Quotes of the Day
He was just one small man in a large crowd of half a million. But as the black-clad protesters streamed into Hong Kong's Victoria Park last week, they would stop for a moment to stare at the slight, unprepossessing individual. Only when he lifted a megaphone, broadcasting a familiar voice whose Gatling-gun delivery epitomizes the staccato clatter of the Cantonese dialect, were they sure. For this was Wong Yuk-man, the phenomenally popular talk-radio host who had used his bully pulpit to incite one of the world's most politically docile populaces into marching for its future. For weeks, Wong, also known by his English appellation Raymond Wong, had gone on air during his 6:30-8:00 p.m. show, "Close Encounters of the Political Kind," to lambaste the Article 23 bill, the controversial antisedition legislation that may be enacted on July 9. When listeners flooded the lines to denounce the legislation, Wong urged them to stand up for Hong Kong and join the mass march. In fact, he seized every opportunity to do so. At a private screening of the Disney animated movie Finding Nemo the night before the protest, Wong was asked to talk about his Cantonese voice-over for Bruce the shark. Instead he shouted, "March tomorrow!" Wong seems to feel it's his duty to spur the public. As he says matter of factly: "I'm an icon of free speech in Hong Kong."
Broadcasters like Wong are in the vanguard of Asia's radio revolution. Much of the region is still too technologically backward or remote to rely on the Internet or on text messaging to gather information, form virtual communities, exchange and spread ideas, or just vent. Instead, it's radio—particularly talk radio—that is proving the channel of choice, not least because all you need is a simple transistor radio and a phone. A new generation of outspoken radio-show hosts are not only airing their own contrarian views but are allowing we, the people, to speak out. Asia's talk-radio programs are giving societies reared on authoritarian regimes and schooled more in discipline than dissent a chance to participate in political and social dialogue with newfound confidence. After all, most of Asia's traditional media continue to focus on the ruling élite's message, excluding controversial or minority voices. But talk radio is a microphone through which even the smallest voice can be magnified. For Asia's citizens, muzzled for so long, radio's lure is not only the freedom to talk—but to talk back.
Last week's march in Hong Kong, galvanized in part by Wong Yuk-man's radio entreaties, never had the pretension of actually overthrowing a ruling government. In many ways, the protest was a ritualistic expression of futility, participants wearing black shirts that symbolized the funerary nature of their march. But somewhere along the way, the expected 100,000 protesters snowballed to at least five times that. Suddenly, the protest grew a vitality of its own that sparked a deep democratic longing that most Hong Kongers didn't even realize they held. Wong, the territory's Great Communicator, may have started the dialogue. But this was little Hong Kong speaking out loudly on its very own. The territory's experience last week is a reminder that, more than any print publication or Web chat room, talk-radio hosts throughout Asia are building cohesive, virtual communities that can actually make a difference.
Turn the radio dial a bit, and political discourse gives way to rants on straying husbands or disobedient teenagers. Social issues may not have the gravitas of incipient revolution, but talk radio addresses far more than a political need. Traditional Asian culture is chock-full of taboo subjects: sex, religion, sex, suicide and sex. Talk radio allows the shy and curious alike to discuss issues they would never dare broach even with their closest friends. Ye Sha hosts a late-night radio show in Shanghai, a city where the neon present collides with Confucian tradition. These days, many of her calls are from wives and mistresses on either side of the extramarital divide. With fewer neighborhood spies to keep track of a person's movements, such illicit relationships are burgeoning, but there's little chance to discuss these forbidden affairs except on programs like Ye's "Accompanying You 'Til Dawn." Other calls that Ye fields have brought tales of incest, spousal abuse and date rape. "My program provides a relatively private space for people to tell their stories," says the 34-year-old Ye, who prides herself on useful advice instead of simple platitudes. "Newspapers don't have so much space for ordinary people's lives."
Other shows do more than just dispense advice. In Bangkok, a 24-hour radio program called "Uniting to Help Each Other" pulls in 800,000 listeners during peak hours by serving as a proxy people's advocate. An errant spouse? The radio station will dispatch a therapist to provide counseling at the couple's home. A sick puppy? Callers will flood the line with recommendations on the best veterinarian. And that's only the beginning. The station helps callers find wallets left in the back of taxis and notifies the fire station when there's a blaze in the neighborhood. It also badgers hospitals to admit patients who don't have adequate funds and harasses lawmakers to change legislation. "In Thailand we have ministries for social services and welfare, but they do not work well," says program manager Yanyong Sangpow. "The people need us to get things done, to cut through the red tape."
Thailand's other hit radio program doesn't do much to help its listeners at all. Instead, shock jock Veera Theerapat spends most of his on-air time ridiculing callers foolish enough to try to parry with Thailand's Howard Stern. At first, Bangkok denizens took offense at Veera's brassy attitude; this is, after all, a country where reserve and politeness are practically national characteristics. Newspapers chided Veera for bringing the worst of the West to the East. But Veera's direct approach soon caught on. "He always says just what he thinks," says engineer Chartchai Kaewsung, who tunes into Veera when he is driving in Bangkok's endlessly snarled traffic. "He is not scared to criticize anyone, even when it comes to the government." Indeed, at a time of economic duress and social uncertainty, Veera refuses to dispense messages of false hope or make promises he can't keep. The audience has responded to his ruthlessly practical, no-nonsense approach. "When I first started this program in 1998, people thought I was aggressive and rude," recalls the former business journalist whose bookish appearance belies his swaggering on-air demeanor. "But within a few months, people were ringing to tell me that now they think I am brave and sincere." Religion is also a hot topic on the airwaves. In China's eastern Fujian province, a handful of radio programs discuss family values and declining morality among today's youth. But anyone steeped in Christian code words recognizes that the show is little more than a thinly veiled religious sermon—and the authorities either haven't caught on or think the program is too innocuous to shut down. "Loving your neighbor is very important," says one caller to a Xiamen city radio show. "We must all remember that." In Indonesia, where the Muslim majority isn't forced to hide its religiosity, spirituality is still only reluctantly covered by the print media and television. "Most TV stations are too conservative," says Ulil Abshar-Abdalla, one of the country's best-known young Muslim intellectuals. "They're afraid they might lose ads or face demonstrations."
Instead, Ulil uses the radio to dissect issues facing modern Islam today. Unlike in the U.S., where an increase in conservative-Christian broadcasting has sharpened an us-vs.-them divide, Ulil preaches inclusiveness in his weekly 30-minute show "Religion and Tolerance." More than 5 million Indonesians listen in as Ulil preaches a moderate and progressive message of Islam. But not everyone appreciates his take: earlier this year, a west Javanese radical group issued a death fatwa against him. But Ulil remains undaunted. Just last week, he was back in fine form, discussing how each individual experiences Islam differently, a topic usually reserved for ulemas.
Other talk-radio hosts have faced similar threats—and more—for their outspoken ways. In the mid-'80s, Jun Pala, a firebrand radio host in the southern Philippine city of Davao had his program interrupted when an assailant shot him in the recording booth. The gunman was believed to be a communist insurgent, angry at Pala's vocal anticommunist stance. This year, Pala was shot at again, this time by men in police uniforms. Although Pala escaped unscathed, two of his bodyguards were seriously injured. A fellow Filipino radio broadcaster wasn't so lucky. The same day Pala was attacked, John Villanueva, a procommunist talk show host from the northern Luzon city of Legazpi, was shot to death on his way home from the radio station by two motorcycle-riding military men.
In Hong Kong, radio-show personalities face less overt intimidation, but their broadcast freedom is nevertheless being threatened. Albert Cheng, a bespectacled society icon and radio host, decided last month to take indefinite leave from his ultra-popular talk show, "Teacup in a Storm," after the Broadcast Authority warned his radio station, Commercial Radio, about his on-air conduct. (Wong Yuk-man's program is carried by the same station.) The warning comes at a sensitive time, when the issue of the station's license—due for renewal next year—is still being addressed. The controversy centered on two shows this spring during which Cheng harangued government officials, calling one "doglike." The 57-year-old Cheng is hardly one to give in without a fight. In 1998, he was brutally slashed by suspected mobsters after he criticized Hong Kong's notorious triads on-air. Undeterred, he went back to his show. This time, though, Cheng isn't sure what he will do about the government warning. "We've been under a lot of pressure," he says, noting the rise in pro-Beijing sentiment among Hong Kong officials. "[But] we can't lose this freedom, this space."
These airwaves have, throughout most of modern Asia's history, been controlled by authoritarian governments rather than loquacious rabble rousers. Ever since the first crackly radio broadcast, Asia's strongmen have known the power of radio to rally the masses. Radio, after all, reaches even the remotest hinterland, as those listening secretly to the BBC World Service in places like Burma or Tibet know. When Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines in 1972, one of the first things he did was shut down the radio stations. For Marcos and other autocrats, radio was a tool of subjugation, not incitement. Citizens across Asia were forced to listen to monotonous government broadcasts trumpeting the latest made-up economic statistics or warming relations with an irrelevant African republic.
The role of radio in Asia began to shift in the 1980s, when the first shoots of democratic reform sprouted across the region. When Corazon Aquino led her bloodless revolution to overthrow Marcos in 1986, she was determined to use the airwaves once more. As citizens gathered in the steamy heat of their shacks, they heard then police chief and future President Fidel Ramos boast on the radio that the military had abandoned Marcos to join the people's cause. An exaggeration, to be sure. But the crow of victory prompted thousands to flood the streets and give the people-power revolution the critical mass it needed to succeed. So, too, in Thailand six years later did radio stations help mobilize hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, who forced the resignation of a military commander who had seized control of the country. "In many ways the voice of Thailand's so-called civil society was first heard and gained power on radio," says Sunai Phasuk, a political scientist at Bangkok's Thammasat University. "It's proven to be very powerful, and politicians clamor to get their message across on the airwaves."
Imperceptibly, radio was changing from a tool of power to a tool of the people. Nowhere was the shift more apparent than in Taiwan in the mid-'90s, when the then opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) depended on an underground station called Greenpeace to broadcast its samizdat message. (The station has no relationship with the environmental group of the same name.) On Greenpeace's unfettered airwaves, citizens could express proindependence views and criticize the then ruling Kuomintang (KMT). Many supporters called in at night, taking care to keep the lights off at home lest their neighbors suspect they may be taking part in the clandestine radio movement. "The station worked not only as a public-opinion medium," recalls Greenpeace head Chen Der-li, "but also as a command center to announce rally activities and to mobilize supporters to the democratic movement." The DPP won a landmark presidential election in 2000.
Now, people power up and down the dial has become a self-perpetuating force. Earlier this year, tens of thousands of Bangkok citizens had their radios tuned to 96 FM, home to "Uniting to Help Each Other," when the show's usual excited chatter was replaced by the ominous notes of a military march. The army, which along with the government controls most of Thailand's radio stations, had abruptly pulled the 24-hour show off the air. Critics claim they were punishing the media group INN for barbs aimed at Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra that were made on another INN-owned radio show, but a government spokesman denies it. The plug pulling wasn't unusual; Thai media companies are ever mindful of getting their licenses revoked and are often forced to adjust their programs accordingly. This time, though, the public came to radio's rescue. Within hours, thousands of irate listeners had signed a petition demanding their show back. Parliament was lobbied, and scores of taxi drivers, their cabs draped with protest banners, joined a solidarity rally in front of the radio show's offices. Two days later, the military backed down and the station was back on the air. "We were delighted with the support," says Somchai Swangkarn, managing director of the INN Group. "It's the first time in Thai radio history that listeners have protested on a radio station's behalf." Thailand's experience was a subtle presaging of what the Hong Kong government found out last week. This region is tuning in as never before to talk-radio hosts whose medium delivers powerful messages like no other outlet. Asia's communications revolution is in full swing, and this time it will not be televised.
- Hannah Beech
- Talk radio is enabling Asians to air their grievances—and to organize politically—like never before