City Beat: TVB's flag error can teach us a lesson in the importance of history education

Like it or not, the city's dominant broadcaster still enjoys good ratings for its programmes. But more viewers also means harsh public scrutiny. A factual mistake of any kind cannot escape the eyes of its picky audience, nor can errors be excused easily.

Such was the case for a TVB documentary aired late last month commemorating the 70th anniversary of the anti-Japanese war, which unfortunately carried an incorrect graphic to depict two major battles between Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang and the invading Japanese. It used the red, five-starred flag of today's People's Republic to denote Chiang's forces; in reality, Mao Zedong's communists played no part in the battles depicted, though they did participate in others. The five-star flag only became the national flag after the civil war, in October 1949.

Internet users were quick to spot the error, and it was no surprise that some saw a political agenda, accusing the broadcaster of trying to "fabricate history" by ignoring the contribution of the KMT in resisting the Japanese.

TVB immediately apologised for that obvious mistake, immediately replacing the flag on its official website - only to make another mistake by replacing the Japanese national flag with the Imperial Japanese military standard. The criticism online this time was that if the national flag used by China at the time was shown, the Japanese national ensign should also be used.

Understandably, online criticism can be somewhat cynical, but to be fair to TVB, this was apparently a case of careless human error, rather than a hidden agenda on the part of the station to amend history.

TVB fired the programme director and warned the producers. But the episode demonstrated a deeper issue which warrants further reflection.