Hong Kong’s free press is being ‘gutted.’ Here’s what the world loses
CNNHong Kong CNN Business — In the past year, two of Hong Kong’s biggest pro-democracy media outlets were toppled after enormous government pressure, a series of arrests and police raids on their newsrooms. “ Carrie Lam is patiently unraveling the substance of press freedom in Hong Kong,” Reporters Without Borders said in a December 2021 report on China’s press freedoms. This week, she dismissed accusations that Citizen News and Stand News’ shutdowns were related to the national security law and pushed back against the idea that Hong Kong’s free press faced collapse. For now, the media in Hong Kong is still nowhere near as restricted as in mainland China, where Beijing’s so-called “Great Firewall” of censors severely curtails internet access and journalist visas are difficult to obtain. In the future, Hong Kong could increasingly find itself in a situation where media covered the city from the outside — just as media do with mainland China, Freedom House’s Cook said.