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BBC gender pay gap row highlights wider issue of disclosure, says the Beeb’s Jamie Angus

The BBC's Jamie Angus addressed the gender pay gap row currently facing the corporation. Photo: FCC/Sarah Graham The BBC’s Jamie Angus addressed the gender pay gap row currently facing the corporation. Photo: FCC/Sarah Graham

The gender pay gap at the BBC is “not something any of us in senior management at the BBC feel comfortable about”, according to Deputy Director of BBC World Service Group Jamie Angus.

The former Today show editor added that the corporation’s controversial salaries, revealed by the BBC last week on the orders of the British Government, were last year’s figures and said that when next year’s figures were published “the direction of travel will be clear”.

The question of the row over discrepancies in the pay of male and female on-air talent was the first to be posed to Angus, also Editorial Director of BBC Global News Ltd, after he threw the floor open to members and guests following a presentation on the BBC’s global viewing figures.

Angus, who was appearing at the FCC as part of the club’s Meet The Editor series, said the row had highlighted a much wider issue about pay disclosure, and that other employers would now be forced to look at their own salary structures.

When pressed further on whether veteran presenter John Humphrys, for example, should be paid more than other journalists, Angus agreed that salaries should based on merit and value to the audience. He added: “He’s a genuinely outstanding talent who the BBC is lucky to have and he should be paid a lot of money.” Angus said that the BBC should not pay full market rate salaries as it is a public service broadcaster but conceded that finding a pay scale that was fair to everyone would be a challenge.

In his presentation to members and guests, Angus had addressed the rise of the digital age and its effect on the BBC’s operations. He discussed the various forms of competition now faced by TV channels in live streaming services such as Netflix, and in turn their effect on advertising. He said services such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu had disruptive, ad-free subscription models that were causing big structural challenges for the TV market.

Watch Jamie Angus discuss the BBC’s efforts to evolve in the digital age

In spite of the rise of digital, Angus said viewing figures showed that World Service reach was up while digital traffic was flat. BBC world news currently reaches 99 million people a week globally – a 12% rise in a year. He attributed this to two factors: owning a state-of-the-art TV screen complete with TV bundle was aspirational for the rising middle classes; and people who consumed their breaking news on social media were turning to trusted TV sources to verify their information.

The real challenge was generating revenue from advertising, particularly in an age where more and more viewers are turning to ad-free formats like Netflix. Angus said the BBC was “immensely lucky” to have 3bn a year in public service funding in the UK – the British TV licence fee – that “sits behind everything we do”.

As for the inevitable rise of digital platforms, Angus was upbeat about the future of TV for news broadcasters: “TV generates cultural moments that audiences can share together that digital fails to provide,” he said, citing world news events, sports, events drama and entertainment that entire households and workplaces will watch together. “The power of TV is with news providers for many years to come.”

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June 17, 2017 Board minutes

June 17, 2017 Board minutes

Income Statement – June 2017

Income Statement – June 2017

Me and the Media: Francis Moriarty’s career highlights – and a missed golden opportunity

Francis Moriarty was senior political correspondent for RTHK. Photo: realhongkongnews Francis Moriarty was senior political correspondent for RTHK. Photo: Apple Daily

Francis Moriarty is a freelance journalist and former Secretary & Correspondent Governor of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong.

Previously: Senior Political Correspondent, RTHK; founder of Human Rights Press Awards.

What made you want to work in media?

The media – a term that did not appear in its collective form taking the singular until well into my career – was never that I sought to join. Not unlike other callings, journalism came out to find me. A nun teaching the eighth grade at St. Mary the Morningstar school volunteered me as the editor of the class newspaper. That led into being subsequently volunteered, also by the Sisters of St. Joseph, as a competitor at the statewide speech festival in the radio broadcasting category. My voice had not yet changed and I still had peach fuzz. I found myself finishing as a runner-up to a guy who looked like he needed to shave twice a day and sounded like a young Walter Cronkite. It was a crushing experience but a learning one. Several years later, I saw a student-wanted post on a school bulletin board seeking a part-time writer on the local paper’s sports desk. I’m not sure if anyone else even applied, so they hired me. That was exactly 50 years ago and the paper was the Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. I now write a regular column for them. Such is progress.

What has been a career high point?

I’ve been extremely fortunate in my career and have had a lot of high points. Hitchhiking across the United States and ending up in the MJ degree program at U.C. Berkeley was one early high point. Another game-changer was being selected as a visiting fellow in the Journalists in Europe fellowship program in Paris, France, a decade on. This would turn out, years later, to lead me to Hong Kong.

One of the more satisfying career moments was getting sacked as editor a weekly paper in California after doing a lengthy series of articles that really angered some of the paper’s major advertisers. The publisher caved in to the pressure. Though it stung, and felt like a low at the time, it led to my moving from Silicon Valley up to San Francisco, opening a whole new world of opportunities and major stories, including the People’s Temple, the arrival of the Boat People from Vietnam, the rise of the gay political movement and the double assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and gay Supervisor Harvey Milk. One of the more dramatic moments was being in Chicago for the first election of Barack Obama and seeing him and his family on the election night. There’s a fairly lengthy list of other major stories, including 4 June 1989, and the many events leading to Hong Kong’s handover.

What career advice would you give to your younger self?

Don’t just do jobs, interesting though they may be, but conceive of a longer-range career and then seek to manage it – while remaining flexible and spontaneous. Also, should anyone ever again offer you the chance to be a full partner in the world’s first computer-game company, this time say yes.

The FCC bids farewell to long-time member Francis Moriarty

FCC members gathered on Tuesday evening to say goodbye to Francis Moriarty in the traditional way: by raising a few glasses on the verandah.

Francis, a long-time resident of Hong Kong and former political reporter for RTHK, is to embark on a new life in America.

FCC president Juliana Liu presented Francis with a framed painting of the club. But it wasn’t the only gift presented on the night: Francis – founder of the Human Rights Press Awards – gave the club some souvenirs from his time as journalist for the club’s archive.

Watch Francis Moriarty’s leaving speech and scroll down for our gallery

FCC supports FCC China’s calls for end to intimidation of journalists reporting Liu Xiaobo’s death

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong, supports this statement from our colleagues at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China.

The FCCC is concerned by reports that foreign journalists in Shenyang covering the death of Nobel Peace laureate, Liu Xiaobo, have been harassed and intimidated by plainclothes security officers.

Reporters “were escorted everywhere by plainclothes men, who shamelessly followed them into restaurants and even bathrooms,” according to one report.

Another journalist said: “I entered the hotel lobby to catch a taxi. Four plainclothes state security officers, all men and wearing black, were already waiting. They asked me where I was going as well as where my friend, a photojournalist, was going. I ignored them. Shortly after I showed up at a nearby press conference hastily convened about Liu Xiaobo, the same men were already waiting in the hotel lobby. They stayed there for the rest of the day, glancing over at us periodically, about 15 feet away. They would follow us as we went to the bathroom or make calls outside.”

Further details described in the Tweets below have caused us concern.

The FCCC calls on the Chinese government to take steps to prevent foreign reporters from being subjected to such intimidation.

He died a hero. A democratic one: Ilaria Maria Sala’s poignant tribute to Liu Xiaobo

Activist Liu Xiaobo died on July 13, 2017. Activist Liu Xiaobo died on July 13, 2017.

I have never seen Liu Xiaobo as much as in the past few days. His picture comes up every other tweet. He’s all over my social media, in the newspapers and magazines. On TV.  Among all the sudden snapshots, I look for those of the one I knew. The ones before the last jail term, and before we all saw him in that striped pyjama.

It is unexpected: to see someone I had badly wanted to see again, except that now there is no hope left. Now, after the hastily arranged “sea burial” to prevent even a tear on his grave, the only thing we can do is offer flowers to the ocean.

As I parse through the pictures I look for his smile, hoping to find the right angle, the one I remember. I have no pictures of Liu Xiaobo: our friendship was before smartphones and selfies, and I am weary that these other pictures, of the last days, may come in canceling my own memories.

We met often at the coffee shop of a hotel near the old CCTV tower, in Western Beijing – not too far from the Military Museum.

I had heard him give a lecture at university, but we became friends after I read a short, serious but humouristic piece he had written for the Hong Kong magazine Cheng Ming. It was an autobiographical essay about smoking his first cigarette at age ten, as an act of rebellion during the Cultural Revolution. The story – how he had stolen the cigarettes from his father  (a rebellion against the patriarchal family structure) and smoked at school (a rebellion against the reactionary education system) and got punished for it, was his own way of “coming clean.”

It was expressed in a fun way, but it wasn’t a joke: Liu Xiaobo couldn’t tolerate the endless blame-shifting of China’s post-Cultural Revolution literature. “We must tell the truth”, he would say serious, smoking, stammering: “about ourselves, about what we did. Why does everyone only talk about their own suffering? How come China pretends to be a country of victims, and never of perpetrators?” he asked. His description of that small-time theft was his way of admitting the truth – but he was also hoping to provoke, and make more people think about the boiler plate stories they were churning out. He didn’t succeed.

We kept meeting, after that, and I kept being struck by how no gesture was too small for him to reflect on its political significance. Once, as we were sipping coffee and talking about the role of dissidence, I said to him: “I don’t like heroes.” “Why not?” he asked. “Because they often become autocratic and anti-democratic.” He nodded, while taking a long drag from his cigarette – at the time, smoking indoors was allowed everywhere in Beijing. I thought of this conversation as I watched horrified as he died of neglected cancer, and as the authorities decided for his remains to be scattered in the sea.

He died a hero. A democratic one.

Ilaria Maria Sala is a former FCC Hong Kong president, and writes for The Guardian, ChinaFile, and Quartz. 

How to help solve Hong Kong’s housing shortage? Reclamation, reclamation, reclamation

Stephen Wong, Deputy Executive Director of Our Hong Kong Foundation, discussed the city's housing problems. Photo: Sarah Graham/FCC Stephen Wong, Deputy Executive Director of Our Hong Kong Foundation, discussed the city’s housing problems. Photo: Sarah Graham/FCC

Hong Kong needs to find 9,000 hectares of land to reclaim in order to help ease the city’s housing crisis, according to public policy expert Stephen Wong.

The Deputy Executive Director of Our Hong Kong Foundation – a non-profit organisation seeking to promote the long-term and overall interests of Hong Kong through public policy research, analysis and recommendation – told the July 13 club lunch that a lack of long-term coherent debate on the matter, coupled with more than a decade in which there has been little or no reclamation in Hong Kong, had contributed to a shortage of land on which to build much-needed housing.

Wong said that 9,000 hectares of land – or 1.26 million units – was needed to ease the city’s shortage of housing, and that the government’s existing land development plans would only provide 5,300 hectares of land. He suggested that the remaining 4,000 hectares come from reclamation and change of use of industrial units, such as Kwai Chung Container Terminals. He said Hong Kong was built on reclamation, and suggested a large scale project would make up the government shortfall.

Wong concluded: “There can be no new towns without reclamation. Without reclamation… our inventory is depleting.”

A slide from Stephen Wong's presentation. A slide from Stephen Wong’s presentation.

In the past decade, he said, land shortage in Hong Kong had slowed down economic growth and led to a serious undersupply of housing, which in turn had created skyrocketing property prices that are unaffordable to the majority of people living in the city.

He explained: “In Hong Kong we only have 24% of land that is used to develop, so the remaining 76% is green areas.” This, he said, compared to 73%  developed land in Singapore. “We have high density compared with rest of the world,” he added.

Building new towns, he said, would take 20-30 years, and Hong Kong was already falling behind other major cities so needed to act now: “In the past 10 years we have no new towns. Where is our next new new town? In completion in the next 20-30 years. Of course there’s a problem in Hong Kong because we’ve done nothing for 30 years.”

Watch Stephen Wong talk about Hong Kong’s housing shortage

Me and the Media: Elaine Ng on the challenges of covering the arts in Hong Kong

Elaine Ng. Elaine Ng.

Elaine W. Ng is the editor and publisher of ArtAsiaPacific, a 24-year old publication dedicated to contemporary art from Asia, the Pacific and the Middle East.

Previously: Hanart TZ Gallery, Videotage.

What made you want to work in media?

My very first job out of university in the mid-1990s was working at Hanart TZ Gallery. It was a pioneer in Hong Kong, focused on promoting contemporary art from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. There was virtually no market for contemporary art, especially from China, back then. As we were hardly selling in those days, the work that my colleagues and I did entailed a lot of research – helping edit the essays, and even assisting museum institutions in the US and Europe in their initial research on Chinese artists. This aspect of conducting research and interviews with artists was appealing, so working on ArtAsiaPacific—one of the two only publications focused on contemporary art from the Asia region (at that time)—was a pretty seamless transition.

 

What has been a career high point?

One highlight of my career was being invited to speak to European central bankers in Florence, Italy, about investing in the arts after the 2008 economic crisis. I wanted to point out that art can flourish with or without a booming art market. The bankers were amazed by the artistic scenes in Asia which I introduced that were dynamic, colourful and fascinating. I even got a handwritten letter afterwards thanking me and ruminating on some of my points that I made by the former governor of Bank of England, Lord Mervyn King.

What has been a low point?

It’s not specifically a low point to me directly, but I think the general atmosphere for publishing and editorial work has not been encouraging, in part as a reflection of politics (all over the world today) along with Hong Kong’s unique situation. It’s also been challenging to find good young art writers and editors in Hong Kong who can work in English, I hope this might change with the evolution of the art scene here, which will attract more talented young people. 

What career advice would you give to your younger self?

I would say go for the difficult route, on a path that will challenge you, which you will grow from. Even if you find yourself with a tough, terrible boss, you can learn something from that experience. An easy job usually leads to boredom and eventually dissatisfaction. If you are young, follow your dreams to the extreme, no excuses. The art world turns out to be pretty dreamy, as well as hard as nails. It is only when you “grow up” that you realise you had very little to lose when you were young, and a whole life ahead of you to gain.

Elaine, right, at the 1998 opening of the Hanart TZ Gallery. Photo: Hanart TZ Gallery Elaine, right, at the 1998 opening of the Hanart TZ Gallery. Photo: Hanart TZ Gallery
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