Posted: 11 Feb 2016
The news is making news in Hong Kong of late. Concerns over increasingly limited press freedom are driving a reflexive change in how we consume media, and whom we trust to provide it. But is this new wave sustainable, and will it really hold those in power accountable? Joy Ming King finds out
Some people ask me, ‘Is there really no press freedom left in Hong Kong?’ Well, of course there is. But the space is narrowing,” claims Sham Yee-lan, chairperson of the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) and part-time lecturer at Shue Yan University. “The most evident [indicator] is the slide of Hong Kong’s ranking on the annual Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders. We fell from 18th place in 2002, to 70th place last year. This is a very shocking fall.”
From the brutal stabbing of former Ming Pao editor-in-chief Kevin Lau in February 2014 to the disturbing disappearances of five booksellers in recent months, there has been a steady stream of incidents directly undermining press freedom in our city. Respect for press freedom has long been hailed as a ‘core value’ upon which Hong Kong’s governance is based and as one of the defining characteristics of the SAR since the handover in 1997. Yet, in an annual report by Freedom House, a US-based independent research institute, Hong Kong’s status changed from ‘free’ in 2005 to ‘partly free’ in 2015. “Beijing’s enormous economic power and influence over Hong Kong businesses, politicians and media owners [is causing] considerable indirect pressure on the territory’s media,” state the report’s authors.
Sham Yee-lan, head of HKJA, outside the Causeway Bay bookstore at the centre of recent controversy
“We’ve heard many examples of self-censorship in recent years,” Sham says. “The authorities don’t even need to involve themselves. Those with a position in media management ‘know the drill’, even before any pressure has manifested.” Sham cites an infamous example from March 2012, when veteran Sing Pao Daily News columnist Johnny Lau’s piece about the chief executive election was heavily edited. Lau’s original piece had rejected both Leung Chun-ying and Henry Tang Ying-yen as candidates to become chief executive, but the published version ran the headline, ‘Out of the two, I’d rather choose Leung Chun-ying’, provoking public outrage and an eventual apology from the editor-in-chief, Ngai Kai-kwong, for ‘careless’ editing. “We thought, ‘Why is this happening now? It wasn’t like this before,’” Sham exclaims. “People used to respect the forbidden taboos in the media industry. They would try to use some technical reason to censor you, but now it’s completely naked.”
The concerns over press freedom are not just limited to Chinese media. After long being regarded as the region’s bastion of quality journalism, century-old English- language newspaper South China Morning Post (SCMP) has been coming under increasing scrutiny of late – not least since its acquisition by Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma, in December. “There’s a climate of control-freakery [at the paper],” one former subeditor – who left the publication last year – tells us, on condition of anonymity. “We were definitely encouraged to write about ‘non-controversial’ content, instead of stories that took longer than a day to put together.” While the paper has received praise for its live blog of the Occupy protests, as well as its retrospective of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crack down – all subjects that are distasteful to Beijing – its also made international headlines for its own conduct, during a series of controversial episodes. These include the reduction of a full story on the suspicious death of Mainland dissident Li Wangyang in 2012, and a subsequent email exchange, circulated on The Asia Sentinel and later reported in The New York Times, in which former editor-in-chief Wang Xiangwei told a subeditor, ‘If you don’t like it, you know what to do’. “Of course, the purchase of SCMP by such a powerful investor like Jack Ma could be a positive change for the paper’s development,” admits Sham. “But in the editorial process, especially for journalists responsible for the news coverage of China, there is an additional level of concern.”
As public scrutiny of traditional media outlets grows, a new wave of media platforms have spawned in their wake. One that has gained plenty of traction since its launch in June 2015 is Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) – a free, non-profit, independent English-language news source, which surpassed its initial target of $150,000 within the first 48 hours of its crowdfunding campaign. “Many thought we’d be dead by Christmas,” says HKFP’s co-director and editor-in-chief, Tom Grundy, “but it’s becoming clearer that we’re here to stay.”
The popularity of the website, which garnered five million page views in its first quarter, is indicative of a shift in the traditional media landscape. “Starting from zero was always going to be tough,” admits Grundy. “But our impact and the rate of our traffic and social growth has been great. The timing was right and there was an appetite for what we set out to do. [And when it comes to the credibility of online-only news sources], readers have already decided. The vast majority now access their news online, and generally via Facebook... The audience is in control of news consumption now.”
But HKFP, which was blocked in mainland China in late 2015, isn’t the only news outlet attempting to push the boundaries with the aid of its readers. “Crowdfunding is essential to get things started – you can’t make money without an audience and a platform, and you can’t have an audience or platform without first having money,” states Grundy. “Chinese news wire FactWire raised over $4 million, so I’d say that it works because the idea is good and much-needed.”
Founder of FactWire, Ng Hiu-tung
FactWire, Hong Kong’s first news agency specialising in investigative journalism, has been co-founded by Ng Hiu-tung, a veteran journalist with over 25 years of experience with TVB and Cable TV. It is set to launch in April. FactWire’s crowdfunding campaign broke the record for the largest crowdfunded journalism project in Asia by raising $4.75 million in September – far exceeding its goal of $3 million. Conceived as a response to a lack of original, fact-based reporting in Hong Kong and worldwide, FactWire’s ambition is to eventually join the ranks of Associated Press and Reuters as an international, investigative news agency.
“Whether it’s online or traditional print media, you can see that news is repetitive now – not just in Hong Kong, but the world over,” says Ng. “They just want to add as much content and update as much as possible so they can face up to their readers or their advertisers. The whole world seems to have stopped investing in original reporting. The first thing I will explain to the journalists at FactWire is that they should be ready to discover news and ignore the insignificant, sensational stories.”
Despite the difficulties involved in sustaining an independent news agency, Ng is optimistic. “As long as our reporting is unique and is what the public needs to know, I really believe that the possibilities for our future business model are infinite,” he says.
Ultimately, having a diversified media landscape is a strength if we are to face down the imposition on HK’s press freedom by China. And the demand is clearly there from the public. But, as we await confirmation of what exactly has happened to the five missing booksellers, how much do local journalists themselves need to be concerned for their personal safety?
“Journalists have always encountered this kind of pressure,” declares Ng, resolutely. “If you don’t have this pressure, you’re not doing journalism, you’re doing public relations. The most important thing is that our content must be very unique, it must be impactful and it must be content that the public needs to know about. [But we need] to be very prudent in treating the news material that we’ve gathered. Whatever we publicise must be founded on fact. There is no room for error.”
Find out more about FactWire at factwire.org and about Hong Kong Free Press at hongkongfp.com.
http://www.timeout.com.hk/big-smog/features/75614/factwire-founder-ng-hiu-tung-and-hkfps-tom-grundy-on-hks-changing-media-landscape.html
