Chief Executive CY Leung has been accused of having no respect for Hong Kong's press freedom. File photo: RTHK
A day after Chief Executive CY Leung insisted that press freedom is the cornerstone of the SAR, the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HJKA) has accused him of having no respect for the right at all, after he complained that reporters had tailed one of his daughters at her school in the United States.
In a statement, the HKJA said Leung was out of order to condemn the reporters from Next Magazine because they had every right to seek a response from his daughter, Leung Chung-yan, over the controversy surrounding her forgotten bag at the airport last month.
The association said the saga was of major public interest and it is the duty of every reporter to get to the bottom of such incidents. It added that the two Next Magazine journalists involved had conducted their duties in a polite and professional manner.
The chief executive had complained that the publication stepped out of line by following his daughter to the US. “Next Magazine should not have gone into the campus to disturb our daughter outside her classroom,” Leung said. “What Next Magazine did should be condemned by everyone.”
The magazine insisted that its reporters had done nothing to harass Leung Chung-yan.
She has been in the news for the past few weeks after airline staff at Chek Lap Kok took a bag through security for her when she accidentally left it in the departures hall before a flight to San Francisco.
The move sparked accusations that her father had put pressure on airport workers to give his family special treatment, a claim he has repeatedly denied.
http://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1256770-20160426.htm
