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Film censorship reflects community standards
The views of the public advisers are instrumental in ensuring that the film censorship standards do reflect the community standards, the Commissioner for Television and Entertainment Licensing, Mrs Rita Lau, said.
There are now about 300 public advisers. Six or seven of them view each film and advise the censors of the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (TELA) on whether a film should be classified as Category I, II or III, with or without excision.
At a spring reception hosted by TELA this (Friday) evening, Mrs Lau said: "For 93 per cent of the 615 films approved during the period from September to December last year, the censors adopted the majority views of the public advisers as the decisions.
"As regards the remainder, the censors' decisions were more strict than the majority views of the public advisers in five per cent of the cases and more lenient in only two per cent of the cases."
"In view of the need to maintain consistency in standards, it is inevitable that the censors' decisions are sometimes different from the public advisers'. The earlier statistics show, however, the importance we attach to their views," she said.
Mrs Lau also pointed out that according to the findings of a public opinion survey completed by an independent research firm in April last year, the current film censorship standards do closely resemble those held by the majority of the respondents.
"This is proof that our standards do reflect the community's and the credit goes to the panel of public advisers."
The present advisers include persons from different occupations, different age groups and different educational levels. The female gender, however, appears to be under-represented as only one-third of the advisers are female.