Absence of Malice – New Quote I Love

Love the movie Absence of Malice starring Paul Newman and Sally Field. Love this monologue of the Assistant U.S. Attorney General character (played by Wilford Brimley) to newspaper reporter (played by Sally Field),

“You know and I know that we can’t tell you what to print or what not to. We hope you people in the press will act responsibly, but when you don’t, there ain’t a hell lot anybody can do about it. But we can’t have people going around leaking stuff for their own reasons. It ain’t legal. And worse than that, by God, it ain’t right.“

P.S. Right after I finished watching Absence of Malice, I started writing a long post to recommend the film to the HK newspaper Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai Chee Ying (黎智英), the paper’s editorial team and reporters because I consider Apple Daily‘s moral compass as mostly broken. Apple Daily reporters will write almost anything, put almost anything in cartoons (including a a sequences of cartoons depicting a young girl falling to her death), filming almost anything to sell newspapers.

P.P.S. According to Vanity Fair Dec 2004 article “The Gossip Behind the Gossip”,

Central, Hong Kong Pretty Girls – courtesy of HK newspaper Apple B.B. Daily (a lesson about freedom of press)

*** Hong Kong Pretty Girls ***

I am a keen observer of pretty girls in HK and around the world. Unfortunately today, against my better judgement, I will argue the Hong Kong newspaper Apple B.B. Daily should voluntarily stop taking photos of some of these pretty girls (中環我至靚) in Central, Hong Kong. Yes, some of these photos taking and publishing has to be stopped!  Especially many of the photos that I love the most. Isn’t this paradoxical?

Lets look at some of the photos of the pretty girls in Central, Hong Kong as reported by Apple B. B. Daily. And see if you notice a very important pattern.

??? Have you noticed a pattern yet? Lets look at some more pictures.

If you read Chinese, you can see the full Flickr set which I also posted the original Apple Daily text that goes with the photos for added context.

*** Observations ***

As you may have noticed already, the pretty girls in only 3, yes three, out of the above 13 photos actually post for the photos! And as you can read from the Flickr set, only those 3 photos have people’s names attached.

As you see, the other photos are of people talking on the phones or walking on the street simply going about their businesses. I have no indication that these people actually has or has not given Apple B.B. Daily permission to publish their photos on a column dedicated to photos of pretty girls in Central, Hong Kong!

Is this ethical behaviour? How will you react if this is your newspaper? Or if this is practiced in your city/country?

And if you live in Hong Kong, what do you think about this?

*** The Freedom of Press Paradox ***

While I don’t know the specific Hong Kong law but I suspect what the photographers of Apple B.B. Daily have done here are safely within the boundary of Hong Kong law. And I bet a Canadian dollar that a Canadian newspaper can legally take and publish photos of pretty girls standing on a public street too (although I can’t be sure).

The brave men and women of Apple B.B. Daily are truly the pioneers of newspapers and poor-tastes. At the end of day, no one can blame them for their total pursuit of making money through sex and smut at the same time as speaking truth to the powerful Chinese Beijing and HK governments.

Yes, seriously, Apple B. B. Daily do fight for democracy at the same time as they insert B. B. (bouncy breasts) of ladies in bikinis into completely serious news article!

*** Concluding Thoughts ***

Hong Kong is a really vibrant and strange market for newspapers, for both paid and recently free newspapers. Apple B. B. Daily bossman Mr. Jimmy Lai is one of the most intriguing and interesting entrepreneurs in Asia unfortunately the way he runs his newspapers (or allowed his newspapers to be run) just make me sick.