Report No. 32, March 1999

Chapter 3

Control of obscene and indecent articles by the
Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority

Summary and key findings

A. Introduction. The Government policy objective with respect to indecent materials is to ensure that young people are adequately protected from exposure to these materials while adults are allowed appropriate access to them. The publication and public display of obscene and indecent articles are controlled under the Control of Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance (COIAO ?Cap. 390) which mainly deals with the level of obscenity and indecency of articles published to the local community and of articles displayed in public. Under the COIAO, articles are classified into three classes. Class I articles may be published without restriction. Class II articles are subject to restrictions on their display, access and sale and may not be sold to persons under 18 years old. Class III articles are prohibited. A judicial body, the Obscene Articles Tribunal (OAT), is the authority for determining and classifying the decency of articles (paras. 1 to 5 and 9). B. The Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (TELA) is one of the government agencies involved in the enforcement of the COIAO. It is mainly responsible for monitoring articles published or displayed. It monitors the contents of articles on sale in the market and takes appropriate action if the articles do not comply with the COIAO (paras. 10 and 13). C. Audit review. Audit has recently conducted a review to examine the efficiency and effectiveness of the TELA in monitoring the publication and public display of obscene and indecent articles and to ascertain whether there is room for improvement in its enforcement of the COIAO (para. 17). The major audit findings are summarised in paragraphs D to I below. D. Lack of systematic training on article classification standards. The TELA has not provided systematic training on article classification standards to its inspection staff. Furthermore, the TELA has not provided procedural guidance to its inspection staff to assist them to perform their monitoring duties (paras. 23 to 24). E. Planning and monitoring of routine surveillance inspections. The TELA has not made any risk assessment in the selection of the publication outlets for routine surveillance inspection. There is also no documentary evidence to show that the TELA has done any strategic planning for the inspections to ensure that publication outlets which are prone to contravene the provisions of the COIAO will be inspected more frequently than others. In addition, the TELA has not established a performance standard for the number of inspections which should be carried out by each inspection staff for its management to measure and monitor their performance (paras. 29 and 32). F. Enforcement of the COIAO. The TELA inspection staff have not exercised their power under the COIAO to seize obscene and indecent articles which contravene the COIAO. Furthermore, the TELA has not taken prompt prosecution action against some publishers who have contravened the COIAO (paras. 40 to 43). G. Enforcement action on obscene and indecent video compact discs (VCDs). The number of pornographic VCDs monitored by the TELA only made up a small proportion of the total number of articles monitored by the TELA. During the past three years, the number of VCDs referred by the TELA to the OAT for classification accounted for no more than 7.5% of the total number of referrals. The TELA monitoring and enforcement actions on obscene and indecent VCDs are therefore inadequate to effectively control this form of article (paras. 51 to 52). H. Public opinion survey on article classification standards. Despite a commitment made in 1987 by the then Chief Secretary to conduct periodic public opinion surveys to ascertain the community standards on the classification of articles, such a survey commenced only in September 1998. Audit considers that expeditious action should be taken to complete this long-overdue public opinion survey (para. 71). I. Publicity and educational activities. The TELA has no long-term strategic planning on its publicity and educational programmes to improve the control of obscene and indecent articles. In addition, the TELA has not carried out any formal evaluation on the effectiveness of the publicity and educational activities (para. 84). J. Audit recommendations. Audit has made the following major recommendations that the Commissioner for Television and Entertainment Licensing should: (a) produce training materials on article classification standards and provide adequate training to assist the TELA inspection staff in the carrying out of their monitoring and inspection duties efficiently (first and third insets of para. 25); (b) promptly promulgate a guidance manual for the performance of duties under the COIAO (fourth inset of para. 25); (c) formulate a strategic plan for inspecting more frequently publication outlets in high-risk areas (first inset of para. 35); (d) promptly establish a performance standard for routine surveillance inspections to facilitate monitoring of the performance of the TELA inspection staff (third inset of para. 35); (e) instruct the TELA inspection staff to exercise their power of seizure under the COIAO when they reasonably suspect that an offence under the COIAO has been committed (first inset of para. 44); (f) step up the TELA monitoring of pornographic VCDs in routine surveillance inspections and refer a larger number of dubious VCDs to the OAT for classification (inset (a) of para. 60); (g) take expeditious action to ensure that the public opinion survey on classification standards for obscene and indecent articles is completed satisfactorily and consider conducting similar surveys regularly in future (para. 72); (h) formulate a long-term strategy for the TELA publicity and educational activities in order to improve the control of obscene and indecent articles (first inset of para. 85); and (i) conduct formal evaluations periodically to assess the extent to which the TELA publicity and educational activities have achieved their intended objectives (third inset of para. 85). K. Response from the Administration. The Commissioner for Television and Entertainment Licensing has accepted all the audit recommendations.