“Citizens Can Benefit from Market-Driven Journalism in Hong Kong.” Critically Examine.

The market-driven mechanism has marked some significance of journalism in Hong Kong. As the term “market-driven” has suggested, journalism becomes business-oriented in Hong Kong. While some people consider market-driven journalism a good change, a lot of problems are also arisen due to this practice. In this paper, we are going to examine the advantages and disadvantages of market-driven journalism in Hong Kong to see whether citizens can benefit from it.
Before talking about the pros and cons of market-driven journalism in Hong Kong, let us first give a clear definition of the topic. “Citizens” in the topic means readers or audience. The term “market-driven”, in this context, means act in order to obtain the maximum profit. According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, “journalism” is “the work of collecting and writing news stories for newspapers, magazines, radio or television” (699). In market-driven journalism, “the reader or viewer is now a ‘customer’. The news is a ‘product’. The circulation or signal area is now a ‘market’ ” (McManus 1).
In fact, market-driven journalism is a response to the fast-changing nature of media. Over the past decades, many different new forms of media appeared. Thus, the competition becomes keener among different media institutes. Therefore, they need to find a way to make themselves stand out and can sell well.
Most people believe that the biggest benefit of market-driven journalism is that readers can get what they want because media institutes will “serve” them accordingly as they are the “customers” who buy news. Yet, this might not be as good as what general public thinks. When practising market-driven journalism, the news selection process will be focused on business interests but not according to the importance of the news itself. As a result, citizens sometimes will be misled because media agenda have a great influence on public agenda.
Sometimes, in order to make the news sell well, media organizations use words... [continues]

Read full essay