A 3rd group — the five-year-old Citizen News — introduced final week that it might shut down, too. But not like Apple Daily and Stand News, Citizen News did not look ahead to police to return knocking earlier than closing store.
“If we can’t proceed reporting the best way we wished to and the best way we really feel protected to, ceasing operation is regrettably the one selection,” chief author Chris Yeung stated throughout a press convention Monday.
In the 18 months since Beijing imposed a sweeping nationwide safety regulation on Hong Kong, the road defining what can nonetheless be printed with out breaking the regulation has turn into more and more blurred. That’s made it all of the harder for journalists to know what the authorities think about acceptable, and what may land them in jail for years.
That means Hong Kong — as soon as dwelling to one in every of Asia’s most vibrant media scenes, and a spot that professes freedom of speech and freedom of the press — has misplaced nearly all its homegrown unbiased information retailers. And, whereas the federal government has dismissed the concept that press freedom has been undermined, the way forward for unbiased reporting seems more and more bleak.
“The authorities created this local weather of self-censorship and concern, as a result of the uncertainty of what’s and isn’t unlawful, and the uncertainty of what’s and isn’t seditious is so blurred proper now,” stated former Chinese University of Hong Kong journalism professor Lokman Tsui, who now lives within the Netherlands.
“On the one hand, it is a story of a bunch of retailers being compelled to shut down,” he stated. “On the opposite hand, it is actually the story of how skilled reporting in Hong Kong is now so harmful that you just would possibly find yourself in jail.”
Blurred traces
Citizen News’ announcement did not come fully out of the blue.
Just days earlier, Stand News shut down after police raided its workplace and arrested seven folks related to the publication. The “destiny of Stand News” triggered the choice by Citizen News, in line with Yeung, who can also be the previous chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association.
The allegations in opposition to Stand News contain a “conspiracy to publish seditious publications,” which stems from a colonial-era crimes ordinance and never the nationwide safety regulation imposed in 2020. The Hong Kong police who raided the outlet’s workplace are nationwide safety officers.
Ultimately, Citizen News could not make sure whether or not the tales it was asking reporters to write down would violate laws, and opted to close to guard its workers, stated Daisy Li, the publication’s chief editor.
To many onlookers, the outlet was yet one more casualty of the town’s more and more restrictive media atmosphere. Like Apple Daily and Stand News, Citizen News printed articles important of presidency insurance policies.
The velocity with which the business has been “gutted” over the previous two years is absolutely dramatic, in line with Sarah Cook, analysis director for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan at non-profit Freedom House.
Nearly a yr in the past, the Hong Kong authorities introduced it might exchange the director of public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) with a public servant with none media expertise. RTHK’s program workers union responded by saying the station had misplaced its editorial independence. Since then, a partnership between RTHK and Chinese state media has raised considerations amongst press freedom advocates that the media group is more and more changing into a propaganda outlet.
Then, in June, a whole lot of cops raided the workplaces of long-running pro-democracy outlet Apple Daily. They arrested executives, froze its property below nationwide safety fees — and finally prompted it to stop publication.
Police raid Apple Daily’s workplaces in Hong Kong in August 2020. Credit: Apple Daily
“[Hong Kong leader] Carrie Lam is patiently unraveling the substance of press freedom in Hong Kong,” Reporters Without Borders stated in a December 2021 report on China’s press freedoms.
Lam has performed down considerations. This week, she dismissed accusations that Citizen News and Stand News’ shutdowns have been associated to the nationwide safety regulation and pushed again in opposition to the concept that Hong Kong’s free press confronted collapse. She claimed that the retailers made the choice to close on their very own.
“Nothing is extra vital than the rule of regulation in Hong Kong. And journalists and media organizations like all of us should respect and adjust to the regulation,” she stated Tuesday. “If they’re scared of not with the ability to adjust to the regulation, then they should make up their thoughts and take the required choices.”
What occurs subsequent
Despite Lam’s insistence that there’s nonetheless freedom of the press in Hong Kong, the variety of unbiased media retailers is quickly dwindling.
Although there are nonetheless main worldwide media retailers — together with CNN and Bloomberg — working giant newsrooms within the metropolis, there are few important native unbiased retailers left, with specialists pointing to Chinese-language inmediahk.internet and the English-language Hong Kong Free Press as examples.
A variety of different retailers are both backed by the Chinese state, or have mainland Chinese homeowners. The metropolis’s largest English language paper South China Morning Post, for example, is owned by mainland Chinese tech large Alibaba.
There’s an expectation that any unbiased retailers will possible turn into targets in the end, stated Hong Kong political commentator Joseph Cheng, who’s now based mostly in New Zealand. l
Ronson Chan, the chair of the Hong Kong Journalist Association and a former editor at Stand News till it closed, agrees.
Free press would possibly proceed on a small scale, he stated — however as soon as retailers achieve an excessive amount of consideration and sources, they are going to possible turn into targets.
“The media is in a … critical crackdown,” Chan, whose dwelling was raided by police, instructed CNN Business. “The chilling impact will have an effect on many selections for the administration of the opposite media.”
For now, worldwide media have not confronted the identical challenges as native media, though some international journalists have been denied visas. But Hong Kong’s future as a world media hub is in jeopardy. Just weeks after the nationwide safety regulation was imposed in 2020, the New York Times introduced it might transfer some workers out of Hong Kong to Seoul, South Korea. The Washington Post additionally selected Seoul as the situation of its new Asia breaking information hub. In a Foreign Correspondents’ Club survey of 99 Hong Kong-based journalists final yr, 84% stated the state of affairs for the media had deteriorated because the nationwide safety regulation was launched, and 46% stated they have been contemplating or had plans to go away the town because of the decline in press freedoms. For now, the media in Hong Kong remains to be nowhere close to as restricted as in mainland China, the place Beijing’s so-called “Great Firewall” of censors severely curtails web entry and journalist visas are tough to acquire.
But the town’s media atmosphere is shifting to turn into extra much like the mainland.
In the longer term, Hong Kong may more and more discover itself in a state of affairs the place media lined the town from the skin — simply as media do with mainland China, Freedom House’s Cook stated.
And, stated Tsui, the town’s web may turn into extra restricted, and will see authorities blocking entry to articles it sees as controversial.
Why this issues
Experts additionally level out that the lack of native, unbiased retailers in Hong Kong may additionally undermine the press’ function as an vital neighborhood watchdog.
That echoes the struggles that media organizations have had worldwide: In the United States, for example greater than 1,800 newspapers have closed since 2004 and no less than 200 counties have been left with no newspaper in any respect, in line with a 2019 PEN America report.
“This is constant throughout all international locations, all cultures — if native journalism dies, corruption will increase,” Tsui stated.
The drawback in Hong Kong, although, is that this pattern of native media closures has been coupled with different assaults on democracy.
Since the National Security Law was launched, almost all the metropolis’s main pro-democracy figures have both been jailed or gone into exile. A variety of organizations and unions have disbanded or left Hong Kong, together with the pro-democracy group that organized among the metropolis’s greatest protests. And the nationwide safety regulation is not merely a risk — some activists have now been jailed below the act.
“The suppression of the pro-democracy motion meant that there was no toleration of an opposition, no toleration of checks and balances,” Cheng stated.
And when Stand News and Apple Daily closed, each publications additionally eliminated years of reporting from the web, taking with them a historic file of the town.
“It’s an apparent try to take away the reminiscence of Hong Kong folks,” stated Cheng.
There’s additionally a reputational price to Hong Kong, which has lengthy positioned itself as Asia’s world metropolis.
Following the raid on Stand News, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken known as on China and Hong Kong authorities to cease focusing on the town’s free and unbiased media, and uphold freedom of expression and entry to data.
“These freedoms enabled Hong Kong to flourish as a world middle for finance, commerce, training, and tradition,” he stated in an announcement.
“By silencing unbiased media, [the People’s Republic of China] and native authorities undermine Hong Kong’s credibility and viability. A assured authorities that’s unafraid of the reality embraces a free press,” he added.
Despite heavy censorship in mainland China, Hong Kong does stay comparatively free. This has allowed it to behave as a type of gateway into the nation, and is why so many companies and media hubs have been based mostly within the metropolis
But as Hong Kong edges nearer to China, that is altering.
“Now even this little peek gap is changing into a black field,” Tsui stated. “What the world is dropping is an perception into not simply Hong Kong, but additionally an perception into what is going on on in China.”