The intense emotion behind live broadcast
Chan Yu-hong
Reporter, Stand News
It has been said that the situation confronting journalists over the past year is unprecedented. The thirst for news of our readers and audience is insatiable. News live broadcast is nothing new. However, in the past eight to nine months, low resolution short live videos have often been watched simultaneously by thousands of viewers nearly immediately after they are posted. What I want to say is, this has nothing to do with the role or the ability of the journalists. Nor is it due to factors such as the popularity of any particular media. Live broadcast has drawn so much attention because of the intense emotion built up under the specific situation of Hong Kong in 2019-20 that pushes audience to seek out news footages.
The intense emotion is driven by love, personal belief, insecurity and fear.
Whether one is a social reformist or a worker in the lower social strata, they are simply a reader or an audience when they are reading or watching news. Usually they go back to what they had been doing after reading half an article or watching ten minutes of news live broadcast from which they got some updated information about what was going on around them. In other words, after a brief break they resume their role as a social reformist or a worker.
However, even then, they would have carried away with them new emotions which may not seem very different from their prior feelings, but which are, nevertheless, distinct. After watching the news, they may feel a fear for the increasing insecurity in their neighbourhood and an unease about the unjust violence faced by young people in and outside of the news footage. Though bewildered, they force a smile and continue to believe that Hong Kong can become a better place, and that they cherish and love it as ever.
This is what it means to watch news in Hong Kong over the past year.
My experience in covering news on the frontline is not much. My work outside of the office is mainly doing live broadcast for the web media I work for. When I am doing live broadcast, I have to ensure that the footage I take is acceptable and the equipment is working fine. I also act as the narrator and report on what is happening. This is basically what I have been doing on the frontline and the skills that I have acquired. Now I would like to continue to write about what I have experienced.
The emotion mentioned above could be observed online as well as offline.
Online are comments, emoji and images that express unequivocally and plainly how people feel.
People talk about their overall impression of the struggle or how they feel about the government. People’s opinions are most often expressed in just a few words. However, the words people use have been changing. Some phrases that were not seen in June and July began to appear frequently. As people watched news footage and read reports online evening after evening, their emotion fluctuated. Soon many comments were laced with curses.
Offline are those which are not captured on screen. What the camera does not show or the microphone does not record is the general atmosphere of an evening. It could be anger, sadness or joy. There have been evenings of joy, but they are comparatively few.
Sometimes a few kaifong (i.e. people living in the neighbourhood) walk by when I am working. When I notice that someone has been to the same place a number of times, I would assume they are kaifong and their response represent to a large extent the opinion of other kaifong. They are cursing all the time. Sometimes a family passs by- two children accompanied by their mother. They are there to show their support or to give flowers. What they represent is also a kind of emotion—an emotion that urge them to act in spite of the danger they know they are exposed to. This kind of emotion grows from watching news day after day for about ten months. There are also often, in my vicinity, young people who chat about what happened the day before, what is going on, and the news that upset them.
When I do live broadcast, I always remind myself that my job is not only to allow those who are not there to see what is happening, but also to record and document everything, including all the sound and scenes that my camera can capture—the violence, actions, injuries, slogans, as well as the background such as the sky and the honking of hones by drivers. It is a record of the collective emotion of the Hong Kong people. While it may not give the full picture, it is still better than there being none.
It is Hong Kong people’s intense emotion that gave rise to this form of reporting and recording, and every evening express their desire for more of this kind of reporting. I am not the only one doing live broadcast. Hundreds of media and non-media workers are doing it and many do it better than I. No doubt Hong Kong people love to watch live broadcast, and it is because they care. I think there is a need to document what bred this emotion and how has it been developing. There is also a need for more documentation of what has been happening off screen and behind the scene. What media workers are doing in these respects are definitely very important and should attract more attention.
It has been a year now. As we ruminate over what has been happening, Hong Kong readers and audience will be reading and watching news under a new light and with new emotions. Let us continue to do our best to capture, record and report.