ON POINT: FCC PRESS FREEDOM SURVEY 2023

In today’s Hong Kong, “virtually anything” can be seen as political, said Alex Frew McMillan, a British freelance journalist who moved to the city in 2001.

Olivia Parker, Deputy News Editor, New York Times International Edition.

A booklet he wrote for a top Hong Kong university, for example, included an anecdote about a woman who had travelled to Hong Kong from mainland China to get a P zer vaccine, which she thought was more e ective than the Chinese ones. “Can we put this in?” McMillan was asked. “It sounds very political, because we’re sort of saying that the Chinese vaccines are not good.” e second-guessing won out, and the story was removed.

An increasingly cautious approach to content is one of the most signi cant ndings of a new survey of the FCC’s Correspondent and Journalist members, conducted in May. e survey aimed to canvass members on the current state of press freedom in the city, following a similar survey conducted in October 2021. Of 66 respondents this year (22.5 percent of the club’s Correspondent and Journalist members), 65 percent said they had practised self-censorship in the last 18 months, either in the content of their reporting or by avoiding certain subjects. Eighteen percent of those said they had self-censored “considerably”. at is a signi cant increase from 2021, when 56 percent of respondents said they had self-censored, 16 percent of them to a considerable degree.

“You learn which words are going to trigger the government into an angry response,” wrote one respondent to the survey, which was anonymous. “For example, they hate it when you call the National Security Law ‘draconian’, so I’ll use ‘far-reaching’ or something more neutral-sounding,” they continued. “But better to avoid their trigger words and live to write another day.”

Another member wrote of “times when I have just softened mention of something related to HK’s political position, or even reworked a piece so a non-crucial mention is eliminated.”

Self-censoring was more likely to be carried out by club members working for news organisations headquartered in Hong Kong rather than abroad, the survey found, suggesting journalists working for local companies are feeling greater pressure to watch what they say.

And the practice extends beyond individuals redacting their own words. Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they had encountered censorship by their news organisations, with 15 percent of those –more than half of whom work for Hong Kong-headquartered companies – judging the level of censorship to be “considerable.” at is a rise from 44 percent and 8 percent in 2021, when the survey received 99 responses, around a quarter of all Correspondent and Journalist members at the time.

Navigating sensitivities

Self-censorship has existed in Hong Kong since long before the introduction of the National Security Law in 2020. It was “epidemic and endemic” before and around the Handover from Britain to China in 1997, wrote Professor Anne Cheung, who is now a law professor at the University of Hong Kong, in a 2001 dissertation on the subject.

Self-censorship has existed in Hong Kong since long before the introduction of the National Security Law in 2020.

*In 2023, this answer option was new.

Professor Cheung noted in the paper that the Chinese University of Hong Kong, using surveys of journalists in 1990 and 1996 along with an analysis of newspaper reports after 1997, found that “20 percent of Hong Kong journalists admitted that they practised self-censorship in covering China issues.”

But the much higher percentage of self-censorship admitted by journalists in the FCC’s two recent surveys suggests the practice is a potent side e ect of fear linked to recent societal developments.

“ ere’s an ongoing struggle between pragmatism (operating and surviving in this new order by self-censoring and not rocking the boat) and principle (practising real journalism and holding true to media freedom),” one respondent wrote.

While the term “censorship” is negatively loaded, some respondents to the FCC’s survey noted that the extra caution demanded by the present moment has had

*In 2023, one respondent (1.52%) selected a third answer: “I don’t think any subjects are sensitive.” bene ts for journalistic output.

“ e sub-editors and myself do take more care to cut out editorialising (especially about China), which is sometimes a thin line,” wrote one respondent. “But more often, this awareness actually leads to better copy.”

Sixty-seven percent of respondents in this year’s survey said they had a clear sense of what subjects the government deems sensitive, up from 52 percent in 2021, suggesting that more journalists are learning to navigate the government’s unde ned red lines. Or that they have opted to avoid them entirely: one respondent wrote that they “no longer write about Hong Kong politics. It’s too dangerous, in my opinion.”

And a slightly higher number of respondents than in 2021 – 56 percent, up from 52 percent – said they felt “con dent” or “somewhat con dent” knowing what is permitted when it comes to taking photos

The Respondents Weigh In

Do you have a clear sense of what subjects are sensitive?

National security law, press freedom, freedom of speech, the protests, any criticism of Xi Jinping, the CCP or the HK leadership.

Anything national security related, obviously. But anything critical of the government and its policies is unclear.”

Anything to do with government and dissent.”

There are no concrete answers. I feel I err on the side of caution (and again, luckily, being out of hard news means I’m mostly not dealing in sensitive subjects) because it really does feel like the NSL is o e a ... e ble.

or videos in Hong Kong.

The red line is deliberately left vague and what’s covered by ‘national security’ seems to grow day by day.” e environment of censure and control a ects journalists’ work less directly, too. Of those who indicated in the survey that speaking to sources is part of their job, 88 percent said they found sources had become less willing to be quoted or discuss sensitive subjects in the last 18 months.

But their comments revealed that collectively, journalists think that a very wide variety of subjects, all extremely broad in scope, could be seen as sensitive.

Topics that came up frequently in responses to this question included “China”, “press freedom”, “government”, “protesters”, “National Security Law”, “Taiwan”, “independence” and “democracy”, as did the sentiment that anything at all could be perceived as political.

“ eoretically, a photo of anything yellow in colour could be problematic,” one respondent wrote, referring to the colour traditionally associated with Hong Kong’s pro-democracy faction.

“People are terri ed. And with damn good reason,” one respondent wrote.

At least three major news organisations now frequently consult lawyers before publishing any articles on sensitive security matters relating to Hong Kong and China.

Explaining the mood

A catalogue of recent events a ecting the media in Hong Kong helps explain why journalists feel so broadly negative about working conditions in the city. In the survey, 83 percent said the environment for

Any subject that Beijing or the Hong Kong Government feels threatens them or embarrasses them. The HK Police are especially sensitive to any slight, real or imagined.”

I think I know what the sensitive subjects are but it then changes.”

Anything that refers to prodemocracy activists, jailed legislators, pro e er e fi re o criticise the government.” journalists had changed for the worse in the last 18 months, while just 3 percent (two people) said it had changed for the better. Fourteen percent said it hadn’t changed. e trials of journalists and editors from Apple Daily and Stand News, who were arrested in 2020 and 2021 and charged under either national security law or sedition legislation, are ongoing.

Hong Kong’s Chief Executive John Lee has stated that the laws are only being used to crack down on threats to national security and are not a tool to deliberately limit press freedom, which he has repeatedly said is protected under the city’s Basic Law. After the arrest of seven Stand News employees in December 2021, and the subsequent closure of the news website, he labelled the journalists “bad apples who are abusing their position simply by wearing a false coat of media worker”.

Other events making an impact on the industry since the last FCC press freedom survey include the denial of a work visa for a journalist from e Economist, without explanation; the cancellation by the FCC of its annual Human Rights Press Awards, with former President Keith Richburg citing “signi cant areas of uncertainty” around the laws; and media organisations being denied access to cover several government events, including John Lee’s inauguration.

In response, fears are running high. Seventeen percent of members who took the survey said they were “very concerned” about the possibility of arrest or prosecution

Anything that seems remotely critical is now sensitive. They only want media to praise their efforts. Anything critical in the slightest might see you accused of ‘smearing’ Hong Kong and ‘smearing’ the NSL and the motherland.” from their reporting or opinion articles or work that they have edited, up from 10 percent in 2021. A further 56 percent said they were “slightly concerned”. e anxiety follows a statement from the Hong Kong Journalists Association in March, in which the group said it had received reports from several news organisations that journalists were being “followed or monitored by unknown men”. at statement came after a court reporter for Hong Kong Free Press lmed two men who followed her for over an hour as she travelled to work on 22 March, despite her attempts to lose them.

Reported rates of surveillance or harassment while on the job, meanwhile, remain low but troubling.

While 82 percent of respondents said they were concerned about digital and physical surveillance but had not experienced it, four respondents said they had experienced digital surveillance while reporting in Hong Kong in the last 18 months. One person had experienced physical surveillance; and four more people said they had experienced both.

And while 77 percent of respondents said they had not experienced any interference while reporting in Hong Kong, 20 percent wrote that they had experienced minor interference, and 3 percent (two people) had experienced signi cant interference, harassment or violence.

“It’s very worrying to hear these reports from our members, even if they remain few in number,” said FCC President Lee Williamson. “It’s important that as a club, we continue to monitor such reports and keep lines of dialogue open with the relevant authorities so that we can raise our concerns.”

Anticipating a ‘fake news’ law

One topic causing near-unanimous apprehension is the government’s proposed introduction of a law designed to combat false information, which many said they feared could be used as a tool to suppress the publication of anything that the government dislikes, and would not be used to limit the spread of actual disinformation.

Former Chief Executive Carrie Lam raised the idea of such legislation in February 2021. In an address to the Legislative Council in October 2022, John Lee said that his government would press ahead with work to enact Article 23 of the city’s Basic Law, including “completing the consultancy study on addressing the issue of false information”.

Seventy-seven percent of respondents to the survey said they were “very concerned” about such a law, a slight increase from 2021. A further 18 percent said they were “slightly concerned”.

e fears are not groundless. A study of the impact for journalists and sources when similar laws were enacted in Singapore in 2019 and Indonesia in 2016 found a “chilling e ect” on journalism and free speech.

e authors of the paper, which was published by Journalism Studies in May, also identi ed an “unintended back re e ect” on the laws’ stated aims. “By discrediting the media, respondents believed governments risked undermining public trust in news and paradoxically could make it more di cult to tackle harmful misinformation.”

In Hong Kong, the results of a survey by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, released in August 2022, found that the credibility of the city’s media with the

Chart about the possibility of arrest or prosecution from public had already reached its lowest level since 2001, when the research started being carried out in its current format.

Resilient, or resigned

Despite the general sense of pessimism, some data in the survey suggested that those journalists who have not yet left the city – if that were an option – may have become resigned to navigating the changing situation in Hong Kong, and perhaps more resilient.

“You’d be naive to not be unconcerned, when so many people are being arrested today,” one respondent wrote. “But I am not so concerned that I am changing the way I work and write. If I were, I’d have left Hong Kong already. And I believe it’s important to record what’s happening now.” e percentages of members planning to leave or considering leaving have dropped slightly, to 9 percent and 31 percent today from 12 percent and 34 percent in 2021. e rest say they have no plans to leave.

However, the actual number of Correspondent and Journalist members of the FCC has itself decreased signi cantly, from around 400 in October 2021 to just under 300 now. ose who gave the FCC a reason for closing their membership said, far more often than any other reason, that it was because they were leaving Hong Kong.

“Staying informed about our Journalist and Correspondent members’ experiences of doing their jobs in Hong Kong, as this survey helps to do, is a vital part of our work as a press club, particularly in a time of change,” said Williamson.

“I’d like us to continue these surveys to help inform our members that they are not alone in their concerns or the ways they are adapting to a changing Hong Kong. I hope their candid answers will not go unnoticed outside our membership. As a club, we will continue to do all we can to promote conditions in which journalists can do their vital work without fear.” n