The life cycle of iconic sound bites: politicians’ transgressive utterances in media discourses

Verbal transgression, talk scandal, and the media

In his seminal theorization, Thompson (2000) categorized political scandals according to the transgression involved and argued that contemporary political scandals mainly fall into three types: sexual, power, and financial. Built upon this typology, Ekstrom and Johansson (2008) added “talk scandal” as a fourth category. Talk scandals involve the transgression of norms of public discourse. They typically involve problematic verbal statements. Obviously, not all verbal transgressions become talk scandals. What is said only becomes scandalous when it is “able to awaken such an extensive and general discontent that it seriously threatens a politician’s reputation and career” (Ekstrom and Johansson, 2008: 64).

Although verbal transgressions cannot be equated with talk scandals, Ekstrom and Johansson’s (2008) discussion and the broader literature on mediated scandals do provide insights for the analysis of politicians’ transgressive utterances in the media. Ekstrom and Johansson focused mainly on developing a typology of talk scandals. Following Thompson (2000), they differentiated between first-order and second-order talk scandals. The former refers to cases in which the transgressive utterances constituted the scandals, whereas the latter occurs when a politician’s responses to an existing scandal created a new scandal. Ekstrom and Johansson further distinguished among five types of first-order scandals according to where the verbal transgression was committed and how it was publicized. A talk scandal can arise: (1) when transgressive remarks made “back-stage” (in Goffman’s sense) are revealed, (2) when politicians mistakenly believe that they are at the back-stage, (3) when politicians are led to believe that they are back-stage, (4) when politicians make transgressive statements while knowing that they are speaking publicly, and (5) when politicians commit a verbal transgression during an encounter with journalist.

This typology can help us make sense of certain characteristics of politicians’ verbal transgressions. But it does not directly address the question of how the transgressive utterances are constructed and contested in the media. Relevant insights can be obtained from the broader literature on mediated scandals. As Esser and Hartung (2004) point out, the word “scandal,” in everyday language, can refer to both the original transgression and the “communication pattern” surrounding the publicization of the transgression. The “Clinton–Lewinsky scandal,” for example, can refer to the sexual relationship involved or to the media coverage and public discourses surrounding the publicization of the affair. The media become crucial when the focus is on communication patterns. They constitute the most important platform for publicizing a wrongdoing, and they signify the seriousness of the wrongdoing through the prominence and tone of their coverage. They are also the platforms for the articulation and communication of what Thompson (2000) called “opprobrious discourses.” A scandal arguably does not exist if no media organizations treat it as such.

Scandals, therefore, can be understood as media constructions. Similarly, when the focus is on politicians’ verbal transgression in general, the media is crucial in constructing an utterance as transgressive in the first place. Certainly, the media are constrained by the facts of the matter and existing social and political norms. Not all utterances can be convincingly portrayed as transgressive, and the media can hardly ignore a problematic utterance when it is already publicized through and denounced in other channels. As Williams and Delli Carpini (2004) point out, the rise of new media has arguably weakened the gatekeeping power of the mainstream media concerning scandals. Yet it should be noted that, even when the information is already publicized somewhere, the news media’s “mainstreaming and spotlighting” (Liebes and Blum-Kulka, 2004) remain crucial in conferring the status of a transgression or even a scandal on a revealed utterance.

The media, in constructing a scandal, are further constrained by their own norms and conventions. A narrative of transgression should include the denounced act, the culprit, the denouncer(s), and the relevant public (Esser and Hartung, 2004). Yet denouncing an act implies value judgment, and so can conflict with the journalistic requirement of objectivity. One way for journalists to resolve this conflict is to objectify (Glasser and Ettema, 1998) the judgments made, such as by referring to existing laws that a public figure has violated.

Another method for criticizing a transgression without deviating from the convention of objectivity is to rely on sources. Journalists tend to “index” elite opinions (Bennett, 1990). While they conventionally balance competing views, a “consensus” appears when politicians on different sides of the political spectrum offer the same view (Hallin, 1994). Therefore, a key issue in the construction of transgressions is whether politicians of different leanings would join hands to condemn the publicized act. A conflict rather than a scandal exists when one side condemns the act and another side defends it (Esser and Hartung, 2004). Similarly, for the present study, we can argue that the media are constructing a politician’s utterance as transgressive instead of as merely debatable only when media discourses present overwhelmingly one-sided criticisms against the publicized utterance.

From transgressive utterances to iconic sound bites

Tumber and Waisbord (2004: 1) argue that, given the media’s “notorious short-lived attention,” scandals as mediated events often have a brief existence unless institutional actions are undertaken. Following their argument, one may expect media attention to verbal transgressions or talk scandals to be particularly short-lived because mere words seldom necessitate official investigation or other institutional actions. Just as the initial media coverage signifies the presence of a transgression, the subsiding of media coverage would signify the end of the scandal as a news event (Waisbord, 2004).

However, public discourses related to a scandal do not simply disappear when the original news event subsides. A scandal may raise questions for commentators to ponder over. Some may speculate on why the transgression was committed. Some may attempt to decipher its broader significance. Hence discursive activities related to a scandal may persist in the media – in newspaper columns, talk shows, etc. – for a period of time. These discursive activities can help further define and potentially redefine the meanings of a scandal.

Furthermore, the images and symbols related to a scandal may have a life-span in media discourses that is much longer than that of the original news event. Watergate is an obvious example here. It was not only a critical event which influenced the immediate political fortunes of the politicians involved. In the decades afterward, Watergate was often used by the American press as a point of comparison for new scandals. Through its recycling in public discourses, the event continued to exert an influence on American politics (Schudson, 1993, 2004).

Certainly, few scandals have the long-term impact of Watergate. But many scandal-related images and symbols may indeed have a life-span of months or even years in the media. This is especially true when a scandal generates what Bennett and Lawrence (1995) called a “news icon.” A news icon is a condensation symbol capturing the core meanings of an event. More than simply being memorable, news icons are those symbols that have been detached from their original contexts and used by journalists to shed light on subsequent unconnected events (Denham, 2008; Lawrence, 1996; Livingston and Eachus, 1996). Powerful news icons can “evoke larger cultural themes, symbolizing values, contradictions, or changes that have begun to surface in society” (Bennett and Lawrence, 1995: 23). The term “Watergate” can be considered as a news icon in this sense.

Almost by definition, politicians’ verbal transgressions generate vivid and memorable quotes. The problematic utterances, after being constructed as transgressive or even scandalous, have the potential to become “iconic sound bites” to be evoked by journalists and commentators to make sense of subsequent events. A transgressive utterance can potentially be recycled in media discourses for a longer period of time.

Bennett and Lawrence (1995: 26–7) described the life-cycle of a news icon as comprising of three stages. The news icon first appears in a news story about a current event. The icon “overwhelms the story and is reproduced throughout the mass media.” In the second stage, the image appears in a range of other media and cultural products such as talk shows, documentaries, or films, signifying that the image has captured the society’s imagination. In the third stage, the icon stands alone and can be invoked with a simple phrase or visual reference, enabling reporters to employ it in other stories. Drawing upon this three-stage model and following the arguments made above, this study proposes a three-stage life-cycle of politicians’ transgressive utterances in media discourses:

A few points about the three-stage life-cycle need to be clarified here. First, obviously not all transgressive utterances made by politicians would survive all three stages and become iconic sound bites. Second, while the three-stage model involves a specific order, two consecutive stages can overlap temporally. Intensive public discussion, for instance, can begin as the news event is still unfolding, but it typically extends beyond the end of the news event. Third, even among those transgressive utterances that have become iconic sound bites, their actual life-spans may still vary in length. Some icons may disappear in public discourse within a year or so, whereas the most powerful icons may have a life-span of decades. When an icon has an “extended life-cycle” (Lee et al., 2011), the ways it is invoked can shift in accordance with social and cultural changes.

The three-stage life-cycle sketched above is a heuristic model guiding the analysis of how a politician’s verbal transgression is constructed, contested, and recycled. It provides the basis for a conceptually informed, interpretive account of how a transgressive utterance enters into and affects media and political discourses over time.

Context and method

The case analyzed below involves a verbal transgression of a top Hong Kong government leader speaking through talk radio. In Ekstrom and Johansson’s (2008) typology, it is a case of a politician committing a verbal transgression publicly. In Hong Kong, political radio phone-in shows have gained huge prominence since the late 1990s (Lee, 2002; Ma and Chan, 2006; So and Lee, 2007). Nowadays, it has become a routine for government leaders to attend phone-in programs after major policy announcements (Lee and Lin, 2011). These programs constitute mini-news events for mainstream journalists. Similar to some other mediated events, a radio talk show does not have a “natural climax” (Clayman, 1995). Consequently, journalists covering a talk show are particularly interested in capturing a “defining moment”: a sound bite which can define the event. A verbal blunder or a transgressive utterance can easily become such a defining moment. Therefore, officials attending talk radio have to take the risks of having their verbal mistakes registered and amplified by the mainstream media.

The Chief Executive (CE) of the Hong Kong government, Donald Tsang, made exactly such a mistake in a talk show organized by the English channel of the public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong on October 12, 2007, a few days after Tsang delivered the annual Policy Address. During the show, the host pursued the question of democratic reform. Local democrats often criticized the government for failing to quicken the process of democratization. In the following exchange, the CE attempted to defend the need of a “gradual” approach:

Given the continual debates surrounding democratization in Hong Kong, any defense of “gradual democratization” is bound to be controversial. But the CE’s utterances above are particularly problematic given its invocation of the Chinese Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976 – a disastrous event in which tens of millions of people suffered from political persecution. Treating a political disaster in a communist totalitarian society as “extreme democracy” is, at least on the surface, bordering on absurdity. Moreover, the Cultural Revolution is a sensitive matter in Hong Kong because many local citizens belong to families with members who experienced the event personally. Some Hong Kong citizens were actually refugees who fled to the city during the disastrous event. Hence the CE’s statements can be considered as highly insensitive with regard to the strongly negative emotions some citizens may still have in relation to the Cultural Revolution. As a matter of fact, the CE’s statements aroused strong criticisms from commentators, politicians, and common citizens. The outrage generated may not be strong enough to constitute a “talk scandal,” but it was definitely constructed as a verbal transgression in media discourses, as discussed below.

As the CE apologized for making inappropriate statements the next day, the immediate news event surrounding the verbal transgression had a very short life-span. But there was already a substantial amount of coverage generated. Based on a search using the electronic archive Wise News, 12 Hong Kong newspapers combined to provide no fewer than 53 related news articles on October 13 and 14 alone.

Consistent with the argument that politicians’ transgressive utterances could generate intensive public discussions even after the immediate news event, a keyword search using “extreme AND democracy AND cultural revolution” as the keyword set generated 137 articles referring to the verbal transgression between October 15 and October 31, 2007. References to the utterance subsided afterwards. But the same keyword search can still generate 97 articles between November 1, 2007 and December 31, 2010. Notably, the keyword search would not generate all relevant articles, since articles may refer to the verbal transgression without using all three keywords. But the search is adequate for deriving a sample of articles for analysis, and the numbers of articles generated should provide basic evidence that the transgressive utterance has “lived on” in public discourses for at least some time.

As argued earlier, there may be overlap among the stages in the life-cycle of a transgressive utterance. But to facilitate the analysis, October 13 and 14 was treated as the immediate news event period. October 15 to 31 constituted the period of intensive public discussion, and November 2007 and afterward was treated as the third stage. The analysis is based on close and reiterative readings of the articles derived from the news archive. As in a typical textual analysis, the researcher attempted to identify major themes in the articles and to make sense of the ways the key verbal utterance was appropriated in media discourses in different time periods. Interpretations of the textual corpus were guided by the conceptual arguments discussed earlier and by considerations related to media politics in Hong Kong. The overall aim is to reconstruct a theoretically informed and context-sensitive account of how the transgressive utterance was constructed, contested, and recycled.

Constructing the verbal transgression

As already mentioned, the CE’s statement about “Cultural Revolution as extreme democracy” attracted across-the-board criticism from the media. The headline of the populist newspaper Apple Daily (AD) on October 13 was “Using the Cultural Revolution to criticize democracy; Bow-tie’s brain damaged.” ¹ Another populist paper Oriental Daily (OD) wrote: “Bow-tie’s mouth stinks; treating Cultural Revolution as democracy.” Both headlines used the CE’s nickname (bow-tie) and involved personal attacks. The more professional newspapers adopted milder headlines. But some still highlighted the negative reactions generated by Tsang’s words: “‘Governance would become impossible when people handle everything’; Tsang criticized for using the Cultural Revolution as an example of extreme democracy” (Ming Pao, MP hereafter), “Political parties criticized Tsang for using the Cultural Revolution to discuss democracy” (Hong Kong Economic Times, HKET hereafter).

Pro-government newspapers adopted headlines that were relatively more “neutral.” Sing Tao Daily (STD), for example, headlined the relevant story “Issuing clarifications after arousing controversies in the morning; Bow-tie explained the statement on ‘democracy and Cultural Revolution.’” Judging only the headline, STD seemed to have framed the CE’s statement as controversial more than as transgressive. But reading the news article, it remains clear that the CE’s statement was denounced. STD quoted a total of nine sources. Four were politicians from the pro-democracy camp, and their criticisms were predictably fierce. The paper also quoted three commentators without political affiliations. All three criticized Tsang for misunderstanding the Cultural Revolution. More importantly, the paper quoted two representatives of pro-government parties, and both expressed disagreement with the CE’s view. In other words, all nine sources denounced the CE’s utterance, albeit exhibiting different degrees of outrage. In fact, among the 12 newspapers, only one quoted a source supportive toward the CE. And even in that newspaper (Sing Pao), the solitary supportive source was pitted against eight critical sources.

Quoting sources across the political spectrum who nonetheless express the same view is a way to “objectify” the judgment that the utterance has transgressed generally accepted norms. Another method utilized by newspapers to objectify the judgment is to re-present the original dialogue. Many news reports incorporated the English dialogue between the CE and the radio host. The printing of a lengthy passage in English is rare in Hong Kong Chinese newspapers. This act thus implied that the printed dialogue is the original and unedited version of what was said. It can be understood as a gesture signifying to the readers that they can judge for themselves whether they would find the utterance offensive.

Moreover, the original dialogue included the host’s attempt to rebut the CE’s statement. Studies on newspaper coverage of talk radio contents in Hong Kong have found that the host is usually absent in news, since usually it is what the officials and the call-in citizens say that constitute the newsworthy materials (Lee, 2011). However, the host’s retort is crucial in this case, because the host was essentially the first denouncer of the CE’s statement in the narrative of transgression. Hence the inclusion of the English dialogue also helped justify the newspapers’ treatment of the CE’s statement as problematic.

Furthermore, almost all newspapers included in their coverage, as background information, the Chinese government’s stance on the Cultural Revolution. MP, for example, printed an article entitled “History called the Cultural Revolution a ‘ten-year disaster.’” It quoted the verdict on the Cultural Revolution passed unanimously by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in June 1981: “The Cultural Revolution was an internal disorder initiated by some leaders and utilized by anti-revolutionary gangs which brought serious disasters to the Party, the nation, and people of various races.” The CE’s statement was wrong, therefore, because it deviated from the official verdict.

Notably, using China’s official verdict on the Cultural Revolution to objectify the coverage has arguably shaped the characterization of the transgression. As mentioned earlier, the CE’s statement was made against the backdrop of the lack of progress in Hong Kong’s democratization. It could have been taken as indicative of the attitude of the government toward democratization. Besides, the statement was problematic partly because of its insensitivity to many Hong Kong people’s deep and troubled feelings toward the Cultural Revolution. However, at least in the first-day coverage, the utterance was mainly treated as illustrating the CE’s ignorance about Chinese history. MP’s editorial on October 13 was the most explicit. Titled “National citizen education should begin with Donald Tsang,” it reiterated China’s official verdict:

Donald Tsang, being the Chief Executive, mixed up the Cultural Revolution with extreme democracy. [He] obviously lacks the most basic knowledge about the largest disaster experienced by the Chinese people after the establishment of the Communist regime. [His understanding] is miles apart from the Central Government’s verdict. This is completely unacceptable, particularly because more than 113 millions of the country’s 600-million population at the time have experienced different levels of persecution during the disaster.

In sum, the construction of the verbal transgression by the press was aided by the host acting as the initial denouncer and the willingness of politicians from different sides to criticize the CE’s remarks. The coverage was further objectified by a reference to the official verdict on the Cultural Revolution, which inadvertently led to an emphasis on the CE’s “ignorance about history” when pinpointing what was unacceptable about his remarks. However, as discussed below, when opinion writers began to comment on the transgressive utterance, contestation of the nature and implications of the utterance emerged.

Interpreting the verbal transgression

Facing unanimous criticisms, the CE retracted his remarks on October 13 through a statement issued by the Government Information Service. Media coverage highlighted the fact that it was the first time since the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong that the CE had retracted a publicized statement. Most newspapers remained critical. OD, for instance, wrote that Tsang’s statement “aroused public outcry throughout the city.… Thirty hours after the event, Tsang finally realized his mistake and admitted it in an attempt to limit the damage done by his stupid words.”

However, the pro-government camp was receptive to Tsang’s retraction. A pro-government party representative was quoted as saying: “[The CE] accepted people’s opinions and criticisms. [I] believe citizens will accept [his retraction].” The immediate news event surrounding the verbal transgression thus came to a quick end. In the weeks afterward, journalists would still occasionally ask individual Chinese officials and Hong Kong politicians to comment on the matter. Yet most officials and pro-government politicians were reluctant to comment, preferring to let the matter die down. Hence the news articles were no longer prominent and no longer had a strongly critical tone toward the CE.

Nevertheless, the story continued to serve as a “hot topic” in the commentary pages in the weeks after the original event. Some writers elaborated upon the “wrongness” of the CE’s statement by discussing the Cultural Revolution in more detail. Others criticized the CE’s choice of California as the other example of “inefficient democracy.” Yet others criticized the logic of the CE’s argument. For example, a famous columnist questioned what “extreme democracy” could mean: “‘Democracy’ itself is a mature system which can effectively prevent ‘extremism.’ [Tsang] said ‘democracy goes to the extreme.’ Given the operation of the democratic system, this ‘goes to’ would not happen” (K Tao, 2007).

More importantly, the commentaries did not simply take up the judgment in the earlier news coverage. More subtle or even alternative interpretations appeared. A columnist in OD, for example, argued that the Cultural Revolution indeed had “some characteristics” of democracy (Leung, 2007). A veteran China affairs commentator stated that “public discourses one-sidedly criticized Donald Tsang for getting it wrong. But … if we calm down and analyze it, Tsang’s understanding [of the Cultural Revolution] is not groundless, it just does not fit the reality of Hong Kong” (Y Li, 2007). An article in STD even supported the CE by using the aftermath of the French Revolution as the example of “democracy” leading to terror (Chan, 2007).

In other words, the discourses in the commentary pages, when compared to the initial news coverage, are more diverse in terms of the expressed judgments about the transgressive utterance. Part of the reason for the diversity seems to reside in the need for differentiation in public discourses. The writers were likely to be aware of the fact that many others were also commenting on the matter. This could have compelled each of them to try to develop a unique argument. This logic was demonstrated most clearly in those articles which explicitly responded to earlier discourses. For instance, an article in MP on October 23 was titled: “He is not completely wrong, and you are not completely right: what Donald Tsang needs the most is not national education.” The title directly rebutted MP’s editorial on October 13. The article argued that Tsang did not misunderstand the Cultural Revolution. Rather, Tsang’s problem resided in his denigration of democracy.

In fact, free from the pressure to objectify their judgments, columnists were more likely to identify the implied view on democracy as the problem of Tsang’s statement. Yet even among those writers who focused on the issue of democracy, two different themes were developed. Some writers personalized the verbal transgression, arguing that the utterance illustrated how the CE himself thought about democracy. For example, an article in AD said:

it is absolutely not a case of Mr. Tsang carelessly making an analogy between democracy and the Cultural Revolution; it is a case of him carelessly speaking what’s in his heart. I tend to believe Mr. Tsang really thinks that the struggle for democracy would lead to chaos. (TS Li, 2007)

In contrast, other writers opted to interpret the statement as reflecting how Tsang had taken up the idea from the Chinese government or pro-China forces. For example, another AD article on October 15 was titled “The Cultural Revolution as democracy thesis came from Beijing.” The author recalled numerous cases in which the conservative forces or Chinese officials invoked the Cultural Revolution to criticize the democrats in Hong Kong. Similar interpretations also appeared in the pro-government newspaper STD. A writer argued that it was not typical of Donald Tsang to talk casually about the Cultural Revolution: “probably there were pro-China politicians who have made that comparison in front of him, and he agreed with it” (LM Tao, 2007).

No matter whether the transgressive utterance was seen as originating from Tsang himself or from China, these interpretations posited the verbal transgression as signifying something more deep-rooted. Through collective interpretation, the verbal transgression was constructed as more than a one-off mistake. It was seen as a manifestation of the underlying problem plaguing the progress of democratization in Hong Kong.

Recycling the transgressive utterance

Besides being discussed in column articles, the CE’s statement was also quickly appropriated by writers and politicians when debating other matters. In a legislature debate on October 23 regarding the government’s plan to expand the hiring of “political assistants” to aid government bureau chiefs, a legislator criticized the plan and questioned if only supporters of the “Cultural Revolution thesis” would be hired. In a commentary article in AD on October 19, the author discussed the lasting impact of what she regarded as a government policy mistake in the late 1990s. The author drew an analogy between Tsang’s verbal mistake and the earlier policy mistake and argued that “the leaders have no need to apologize [in both cases], and citizens cannot kick them off the stage” because of the lack of democracy (Lam, 2007).

The transgressive utterance, in these cases, has started to take on the characteristics of a news icon. The “democracy as Cultural Revolution thesis” was detached from its original context and inserted into discourses surrounding other events. Of course, these early appropriations might have merely reflected the currency of the news event. After all, it is common for writers to mention prominent recent events when discussing various matters. But similar appropriations reappeared from time to time in the following years. An article in the Hong Kong Economic Journal (HKEJ) on June 17, 2008, for instance, criticized the government on the issue of heritage protection. The author wrote sarcastically:

Chief Executive Donald Tsang’s knowledge about history is extremely weak.… His “Cultural Revolution as extreme democracy” thesis, for instance, has scared all people in the world.… So it’s already something to savor when the Tsang government is willing to spend those $2 million to provide maintenance support for certain classified historical buildings. (Tsung, 2008)

Clayman (1995), in analyzing the media’s recycling of quotes from presidential debates, argued that quotation was largely driven by narrative relevance. But it is difficult to predefine the range of relevant narratives for the “Cultural Revolution as extreme democracy” thesis. Rather, an iconic sound bite is open to various articulations. The above passage shows that, as the original transgressive utterance touches on a historical event, it became potentially relevant to discussions about policies related to issues of history and culture.

In other cases, the transgressive utterance served as a more generalized symbol of governmental incompetence. It was combined with other mistakes and/or controversies to construct an image of a persistent problem:

I suspect that Bow-tie had an automatic destruction system in his body. From the time he whistled after knowing that he would replace Tung [to become the CE], to his speech on “Cultural Revolution as extreme democracy,” to saying that he represented all Hong Kong people [on the issue of commemorating the Tiananmen Square incident], to the Act Now campaign, all of these are wrong, gravely wrong! [He] repeatedly demonstrated his ignorance, arrogance, and stubbornness … (But, 2010)

The “Cultural Revolution as extreme democracy” thesis was, in this passage, listed as one item in a series of mistakes. The clustering of the mistakes created an image of the CE as a person who had consistently demonstrated certain undesirable personality characteristics. Later in the article, the CE’s personality would serve as an explanation for his most recent hiccup, which was the actual topic of the piece.

Different overall images could be created through clustering the iconic sound bite with different sets of events. In another article, the transgressive utterance was clustered with other events, including a case in which another top government official embarrassed himself by failing to utter the proper English name of a famous tourist spot in Hong Kong, to create an image of a government full of uncultivated leaders. The image was in turn used to “explain” the weaknesses of the government’s cultural policies (Heung, 2008).

Finally, the narrative relevance of the iconic sound bite probably becomes most conspicuous when the CE made another transgressive remark. In the Legislative Council meeting on May 14, 2009, several pro-democracy legislators pushed Tsang to express his personal view on the Tiananmen Square incident. Tsang answered that China has experienced quick economic development in the past two decades. Hence people should reevaluate the incident from a more “objective” perspective. He also claimed that his view is representative of the Hong Kong people. His reply led the pro-democracy legislators to leave the meeting hall in protest. The next day, a number of newspapers invoked the Cultural Revolution as extreme democracy thesis as a background when covering the event, highlighting the fact that Tsang “had a record” of making highly problematic remarks. Some column writers also appropriated the earlier verbal transgression to criticize the CE:

Within the four years since Tsang assumed office, he first treated the Cultural Revolution as “extreme democracy,” and now he “represents” Hong Kong people to say that the rice bowl is more important than June 4. [He] just doesn’t understand that, for most people, the Cultural Revolution and June 4 are matters of good and evil. (Chui, 2009)

This passage and many of the above examples suggest that a transgressive utterance is not always simply forgotten. Rather, when similar verbal transgressions and other policy mistakes accumulate, media criticisms can become stronger and stronger, in rhetoric and in tone, as earlier mistakes are invoked to serve as the background for the newest ones.

Concluding discussion

This article begins with the matter of the role of “sound bites” in public discourses. Focusing on politicians’ transgressive utterances as a type of newsworthy sound bite, this article draws upon the theoretical discussions of media scandals and news icons to analyze the construction, contestation, and recycling of such verbal transgressions in media discourses. The analysis illustrates a three-stage life-cycle of a transgressive statement made by a Hong Kong government leader linking the Cultural Revolution to “extreme democracy.” The media constructed the statement as transgressive, while strategies of objectification were employed to turn the moral-political judgment underlying the story into something seemingly factual. In the second stage, the verbal transgression was elaborated and discussed, and to a certain extent contested, in the marketplace of ideas constituted by the commentary pages. Finally, the transgressive utterance was turned into an iconic sound bite. Decontextualized from the original event, it was occasionally invoked by journalists and commentators when reporting and discussing subsequent events.

This study derives part of its arguments from the analysis of what Ekstrom and Johansson (2008) have called talk scandals. The difference between political verbal transgression and talk scandals resides in the degree of outrage generated by the problematic remarks. It is neither possible nor necessary to draw a sharp line between the two. In fact, in broad terms, this study should have implications for studies of phenomena ranging from simple verbal mistakes made by politicians, to utterances involving the violation of social and political norms (i.e. verbal transgressions), to talk scandals or even scandals in general. Specifically, this study suggests that the analysis of such phenomena can extend to their “afterlife.” Regarding media scandals, for example, Waisbord (2004) has argued that the media have a short attention span such that many scandal events have a short lifespan. However, talk scandals can live on in public discourses afterwards. Waisbord (2004: 1079) also stated that the receding of media coverage “determines that scandals may be moving into another phase, a minor footnote in historical records or enshrined in a country’s political memory.” This study suggests that, although not many scandals or verbal transgressions have the lasting influence of Watergate, many of them are also more than “minor footnotes in historical records.” They can have concrete influence on public discourses and political happenings at least for a period of time.

The present analysis of media construction of verbal transgression pays much attention to methods of objectification. It shows that the media’s attempt at objectification can have implications for the definition of the denounced act. The reliance on the Chinese government’s verdict on the Cultural Revolution arguably led the Hong Kong media to pick out the CE’s “ignorance about history,” rather than his lack of intention to seriously push for further democratization, as the problem. It shows that one issue researchers can pay attention to when analyzing a political scandal is how the conventions and norms of professional journalism may affect the definition of the scandal. A definition which can be more easily objectified or is more adapted to other requirements of professional journalism would have a higher chance of being adopted.

Nevertheless, the characterization of a transgression in the initial coverage can be contested when there is intensive public interpretation. In the present analysis, media commentators provided a range of interpretations regarding questions such as what actually was wrong with the statements made by the CE, why the CE made such a statement, or even whether the statement should be considered as wrong in the first place. One reason for the plurality of opinions in the commentary pages has already been suggested earlier: opinion writers, competing with each other in a marketplace of ideas, have the incentive to present themselves as capable of generating unique views. Writers have an incentive to differentiate themselves from each other. In addition, one may also argue that column writers have a larger degree of freedom to express their views, even if their views are contrary to the society’s mainstream opinion. In fact, the statement made by the CE would not have aroused much criticism if it had been made by another person in another context. A sociologist or historian claiming in an academic seminar that the Cultural Revolution represents a form of extreme democracy might still invite critiques from his or her peers, but it would hardly constitute a news story.

Who makes the statement is crucial in cases of political verbal transgression or talk scandals. Related to the identity of the speaker is the political cost for the speaker. The statement about Cultural Revolution as extreme democracy was costly for the CE’s reputation. As the media treated the utterance as transgressive, publicly supporting the CE could also have been costly for politicians. But opinion writers who wrote after the end of the immediate news event have much less need to concern themselves with public reaction and personal costs.

When discussing the recycling of iconic sound bites, the analysis borrowed Clayman’s (1995) notion of narrative relevance. On one hand, the analysis pointed out that the iconic sound bite has a certain degree of semiotic openness and can be appropriated by different authors to fit into different narratives. But, on the other hand, if semiotic openness is over-emphasized, the notion of narrative relevance could become tautological – the iconic sound bite is of course relevant to the narratives it has already entered into. Therefore, it remains important to identify certain narratives to which the iconic sound bite can be more easily adapted. Here, contextual considerations are important. Within a given political context or an existing media culture, certain narratives may be particularly prominent. The likelihood of a sound bite being recycled, then, should be related to the degree to which it can fit easily into those contextually prominent narratives. Clayman’s (1995) original analysis, for example, explained the quotability of politicians’ statements in terms of their goodness-of-fit with the dominant horse-race narratives in political news in the U.S.

In the present case, it can be argued that the narrative of a persistent crisis of governance has been highly prominent in Hong Kong since the transfer of sovereignty (Chan and So, 2002; Sing, 2009), and the verbal transgression by the CE is indeed highly adaptable to the persistent crisis narrative. The prominence of the persistent crisis narrative in public discourse is, in turn, grounded in the larger context of Hong Kong not being a fully developed democracy. Many citizens see government incompetence as a systemic problem as they do not have the chance to remove their leaders from their office. The context thus encourages commentators to see politicians’ personal and policy mistakes as interconnected and illustrative of underlying patterns. The political system makes it particularly difficult for the public to forget and forgive official errors, and provides part of the reason for the recycling of governmental or leader mistakes in public discourses.

Finally, going back to the concern of the influence of sound bites, this study suggests that certain types of influential sound bite can be understood as discursive resources in a society’s public culture. Although scholars may generally be correct in lamenting the tendency of a “sound bite culture” to sensationalize and trivialize political discussion (Hallin, 1992; Scheuer, 1999), evaluations of what sound bites do and signify in a society should also take into account how specific types of sound bite influence public discourses. Understood as resources, iconic sound bites can be appropriated in different ways to generate meanings, make arguments, and render judgments. Mark Twain famously described a powerful short phrase as “a minimum of sound to a maximum of sense.” While it may be true that only a very small minority of the sound bites in contemporary societies deserve to be described as such, many sound bites do deserve to be taken seriously, for their ability to shape public discourses and, potentially, public opinion.