Screen Capture of the House News’ Facebook Page. The site had more than 230 thousand Facebook followers before it shut down.
The House News, a popular pro-democracy news site in Hong Kong modeled after the Huffington Post, was shut down without warning on July 26.
Tony Tsoi, one of the founders and key investors of the site, announced the closure in a note posted to the site at 5 p.m. He explained that political pressure against critical voices and a lack of advertisers were the two major reasons behind the decision to shutter.
The House News was launched in July 2012 as a news curation and blog site. It grew to become one of the most popular online media outlets in Hong Kong, ranking 57 in traffic from Hong Kong on Alexa with 300,000 unique visitors per day. Yet, in the past two years, the news platform failed to attract enough advertisers to keep afloat.
Tsoi, who supports protest movement Occupy Central's plans to peacefully take over central Hong Kong to demand the right to choose candidates for the city's next chief executive election, said in the shutdown announcement that he is “terrified” by the political atmosphere:
Former British colony Hong Kong is a special administrative region of communist China and enjoys a high level of autonomy from the communist country under the idea of “one country, two systems.” Relations between the two havebecome tense in recent months. China has promised Hong Kong a direct vote for the next chief executive in 2017 for the first time, but insists that a committee approve the candidates.
The mainland considers “love of country” to be an important criteria for Hong Kong's administrators, according to awhite paper released by the government, so some Hong Kongers suspect they will only have pro-Beijing candidates to choose from, defeating the purpose of a direct vote.
Businesses aren't keen to advertise with pro-democracy media for fear of souring their relationship with the Hong Kong and Chinese governments, making it nearly impossible for sites to develop a sustainable business model based on advertising. Tsoi described the market in Hong Kong in his shutdown note:
Soon after the closure was announced, all of the site's content became inaccessible. Such an abrupt decision sparked wide speculation among netizens that Beijing is tightening its grip on Hong Kong's media. Wen Yunchao, a mainland Chinese blogger who is now based in the U.S., commented on Twitter:
The major cause of the abrupt shutdown of The House News is more likely related to fear than business considerations. The fear most likely stems from direct threats rather than the political atmosphere — the imperative kind of threat in the form of “shut down or else you will face certain consequences.” If it is business considerations, they should at least look for a business partner, sell the business or seek another solution.
Au Ka Lun, a former journalist and columnist at The House News, wrote on his Facebook (republished on citizen media platform inmediahk.net with the writer's permission):
A few days before The House News’ shuttered, pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai's donation to the democratsheadlined in six major newspapers in Hong Kong. As Lai is the chairperson of the Next Media Group, current affairs commentator Yip Yat Chi hypothesized on inmediahk.net that Beijing is launching a major crackdown on pro-democracy media in Hong Kong, including the Next Media's Apple Daily News and major online media platforms:
Yip Ya Chi explained that just as he was finishing up his piece, the House News announced its shutdown.
Which online media platform will be the next target of this suspected crackdown? What can be done to protect the media freedom environment in Hong Kong? Many Hong Kongers are wondering.
