives, only the first broadcast of the program has been watched more than 1,500 times, and only one in recent months (early September) managed to attract close to 1,000 views on the Internet, most of the installments stalling at around 200 views. Nevertheless, Macau Forum very often got quoted in the printed press the next day, and the impact was thus wider than live watching and Internet second life. Was Macau Forum ever really given a chance to strive and find an audience? It was originally presented by veteran TDM journalist Yip Kuok Va, the very same person who is presenting the Thursday evening 40mn debate program “Wind and Fire Station” today under threat: for some reason, he was discreetly replaced by two young journalists — less argumentative to put it nicely — in April 2012, and then invited guests started to be very often less controversial. Now, what was originally characterized by TDM CEO as the “most important program” of the public station has simply been dismissed after just a year and a half of existence on the pretext of “lack of human resources”: is it credible?
Nobody can say that there is absolutely no freedom of expression in Chinese electronic mass media in Macao as far as political debate is concerned: after all, the most challenging broadcast is aired daily as a call-in morning program (澳門講場) on the public radio and is so popular that every single administration has a staff summarizing every morning what is often seen as the pulse of Macao society. On Lotus TV, Macao Tales (澳門開講), a daily 1-hour call-in program, has also been gathering momentum since it started in October 2011.
So why stop Macau Forum now? Are traditional associations such as the Neighborhood Association and the General Association of Workers that afraid of getting into a democratic debate that would necessarily force them to take some distance from the government? If suspicions that some pressure has been imposed from above to shut down the program have for now remained groundless, what is really despicable is the resounding silence of the five journalists associations of Macao: not a single one of them has voiced out any concern! But how could it be otherwise when one of the most two important of these is headed by a member of the National People’s Congress and the other one by the Head of Chinese News at TDM?
This is the longer and html rich version of my column published in Macau Daily Times on January 25 2013.
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