News and Education Policy in Hong Kong

Abstract

This thesis examines the press coverage of educational issues and the making of education policy in post-transition Hong Kong. Education is of great importance to Hong Kong. After the handover of sovereignty from Britain to China in 1997, Hong Kong’s new government introduced a thorough educational reform. As educational issues had a high priority on the new government’s agenda, media coverage of these issues increased dramatically. In addition, there was much speculation about how Hong Kong’s media would develop after the reversion to Chinese rule. A case study of news coverage of education issues in contemporary Hong Kong holds great interest not only for studying news and education policy but also because of the insights it gives into Hong Kong’s press and politics. The present study draws on the newsmaking and agenda-building literatures to develop an analytical framework that guides the research. By employing content analysis, and supplementing it with interview data from journalists and educators, the thesis examines the press coverage of four educational issues. The four issues were the compulsory mother-tongue teaching in secondary schools, a proposed language benchmark test for teachers, sex discrimination in the Secondary School Places Allocation System, and cuts to university funding between 2001 and 2004. In total, the content analysis included 1,385 items from four newspapers on these four issues. The research found, firstly, that the press is more interested in primary and secondary education than in tertiary education issues; secondly, that the news coverage of educational issues concentrated on conflicts, and while these could occur at all stages of the policy process, they were most frequently in the later parts; thirdly, that journalists’ judgement of the newsworthiness of individual events and news source activities strongly influenced the press coverage of education issues; and fourthly, that education coverage is dominated by few powerful news sources but the domination did not necessarily secure the sources positive coverage. So press coverage tended to reflect when policy development generated conflicts and public events, and reflected the publicity strategies of the strongest and best organised groups.