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A Wall Street Journal reporter’s firing in Hong Kong has revealed a quiet, intense battle between journalists in Asia and their employers over how to handle Chinese government pressure on independent media — and raised questions of whether big media organizations are undermining the groups that have long advocated for journalists in the region.
Former Wall Street Journal Selina Cheng alleged she was fired from her position Wednesday after refusing to step down as the chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, a press advocacy group. But The Wall Street Journal isn’t the only major international publication trying to dissuade its employees from taking leadership roles in the city’s key journalism organizations, the HKJA and the venerable Foreign Correspondents’ Club.
There are currently no reporters from international outlets — and few local mainstream ones — serving on the HKJA executive committee. A BBC reporter resigned immediately after being elected in June. He did not reply to Semafor’s request for comment.
More than a half-dozen journalists from international publications, including from Bloomberg and CNN, serve on the FCC’s board, but two former board members with direct knowledge of its election process told Semafor that CNN and Bloomberg had tried to dissuade their staff from running to avoid provoking Chinese government authorities. Working journalists have steered clear of the club’s presidency: current president Lee Williamson runs soft content and lifestyle news at the South China Morning Post, and his predecessor Keith Richburg was the head of the journalism program at the University of Hong Kong.
The situation is similar on the mainland: A Beijing-based Bloomberg reporter who withdrew their candidacy for the 2022-2023 board of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China told Semafor he was instructed not to comment on the situation. A Wall Street Journal editor who also pulled out from running for a board seat declined to comment on whether the decision to step down was his or his employer’s and referred Semafor to the Journal’s press office.
The news organizations did not immediately reply to Semafor’s request for comment.
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Cheng’s termination is the latest to rock Hong Kong’s once-vibrant press corps since the implementation of the city’s National Security Law, which criminalized much speech critical of Beijing. Cheng said she is “deeply shocked” that the Journal appears to shy away from press advocacy in Hong Kong, even as it champions press freedom in other countries such as Russia, where its reporter Evan Gershkovich remains in prison.
Sheila Coronel, Cheng’s former professor at Columbia Journalism School, described the firing as just the latest in a series of steps international news organizations have taken to appease Chinese authorities. “This is how press freedom dies—in compromises and accommodations to autocratic power.”
Gina’s view
Managing reporters in countries where press freedoms are curtailed is not an easy task. Editors are constantly balancing the safety of their staff and continued ability to work with the broader mission of the publication. Missteps can cost the organization access to officials or a loss of visas for reporters — and in some cases, lead to the expulsion or jailing of their staff.
Seen in that light, it’s not surprising that major news organizations would prefer not to have to deal with their staff taking on broader responsibilities of advocating for press freedom beyond their day jobs.
But firing a reporter for doing what, in effect, their bosses regularly do when they sit on the boards of organizations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists or the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is a rare step for a publication to take.
Beyond that, as Coronel notes, each accommodation that any organization takes ultimately adds to an environment where press freedoms shrink for all. The value of collective action that press advocacy groups represent doesn’t work when few are willing to band together.
Whatever the reasons, the diminished representation of major international publications on the boards of press freedom organizations represents a victory for China in its efforts to curtail the free flow of information in Hong Kong and the mainland.
Notable
- Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondent’s Club has also succumbed to self-censorship, wrote former board member and Atlantic writer Tim McLaughlin. The club in 2022 suspended Human Rights Press awards and refused to issue statements on a journalist’s arrest out of fear of legal retributions.
- The number of imprisoned writers in China has reached a record high, according to the Freedom to Write index. The 107 incarcerated writers accounts for nearly one third of all jailed writers worldwide, and most were arrested for “picking quarrels.”