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The following is issued on behalf of the Broadcasting Authority:
The Broadcasting Authority this month (March) considered one complaint case concerning one public complaint against a radio programme. The case was about the programme "On A Clear Day" broadcast on the CR1 Channel of Hong Kong Commercial Broadcasting Company Limited on September 11, 2007 from 7.30am to 10am. Please see Appendix for details.
The authority also noted that in February, the Commissioner for Television and Entertainment Licensing (CTEL) dealt with 77 cases (2,981 complaints) under her delegated authority, of which two cases (two complaints) were classified as minor breaches, and 56 cases (72 complaints) as unsubstantiated, under section 11 of the Broadcasting Authority Ordinance. Nineteen cases (2,907 complaints) were outside the ambit of section 11 of the ordinance (Note 1). The monthly complaints figures dealt with by the CTEL since January are shown in Figure 1. A breakdown of the unsubstantiated cases by nature is at Figure 2. Please refer to the authority website: www.hkba.hk for details of the complaints.
Note 1: The figure included the complaint cases on the television programmes "Operation Relief 2008" (1,629 complaints) and "Jade Solid Gold" (1,232 complaints).
Appendix:
Case - Radio programme "On A Clear Day" broadcast on the CR1 Channel of Hong Kong Commercial Broadcasting Company Limited on September 11, 2007, from 7.30am to 10am
A member of the public complained that the hosts confused the concepts of call and put derivative warrants and misled listeners about the operation of the derivative warrants by citing a wrong example.
The authority noted that in a mini-segment of the programme which featured information on finance, a host drew an analogy between derivative warrants and a manufacturer's warranty of an electrical appliance and remarked that the issuer of the warrant would buy back its warrant under all circumstances. The hosts' reference to warrant was general, making no specific differentiation between call and put derivative warrants in explaining how one would make a profit or a loss.
The authority considered that the host's elaboration in the profit and loss concept of derivative warrants could not be considered as accurate.
Hong Kong Commercial Broadcasting Company Limited was given an advice to observe more closely paragraph 20A of the Radio Code of Practice on Programme Standards which provides that the licensees shall make reasonable efforts to ensure that the factual contents of current affairs programmes are accurate.
Ends/Monday, March 31, 2008
Issued at HKT 16:03
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