| Abstract |
In line with a prevailing global trend, the Hong Kong government has for the past decade been experimenting with deregulation for its broadcast media sector. As such, numerous uncertainties and controversies have been added to the recurrent problems of media regulation. It is far from clear to which directions or destination the process of deregulation will be heading. Meanwhile, self-regulation by the media industry, particularly for the print media, has been much researched and advocated in the past few years in many parts of the world. This paper surveys the increasingly popular concept of self-regulation and its relationship with media freedom and democracy, and examines the potentials of self-regulation as a model for future broadcast media regulation in Hong Kong. It further explores the feasibility of converting the territory's existing government controlled regulatory mechanism into a self-regulatory device.
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