Hong Kong‘s five major television stations unanimously confirmed on the 29th that this year’s Academy Awards ceremony will not be broadcast for the first Time in 52 years, confirming previous foreign media reports that this year’s finalists and their works, featuring sensitive current events in China and Hong Kong, had been blocked by the Chinese Communist Party‘s Central Propaganda Department. In response, Hong Kong media veteran Pan Xiaotao lamented on Facebook, “Has Hong Kong TV been brought under the control of the Chinese Propaganda Department?”
The ninety-third Academy Awards ceremony will be held on the 25th of next month at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, California. The Standard, Hong Kong’s most widely circulated pro-establishment English-language newspaper, reports that TVB, which was awarded exclusive broadcast rights last year, has confirmed that it “does not have the rights to broadcast the Academy Awards in 2012. The station has decided not to continue discussions about this year’s broadcast rights for purely commercial reasons,” NowTV, ViuTV, Cable TV and Hong Kong Kai TV also confirmed that they did not get the broadcast rights.
Hong Kong’s Apple Daily pointed out that TVB, which made a big deal of its exclusive broadcast last year, broke its past practice of broadcasting live in the morning and re-broadcasting in the evening, and this year “handled it in a low profile, which was questioned as being related to political correctness. In fact, the American “Radio Free Asia” (RFA) 16 has revealed that the Norwegian documentary about the 2009 “anti-China” movement in Hong Kong “not to cut the seat”, and China blocked the “insult to China “In addition to preventing people from learning about current events in Hong Kong and other places through the film, it also prevented the “embarrassing” scenes of award winners speaking the truth on stage from reaching China at the same time.
Ai Weiwei’s work was cited for violating national security laws
On the other hand, a black-and-white photograph of Ai Weiwei, a dissident Chinese artist in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD), with his middle finger in Beijing‘s Tiananmen Square, has been criticized by pro-China media, writers and groups for violating the National Security Law of Hong Kong. The West Kowloon Cultural Authority Board Chairman Henry Tang claimed on the 29th that the “M+” museum, which is expected to open this year, never intended to exhibit the “indecent” work, and that the State Security Office had not been approached on the matter, and that if it was found to be in violation of the law, the museum would be dealt with according to the law.
However, the director of M+, Anja Hua, has said that the museum has no intention of avoiding works related to the June 4 Tiananmen Square incident or the “anti-Send China” movement, including Ai Weiwei’s masterpiece.
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