Performing global ‘news’ : indigenizing WTO as media event

In spite of its proclaimed status as "Asia's international city," Hong Kong has seldom played host to international events, such that news reporting in the area is more often concerned with the local/parochial. But when the WTO conference was staged in the territory in December 2005, the Hong Kong news media (both Chinese and English language) was caught up, along with journalists worldwide, in the coverage of such as international event. This chapter interrogates the discursive production of a "media event" involved in the news coverage of a "global" event, such as the WTO conference(s). It examines the "mediatized space" that results when the local news media frame global events for local interests, and in so doing sensationalise the near-local, as well as alienate what is deemed "global." The process of "mediatizing" the WTO, however, has not been straightforward. By "performing" the WTO protesters as violent, irrational, and disorganized, the reporters were encountered by experienced Korean protesters who forced them to disrupt the ritualistic representation of the whole event. As such, this is one of the problems facing the local news media, as they are also caught up in the interplay between the local/global, mainstream/alternative in the coverage of the WTO event.