Between when I last sat down to write my few words for last issue and today, the whole Edison Chen’s girlfriends’ saga has played itself out across the front pages of not only Hong Kong’s newspapers but the worlds. And yes, I read the stories, looked at the pictures – I’m as much a voyeur as the next person – and in that way contributed to the money-making frenzy that bracketed and drove the story.

It’s been a fascinatingly interesting few weeks and raised numerous questions that remain unanswered, especially many concerning the actions of the police and the preferential treatment given to some of the people involved. I’m certain that if it had been your or my nude photos that had been posted on the internet, the sort of resources allocated to solving the problem would have been very different. I have a lot of respect for the Hong Kong Police but in this instance their reaction does seem strange.

I doubt that much will be made of it and it will be conveniently forgotten as life rushes on. We the media have not really covered ourselves in glory – milking the whole story for as many $ as possible - although kudos, unusually, must go to Ming Pao who forced the issue on the classification of the initial image and had the charges against Chung Yik-tin dropped. Amidst all the rubbish there’s been some excellent commentary from bloggers in English and Chinese, and if there had been anyone left who doubted the power and pervasiveness off the internet, surely you can doubt no longer.

It will be very interesting to see how the careers of those pictured evolve over the next year or so. I leave you with two questions. Firstly, was it purely coincidence that this exploded as New Media Group a publishing company owned by the Emperor Group – home of many of the celebrities involved - debuted on the local stock market. And more intriguingly, if it had been a female celebrity’s collection of nude male boyfriends that had been uploaded would we have been as interested and would as many magazines/newspaper stories have been written and sold?

sd