Fearing for Staff Safety, Citizen News Shuts Down

Chief editor Daisy Li (left) and Chris Yeung speak to media

Today senior executives of Citizen News explained to the media why they were closing abruptly, admitting it was because of what happened to Stand News on December 29 when seven people related to the news portal were arrested, which led to its immediate demise.

They said they could no longer guarantee their staff's safety, as they did not know where the red lines were being drawn.

Citizen News shut down effectively today

Choking back tears, chief writer Chris Yeung Kin-hing said: "We can't work in a safe environment. Reporters are also human and have their families and friends too. Journalists don't want to be landed in this dilemma simply because of their work."

Yeung, who is the former chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, said the closure was because of what happened to Stand News.

"The city's media has been embroiled in a political storm with many media outlets or the overall media being deemed as the target of a shake-up," he said.

"From the Stand News incident, we see that many articles and reports are deemed as seditious. We are worried that we may have violated the law without our knowledge."

He added: "Hong Kong is really facing a great change in many aspects, about how to understand press freedom, and where to draw the line... and now many things about the law and law enforcement and so on have become vague."

Yeung said as journalists could be exposed to the threat of prosecution, the outlet had no other choice but to close.

Yeung said no authorities contacted them

"We can't assess how long such a situation would linger. It's difficult to carry on," he said. "We have no choice but to cease operations."

During the announcement, Yeung said they were not contacted by the national security police regarding Citizen News' reporting, though some commentators have warned some media outlets like Stand News and Citizen News were targets. 

Citizen News started five years ago on January 1, 2017 with 10 people and in the last five years grew to dozens of people, absorbing those who left RTHK or i-Cable, or Apple Daily. And now it has let go 40 journalists.

Meanwhile, Ip Iam-chong, one of the co-founders of the online news outlets Inmediahk, told a radio show there had recently been an intensification of the chilling effect on the media from a government campaign initially targeting the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper.

"When we first started, we thought we wouldn't last long, not because of political pressure, but because of finances," Ip said. "Nowadays any media that is not considered establishment will keep receiving threats or warnings to shut down."

Over 200 police raided Stand News last week

He feared the continued closure of media outlets would mean that more rumours, mostly regarding the government, would be able to spread unchecked on the internet.

Even this afternoon there were rumours of the government considering imposing a lockdown on Hong Kong to stop the spread of the Omicron variant; eventually the government did issue a press release to deny the rumour, but with trust in the authorities so low, does anyone believe it?

They would have turned to online outlets like Stand News and Citizen News to get the facts. But now they have to turn elsewhere... and is it a place they trust?

This is the state of press freedom in Hong Kong, and more importantly freedom of information in the city. 

Apple Daily is Raided Again

500 officers were involved in this morning's Next Digital raid

 

Hong Kong's press freedoms continue to erode significantly despite government claims it is still protected.

The city woke up this morning to read the news that five executives from Apple Daily were arrested for allegedly violating the national security law, while the office where the newspaper is produced was swarmed by 500 police officers who took away lots of material, including computers from the newsroom.

This is the second time Apple Daily has been raided -- last August 10, officers descended on the Tseung Kwan O offices, arresting founder Jimmy Lai Chee-ying in front of staff, while editor in chief Ryan Law Wai-kwong vowed the newspaper would continue to run. And if they were raided again, they would start filming right away.

Editor in chief Ryan Law was arrested today

But this time the police prevented reporters from filming what was going on and limited their movements in the office, and Law himself was arrested at his home, along with four senior executives. 

The police said there were 30 articles that were evidence the paper was conspiring to collude with foreign forces by encouraging foreign countries to impose sanctions on Hong Kong and Chinese officials.

The force also froze assets of three related companies -- Apple Daily Limited, Apple Daily Printed Limited, and AD Internet Limited, amounting to HK$18 million (US$2.43 million). Next Digital suspended trading its shares today.

Watching this unfold in real time was chilling for many journalists, especially those who work for Apple Daily, wondering if this is really the beginning of the end.

Even Lai's right hand man, Mark Simon has fled to the United States, reported in an interview with Reuters. He said he was very concerned about the paper's future.

Later in the day, Secretary for Security John Lee Ka-chiu said endangering national security "is an extremely serious crime. We need to curb such acts with the strongest measures, and consider all effective measures that the law allows."

Lee says to obey the law to avoid violating NSL

He said the raid at 6am this morning was not to target the press, but only to go after a publication that used "news coverage as a tool" to harm national security.

"The suspects tried to make use of journalistic works to collude with foreign countries or external elements to impose sanctions or take hostile action against Hong Kong and the central government. We need to differentiate what the suspects have done from normal journalistic work," he said.

What's "normal journalistic work"?

Lee was also ominous in saying people should cut ties with the five executives.

"Ordinary journalists are different, and should not get involved with them, keep a distance from them," he said in a press conference. "I hereby solemnly declare that: don't associate with these criminals endangering national security, you will pay a hefty price if [you] stand with these criminals, [you] should cut ties with these criminals before it's too late to repent."

He has already labelled the five as criminals before they have even gone to trial.

Police took lots of material including Lee'

Lee's advice to members of the media? "So the answer is simple: do your journalistic work as freely as you like in accordance with the law, provided you do not conspire or have any intention to break the Hong Kong law, and certainly not the Hong Kong national security law."

Meanwhile Chris Yeung Kin-hing, chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association described the raid as "shocking" and "scary".

He told RTHK it was "quite scary" that the force was building a case around a number of newspaper articles, some of which date back to 2019 -- before the national security law was even implemented.

"Officials had repeatedly assured people that there would not be a retrospective effect of the law, but in practice, or in the enforcement of the law, it seems that's just empty words," Yeung said.

He added the latest developments will undoubtedly send a chill across the whole of society and will exacerbate self-censorship within the news industry.

"The fact that police seized and searched journalists' materials... there had been no protection to journalistic materials. That would create a chilling effect on not just the media, but for the public who will feel unsafe and uneasy talking to the media."

Reporters continue to file stories for tomorrow

Nevertheless, Apple Daily's reporters soldiered on, returned to the office to file stories and now after midnight, trucks are being loaded with 500,000 copies of the paper and being distributed across the city.

Copies will undoubtedly be snatched up tomorrow morning, a small act of support for what Apple Daily stands for. 

Hours before his arrest, editor in chief Law wrote a letter to readers.

"We want to be a newspaper for the people of Hong Kong."

Despite wanting to be a Hong Kong paper, how much longer can it sustain attacks that are financial, and now political?

RTHK's Letter to Hong Kong Abruptly Axed

This RTHK opinion show was suddenly axed on Sunday

 

The dismemberment of Radio Television Hong Kong continues to gather pace with the axing of a short weekly program called "Letter to Hong Kong".

It gives airtime to politicians and public figures to talk about a specific issue they want to address and it's on average eight to 10 minutes long.

The letter is written and recorded in English, so the speaker's oral skills may not be as good as a radio host, but many do have interesting things they want to say, or make a rebuttal to an issue in the news, or promote a cause that is worthy of the public's attention.

Mo's letter supported those in jail and was yanked

There was a balance of guests, some pro-establishment, some pan-democrats, or well-known figures. The last person to read his "Letter to Hong Kong" this past Sunday was businessman Allan Zeman, chairperson of the Lan Kwai Fong Group, who talked about the pandemic.

However the new head of RTHK Patrick Li Pak-chuen has canceled episodes at the last minute, leaving the station's staff scrambling for replacement items. 

In April, the "Letter to Hong Kong" featuring Tuen Mun district councillor Michael Mo Kwan-tai was yanked, possibly because he sent Easter greetings to those in detention and thanked them for their spirit of sacrifice.

"We may lose a battle, but we must not lose our determination to resist," he said.

The episode was suspended three days before it was to air and was replaced with Eugene Chan, President of the pro-Beijing Association of Hong Kong Professionals and a former chairperson of RTHK's board of advisors.

Also Chris Yeung Kin-hing, chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association was told his appearance would be postponed in April. Looks like never.

Zeman read the last Letter to HK

"Letter to Hong Kong" will now be replaced by a show called "#Hashtag Hong Kong", where music will be played and NGOs will be invited to discuss livelihood issues. The first episode features Patrick Cheung Chi-hung, chairperson of the children's rights group Against Child Abuse, who called for mandatory reporting of child abuse.

Sounds pretty intense. But one presumes eventually there will be groups on the show talking about beach clean-ups, food waste, and recycling clothes...

 

HK Press Freedom Under Attack on World Press Freedom Day

RTHK contributor Bao Choy was convicted last month

 

Today is World Press Freedom Day and ironically press freedom in Hong Kong is under attack with the sacking of Cantonese-speaking RTHK journalist Nabela Qoser, and the publicly funded broadcaster is deleting stories and programs from the internet that are over a year old, signalling its opportunity to rewrite history.

Qoser, a Hong Kong-born journalist of Pakistani descent was known for her pointed, critical questions at government officials during the 2019 anti-government protests. But after complaints about her reporting, she was put under investigation and her contract was was terminated in January, and then she was put on temporary contract until the end of this month.

Qoser must leave RTHK at the end of May

In the investigation she was cleared of wrongdoing, but another probe was reopened last October.

And then it was discovered RTHK has begun deleting news stories and programs over a year old on its website and social media accounts.

RTHK claimed this practice was consistent with its policy, and documentaries from Hong Kong Connection and episodes from the axed satirical show Headliner were among the first to be taken down from YouTube.

Some Hongkongers are now rushing to save whatever is left on the RTHK sites to prevent them from being disappeared by putting them on a blockchain content-sharing platform.

"After [RTHK] was painted red by [director of broadcasting] Patrick Li Pak-chuen, all its contents will be removed from the shelves. To ensure history will not be forgotten, internet users have decided to upload the programs here," said a statement posted on an online platform called "SaveRTHK".

Lui says deleting programs against public interest

Bruce Lui, a journalism lecturer at Baptist University said RTHK may be the owner of the programs, but removing them from the internet is against public interest and a waste of taxpayer money.

"News is the first draft of history and also the public can look at it afterwards and learn what happened in the past. If we delete those records, it's sort of clearing the history so that the public won't have a very good picture of what happened," he said.

He noted many of the programs removed were related to the social unrest of 2019.

"The government and Beijing are trying very hard to create their own version of history, so they can have their mainstream definition and it will also take away embarrassment and wrongdoings of the government," he said. 

Screen shot of RTHK's deleted shows on YouTube

"In the future, people will only know the government's version, without knowing the civilian version of history."

How chilling is that? The authorities are attempting to whitewash what happened only two years ago even though people not only have other sources of news to look up, but also first-hand experiences of being in the protests. The government is basically negating their actions, or prosecuting them.

And on top of what happened today,  Hong Kong's press freedom index as rated by journalists has sunk to an all time low thanks to the government's imposition of the national security law last June.

In a joint survey by the Hong Kong Journalists Association and the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute, 367 journalists were surveyed and gave the city's press freedom a score of 32.1 out of 100, even lower than the previous record last year of 36.2.

HKJA's chairman Chris Yeung Kin-hing warned "the worst is yet to come".

"The chilling effect of the national security law will become more prevalent and intrusive in every aspect of [our society]. I don't think there is any room for optimism," he told a press conference today, predicting the index would drop again.

Yeung worries HK press freedom will worsen

Up to 85 percent of the journalists surveyed said the government is the source of media suppression. 

A staggering 99 percent of all the respondents said the enactment last June of the national security law had harmed press freedom, with 77 percent saying the legislation caused "great damage". 

When asked to rate a list of 2020 incidents for their repercussions for the industry, 99 percent agreed the prosecution of RTHK contributor Bao Choy Yuk-ling was harmful to press freedom.

She was recently found guilty of knowingly making a false statement when tracing the ownership of vehicles that were apparently used to ferry white-shirted men to Yuen Long MTR station to assault people there on the night of July 21, 2019. Choy was fined HK$6,000 (US$772).

Then 98 percent of respondents told the survey the August 2020 raid of Next Digital's offices -- headquarters of Apple Daily -- also triggered a decline in press freedom.

Yeung was concerned the government may be shifting to follow the mainland, where the media is used as a propaganda tool for the central government.

Police raid of Next Digital last August

It certainly looks like RTHK is being muzzled and with the deletion of previous content, it is paving the way for recreating a new version of Hong Kong's history. This should ring alarm bells for anyone in the city and around the world about what is happening here and more attention needs to be paid to the situation.

But with everyone too busy fighting the pandemic, and bickering over getting vaccinated or not, Hong Kong's rights and freedoms continue to erode even further, making one wonder when they will bottom out...

Hong Kong's Press Freedom Under Assault

After the verdict Choy said: "Uncovering the truth is not a crime"

 

Press freedom in Hong Kong was under attack again today, with journalists no longer able to use public records to do investigative reporting for the public good without being prosecuted.

Bao Choy Yuk-ling, 37, is the first person to be convicted related to the July 21, 2019 mob attacks in Yuen Long, and yet she did not carry a stick and violently beat people in the MTR station that night.

There were an estimated 100 men in white shirts with sticks who assaulted commuters, and yet only 63 people have been arrested and yet to be brought to justice.

White-shirted men assaulted people July 2019

But the first person to be found guilt is the journalist who told the truth.

Through security surveillance video footage of the attacks, Choy went to the Transport Department's vehicle registration database to find out who owned vehicles that ferried some of those white-shirted attackers to the station, and how the police were slow to attend to the scene where 45 people were injured.

That information Choy found was reported in a documentary called "7.21: Who owns the truth", that has just won the Hong Kong Journalists' Association's Kam Yiu-yu Press Freedom Award, with judges praising it for the journalists' "detailed and professional search on public records".

Notably RTHK declined the award, as its head is in the midst of overhauling the public broadcaster's programs for political correctness.

In her verdict, Principal Magistrate Ivy Chui Yee-mei found Choy guilty of providing false statements, that she sought details of car ownership for reporting purposes rather than transport-related reasons. Chui fined Choy HK$6,000, or HK$3,000 for two counts of knowingly making false statements. The maximum penalty would have been six months in prison.

Choy tearfully spoke to the media after verdict

Despite not being named in the documentary, one of the car's owners filed a complaint to the police, which led to Choy's arrest in November.

When requesting the car ownership information, there is no box to tick "for media purposes", but only "others", which she did.

"I am of the view that whether the defendant had sought the information out of good faith was unimportant," Chui said. "I can be sure that the defendant... knew clearly she made the applications for the purposes of searching, interviewing, and reporting, none of which falls under the three options offered by the Transport Department."

Outside the court, Choy was tearful, but defiant.

"Today the court found me liable for a crime, but I firmly believe searching public records is not an offence, and neither is [upholding] press freedom," she said.

Standing next to her was Chris Yeung Kin-hing, chairman of the HKJA, who said today was "a dark day for the Hong Kong press".

Choy's supporters: "Journalism is not a crime"

He criticized the government for undermining press freedom the public's right to know, adding officials were, in effect, sheltering people with something to hide.

Dozens of supporters behind them, many RTHK workers, held signs that read "Journalism is not a crime" and "Defend press freedom".

Needless to say Choy's former employer, the government broadcaster, is not footing her legal expenses -- she is left on her own.

The government is making it harder for journalists to do their jobs. Last month Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor saw no point in giving reporters the privilege to conduct record searches using government databases, stressing the need to prevent doxxing or weaponising of personal information.

In addition the government says other public registers, including those on marriage status, land ownership and company particulars are under review to determine whether further similar administrative measures to protect data privacy are needed.

This move just makes it easier for corruption to happen more easily in Hong Kong, with no ability to hold any one accountable for anything.

Yeung (left) says today dark day for HK media

While Lam thinks this will not affect the financial markets, she is wrong. Capitalism depends on freedom of information. When it becomes more opaque, there is less trust in the system, which will only make Hong Kong's strength in the finance and banking fields atrophy and eventually wither away.

In the meantime Choy deserves to be rallied around for her courage. "I hope as a profession we can defend our value and our role, we cannot give in," she said.

 

HK's Press Freedom Under Threat

How much longer can the media report freely in Hong Kong?

Press freedom continues to be eroding at a fast clip in Hong Kong.

On Tuesday it was revealed in a proposal to the Legislative Council it was up to the individuals who own the companies to decide how much information to make available on the Companies Registry, which in turn will be harder for journalists to find information of owners and shareholders to do investigative work.

Lam says journalists shouldn't have privileges

When asked about this new change at a press conference that day, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor seemed to reveal her contempt for the media.

"Personal information should be protected... It should not be disclosed unless there is a crucial need for it to be made public," Lam said.

"I cannot see the reason for journalists to have that privilege. Why should information that is not available to others be accessible to journalists? None of the people in Hong Kong should enjoy such privilege."

And now Hong Kong courts have stopped providing personal details of people standing trial as well as the police officers handling the cases. Information on the defendant's ID card number, name, addresses and date of birth has now been redacted since March 30.

Previously all this information, including the defendant's age, gender, nationality and occupation were readily available on a charge document.

Yeung says judiciary should release info to media

Chris Yeung Kin-hing of the Hong Kong Journalists Association said the decision was not in line "with the principle of open justice the judiciary has promised".

He added: "We are disappointed that the judiciary, which should function independently, seems to have followed the moves by the executive authorities to impose tighter restrictions on access to court information.

"Journalists have used that information for reporting. There have been no cases of misuse of abuses. We urge the judiciary to reconsider their decision and remove the curbs on the press."

And if that wasn't enough, the new director of broadcasting at RTHK is withdrawing all of the broadcaster's entries for various awards.

Government appointed career bureaucrat Patrick Li Pak-chuen assumed the post on March 1 and since then has been reviewing every single program and pulling them off the air if he deems them "one-sided" or have "inaccuracies".

Lam praised him on Tuesday for doing exactly what she asked of him.

Li wants withdrawal of all RTHK award entries

The submissions for these awards were made earlier, and RTHK has been praised locally and internationally for its quality documentaries and shows.

The Human Rights Press Awards revealed that Li asked to withdraw RTHK's entries "in totality", but said it was unable to comply with his request.

"Because the judging process for the Human Rights Press Awards is already underway, and because entries can only be withdrawn by the individual who submitted them, HRPA has not withdrawn RTHK's entries," a post on social media said.

One wonders how Li feels about not being able to have his way, and if RTHK wins, will he prevent its journalists from collecting the award?

Press freedom in Hong Kong is under serious threat -- how can journalists stop its erosion any further?