The Self-Censorship Myth
I am very happy to announce that self-censorship, a phenomenon that has been disturbing the journalistic circle in Hong Kong for many years, is dead. As a matter of fact, it never existed. Let’s be realistic. We should stop calling the sickness “self-censorship” and name it what it really is–censorship. Front-line journalists seldom censor themselves….
The Case of Jimmy Lai: Hong Kong’s Press Freedom Canary?
Those looking to take the measure of China’s attitude toward Hong Kong’s outspoken press may not need to wait for macroeconomic changes. Beijing has already expressed its distaste for Hong Kong’s independent journalism in the case of media magnate Jimmy Lai. The flamboyant millionaire has built a media empire in a very short time by…
The Self-Censorship Myth
I am very happy to announce that self-censorship, a phenomenon that has been disturbing the journalistic circle in Hong Kong for many years, is dead. As a matter of fact, it never existed. Let’s be realistic. We should stop calling the sickness “self-censorship” and name it what it really is‹censorship. Front-line journalists seldom censor themselves.…
China’s Journalists: Breaking Free
It was at the end of my year teaching journalism as a Fulbright lecturer at Fudan University in Shanghai, and one of my best students was talking about his future. “I don’t want to go into journalism,” he said. “It’s too depressing. You can’t be a real journalist.” I had been in China for almost…
Knight Errant of Hong Kong’s Press Web Site Chronicles Transition
When Australian journalist Alan Knight started thinking about the impending changes in Hong Kong, he saw a job to be done documenting the attitudes of local and foreign journalists in the soon-to-be former colony. Knight moved to Hong Kong in early 1997 and began producing Dateline: Hong Kong, a Web site devoted to press and…
The Tail of the Dragon
Two intrepid Chinese women‹one a naturalized American working as a reporter in New York, the other a former Beijing business writer now serving a six-year sentence in a Chinese jail‹have helped define what is at stake for East Asia and the world now that the Hong Kong press is under the formal sway of the…
Attacks on the Press in China and Hong Kong: 1996 and 1997
China Chen Fang BOOK BANNING Aug. 21, 1997 The Communist Party’s propaganda department, the Culture Ministry, and the Press and Publications Administration banned Chen Fang’s 1997 book, Wrath of Heaven: A Mayor’s Severe Crime, for posing a threat to Chinese leadership with its coverage of government corruption. Though a novel, the book describes the infamous…