Covering the 2019 Hong Kong Protests 3030822257, 9783030822255

Table of contents :
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction
Individual Journalists’ Identification with Protest Movements
Journalists’ Autonomy and Agency in Reporting on Social Movements
The Connection between News and Social Actions
Journalists’ Use of Social Media
Violence against Journalists Who Cover Protests
The Changing Media System: From Libertarian to Authoritarian
References
Chapter 2: Journalists in the Mainstream Media: Constraints and Influences
References
Chapter 3: Citizen Journalists: Facing the Force of Delegitimizing the Profession of Journalism
References
Chapter 4: “We Covered Stories Mainstream Media Won’t”: Student Journalists on Covering the Protests
References
Chapter 5: Working at State Media: Journalist or Propagandist
References
Chapter 6: Foreign Media Journalists: Bringing the Protests to the World
References
Chapter 7: Stand News: Livestreaming Protests and Fighting Police Brutality
References
Chapter 8: After the Movement and under the National Security Law
References
Index

Citation preview

Covering the 2019 Hong Kong Protests

Luwei Rose Luqiu

Covering the 2019 Hong Kong Protests

Luwei Rose Luqiu

Covering the 2019 Hong Kong Protests

Luwei Rose Luqiu Hong Kong Baptist University Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

ISBN 978-3-030-82225-5    ISBN 978-3-030-82226-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82226-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Iain Masterton / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 Journalists in the Mainstream Media: Constraints and Influences 21 3 Citizen Journalists: Facing the Force of Delegitimizing the Profession of Journalism 39 4 “We Covered Stories Mainstream Media Won’t”: Student Journalists on Covering the Protests 55 5 Working at State Media: Journalist or Propagandist 73 6 Foreign Media Journalists: Bringing the Protests to the World 89 7 Stand News: Livestreaming Protests and Fighting Police Brutality107 8 After the Movement and under the National Security Law123 Index141

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

For months in 2019, journalists in Hong Kong covering the Anti-­ Extradition Bill Movement were subjected to political pressure, violent attacks, criticism, and, on occasion, were praised for their bravery. On the ground, as the violence between protesters and police escalated, and as the latter adopted increasingly aggressive tactics, including targeting frontline journalists, the risks associated with covering street protests increased as well. At the same time, the political stances of the media outlets that employed journalists and the usually limited support that they received sometimes made it challenging for them to report the facts. During more than 20 years as a journalist, I covered protests all over the world, so I am well aware that reporters seeking to cover large street protests may be subject to a wide range of influences and constraints. I vividly remember my first encounter with tear gas and rubber bullets on the job. I had been assigned to cover the WTO meeting in Seattle in 1999, and, at first, everything was peaceful. Then a confrontation occurred between some of the protesters and police officers. My coworkers and I—who had no previous experience covering conflicts during mass protests—struggled along with our cameraman to find an appropriate place between the protesters and the police from which to report so as to avoid the worst of the pepper spray and dodge the rubber bullets while still capturing the scene. Later, when I watched television news coverage of the protests, I kept seeing footage of a group of black-clad men smashing their way into © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. R. Luqiu, Covering the 2019 Hong Kong Protests, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82226-2_1

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several chain-stores. If it weren’t for the fact that I had been there and had seen that the peaceful demonstrators vastly outnumbered the black-clad looters and vandals, I would not have known that the violent impression left by the media reports greatly distorted what actually happened. In retrospect, I came to the conclusion that I failed to deliver an accurate account of the WTO protests to my audiences. Not only were the descriptions of violence in my reporting and that of other journalists on the scene excessive, but we also failed to describe the specific demands of the protesters, who had come from all over the world, in the context of globalization. Further, we failed to assess the extent to which the police response to the protesters was justified or rather constituted misuse of force. Again in retrospect, I fault myself for framing the protests first as a “carnival” and later as a “riot”—and, indeed, these frames have been commonly used in the coverage of social protests, being characteristic of what has been termed the “protest paradigm” for press reports on such events (McLeod, 2007). The news media has played an important role in mobilizing political processes, including those relating to street demonstrations. In fact, the manner in which media outlets frame protests has come to serve as a reliable indicator of their legitimacy and thus impacts the public’s understanding and evaluation of civil unrest. Professional ethics call for coverage that provides an unbiased perspective on events as they unfold and an accurate and balanced presentation of the facts and evidence. In practice, however, various organizational, professional, and procedural factors influence reporting, including on social protests. In particular, journalists covering protests have been experiencing increasing violence at the hands of both police and demonstrators in recent years in locations as otherwise disparate as Chile, Lebanon, Hong Kong, and the United States, finding themselves caught amid demonstrators venting their rage, police violence, and increasing government pressure on the news media in general. The Hong Kong protests dominated local and international news for months in 2019. Journalists working for local news outlets, both traditional and online, including student media and citizen journalists, took to the streets to cover the story. It was also a busy time for foreign correspondents based in Hong Kong, who became the main sources for audiences in their home countries to keep up with the rapidly evolving situation in the streets through their published stories and, in most cases, their Twitter feeds. Chinese state media outlets for their part presented a pro-Beijing

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perspective to audiences in mainland China in order to manage perceptions of the protests there. The Anti-Extradition Bill Movement was a critical event that disrupted the relationship between social structure and institutions in Hong Kong in many ways, including in the field of journalism. On the macro-level, the movement led to a further tightening of Beijing’s direct control over the media. Thus, dissatisfied with the coverage of some media outlets in Hong Kong, the Chinese government began to overhaul those that it deemed disobedient after the pandemic put an end to the street protests, sending party faithful to take on senior management roles in the newsrooms of private media companies. Similarly, Radio Television Hong Kong, a local public broadcasting service, has been transformed into an official mouthpiece for the government. At the same time, Hong Kong police have targeted journalists when conducting on-street crowd control, and officials have even tried to limit the number and organization of frontline reporters through a system of accreditation. These developments are evidence of a fundamental shift in the organization of Hong Kong’s news media from an originally libertarian system to an authoritarian one. This macro-level change will inevitably impact the meso-level of media outlets and, with the decision-making in newsrooms under direct or indirect government control, the micro-level of the production of news content and the autonomy and professionalism of individual journalists. The micro-level is the focus of this qualitative study, specifically, the experiences of the various types of journalists who covered the protests. These experiences reflect the culture and structure of media organizations and the political environment in Hong Kong. Accordingly, they provide a lens through which to view the protest movement’s disruption of the structural-institutional relations of the news media from the bottom up.

Individual Journalists’ Identification with Protest Movements Recent research has identified factors that can alter the reporting patterns that reinforce the aforementioned protest paradigm. Thus, a comparative analysis of the news coverage of protests in Brazil, China, and India suggested that the ideology of a media outlet and the political culture of the country in which it was operating were the key predictors of the applicability of the protest paradigm to the reporting from these three countries,

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which have often been grouped together (along with Russia and South Africa) under the acronym BRICS (Shahin et al., 2016). A recent study of US newspapers, on the other hand, suggested that the motivation for a demonstration and its timing have been the key external factors influencing media representation in this regard (Boyle et al., 2012). Discussions of the individual journalist’s domain frequently refer to the influence of personal worldviews on news-reporting decisions. Not surprisingly, there is evidence that journalists’ personal political ideologies can influence professional decisions (Patterson & Donsbagh, 1996). Regarding specifically the coverage of demonstrations, a study of Israeli journalists found high levels of identification with a social protest movement—with their stories emphasizing the general ideals of social and economic justice—that motivated positive coverage of the initial stages of protests (Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2014). Further, identification with the movement led some of these journalists to challenge established notions of reporting. Among the relatively few other scholars who have investigated these issues, Shultziner and Shoshan (2018) usefully identified four broad ways of understanding the impact of journalists’ personal views of social movements on their coverage of them: • Ideological identification with a certain cause or group • Personal attachment to a certain cause or group • Personal conviction that a journalist’s moral responsibilities include reporting on and advocating for victims and even helping to organize campaigns to support them • Personal experience with the issues that protesters raise One or another of these attitudes toward the protests—or even a mixture of them—was on display in the reporting on the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement. Thus, for example, a journalist’s balancing of democratic values with demands for law and order can be expected to figure into his or her personal identification with the demands of a given movement. Likewise, personal interactions in the field may cause journalists to identify with protesters as they are pulled into their world and, at times, even create newsworthy information in collaboration with them (Gitlin, 1980; Lück et  al., 2016). Also during protests, a journalist may provide emotional reports on protesters in keeping with a belief that members of the media should play an advocacy role, which can include mobilizing the public in support of a leaderless movement (Walgrave & Verhulst, 2006).

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Lastly, the shared experience of being the targets of forceful, even violent, police tactics on the ground reinforces the sense of identification between journalists and protesters; thus, both groups were united in support for at least one of the five key demands of the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement’s five key demands, namely, that an independent committee investigate police behavior during the protests.

Journalists’ Autonomy and Agency in Reporting on Social Movements Some scholars have taken the organizational perspective and argued that, with respect to power relations within media outlets, it is difficult for journalists to exert their individual will because of organizational constraints (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996). Other scholars have argued to the contrary that journalists should be viewed as extensions of their organizations’ power (Reese, 1991). Since frontline journalists spend most of their time outside the newsroom, management is ill-equipped to control their behavior through bureaucratic means. Instead, the news industry has adapted to facilitate the control of journalists through the establishment of standards and norms of behavior and a professional reward system (Soloski, 1989). Using the case of journalists covering 2019 protests as an example, I examine in this book the structure–agency problem in the professional practice of contemporary news production. In general, the trend in journalism has been toward declining autonomy and increasing workplace alienation, with journalists serving as skilled strategists contesting control in increasingly market-oriented media environments. Because professional journalistic practice is the product of both the structure of media outlets and individual agency (Dickinson & Bigi, 2009), both external and internal factors limit the autonomy of journalists. The external factors include coercive forces that restrict the political autonomy of entire news organizations, including government policy, state censorship, legislation, and regulation. On the other hand, internal restrictions relate to the freedom of journalists to make decisions free from regulatory pressures, commercial factors, and forces internal to the news environment. However, individual and organizational autonomy are intertwined to the extent that it is difficult to distinguish their influences (Reich & Hanitzsch, 2013). From the beginning of this movement, journalists were targeted by the state propaganda apparatus for failing to support the government, with

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many facing restrictions and pressures not only from their employers but also from the regime. With the decline in journalists’ autonomy, it is worth considering whether individuals can continue to uphold professional standards, resist serving as mouthpieces for the government, and carry out their responsibility as members of the fourth estate to monitor those in power. Also of interest in this context is the adoption by journalists of a defensive orientation in the face of numerous threats to their autonomy from both inside and outside the newsroom. Journalists have also come under pressure from the public, for, even as press freedom in Hong Kong continues to be eroded, public trust in the media has reached an all-time low. Thus, protesters have at times prevented reporters from filming out of concern that the footage may be used against them in future court proceedings, and this concern is not unfounded. In other cases, protesters have expressed anger toward reporters for recording and reporting facts on the ground that were unfavorable to their cause. Further, as the conflict between protesters and police escalated during the 2019 protests, and especially as the issue of police brutality came to dominate the headlines, some journalists faced a dilemma regarding the possibility that their reporting might expose information that would lead to a crackdown by the police on the protesters.

The Connection between News and Social Actions Despite being the topic of a long and complicated debate, objectivity has always guided the production of content in the daily practice of news outlets, except in countries where news media are under total control of the government. However, with the emergence of online news, new challenges to journalistic objectivity have emerged in terms of both news narratives and presentation formats. The defining characteristics of online news include hypertextuality, interactivity, and multimediality. Thus, online media allow audiences to participate in the journalistic process, including by posting content, asking and responding to questions, and discussing specific issues with journalists and each other (Deuze, 2003). Digital journalism has brought about changes in content and presentation that have had a salutary effect on press freedom, though the shift to online forms of news has also exacerbated decades-long negative trends in print journalism. In any case, to the extent that the true purpose of news is to guide and facilitate public engagement and generate discussion of public issues across all levels of society, online journalism helps to sustain a

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narrative atmosphere of dialogue (Scott, 2005). Through interactive dialogue, the news can include the voices of a range of social classes, point the way to social action, and generally serve a significant social and political function in daily life. By charting a course away from the overreliance on official sources and elite opinions that has been characteristic of the mainstream media, online media can avoid as well the preoccupation with objectivity that has traditionally characterized mainstream journalism (Chueh, 2011). At the same time, while traditional professional standards have required journalists to remain objective and neutral, journalists have had to defend their freedom of expression and right to monitor the powerful. The standard of objectivity requires journalists to keep their distance from the protesters, while the defense of their profession creates a certain ideological closeness to pro-democracy movements. During the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement in Hong Kong, journalists were often criticized for lacking objectivity by superiors whose motives included both adherence to journalistic standards and self-censorship. In other words, the standard of objectivity and neutrality limits journalists’ autonomy and serves as a form of the censorship that has become a structural feature of the Hong Kong news media (Au, 2016). In other cases, though, objectivity can serve as a defense against criticism, especially from the government (So & Chan, 2007). Conversely, the Chinese government accused journalists in Hong Kong of lacking objectivity and professionalism as part of its effort to influence news production, especially by frontline reporters. Its aim, naturally, was to minimize the resentment toward the Hong Kong police and government felt by many members of the public when they saw the news reports of the protests. Politically active members of the public, as readers, have also accused journalists of bias when news reports have been critical of their camp. Likewise, mainstream journalists often perceive online media reporters, especially student reporters, to be biased and unprofessional. The validity of these claims aside, journalists outside the mainstream proved able to generate productive public discussion and establish links between the news and the movement. When clashes occurred between the police and protesters, it was not uncommon to hear protesters calling for journalists, who, for their part, while not considered participants in the movement, served as the intermediaries between the protesters and the general public. That is journalists, especially online journalists, directly

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influenced both the public perception of the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement and the protesters’ perceptions of themselves.

Journalists’ Use of Social Media After Internet access became widely available, but before the advent of social media, many news media outlets regulated their journalists’ online activity by classifying their blogs as news products, situating them in the editing process in the step before publishing. By 2006, 80% of the top 100 US newspapers sponsored at least one reporter’s blog (Teeling, 2006). Singer (2005) examined political journalists’ engagement with blogs on their institutions’ websites and found that they tended to use traditional professional norms and practices to control the flow of information and to be unwilling to change their news-production practices to suit the context of blogging. News media outlets have also been able to restrict journalists’ blogging to their official websites. This control was possible because a blog is a digital, diary-style text entry rather than a platform. On the other hand, social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, are platforms for which there are no alternatives, so media outlets have difficulty prescreening posts by members of their staff. As Farhi (2009) noted, Twitter gives journalists a variety of identities at the same time: “With their intimacy and immediacy, social networks can put journalists in murky territory: ‘Am I a reporter [when tweeting]? Am I an editor? Am I a critic? Or am I just talking among friends?’” (para. 33). Through social media, journalists can provide perspectives on protests that their news organizations do not provide, again because, according to traditional professional standards, their personal opinions should not influence either the content or the framing of their published stories. Posts on social media platforms have thus come to serve as additional information channels for audiences to access reporters’ opinions and observations and details not included in their published stories. Of course, such posts can be controversial, especially when a follower disagrees with a journalist’s point of view, thereby diminishing the trustworthiness of a published story. In any case, social media platforms have emerged as networked sites where activists, journalists, and members of the public connect during many social movements (Mourao & Chen, 2020; Poell & Rajagopalan, 2015). Throughout the 2019 Hong Kong protests, some journalists were very active on social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, where they

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broadcast events and breaking news and offered commentary on the handling of incidents by police and government officials. The rise of social media has significantly impacted the media coverage of protests, helping journalists to escape organizational constraints while providing opportunities for direct interaction involving them, key actors in the protests, and the consumers of news. Further, while media organizations encourage journalists to use social media to promote news, their attitudes regarding whether journalists should express personal opinions in this context vary. The top management of some media outlets, such as the BBC, has considered enacting strict regulations forbidding journalists and editors to express their personal opinions or make controversial comments on social media (Thorpe, 2019). I argued (Luqiu & Lu, 2021) in an earlier study of foreign correspondents working for Western legacy media during the 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill Movement that journalists should be allowed to exercise free speech on social media while, at the same time, news outlets have a professional obligation to protect the freedom of the press on both the intuitional and individual levels. My coauthor and I found that the correspondents’ expressions of personal opinions on Twitter—which tended to be sympathetic to the protesters and critical of the responses by the authorities, especially the police—encouraged audience engagement, in part by providing readers with additional details about and perspectives on the protests. As part of the research for this book, I considered the views of journalists regarding the expression of personal opinions on social media from a journalist’s perspective, especially in the context of social movements, since journalists’ opinions naturally tend to be more influential than those of individuals not involved with the news industry.

Violence against Journalists Who Cover Protests Journalists who cover the protests that are constantly occurring in one part of the world or another have been experiencing increasing violence at the hands of both police and demonstrators in recent years. Thus, for instance, the Committee to Protect Journalists (2019) accused authorities in Ecuador of intentionally targeting reporters who were wearing clearly marked press vests while covering antigovernment protests in October 2019. The situation in Ecuador is symptomatic of the growing threat to those who cover protests in democratic as well as nondemocratic societies. A recent report documented 203 verified cases of journalists being

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targeted by demonstrators, counter-demonstrators, or police while covering protests associated with a range of agendas—nationalistic, xenophobic, pro- or antigovernment—in 35 countries belonging to or affiliated with the European Union (Costa-Korstritsky, 2019). Journalists are again and again finding themselves caught between demonstrators venting their rage, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, police violence and the tightening of government controls on the news media. The Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) have condemned the increasingly common reports of attacks on journalists covering the protests over the Anti-­ Extradition Bill that intensified across the city in June 2019. At issue are incidents in which police injured journalists with tear gas, pepper spray, and sponge rounds (Hale, 2019). In one case, an Indonesian journalist suffered substantial visual impairment as a result of being shot in the face by a police projectile (Chan, 2019). At the same time, journalists have also faced intimidation from counter-protesters, including attacks by stick-­ wielding gangs (Cheng, 2019). Supporters of the Hong Kong government have also targeted journalists and news media outlets with organized protests and taunted individual reporters on the grounds that their coverage has focused on instances of police brutality while overlooking the violent behavior of antigovernment protesters (Low, 2019). Violence against journalists has come to be considered a global human rights issue as reporters face threats from oppressive governments, terror networks, warring armies, and gangs and cartels while investigating such issues as economic inequality, violations of democratic norms, and disruptions of public safety (Hughes et  al., 2017; Hughes & Lawson, 2005; Hughes & Márquez-Ramírez, 2017; Relly & González de Bustamante, 2017). The intimidation and harassment of journalists have not been limited to nondemocratic and authoritarian countries; fear and self-­censorship are also found in countries with well-developed democratic institutions and strong safeguards protecting journalists’ freedom and autonomy (Löfgren & Örnebring, 2016). During the 2014 Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, frontline journalists were regularly chased from the scene of demonstrations by the police. Eventually, according to statistics compiled by civic groups from news reports, more than 30 were injured, and 3 were prosecuted (Yip, 2015). During the 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill protests, journalists were again deliberately targeted by police officers, whose hostility complicated frontline reporting. On the one hand, the police restricted the scope of

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journalists’ movements, so that many scenes could not be recorded. On the other hand, to avoid confrontations, journalists often kept their distance from the police, again leaving them unable to document some events, especially clashes between protesters and police. The deterioration of the relationship between journalists and police over the course of the movement reflected, in turn, Beijing’s determination to control the media in Hong Kong.

The Changing Media System: From Libertarian to Authoritarian Under the “one country, two systems” policy, individual citizens of Hong Kong, unlike the citizens of mainland China, can own news outlets. Also unlike mainland China, Hong Kong has not established a press-card system of centralized registration for journalists. Professional journalists, freelancers, citizen journalists, and student journalists—all are free to cover street protests. However, the situation seems to be changing quickly. The authorities have repeatedly complained about “fake journalists,” that is, protesters who supposedly disguise themselves as members of the media in order to attack police officers. At the same time, pro-Beijing politicians and members of the Chinese state media industry have kept pushing for the implementation of a press-card system in Hong Kong. The 2019 protests occurred in numerous places across the territory. The slogan “Be water” summed up the movement’s strategy of taking the demonstrations to every corner of Hong Kong and affecting the life of every resident. Under these conditions, journalists were inevitably part of the story. In response to the protesters’ efforts to assert Hong Kong’s autonomy, Beijing in 2020 enacted the National Security Law, which gives its puppet government in the city sweeping powers, including over the media. On the face of it, the large street protests appear to have ceased in Hong Kong because of the pandemic and the new law. However, frequent, small street protests continue to keep journalists busy—and to expose them to dangerous working conditions, including the crowd-­ control devices deployed by the police. The National Security Law authorizes the Hong Kong government to regulate the media in cases of national security, but it does not specify the measures that may be employed for this purpose. For journalists covering the demonstrations, this uncertainty means that they may end up violating the National Security Laws simply

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by reporting on it. Beijing’s control of the media in Hong Kong is, to some extent, reminiscent of the situation in Singapore. Although the Singaporean government has sought to use the media as a propaganda tool, officials have understood that excessive intervention will damage the credibility of the media and thus cause consumers of news to turn elsewhere, as was the case in Malaysia (Rodan, 2004). While Singaporean news consumers have complained about pro-government political bias, they have not been driven to boycott the mainstream media (George, 2006). In Hong Kong, the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement marked the moment when Beijing abandoned all subtlety and aggressively asserted control over Hong Kong’s mainstream media outlets, even to the point of determining the angle and length of individual news stories. During the 2014 Umbrella Movement, by contrast, though some online media outlets benefited from public dissatisfaction with mainstream media, and a few individual mainstream outlets were the targets of boycotts, other mainstream outlets maintained some measure of autonomy and, therefore, credibility in their reporting on the movement. After the Umbrella Movement subsided, however, Beijing installed pro-government executives in the news departments of the city’s two commercial television stations. The government also tightened its control over the city’s public broadcast network, RTHK. Thus, hours after Beijing announced a ban on the broadcast of BBC World News within Chinese territory because of what state media described as “serious content violations,” RTHK announced that it would no longer air the program after having done so for more than four decades (RTHK, 2021). The head of RTHK, Leung Ka-wing, stepped down in February 2021, six months before his term was to expire; his replacement was Patrick Li Pak-chuen, the former deputy secretary for home affairs, who, tellingly, had no prior experience in the media industry (Cheng, 2021). The government and its supporters asserted that, because RTHK’s programming had been overly critical of authorities, especially the police, and had served as a platform for government critics, its editorial decisions needed to be subjected to increased scrutiny. Such scrutiny would mean a fundamental change in RTHK’s role as a public broadcaster, resulting in its transformation into a government media outlet charged with promoting government policies. Such interference would likely have fueled the development of independent in media Hong Kong, but the National Security Act has made the future for such outlets uncertain.

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As explained in detail in this chapter, the aim of this book is to document, based on in-depth interviews with frontline journalists and my own observations and coverage of the Anti-Extradition Bill protests, the role of journalists in the movement, and the various factors that influenced their engagement with it. I conducted semi-structured interviews with 70 journalists working full- and part-time for various types of media outlets as well as independent journalists over the period from November 2019 through January 2021. The questions concerned these journalists’ frontline reporting practices, such as setting the agenda, choosing the angle for stories, communicating with editors, and interacting with protesters and police. The interviewees also shared their views on the value of objectivity in journalism. The interviews conducted after July 1, 2020, raised the issue of the impact of the National Security Law on reporting. For interviewees who agreed to expose their identity, their English name was used, and for the rest of them, numbers were used for the quotations. The focus in Chap. 2 is on journalists working for local mainstream media outlets. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has taken control of Apple Daily and Hong Kong’s other mainstream media outlets through direct and indirect means (Luqiu, 2018). In particular, I describe how, in 2014, the director of the city’s largest television station criticized the news department for broadcasting footage of police beating Umbrella Movement protesters, prompting reporters to issue an open letter condemning management’s attempt to curtail press freedom and quite a few of them to resign to show their displeasure with the biased coverage that the protest movement had been receiving. The CCP tightened its grip on Hong Kong’s mainstream media outlets because they remained a major source of information for the city’s citizens; thus, a recent survey indicated that more than half of the city’s residents relied on the mainstream media outlets for information during the Anti-Extradition Bill protests (City University of Hong Kong Center for Communication and Public Opinion, 2020). The ideologies of their news outlets may constrain them, but journalists as individuals still have the ability to make their opinions known, as the signers of the open letter, and even more those who resigned, demonstrated. Also in this chapter, I explore journalists’ perceptions of objectivity, especially the use of this principle as an excuse to limit journalists’ autonomy and a means to encourage self-censorship as well as their efforts to transcend these limits. In Chap. 3, I turn to the independent journalists who have been playing an important role in framing protests and asserting press freedom even

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as Hong Kong’s mainstream media outlets have been facing increasing restrictions. Fundraising and subscriptions during the movement showed considerable public support for independent media and recognition of their importance as a counter to the influence of the CCP. In the case of the protest movement, independent media outlets and journalists played a key role in documenting events from a perspective other than that of Beijing. The support for independent media thus indicates that defending press freedom remains a core value for the public in Hong Kong. However, independent journalists have faced the same rough treatment at the hands of the police that other journalists have faced, while they and citizen journalists have been denied recognition as professional members of the press by the authorities because they are not associated with one or another of the news outlets that have registered officially with the government. Such disregard puts these journalists at risk when they are on the front lines. On the other hand, in the absence of institutional restrictions, some journalists deliver reports directly to their audiences that are unfiltered and, occasionally, even inaccurate, raising the perennial question of how journalistic ethics can be maintained in an environment in which anyone can be a journalist. This chapter, then, provides a nuanced discussion of independent journalism in Hong Kong that shows the connections among media regulation and government interference, funding, and media professionalism. In Hong Kong, the coverage of the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement by student journalists provided a key perspective on how the movement was understood, namely, that of young people. Because colleges and universities have been centers of this and other pro-democratic movements, student journalists have been constantly at the forefront, and their reporting has, in many cases, been picked up by independent and even mainstream media outlets. These student reporters faced the additional burden of constantly being mistaken for protesters. In Chap. 4, I detail their struggles, the pressures that they faced, and their views of mainstream journalism. While professional journalists tend to dismiss their work, which often deals with incidents and individuals whom the mainstream outlets consider undeserving of mention, student journalists have a keen appreciation for the ways in which seemingly minor incidents and facts on the ground may help to shape an entire movement. Further, the speed with which their reporting is disseminated among their readers and viewers suggests that student journalists tend to be closer to their audiences and better able to communicate with them than professional journalists.

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The directives given to journalists working for state media outlets during the 2019 protests were abundantly clear: their stories emphasized the violence of the protesters and celebrated the coping skills of residents of Hong Kong who disapproved of them. In practice, state media reporters usually left the front lines when conflicts escalated so as not to become victims of police crowd-control efforts. Also, unlike professional journalists in capturing the scene, some state journalists gathered information for the CCP, as part of their responsibility of being the propaganda tool. As I discuss in Chap. 5, this ambiguous role obviously complicated the status of state media journalists when covering the 2019 protests and made them subject to hostile treatment when protesters identified them as agents of the government. In Chap. 6, I consider the foreign correspondents that were sent by media outlets all over the world to cover the unrest in Hong Kong during the months in 2019 when the protests dominated the international news. These correspondents’ stories and social media accounts were, as mentioned, the main sources of information on the protests for consumers of international news in their home countries. Historically, Hong Kong has been the Asian hub of the global media industry, and 2019 was not, of course, the first time that foreign correspondents had covered a prolonged series of mass antigovernment protests there, the 2014 Umbrella Movement being the most recent major example. I explore in this chapter the pressures on foreign reporters from, on the one hand, the CCP, which accused the Western media of anti-Chinese bias and of damaging its image in covering the 2019 protests, and, on the other hand, the protesters, who likewise recognized that the framing of the coverage by Western media outlets directly impacted international support, both popular and official, for their cause. In Chap. 7, I consider advocacy journalism through a case study of the independent Hong Kong media outlet Stand News. While most media outlets in Hong Kong have emphasized the journalistic principle of objectivity and neutrality, Stand News has made its name voicing open support for universal suffrage and democratic movements. In the early stages of the 2019 social movement, this outlet received attention for its live broadcasts and frontline journalists’ performance. Scholars of political communication in Hong Kong have in recent years begun to analyze alternative media effects. The online news outlets, though they have limited reach, play an essential role in the mobilization of social movements. Within this context, Stand News has been transparent regarding its political

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orientation without suffering damage to its credibility, which, in fact, was rated more highly by consumers of news in Hong Kong after than before the movement that it supported, while revenues increased significantly. This online media outlet’s trajectory, which has been fueled entirely by crowdfunding, has been closely tied to the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement. In discussing the space for advocacy media in Hong Kong and the freedom that such media provide for journalists, I show the pros and cons of working for a pro-movement outlet, which may facilitate reporting on the movement but may also blur the line between journalism and protesting, to the detriment of the former. Perhaps most importantly, the move by some journalists to add personal observations and perspectives to live reporting challenges the journalistic principle of objectivity and neutrality. In Chap. 8, I conclude the book with a discussion of the impact of the 2020 National Security Law on journalists in Hong Kong. Uncertainty persists regarding its implications for press freedom in the wake of the 2019 protests owing to the intentional vagueness of the text of the new legislation. Imprecision aside, the CCP’s history of hostility toward both local and international journalists does not bode well for non-state media in Hong Kong. I make clear here the consequences, including self-­ censorship, for journalists across the various types of media outlets covering future protests. In sum, I argue the more general case over the chapters of this book that, when a society becomes increasingly authoritarian, journalists bear the brunt of the mounting political pressure and violence.

References Au, K. L. A. (2016). Institutional logics as constitutive censorship: The case in Hong Kong broadcast news media. The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Boyle, M.  P., McLeod, D.  M., & Armstrong, C.  L. (2012). Adherence to the protest paradigm: The influence of protest goals and tactics on news coverage in U.S. and international newspapers. The International Journal of Press/ Politics, 17(2), 127–144. Chan, H. (2019, October 2). Scores of Hong Kong journalists injured during National Day protests, as some outlets recall staff from frontlines. Hong Kong Free Press. https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/10/02/ scores-­hong-­kong-­journalists-­injured-­national-­day Cheng, K. (2019, July 22). Chaos and bloodshed in Hong Kong district as hundreds of masked men assault protesters, journalist, resident. Hong Kong Free Press. https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/07/22/just-­chaos-­bloodshed-­hong-­

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kong-­district-­hundreds-­masked-­men-­assault-­protesters-­journalists-­residents/ protests-­outlets-­recall-­staff-­frontlines/ Cheng, S. (2021). Head of Hong Kong public broadcaster RTHK steps down 6 months before term ends. Hong Kong Free Press. https://hongkongfp. com/2021/02/19/head-­o f-­h ong-­k ong-­p ublic-­b roadcaster-­r thk-­s teps-­ down-­6-­months-­before-­term-­ends/ Chueh, J. (2011). Is journalistic objectivity always irrefutable? A competing ideal from the internet field. NTU News Forum, 7(11), 55–83. City University of Hong Kong Center for Communication and Public Opinion. (2020). Research report on public opinion during the anti-extradition bill (fugitive offenders bill) movement in Hong Kong. http://www.com.cuhk.edu.hk/ ccpos/en/pdf/202005PublicOpinionSurveyReport-­ENG.pdf Committee to Protect Journalists. (2019). Police attack journalists covering protests in Ecuador. https://cpj.org/2019/10/police-­attack-­journalists-­covering-­ protests-­in-­ecu.php Costa-Korstritsky, V. (2019). Targeting the messenger: Journalists on the frontline of protests. Index on Censorship.. https://www.indexoncensorship.org/ targeting-­the-­messenger-­journalists-­on-­the-­frontline-­of-­protests/ Deuze, M. (2003). The web and its journalisms: considering the consequences of different types of newsmedia online. New Media & Society, 5(2), 203–230. Dickinson, R., & Bigi, H. (2009). The Swiss video journalist: Issues of agency and autonomy in news production. Journalism, 10(4), 509–526. Farhi, P. (2009). The Twitter explosion: Whether they are reporting about it, finding sources on it or urging viewers, listeners and readers to follow them on it, journalists just can’t seem to get enough of the social networking service. Just how effective is it as a journalism tool? American Journalism Review, 31(3), 26–32. George, C. (2006). Contentious journalism and the Internet: Towards democratic discourse in Malaysia and Singapore. Singapore University Press. Gitlin, T. (1980). The whole world is watching. University of California Press. Hale, E. (2019). Hong Kong protests: Tech war opens up with doxxing of ­protesters and police. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/ 2019/sep/20/hong-kong-protests-tech-war-opens-up-with-doxxing-of-­ protesters-and-police Hughes, S., & Lawson, C. (2005). The barriers to media opening in Latin America. Political communication, 22(1), 9–25. Hughes, S., & Márquez-Ramírez, M. (2017). Examining the practices that Mexican journalists employ to reduce risk in a context of violence. International Journal of Communication, 11, 23. Hughes, S., Mellado, C., Arroyave, J., Benitez, J.  L., de Beer, A., Garcés, M., Lang, K., & Márquez-Ramírez, M. (2017). Expanding influences research to insecure democracies: How violence, public insecurity, economic inequality

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and uneven democratic performance shape journalists’ perceived work environments. Journalism Studies, 18(5), 645–665. Löfgren, N. M., & Örnebring, H. (2016). Journalism under threat: Intimidation and harassment of Swedish journalists. Journalism Practice, 10(7), 880–890. Low, Z. (2019, August 24). Hong Kong government supporters’ protest targets ‘biased’ journalists at public broadcaster RTHK’s headquarters. South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-­kong/politics/article/3024225/government-­supporters-­target-­journalists-­protest-­outside Lück, J., Wozniak, A., & Wessler, H. (2016). Networks of coproduction: How journalists and environmental NGOs create common interpretations of the UN climate change conferences. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 21(1), 25–47. Luqiu, L.  R. (2018). Propaganda, media, and nationalism in mainland China and Hong Kong. Rowman & Littlefield. Luqiu, L. R., & Lu, S. (2021). Bounded or boundless: A case study of foreign correspondents’ use of Twitter during the 2019 Hong Kong protests. Social Media+ Society, 7(1) https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305121990637 McLeod, D. M. (2007). News coverage and social protest: How the media’s protect paradigm exacerbates social conflict. Journal on Dispute Resolution, 1(12), 185–194. Mourao, R. R., & Chen, W. (2020). Covering protests on Twitter: The influences on journalists’ social media portrayals of left-and right-leaning demonstrations in Brazil. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 25(2), 260–280. Patterson, T. E., & Donsbagh, W. (1996). News decisions: Journalists as partisan actors. Political Communication, 13(4), 455–468. Poell, T., & Rajagopalan, S. (2015). Connecting activists and journalists: Twitter communication in the aftermath of the 2012 Delhi rape. Journalism Studies, 16(5), 719–733. Reese, S.  D. (1991). Setting the media’s agenda: A power balance perspective. Annals of the International Communication Association, 14(1), 309–340. Reich, Z., & Hanitzsch, T. (2013). Determinants of journalists’ professional autonomy: Individual and national-level factors matter more than organizational ones. Mass Communication and Society, 16(1), 133–156. Relly, J. E., & González de Bustamante, C. (2017). Global and domestic networks advancing prospects for institutional and social change: The collective action response to violence against journalists. Journalism & Communication Monographs, 19(2), 84–152. Rodan, G. (2004). Transparency and authoritarian rule in Southeast Asia: Singapore and Malaysia. Routledge Curzon. RTHK. (2021). RTHK’s BBC ban is very worrying, says academic. RTHK. https:// news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1575440-­20210212.htm

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Scott, B. (2005). A contemporary history of digital journalism. Television & New Media, 6(1), 89–126. Shahin, S., Zheng, P., Sturm, H. A., & Fadnis, D. (2016). Protesting the paradigm: A comparative study of news coverage of protests in Brazil, China, and India. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 21(2), 143–164. Shoemaker, P. J., & Reese, S. D. (1996). Mediating the message: Theories of influences on mass media content. Longman. Shultziner, D., & Shoshan, A. (2018). A journalists’ protest? Personal identification and journalistic activism in the Israel social justice protest movement. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 23(1), 44–69. Singer, J. B. (2005). The political j-blogger: ‘Normalizing’ a new media form to fit old norms and practices. Journalism, 6(2), 173–198. So, C. Y., & Chan, J. M. (2007). Professionalism, politics and market force: Survey studies of Hong Kong journalists 1996–2006. Asian Journal of Communication, 17(2), 148–158. Soloski, J. (1989). News reporting and professionalism: Some constraints on the reporting of the news. Media, Culture & Society, 11(2), 207–228. Teeling, E. (2006). The use of the Internet by America’s newspapers. The Bivings Report. Tenenboim-Weinblatt, K. (2014). Producing protest news: An inquiry into journalists’ narratives. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 19(4), 410–429. Thorpe, V. (2019). BBC could restrict journalists’ use of Twitter. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/dec/21/bbc-­could-­r estrict-­ journalists-­twitter Walgrave, S., & Verhulst, J. (2006). Towards ‘new emotional movements’? A comparative exploration into a specific movement type. Social Movement Studies, 5(3), 275–304. Yip, P. H. (2015). Umbrella Movement police power report: 2067 physically and mentally injured by police abuse. In Media HK. https://www.inmediahk.net/ node/1035179

CHAPTER 2

Journalists in the Mainstream Media: Constraints and Influences

I interviewed Wendy, a journalist for a mainstream HK newspaper, in December 2020. During the interview, which was conducted in Cantonese in my office, she recalled an editorial that her organization had published on June 13, 2019, that described the demonstration on the previous day as a riot, strongly condemned violent attacks, and accused those who questioned the use of force by police of selectively viewing the video footage and being biased toward the protesters. The editorial drew criticism for its focus on the protesters’ activities and its failure to mention that the police had beaten unarmed protesters, shot some with projectiles, and sprayed others with tear gas at close range. Several reporters and editors in Wendy’s organization had posted signs in the newsroom protesting the editorial, and other staff members had left messages on the signs expressing their concern that it would damage the newspaper’s credibility. A group of journalists and editors later issued an open letter saying that the editorial had brought shame on the staff and revealed that frontline reporters had in some cases been unable to conduct interviews as a result. Wendy said that, while some readers understood the efforts of frontline reporters, the public perception of a media outlet inevitably affects its employees. What she found most puzzling, though, was the way in which editors handle stories. Toward the end of the protests, she had volunteered to do a feature story on those injured during the protests to show the impact of the movement on ordinary people. However, in the same issue in which the article was published, she noticed a “next issue notice” © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. R. Luqiu, Covering the 2019 Hong Kong Protests, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82226-2_2

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beside her story stating that a feature on injured police officers was forthcoming. Wendy found baffling the editorial decision to make police officers part of the civilian feature, asserting that “Such an insistence on balance, the belief in the official narrative, and the fetishization of authority figures has destroyed the newspaper’s [already] shaky credibility.” Journalists working for media organizations that adhere to established professional standards are expected to limit the influence of personal concerns on their reporting, and their organizations may impose further regulations in this regard. In many cases, a journalist’s preferred “angle” for his or her reporting fails to conform to the editor’s ideas or the ideology or established agenda of the organization. Of course, such institutional limitations only extend so far. Thus, since frontline reporters spend most of their time outside the newsroom, management has few bureaucratic means to control their behavior, and reporters may serve as something of an extension of institutional power and therefore have some autonomy over how they write their stories. Thus, the establishment of journalistic standards, codes of conduct, and systems of professional incentives, while providing a basis for self-regulation by news organizations, also has the effect of controlling journalists (Soloski, 1989). News products naturally represent compromises between the wishes of journalists and the media outlets that employ them. In particular, journalistic autonomy may be constrained by an outlet’s drive for profitability or simply for survival in the marketplace (Berkowitz, 1997; Phillips, 2015). Journalistic independence refers to reporters’ ability to decide which professional norms to uphold, but, again, such decisions are often at odds with the market-driven nature of the media organizations for which they work as well as their political agendas, leaving journalists in the difficult position of choosing between serving their employers or serving the public (Belt & Just, 2008). The hierarchical design of newsrooms likewise limits journalists’ autonomy in both the process of news gathering and finalization. For example, when reporting on demonstrations in Hong Kong, the mainstream media outlets divided work among journalists, with frontline reporters often being responsible for live reporting and reporting the details observed on the ground to their colleagues in the newsroom, who wrote the final stories that were then edited by the assignment editor or other senior editors. Sometimes, a chief editor screened a story to decide on the treatment of critical issues in the final version. The reporters often found that some of the material that they provided from the field was not used or that information that they considered crucial was

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mentioned only in passing or only toward the end of the story. Thus, many of the journalists whom I interviewed said that they felt helpless. Even journalists able to write their own stories after returning from the field may come into conflict with their editors regarding the importance of a particular angle or detail. In such cases, the editors, not having been on the scene, often rely on live reports from other media outlets to judge the significance of information, or they may make decisions based on their political stance or that of their organization. The words of three of the journalists interviewed for this study are especially instructive in this regard. We [reporters] have been doing this for a long time, and we all understand that, no matter which angle we report from, there will be different reactions, so we can only document as much information as possible in the field and report to the newsroom. But, after doing so [for so] long, of course, [we] understand that different newspapers have different positions, the same single news [organization], Apple Daily and the Oriental Daily, of course, the angle of coverage is different. This is beyond our control, and we can only try to report the information at hand. From the news scene to the final report out on the street, there will be many factors in between to [affect] the impact. For example, a frontline reporter may wish to withhold the identity of certain individuals involved in a story, and an editor may wish to do the same or to withhold certain content. As a result, the entire process of gathering and reporting news will be devious. But, relatively speaking, the reporter is [a] tiny [part] in the whole news production process. (Informant 7) The content of my interviews in the field may be adopted in the present situation, but the focus of the event and the priorities change. For example, the assignment editor will make a judgment based on his or her political position. For instance, they would ask that a news story emphasize the protesters’ destruction of public property. Still, our frontline reporters would think that the riot police should be the focus of the story. [In this case,] the protesters were beaten until their heads were bruised and bloody. The fact that the police beat the demonstrators after they were arrested is, in our opinion, more important to the public [than the protester’s destruction of property] because it shows that the police may be abusing their power. But supervisors would feel that it is more important that the protesters destroy public property because the police are just doing their job. (Informant 2) I don’t have the right to make decisions about writing because I am in a lower position, and more senior people than me set the angle. As for how senior people decide, it depends on the situation. I can debate with them,

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but, in the end, they decide. Of course, what they say is not without reason. For example, sometimes, in official statements, whether they are made by mainland or Hong Kong officials, they will emphasize the official announcement at the top of our long-form story of the day’s protests and then add other content—of course, not to delete other content, but put it at the back, or less space. There is also the wording, such as some words that I think are too [emotive], such as “chaos”; some words that are not factual but very sensational, very graphic, they like to use. Of course, I oppose it, but I can’t help it. Sometimes, the chronology of the conflict in the original manuscript is ignored in our daily summary. Of course, there is nothing wrong with an outcome. For example, if there was a clash between the police and the protesters, it did happen, but the reason for the conflict … and what caused the conflict before and after were ignored. (Informant 8)

In the Worlds of Journalism Study (2019), which is widely recognized as the best source of comparative data on newsgathering worldwide and samples all types of media, mainland China scored the lowest and Hong Kong the second-lowest for press freedom among the 67 participating countries over the period from 2012 to 2016. To the question, “How much freedom do you personally have in selecting the news stories that you work on?”, only 17% of mainland journalists and 30% of those in Hong Kong said that they had either complete or at least a great deal of freedom. The median score in the other countries was around 60%. The surprising score here is not that of mainland China, where the CCP controls all news media, but Hong Kong. Predictably, public trust in Hong Kong’s news media has been declining along with press freedom (Luqiu, 2017). Since the British handover of the city in 1997, the Chinese government has strengthened its control over the media through various means. These have included direct and indirect investment in media companies, co-opting media owners with offers of business opportunities and political influence, and punishing uncooperative outlets through pressure on advertisers to reduce sponsorship or direct naming and shaming (Lai, 2007; Lee, 2015). As a result, the diversity of voices in Hong Kong has decreased significantly, especially after the CCP imposed the National Security Law on the city in 2020. On the macro-level, then, pressure from Beijing has limited the freedom of news outlets and journalists, while on the meso-level, censorship imposed by Beijing together with self-censorship have generated a chilling effect and resulted in newsrooms that are more hierarchical than those in the 65 other countries in the Worlds of Journalism Study. Thus, owners must

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assert control through chief editors and other middle-level management, such as assignment editors, to ensure that the stories that they publish will not be perceived as critical of Beijing. Journalistic objectivity has, to some extent, become a tool of resistance to political pressure and controversy in Hong Kong (Au, 2016). That is, the editorial policy of presenting an unbiased perspective on a polarized political landscape helps to insulate newspapers from criticism by interest groups and can therefore be interpreted as a defense mechanism. However, studies of press freedom in Hong Kong have found that such “objective and neutral” reporting tends not to satisfy local consumers of news, who may instead interpret it as self-censorship, thereby limiting the capacity of the media to perform the essential function of monitoring public authority (Chan & Lee, 2007; Lee, 2007). The issue of editorial and self-censorship is well illustrated in an incident involving Nabela Qoser, a reporter with Radio and Television Hong Kong (RTHK), the city’s public broadcast service. At a press conference held the day after Yuen Long attack, masked men suspected to be triad gangsters attacked pro-democracy protesters in Yuen Long on July 21, 2019, injuring dozens—and one month after the Anti-Extradition Bill protests began—by Chief Executive Carrie Lam and officials, Qoser, who joined RTHK in 2017 and was under probationary period, asked several questions. In one exchange, she pointed out that, after the protesters stormed the Legislative Council on July 1, Chief Executive Lam had held a press conference with officials only a few hours after the incident, at four o’clock the next morning, but, in this case, the press conference had not been held until the next afternoon. She also asked whether there had been any coordination between the police and those who attacked the protesters. In response to the Chief Executive’s continued evasiveness, she demanded a direct answer, saying, with evident exasperation “please speak in human language.” Afterward, Qoser was praised by members of the media and the public alike for her determination, and her image even appeared on some of the posters carried in the streets by protesters to show their support for journalists. On the other hand, members of the public who supported the police wrote to RTHK to complain that her behavior was disrespectful, and pro-government organizations even organized a march to besiege RTHK denouncing Qoser as a “cancer on journalism.” RTHK investigated the issue at the time and a year later, in September 2020, reopened the investigation into complaints about Qoser’s reporting in the period

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from July to November 2019, including her conduct at the press conference. The management decided to discipline her by extending her probationary period for 3 months to January 2021. And then, in January 2021, RTHK terminated her existing contract and offered instead another 120-­ day contract that would not allow her to carry over previous years of service. The RTHK Programme Staff Union criticized the termination as unfair and staged a flash mob in protest during which members dressed in black chanted “Politics overrides professionalism; shame on you for settling scores” and waved posters reading “Today [it]’s Nabela, tomorrow [it]’s you and me” and “We are all Nabela!” The reaction to Nabela Qoser’s exchange with Chief Executive Lam at the July 2019 press conference, then, served as an indicator of opinions about the news industry in Hong Kong. Her supporters argued that journalists must ask questions when officials evade the issue and defended her language and tone as perfectly understandable because journalists, like all people, have emotions. Her opponents argued to the contrary that her questioning of officials was unprofessional and biased in assuming that the government had made mistakes. Former Chief Executive Leung Chun-­ Ying, still a national leader, denounced Qoser by name on his social media account and characterized her behavior at the press conference as unprofessional. Leung went on to assert that a European or American reporter who did the same would be fired, citing the BBC as the exemplary public broadcast service and arguing that, therefore, RTHK should have simply dismissed her instead of extending her probationary period. Qoser’s story, then, is illustrative of the use of professional standards as a pretext for pressuring or even punishing journalists when disclosure of a media outlet’s actual motivations in this regard may cast an unflattering light on those who feel that their interests may be damaged by the reporting. The effect of Qoser’s experience has been to increase self-censorship among journalists in the mainstream media. Concerned about keeping their jobs, they hesitate to ask officials unwelcome questions or demand that they respond to inquiries, and, ultimately, fail to exercise their role as the fourth estate that holds the rest of society to account. RTHK terminated Qoser’s civil service contract in January 2021 and provided a three months’ probation contract. In May 2021, RTHK decided not to renew the contract (RTHK, 2021). In the market-driven libertarian press system, objectivity has long been considered a fundamental principle, the assumption being that journalists should suppress their political views and self-expression in their

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professional lives. However, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, some American media scholars called for a reconsideration of this principle, arguing that journalists are autonomous moral agents capable of making ethical decisions in their work in order to promote the public interest (Stoker, 1995). Tracing this strain of thought further back, in the 1970s, John Merrill (1977), a leading American journalism scholar, proposed what he called “existential journalism” to counter what he saw as the tendency in commercial media for professional objectivity to serve as a pretext for superficial reporting. He argued that it was not enough for journalists to conduct interviews, present information in an even-handed manner, and allow their readers and viewers to judge for themselves; rather, journalists should also explore their interviewees’ intentions and the broader context of the events that they covered. By adopting an existentialist approach, journalists and editors take their social responsibility to a personal level. Unlike objectivity, which is defensive and results-oriented, existentialism is process-­oriented, conceiving of journalists as responsible for others and focusing on the morality of their own and others’ actions. Even earlier, the political, social, and economic upheaval in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s associated with the civil rights, the antiwar, and women’s movements was reflected in the rise of the “New Journalism,” the practitioners of which sought to document and evaluate history through language and attitudes (Murphy, 1974). All of these approaches can be described as advocacy journalism, in which the focus is on concepts and political mobilization to promote the rights of the public and disadvantaged groups in society through reporting and improving the responsiveness of those in power to public demands by promoting institutional construction (Waisbord, 2009). All of the interviewees felt that it was undoubtedly important for the news to be objective and neutral for the benefit of the consumers of news in Hong Kong, who were not there on the scene. They had to receive information through the media and decide whether they supported the protesters or the police. But the reality is that, even if a member of the public were to amass all the information made available by the media about an event, the result would not be a complete understanding of what had actually happened. Moreover, the judgments of journalists and editors about the importance of news reflect different sets of values. Therefore, objectivity can only be understood at the operational level of journalism, through commitment to such principles as providing accurate information

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about all sides of a story and giving equal air time or space to a range of perspectives in a publication. Recently, however, journalists in Hong Kong have been encountering managers who use objectivity as an excuse to demand reports that are biased in favor of the government, as several of the interviewees for this study made clear. Two of them spoke to this issue with particular directness: I think objectivity does not lead to self-censorship because objectivity itself is a right principle that does not restrict journalists’ work. What [restricts] journalists is the use of objectivity as an excuse for censorship, which affects our work. Otherwise, if journalists were allowed to use the principle of objectivity, it would help us do a better job. But if it is just an excuse, it will undoubtedly affect the work. It is often used by management as an excuse to put some hurdles in the way of reporting. For example, to curry favor with the government, when you write on what the protesters are saying, you must include the official version of the story. Or when it is evident that what you saw at the scene is different from the official version, still, you are forced to include the official version. In one example, at the Polytechnic University, it was clear that we saw police officers entering the pedestrian area. Still, the police immediately issued a statement saying that they did not. Many media outlets adopted the police’s claim and did not believe their colleagues were there to cover the incident. They claim to be objective, but it is actually an excuse to use only the official story. (Informant 4) I don’t think that requiring objectivity from journalists creates self-­ censorship as long as reporters report truthfully and do not add their viewpoints. Regardless of the media outlets’ position, the reader can see the truth as long as this is done. However, this is the case in many media [outlets] nowadays … using objectivity to insert self-censorship. For example, many media outlets, for the sake of so-called objectivity, have to add the voices of the pro-establishment camp to an issue that only concerns the pro-­ democracy camp, thus compressing the space of the pro-democracy camp’s views on a topic, which limits the audience’s comprehensive understanding of the issue. (Informant 3)

However, the advent of the Internet, especially social media, has given journalists a platform to communicate first-hand information and even personal opinions. As has been seen, such information may not be offered in their published or broadcast stories because of space or the requirements for framing a story. While traditional professional journalistic standards dictate that personal views should not affect the content or framing

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of journalists’ official stories for their organizations, social media platforms provide their audiences access to additional information and allow activists, journalists, and the public to network and connect in the context of various social movements (Mourao & Chen, 2020). Thus, during the recent Hong Kong protests, many journalists were very active on social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, broadcasting news and real-time information on breaking stories and offering commentary on the handling of the situation by police and other government officials. The rise of social media, then, has dramatically influenced the coverage of the protests by Hong Kong news media, helping to free journalists from institutional constraints and providing opportunities for direct interactions among them, demonstrators, and consumers of news. Previous studies of journalists’ use of Twitter have focused on the ways in which professional norms change on social media and efforts to expand the boundaries of the profession. On the one hand, some news organizations have encouraged or even required their journalists to use Twitter daily to broaden their audiences (Gleason, 2010). At the same time, some of these organizations have also prohibited their journalists from expressing opinions on public issues (e.g., the Associated Press) and from any actions that might call their professional impartiality into question (the National Public Radio ethics handbook). Such tensions between the institutional logic of professional control and transparency in journalism have been especially evident regarding the use of Twitter (Revers, 2014). The half-century of debate summarized above has not shown definitively whether the practice of journalism benefits when journalists keep their political opinions private and limit their self-expression in accordance with professional ethics codes and objectivity. Some media scholars advocate for a journalist-first-citizen-second approach while also insisting that journalists should adhere to professional standards to protect the credibility of their news outlets (Calvert, 1998). Others have argued along these lines that journalists should avoid endorsing any political, social, economic, or cultural interests for the sake of both their audiences and their employers (Ryan, 2001). However, media scholars (Nanda, 1998; Voakes, 1997) also noted in the context of the aforementioned reexamination of the journalist’s role that complete objectivity is impossible. The purpose of objectivity is to ensure the impartiality and accuracy of the information that the public receives. During the 2007–2009 financial crisis however, the media failed to alert or instruct the public about the situation. Tellingly, in interviews, New York Times journalists voiced the opinion that their job

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was only to inform readers and viewers and that they felt no sense of accountability or responsibility for what the consumers of news did with this information (Usher, 2013). Blogs and Twitter have provided journalists with alternative platforms on which they can demonstrate responsibility and accountability as members of society rather than simply employees of news organizations. In this way, they are able to bypass editors to reach the public directly and thus to help maintain the freedom of the press. Journalists have also made use of these platforms to offer a more personalized approach to reporting, focusing resources and attention on their individual brands (Molyneux, 2019). Not surprisingly, media companies tend to view these new tools with some skepticism and have been quick to regulate the use of social media by newsroom staff by modifying their codes of ethics. The challenge for journalists is to meet the expectations of both their organizations and the public. Journalists are required by their employers to conduct corporate branding and self-branding, while members of the public expect journalists to use Twitter in a professional way (Van Hove et al., 2018). Unlike those in Western countries, mainstream media outlets in Hong Kong have not implemented regulations governing what journalists and editors can say on social media. Thus, the interviewees for this study all affirmed that local journalists could express their opinions freely on social media. The interviewees’ opinions differed, though, regarding the scope of their usage of social media. Some felt comfortable sharing their ideas and thoughts with the general public, while others only shared them within a circle of friends. Their differing views in this regard reflect differing perceptions of objectivity. Those who believed that they should not share their views with the public were concerned that the latter would suspect them of bias if their political leanings became known. In the words of one, Everyone has their opinion. A journalist is an ordinary person when he is off duty. Suppose a journalist shares his view on Facebook through his public page, not a private one. If the reporter has some popularity, the audience will be persuaded by his opinion, and he would become an opinion leader. Suppose the reporter’s personal views usually support the democratic camp. In that case, it will create an impression that he does not like the ­pro-­establishment camp and, therefore, will not say anything good about them in his reports. People will think that his story will have a pre-position against the pro-establishment camp, and people from the pro-establishment

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camp will feel that he is biased, so they may not accept his interview. (Informant 1)

Such concerns are not unreasonable. When the state propaganda machine targets journalists who consider it their duty to monitor the government, their social media content is often taken as evidence of bias by pro-­ government online groups. In this environment, many journalists who had accounts under their real names have changed them and made their public pages private. For other reporters, letting readers know their positions increased the transparency and objectivity of their professional practice. Some people may feel affected by journalists expressing their opinions on social media, but transparency is essential. Everyone has a position—and, if you don’t tell people, do you assume that journalists have no position? Of course, there are some issues where journalists are neutral, but that is also a position. If you can tell people privately what the reporter thinks about a problem and tell them that these views do not represent the company, but only yourself, this is a kind of transparency. Of course, some people may feel that the reporter is biased and will make the company feel bad, which I certainly understand. Some of the things that journalists post on Twitter are controversial because they have their positions. From the company’s point of view, of course, they don’t feel good about it, and most of them will tell the journalists not to do it because there is no way to control what the journalists say in advance. I understand that it is necessary to be careful on social media. But if everyone is silent and readers are left to guess the reporter’s position, is that a good thing? Is it better to let readers know the position? I think from the reality of the effect, and it is a matter of perception. I would rather have transparency, rather than pretending to be neutral and objective. (Informant 9)

The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) conducts a public opinion survey on media credibility every three years, and the iteration conducted in August 2019 showed that the top four media outlets were mainstream organizations—specifically, three television stations (Now TV, RTHK, and i-Cable) and a radio station (CUHK, 2020). The alternative online media outlet Stand News ranked fifth. Owing to the circumstances in which the survey was conducted, the results reflect the influence of various media outlets on the social movement that opposed the Anti-­ Extradition Bill, which began in earnest in June 2019.

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Trustworthiness in the context of news media outlets refers to the conviction on the part of consumers of news that an organization and its journalists select the most relevant information to present to the public. In other words, audiences trust the news media outlets that focus on the issues that are most relevant to them and that, they believe, judiciously choose which facts and what background information to include in a story. In more technical terms, the notion of trust in journalistic assessment refers to the classification and weighing of the information communicated and evaluation of the events or issues that are the focus of the reporting (Kohring & Matthes, 2007). People trust the media when they trust the processes by which news is selected and stories are produced. Because this trust is based on public perceptions, various segments within a media market trust various media outlets to varying degrees (Carr et  al., 2014). Newsroom staff, from reporters to editors, are, accordingly, crucial to building public trust. The owners of media outlets, while aligning news production with their commercial and political interests, must ensure that newsroom managers can back their editors and reporters without hesitation when conflicts arise between them and members of the public. Notably, in 2020, sweeping changes took place in the management of the newsrooms of the media outlets ranked first and second in the 2019 CUHK survey that have significant consequences for the public trust in them. In particular, the senior staffs of Now TV and i-Cable were replaced by pro-Beijing managers not known for their adherence to professional journalistic standards. The new management of i-Cable soon announced the firing of 40 members of the newsroom with immediate effect, citing the economic impact of Covid-19. They include the entire team of investigatory program. This was widely perceived as a politically motivated crackdown, and more than a dozen journalists resigned in protest. Those who resigned said that the changes in newsroom personnel had stripped journalists of their autonomy (Kwan, 2020). There have been other instances in Hong Kong when journalists have taken a collective stand and contested decisions by senior management. In 1994, for example, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the June 4 Tiananmen massacre, Asia TV (ATV)’s news division purchased the rights to a clip from a Spanish television documentary (“The Gap in History”) that contained never-before-seen footage from Hong Kong, but the top management canceled the production of which the footage was to have been part. Six senior journalists then resigned from ATV in protest.

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In another highly publicized case 20  years later, in 2014, reporters from several media outlets caught police officers on camera pulling an Umbrella Movement protester into a dimly lit area and beating him. In the account of the incident the next morning on TVB, the voiceover stated that the protestor had been “punched and kicked” by police officers, but the audio and subtitle were later deleted and amended to “the police may have used violence” in the order of the head of the news department. Some TVB journalists then issued an open letter expressing their discontent with this editorial decision, and a number of them left the company in rapid succession. Several TVB reporters also left the company during the 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill protests, and more than 100 TVB employees issued an open letter “calling on the company’s management to fulfill their duties as a media outlet, to be a monitor of the government rather than a stabilizer, to recognize that the news is reported for ‘Hong Kong,’ not for the ‘government,’ and to truly reflect the voices of the society” (tvbnewsopenletter, 2014). TVB’s position as a pro-government media outlet has influenced its news coverage and resulted in its ranking as one of the least-trusted media outlets in Hong Kong. Nevertheless, some frontline TVB reporters have become popular and earned the respect of audiences because of their performances in front of the camera. For example, one TVB reporter while broadcasting live spotted individuals dressed as protesters assisting riot police in arresting actual protesters and asked directly whether they were police officers. Most refused to respond, but one said, “I don’t need to show my credentials to the world.” Some TVB viewers and others who like them supported the police officers criticized the reporter for undermining their efforts, affirming that undercover work is an acceptable law enforcement tactic. They attributed the journalist’s behavior to his political stance, that is, sympathy toward the protesters. TVB did not support its journalist, and he resigned shortly afterward along with seven of his colleagues. As the Chinese government continues to tighten its control over Hong Kong’s mainstream media outlets, the journalists at these outlets will eventually be forced to choose between remaining loyal to their organizations and compromising their professional integrity. For the owners of these organizations, the newsroom is just one part of a business endowed with power unique within society in terms of political leverage and social influence. Political leverage can, in turn, create business opportunities— some of which may be problematic in ethical or legal terms. However, a

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more pressing issue is ensuring the growth of the mainstream media outlets—that is, newspapers and television stations—in the face of the increasing popularity of social and internet-based media. Early in 2021, Sing Tao, a newspaper group that had been in business for more than 82 years, changed hands for the third time. This time, the buyer was the 27-year-old daughter of the chairman of a real estate firm in mainland China, making Sing Tao another acquisition by mainland capital of Hong Kong’s print media, Alibaba having purchased Hong Kong’s largest English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post, late in 2015. In the city’s television market, a mainland businessman, Li Ruigang has long owned the most widely watched and only free-to-air station in Hong Kong, the aforementioned TVB. As mainland capital continues to flow into Hong Kong’s mainstream media market, the already pro-government media can be expected to become increasingly conservative. This conservative attitude will undoubtedly be reflected in the news coverage as the editorial control over the newsroom tightens. The news for journalists, in this respect, is not good, in that mainstream media outlets able to maintain some degree of journalistic autonomy will become rare. This news is not good for Hong Kong media outlets either, for, with the departure of journalists and editors, newsrooms lose the tradition of professionalism and competence, and the quality of their news content decreases. In turn, when a media outlet loses its talent, it loses its readers. In the case of the market-oriented media outlets on the mainland, the narrowing of the press space, change of management in the newsroom, and departure of many experienced and competent journalists led to gradual decline and eventual extinction (Wang & Sparks, 2019). To be sure, the decline of the market-oriented media outlets on the mainland has been a consequence of the government’s media policy, which has made it impossible for them to compete on a level playing field with the party-run outlets. Similarly, in Hong Kong, the aforementioned ATV, which was founded in 1957, used to be an influential station among Chinese viewers in the region and, with TVB, one of two free TV stations serving Hong Kong. After several changes of ownership and in political stances, though, ATV suffered a long period of low ratings and financial problems. There was once hope for the outlet’s rebirth, but the government refused to issue a license owing to political considerations—the buyer was considered too liberal by Beijing—and ATV eventually ceased broadcasting (Kwan, 2016).

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In December 2020, i-Cable’s news department laid off 40 staff members, including its best journalists. The dismissals prompted at least eight veteran editors and journalists to resign. Ten of them quickly joined Citizen News, an online news platform created in 2017 by veteran journalists who had left positions at mainstream media outlets. The chief editor of Citizen News said that the organization expected to provide these journalists with the freedom to develop in-depth news stories without the constraints of the television news framework and pressure from corporate consortia. The journalists who joined the platform found that, while online media outlets tend to have more limited resources than broadcast television stations, the newsroom culture, and especially the professional autonomy that they enjoy, were more than sufficient compensation (CitizenNews, 2021). As many online media outlets seek to respond to criticism from the public by enhancing their professionalism and generally narrowing the gap between their productions and those of mainstream media outlets, they have been assuming the social responsibilities that the mainstream outlets have shirked. The journalists who have left the mainstream media thus represent a valuable resource for online media in terms of achieving sustainable development.

References Au, K. L. A. (2016). Institutional logics as constitutive censorship: The case in Hong Kong broadcast news media. The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Belt, T. L., & Just, M. R. (2008). The local news story: Is quality a choice? Political Communication, 25(2), 194–215. Berkowitz, D. A. (Ed.). (1997). Social meanings of news: A text-reader. Sage. Calvert, C. (1998). And you call yourself a journalist: Wrestling with a definition of journalist in law. The Dickinson Law Review, 103, 411. Carr, D. J., Barnidge, M., Lee, B. G., & Tsang, S. J. (2014). Cynics and skeptics: Evaluating the credibility of mainstream and citizen journalism. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 91(3), 452–470. Chan, J.  M., & Lee, L.  F. (2007). Re-nationalization, internationalization and localization: Media and politics in Hong Kong. Twenty-first Century, 101(6), 43–55. Chinese University of Hong Kong Center for Communication and Public Opinion. (2020). Tracking research: Public evaluation on media credibility survey results. http://www.com.cuhk.edu.hk/ccpos/en/research/Credibility_Survey%20 Results_2019_ENG.pdf

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CitizenNews. (2021). Former i-Cable China team joins, China team established by CitizenNews, looking for public support and subscribers multiply. CitizenNews. https://www.hkcnews.com/article/37323/%E7%9C%BE%E 6 % 9 6 % B 0 % E 8 % 8 1 % 9 E % E 4 % B 8 % A D % E 5 % 9 C % 8 B % E 7 % B 5 % 8 4 -­ %E7%9C%BE%E6%96%B0%E8%81%9E-­%E6%9C%89%E7%B7%9A%E4%B8%A D%E5%9C%8B%E7%B5%84-­37476/%E5%89%8D%E6%9C%89%E7%B7%9A %E4%B8%AD%E5%9C%8B%E7%B5%84%E5%8E%9F%E7%8F%AD%E4%BA% BA%E9%A6%AC%E5%8A%A0%E5%85%A5-­%E7%9C%BE%E6%96%B0%E8%8 1%9E%E6%88%90%E7%AB%8B%E4%B8%AD%E5%9C%8B%E7%B5%84-­ %E7%9B%BC%E5%85%AC%E7%9C%BE%E6%94%AF%E6%8C%81%E8%A8 %82%E6%88%B6%E5%80%8D%E5%A2%9E Gleason, S. (2010). Harnessing social media: News outlets are assigning staffers to focus on networks. American Journalism Review, 32(1), 6–7. Kohring, M., & Matthes, J. (2007). Trust in news media: Development and validation of a multidimensional scale. Communication Research, 34(2), 231–252. Kwan, R. (2020). i-Cable’s China reporters resign in protest after 40 colleagues sacked. Hong Kong Free Press. https://hongkongfp.com/2020/12/01/i-­cables-­china-­reporters-­resign-­in-­protest-­after-­40-­colleagues-­sacked/ Kwan, W. (2016). ATV’s embarrassing demise spells the end of restrictive broadcasting in Hong Kong. Hong Kong Free Press. https://hongkongfp. com/2016/04/15/atvs-­embarrassing-­demise-­spells-­the-­end-­of-­restrictive-­ broadcasting-­in-­hong-­kong/ Lai, C.  P. (2007). Media in Hong Kong: Press freedom and political change, 1967–2005 (Vol. 7). Routledge. Lee, F. L. (2007). Hong Kong citizens’ beliefs in media neutrality and perceptions of press freedom: Objectivity as self-censorship? Asian Survey, 47(3), 434–454. Luqiu, L. R. (2017). The elephant in the room: Media ownership and political participation in Hong Kong. Chinese Journal of Communication, 10(4), 360–376. Lee, F. L. F. (2015). Press freedom in Hong Kong: Interactions between state, media and society. In G. Rawnsley & M. T. Rawnsley (Eds.), Routledge handbook of Chinese media (pp. 131–144). Routledge. Merrill, J. C. (1977). Existential journalism. Hastings House. Molyneux, L. (2019). A personalized self-image: Gender and branding practices among journalists. Social Media+ Society, 5(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/ 2056305119872950 Mourao, R. R., & Chen, W. (2020). Covering protests on twitter: The influences on journalists’ social media portrayals of left- and right-leaning demonstrations in Brazil. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 25(2), 260–280. Murphy, J. E. (1974). The new journalism: A critical perspective. Journalism and Communication Monographs, 34.

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Nanda, M. (1998). The epistemic charity of the social constructivist critics of science and why the third world should refuse the offer. In N. Koertge (Ed.), A house built on sand: Exposing postmodernist myths about science (pp. 286–311). Oxford University Press. Phillips, A. (2015). Futures of journalists: Low-paid piecework or global brands? In T. P. Vos & F. Heinderyckx (Eds.), Gatekeeping in transition (pp. 79–96). Routledge. Revers, M. (2014). The twitterization of news making: Transparency and journalistic professionalism. Journal of Communication, 64(5), 806–826. RTHK. (2021). RTHK gets rid of reporter Nabela Qoser. RTHK. https://news. rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1589026-­20210503.htm Ryan, M. (2001). Journalistic ethics, objectivity, existential journalism, standpoint epistemology, and public journalism. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 16(1), 3–22. Soloski, J. (1989). News reporting and professionalism: Some constraints on the reporting of the news. Media, Culture & Society, 11(2), 207–228. Stoker, K. (1995). Existential objectivity: Freeing journalists to be ethical. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 10(1), 5–22. tvbnewsopenletter. (2014). An open letter from TVB news reporter. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/tvbnewsopenletter/ Usher, N. (2013). Ignored, uninterested, and the blame game: How the New York times, marketplace, and TheStreet distanced themselves from preventing the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Journalism, 14(2), 190–207. Van Hove, F., Asdourian, B., & Bourgeois, D. (2018). My tweets are (not) my own! “Normalizing” journalists’ branding and digital identity on twitter. Popular Communication, 16(4), 263–275. Voakes, P. S. (1997). Social influences on journalists’ decision making in ethical situations. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 12(1), 18–35. Waisbord, S. (2009). Advocacy journalism in a global context. The Handbook of Journalism Studies, 371–385. Wang, H., & Sparks, C. (2019). Marketing credibility: Chinese newspapers’ responses to revenue losses from falling circulation and advertising decline. Journalism Studies, 20(9), 1301–1318. Worlds of Journalism. (2019). Data and key tables: WJS2, 2012–2016. https:// worldsofjournalism.org/data-­d79/data-­and-­key-­tables-­2012-­2016/

CHAPTER 3

Citizen Journalists: Facing the Force of Delegitimizing the Profession of Journalism

The Chinese government began disseminating propaganda targeting journalists covering the protests in Hong Kong from the beginning of the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement in 2019. Thus, on the one hand, state media outlets criticized the frontline reporters for unprofessional conduct, alleging that they pointed their cameras only at the police while overlooking protesters’ violent acts. On the other hand, they accused these reporters of using false professional identities to impede the efforts of police to enforce the city’s laws (Wang & Li, 2019). The Hong Kong police, for their part, claimed to have identified three types of fake reporters: those with forged press cards, of which at least two cases were reported; those wearing the yellow reflective vests that normally identified members of the press but without the insignia of a media organization and who disappeared when police officers approached; and those who represented organizations that were unknown to the authorities. Although the law gives members of the public the right to take photographs in public places, the police asserted that the fake reporters made it impossible for them to identify real journalists (“Fake reporters,” 2019). Although the Hong Kong government stated that it had no intention or plan to issue press cards, the propaganda campaign was clearly intended to limit the number of journalists covering protests by forcing them to prove that they were “real” professionals. Indeed, a year later, the Hong Kong police announced a change in policy such that only journalists from media organizations registered with the Government Information Services © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. R. Luqiu, Covering the 2019 Hong Kong Protests, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82226-2_3

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would be allowed to cover demonstrations, thereby greatly reducing the number of those who could legally do so, in part by excluding independent journalists (Davidson, 2020). The protesters were also obsessed with the authenticity journalists from the beginning of the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement. In one incident, Fu Guohao, a reporter for the official Chinese media outlet Global Times, was detained by protesters while wearing one of the identifying yellow vests because he did not have a press card but only a name card. The Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) later issued a statement reminding mainland journalists to bring their press cards when covering protests in the city (Cheng, 2019). In another incident, CCTV gave wide coverage to a YouTuber from Canada named Toby Gu who wore a reporter’s vest that he had purchased on Amazon and presented a homemade press card, described as a “fake media card,” when covering the demonstrations, and some journalists objected that such behavior made the situation more difficult for frontline reporters. Gu, however, insisted that he was an independent journalist and that, though he had made the unofficial card to attract viewers, all of the information on it was accurate (Cater, 2019). Whatever hidden agendas so-called fake journalists may be pursuing, incidents such as these raise the larger question of precisely what defines and who qualifies as a journalist. The Chinese government’s answer to these questions is simple: in mainland China, journalists are those who pass an official examination and receive the government-issued press card. This credential is only available to the employees of officially recognized news organizations, excluding citizen and independent journalists. Thus, during the Covid-19 outbreak, several citizen journalists who went to Wuhan to report were jailed for illegally covering the news (Wong, 2020). The media system in Hong Kong under the “one country, two systems” policy is different, with individual citizens being allowed to own media outlets. With the development of the Internet, Hong Kong, as elsewhere, has seen many online media outlets and We media, the act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active role in producing news. Some scholars call this participatory journalism, to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging, and relevant information that a democracy requires (Bowman & Willis, 2003). The government does not regulate these outlets, but it only allows online-only media that are bona fide mass news media organizations (MNMOs) whose principal business is the regular reporting of original news for dissemination to the general public can apply for registration with the ISD’s Government News and Media

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Information System (GNMIS), for receiving government press releases and media invitations. There is, as has been seen, no press card system in Hong Kong, so newsgathering is broadly legal; the government can only act against those who engage in illegal behavior during their coverage. The concept of “fake journalists” in mainland China (again, meaning those who cover the news without holding a press card) can be seen as a propaganda tactic, a kind of straw man that has served as an excuse for authorities to alter the status quo and restrict journalists’ freedom to cover the news—which, in the end, is what the Hong Kong police did. In an open society such as Hong Kong, state propaganda must compete with other voices. The central government controls nearly all of the traditional media outlets in Hong Kong, both directly and indirectly. However, the advent of the Internet has resulted in providing alternative narratives. Recognizing the importance of online media during the Umbrella Movement, Beijing moved to support many online propaganda platforms (Luqiu, 2018). The Anti-Extradition Bill Movement highlighted the limited effectiveness of these pro-government platforms, and the resistance to propaganda in Hong Kong has been much louder and more effective because of the presence of these online media outlets and We media. Censorship is the only way for the government to counteract these voices, and restricting the right to conduct street newsgathering is just a start. There is considerable disagreement among scholars regarding the distinction between a journalist and a blogger or citizen journalist from the perspectives of both the law and professional ethics. Ugland and Henderson (2007) argued that, as power shifts from a few traditional news organizations to numerous individuals and institutions, the parameters of journalistic behavior must also shift. In the realm of professional ethics, the question of who is a journalist is a matter of opinion, for consumers decide whom to believe and to whom they give their attention when it comes to news. When the government defines newsgathering and expression in legal terms, the result can be coercion and limitations on press freedom. For, in the realm of professional ethics, the definition of who is a journalist is not a matter of press freedom but rather a private dispute among communicators regarding whose work is more valuable. Ugland and Henderson distinguished an “egalitarian” model of journalism based on the notion that any citizen can act as a newsgatherer from and an “expert” model according to which traditional or conventional journalists are uniquely

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qualified to gather and disseminate news owing to their special education and training and adoption of a code of professional ethics. Gingras (2014) is among those who have argued that journalists have a unique role in a democracy and possess distinct qualities and that unofficial commentators should not be considered part of the profession. Others, however, argue that news blogs indeed fulfill the media’s professional role and demonstrate all of the characteristics of traditional news media. In today’s open and participatory media environment, it is no longer possible to distinguish who is a professional journalist based on the news produced or the process that produces it (Farrell & Drezner, 2008; Singer, 2007). Knight et  al. (2008) argue that journalists were once defined by where they worked; in newspapers, radio, and television stations. While the Internet promises everyone can be a publisher, journalists are not defined by the news outlets they worked for anymore. Anyone applying professional practice within recognized codes of ethics is a journalist. From a legal perspective, in various parts of the world, through re-­ jurisdiction, some courts are expanding their jurisprudence so as to be more inclusive of nontraditional news media and recognizing a broader range of individuals, including some bloggers, as journalists (Johnston & Wallace, 2017). The Hong Kong government did not accredit online news media until 2017, when it began allowing some of them to cover government press conferences and official events. The government set four conditions for this credentialing, including proof of regular updates of online news coverage for at least three months prior to applying, operation of a website that is updated at least five days a week, employing at least one editor and one reporter, and registration under the Local Newspaper Registration Ordinance. Hong Kong’s online media outlets spent several years fighting for the right to cover government press conferences and events. In 2016, the HKJA complained on behalf of these outlets to the ombudsman and in 2017 filed a judicial review with the High Court that the latter granted and scheduled. In the interim, the government announced a new measure to admit online media until the High Court issued its ruling. However, for many small online media outlets, the requirements just listed were too burdensome: many could not afford to pay two full-time staff members, and some were operating on a nonprofit, volunteer basis. As a result, only a few large online media outlets have been able to register with the GNMIS. After the 2019 protests, the police have only allowed media registered with GNMIS to cover street protests,

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leaving most online media outlets to either stop gathering protest news or engage in “illegal reporting.” I interviewed Vivian Tam in October 2019, after reading some of her stories posted on her Facebook page. Her story is full of details, observations, interactions with police and protesters at the scene, and occasionally some personal feelings, which is different from mainstream media stories. It provided plenty of additional information. She was among the independent journalists who covered the protests. After working in the mainstream media in Hong Kong, she joined the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2008 as a full-time lecturer. In her off-hours, however, Tam has worked as an independent journalist. As soon as the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement began, she was on the front lines of the various protest sites observing and reporting. She covered many of the crucial moments in the movement. She also interviewed ordinary people who were usually ignored by the mainstream media, such as parents who accompanied their children to the march, protesters who sacrificed their jobs and income, and drivers who volunteered to transport protesters. She posted these stories on her Facebook page, shared them with her readers, and later collected them in a book. Tam found that her work as an independent journalist, unlike her previous work as a mainstream media reporter, freed her from the requirements and restrictions imposed by editors and from the pressure to meet deadlines. Therefore, she felt that she was able to wait until her emotions had receded from the excitement of experiencing conflict in the field before writing her stories. Being an independent journalist has also allowed her to include many personal experiences and observations in her articles. For example, when she heard the protesters shouting, “Where are the journalists? We need journalists to be here at the scene!”, she realized the importance of reporters for the movement and shared her thoughts with readers. Such personal observation is, of course, frowned upon in the mainstream media, but it has been well-received by Tam’s readers and helped her to define her identity as a journalist. Thus, in her book, The Darker the Sky, the Brighter the Stars The People and Events of the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement, she wrote in the preface: “During this movement, I witnessed a spirit of Hong Kong people that I had never seen before, and I felt the trust of the people to the journalists—they opened their hearts and showed their vulnerability so that I could record the sadness and the light of an era” (Tam, 2020).

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Tam also said that, in the aftermath of the Umbrella Movement, she had felt that the public distrusted journalists, mainly because of the coverage of the protests in the mainstream media. As a result, a group of independent journalists like hers had emerged. Although she had not been officially recognized as a journalist, she had the support from the readers. Thus, she wrote in a column in the mainstream Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao in 2016, I had an epiphany that the status of “journalist” is not up to the person who has the authority, but whether or not the public recognizes you is also an important reference point. It is often said that a journalist’s most important asset is his or her credibility, which sometimes comes from the track record of an organization over the years and sometimes is a journalist’s battle record accumulated over years of reporting. Nowadays, some media organizations have lost their credibility, while independent journalists outside the system may still be respected. (Tam, 2016)

The formation of several online media outlets, or rather citizen media outlets, run by students, following the 2014 Umbrella Movement and again following the 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill protests is notable in this context. These outlets published their content on various social media platforms, and some also operated websites. This content took various forms, including text, photos, videos, and live streaming. Their daily operations were supported by a mixture of donations, crowd funding, advertisements, and subscription fees. The number of independent journalists covering the 2019 protests was too large to count, but there are some indications of the scale of independent online media in Hong Kong at the time. Thus, to begin with, after the police announced the new eligibility requirements for media outlets to cover street protests, more than 60 online media outlets banded together to form a coalition of online media reporters. By contrast, an effort in 2016 to obtain government permission to access official events, such as press conferences and elections, attracted the support of only six online media outlets. This earlier group issued a statement criticizing the police’s classification of reporters’ practice as unfair to online reporters. These independent journalists came together from various backgrounds, some having experience in mainstream media and others being active users of various forums, influential online opinion leaders, or students.

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Compare with mainstream media, Hong Kong’s independent media have not been subject to political and economic censorship and, therefore, they have become integral to the dissemination of information about protests. With first-hand reporting from various perspectives, these media outlets have informed the public about the intentions, dimensions, composition, and actions of various social movements. Unsurprisingly, then, independent media outlets have consistently been viewed as a force for social change by both their advocates and their critics (Soengas-Pérez, 2013). As an alternative to mainstream media sources, then, independent journalism is of value for the production of diverse content as well as the political empowerment of independent journalists (Atton, 2007). Researchers have long characterized alternative media as democratic and nonhierarchical and associated them with advocacy for social justice. Negt and Kluge (1972) introduced the notion of the “counter-public sphere” produced by alternative media. Fuchs (2010) picked up on this notion and argued that alternative media outlets, as critical producers of content and part of the communicative dimension of the counter-public sphere, show the suppressed possibilities of reporting and the potential for change. Unlike mainstream media, alternative media highlight radical, counter-hegemonic content and news values, present alternative aesthetics and forms, and are not focused on advertising. In terms of content production processes, alternative media differ from mainstream media with respect to anti-copyright culture, de-professionalization, native reporting, collective organizing, distribution, and so on (Atton, 2007). As for the definition of terms, there seems to be no functional difference between what independent and mainstream media professionals mean by “journalist.” The most frequently appearing words among interviewees were “reporting the facts,” “impartiality,” and “professional,” as can be seen in the following excerpts. Reporting the truth, regardless of your views, after encountering something, you have to tell the facts to the audience; you can’t stop reporting because you don’t like it. It’s like when you see a clash between the police and the protesters—when you see a protester hurting a police officer, you must report it. Although you may not like the police yourself, you have the responsibility to tell the audience. (Informant 13) There should not be a licensing system, nor should there be an obsession with having a journalist’s card. What constitutes a journalist? It depends on whether what the journalist does is in the public interest. At the beginning

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of the movement, many people joined and became journalists to keep records. This is a good thing: the more people record, the more images, and the more complex reporting. I think a journalist’s definition is whether or not he or she is doing the reporting in the public interest. If you want to prove whether you are a journalist or not, then the report you made is proof of being a journalist, not a press card. It’s not about whether you say you are a journalist or not. If a journalist joins the protest, at that moment, he is certainly not a reporter. But the identity is convertible. (Informant 24) Theoretically, as long as a photograph is taken on the street, such as a car accident, and put on the Internet, the person can be called a journalist, even if there is no press card. There is no genuine journalist or fake journalist, only professional or unprofessional. I think it is up to the audience to decide whether journalists are professional or not. (Informant 30) A journalist is someone who organizes events and then reproduces them with his or her lens and pen. According to the United Nations definition, [those] engaged in news coverage, including commentators, bloggers [and those on] personal platforms are [engaged in] journalism. Anyone who publishes stories online is a journalist. I think, as long as—from the perspective of competition, professional ethics—and the report, to be fair, professional, is [to be] a journalist. (Informant 26)

In early 2019, Kwan Chun Hoi, who had been working in the mainstream media, decided to leave his position and become an independent journalist. Accordingly, he began looking for a business model that would sustain such work. He felt that in Hong Kong today, with the disappearance of small media outlets and the domination of large media outlets, the status of the journalist had devolved into a mere position in a commercial organization held by overworked individuals compelled to write increasingly fragmented pieces. He decried the lack of opportunities to focus on individual issues and conduct in-depth reporting. For him, the definition of a journalist was tied to taking on the responsibility of writing the first draft of history. A month after the demonstrations against the extradition bill began, Kwan and three other journalists launched the online media outlet HK FEATURE to document the movement. Unlike other such outlets, this platform brought together independent journalists, with a page on its website dedicated to them showing their names, profiles, and sponsorship options. It was Kwan’s hope that every independent journalist in Hong Kong would contribute specialized and unique analysis that would attract

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social media followers. The journalists would then sell their content to various other media platforms. As he explained it on the website, The journal’s mission is to provide journalists and independent reporters with the copyright to the feature stories they publish through the journal. This encourages Hong Kong journalists to become dedicated reporters, cover specialized issues of interest regularly, print them, revise them, and reprint them. This not only deepens … the feature stories but also broadens the scope of [their] content. Hong Kong people are the biggest beneficiaries of the continuity of producing these feature stories. The continued social interest in the feature stories makes it possible for reporters to find the “right” readers, creating a sustainable business model for their projects. (www.hkfeature.com)

Kwan has also held citizen journalist training sessions and encouraged citizens of Hong Kong to visit scenes where news is happening to document it. His reasoning was that though independent journalists may not match mainstream media reporters in terms of experience and journalistic skills and values, they can certainly conduct basic investigative reporting, such as contributing to community newspapers, attending district council meetings, and monitoring corporations. Large numbers of independent journalists in society to monitor the government, he argued, help the media to live up to its responsibilities as the fourth estate. In response to criticism from the government and some mainstream media outlets regarding the professionalism of independent media outlets and independent journalists, he admitted that he had witnessed some unprofessional behavior by these reporters during the coverage of the protests but that it was no reason to exclude them from the journalistic community. I disagree that there is a gap between the mainstream media journalists and citizen journalists. For example, the [police] shooting [of a protester] on October 1 [2019] and other very historical images were captured by citizen journalists, so why did the mainstream media use them? It turns out that they also agree that citizen journalists are documenting the truth. The mainstream press believed that these things were real, so they used them. The credibility of the mainstream media and small online media is not built on live reporting, and live reporting is only part of it. Whether the journalists behind the report tried hard to get closer to the truth, to [seek] proof—this is more important than being neutral and objective. How can you rely on the mainstream media’s view to define journalists? When citizen journalists’

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performance is similar to that of the mainstream media journalists, the mainstream media reporters say they have a halo, and there is a distance between them and the citizen journalists. The audience does not think so. The mainstream media needs to tell people where the gap is and define what Hong Kong journalists are like. (Kwan Chun Hoi)

The performance of independent journalists in covering the Anti-­ Extradition Bill Movement polarized the consumers of news in Hong Kong. Those who supported independent journalists emphasized the need that their reporting filled in terms of compensating for perspectives that the mainstream media missed and neglected and thus providing their audiences with diverse information and views from the scene. Their critics, on the other hand, argued that independent journalists’ lack of professionalism damaged the image of journalists in general and had exacerbated tensions between them and the police. In response to the announcement that the authorities were changing the definition of “media representatives,” supporters of the establishment argued that the behavior of police had been lenient and that it was necessary to monitor local online media and set up a licensing system so that they could identify journalists at a demonstration. The supporters of independent media, by contrast, insisted that reporting is a civil right and that the industry’s self-regulatory mechanisms could enforce professional standards without the need for a licensing system. The unprofessional behavior of independent (i.e., online and student) journalists that the reporters whom I interviewed claimed have seen included joining protesters in chanting slogans, assisting them in erecting barricades, speaking harshly to and refusing to cooperate with the police when asked for a press card, provoking police officers in order to generate a conflict while live broadcasting, using obscenities during live broadcasting, soliciting donations while live broadcasting, and claiming multiple identities, for instance in one moment as a first-aid volunteer, in another as a priest, and only occasionally as a reporter. This behavior was not, however, widespread. The independent journalists whom I interviewed were aware of the problem, understood the public’s perceptions, and were able to reflect on the situation. What constitutes unprofessionalism depends on the social climate and the judgment of audiences. Our industry is different from other industries, and we have to respond to our audiences’ demands. Some people criticize online

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media journalists for speaking foul language while [broadcasting] live, but audiences ask us to do so. If no one is watching, we often have to think about how we continue doing it. How can we assume the role of being a recorder of history? Do we have to meet the demands of the audience? Some viewers think we are professional only if we use foul language. Readers say we are unprofessional if we don’t. How can we live with this? I don’t judge [whether] other people are professional or not, but this is the situation we encounter. Of course, journalism experts will say, of course, foul language is not professional. So I don’t know how to answer this question. (Informant 34) Some of the fresh online media journalists joined us to cover the demonstration, and we all thought there was a problem. I have reprimanded some online media reporters because they were exceptionally provocative, they were not asking questions, they were protesting or condemning the interviewees. Once, a reporter I know from the online media asked four or five questions about police enforcement’s unfairness during an interview. The way he asked the questions was to presume that there was something wrong with police officers. His question already had its position, which I disagreed with because it was not fair to the interviewee. I criticized him, but he said, “readers like this, readers want us to do this.” I said, “Readers want you to die; do you want to die? It’s not about what readers want you to do; it’s about what you think readers need to know and what is in the public interest for you to do.” (Informant 40)

Independent online media in Hong Kong emerged around the 2003 protest march against the Article 23 legislation, at a time when the internet, radio, and television were first mobilizing people to participate in social movements. After that demonstration, several hosts of popular radio programs left their posts in response to direct and indirect pressure. Many people in Hong Kong attributed their departure to Beijing’s interference with the city’s tradition of press freedom, as there were rumors that the central government blamed radio talk shows for sending 500,000 residents out into the streets to protest. This was the context in which many online radio stations emerged and independent media outlets and independent journalists began to establish a presence on the Internet. InMediaHK was one of the first online media outlets in Hong Kong, having been established after a rally on July 1, 2004, in support of the idea of citizen journalism. This outlet gained exposure with coverage of the 2005 protest by Korean farmers at the WTO Ministerial Conference in

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Hong Kong, sparking debate regarding the status of citizen journalists. Many mainstream journalists expressed dissatisfaction with these independent journalists’ coverage of the protests, saying that they were too subjective, expressed personal views too frequently, and even confused the boundary between protesters and journalists by participating in the demonstrations. The absence of a newsroom hierarchy system of editorial review made it challenging to ensure the quality of the news reported by citizen journalists. The development of independent media in Hong Kong was fitful before the 2014 Umbrella Movement, in the first place because of the lack of stable financial support. The government has not encouraged independent media outlets and offers no funding to those with a sociopolitical focus. Donations to these outlets have been limited and unstable; thus, once the Umbrella Movement waned, offerings and click-through rates decreased dramatically. In terms of talent, because of their limited influence, independent media outlets often cannot afford full-time staff and have difficulty recruiting. In terms of government control, online media are regulated by the Hong Kong government’s Control of Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance, under which complaints to the government about the content of an article can lead to the prosecution of those associated with its publication (Ip, 2009). The development of independent media in Hong Kong was earlier influenced by opposition politics and political conflicts from the time of the student movement in the 1970s to the antigovernment demonstrations in 2003. Independent media and independent journalists began to emerge again after the Umbrella Movement in 2014 and became a force to be reckoned with during the 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill Movement protests. The public’s acceptance of such media has increased, and donations in support have come to be seen as a form of civic political participation. Though they often do not admit it themselves, Hong Kong’s independent media and independent journalists are, in fact, a manifestation of citizen political participation and a political force in social movements. Because of this, they have been targeted by the local government and, especially, Beijing. During the 2012 protests against the government’s attempt to enforce the teaching of a patriotic curriculum in Hong Kong schools, four unidentified individuals vandalized InMediaHK’s office, and editors and staff regularly received harassing phone calls after the movement died down. Before the 2014 Umbrella Movement, the founder of House News

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announced that that independent media outlet was closing after receiving threats. These events were widely covered by the mainstream media and showed the public the value of, and need for, independent media, and public support came not only in the form of donations but also in the forms of new independent media outlets and journalists. It is costly for the authorities to control such media for the simple reason that it has become impossible to target individual media outlets, as was the strategy in the past, because they are so numerous. Instead, authorities are working very hard to control the independent media outlets in Hong Kong by creating a chilling effect in order to encourage self-censorship. It remains to be seen whether being labeled a “fake journalist” in official propaganda and banned from covering news on the street by the police will, in fact, cause independent journalists to give up covering news in Hong Kong. Chinese President Xi Jinping has emphasized that “without cybersecurity, there is no national security” (Xi, 2018). In terms of managing journalists, mainland Chinese officials require those who publish online to be licensed like members of traditional media organizations, manage online media content, and work to eliminate uncensored reporting by independent journalists on the Internet. Since there is no licensing system for news media in Hong Kong and citizens can own media outlets, the authorities there find it much more challenging to control independent journalists and online content. However, with the implementation of the national security law in 2020, the future of independent journalists who produce online content is worrying. Many independent media outlets and journalists clearly suffer from a lack of professionalism, but the problem is also found in the mainstream media. Indeed, the self-censorship and biased reporting that characterize mainstream media coverage, owing to its ubiquity, are far more damaging to the public sphere than the shortcomings of independent media coverage, because mainstream media reach much broader audiences. From another perspective, protest movements have provided opportunities for citizens without professional training to acquire reporting skills and develop as journalists thanks to criticism from readers and peers that points the way to future improvement. Moreover, the presence of independent media outlets and citizen journalists on the scene of important events has served to monitor the performance of mainstream media outlets and the journalists whom they employ, as two of the interviewees for this study observed.

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Most of the time, the mainstream media is very neutral in reporting because, [since] this movement started, the emerging online media is more and more, live streaming is also more and more. So, the mainstream media is [finding it] challenging to deviate from the facts to report; the mainstream media is required to report the movement accurately because there are many cameras [on] the scene; we all see. (Informant 22) I don’t dare to comment on the overall performance of the journalists. I think there must be good and there must be bad. We all have different positions, different types, and we all have our shortcomings, so there will be different parties out [there]. We are trying to [compensate for] the lack [in] each other. Overall, it is terrific. The mainstream media has meager salaries, and many online media [workers] are volunteers. In utilitarian Hong Kong, some people are still willing to pay and present different facts. We all have shortcomings, so there will be so many journalists in different posts, like a hundred flowers. (Informant 50)

Darbo and Skjerdal (2019) found that, in Hong Kong, the boundary between professional journalists and independent and citizen journalists was blurry because many independent and citizen journalists working online were former professionals. These journalists, then, had received professional training and were familiar with the operating procedures of conventional media newsrooms. Though some professional journalists do not consider independent or citizen journalism viable alternatives to traditional journalism, in particular owing to concerns about validation and neutrality, these outlets are, in fact, organized and follow established editorial procedures, at least to some extent. Further, despite the skepticism of traditional journalists, they share with independent and citizen journalists the ideals of journalistic expertise, responsibility, and autonomy. The main difference is the collectivist-individualist stance characteristic of nontraditional media. Since 2006, after witnessing independent journalists’ performances covering various events, especially WTO protests in Hong Kong, mainstream journalists have become less skeptical about independent journalists and appreciate their ability to fill gaps in the mainstream media coverage and capture critical moments. At the same time, over the past decade-and-a-half, independent journalists have come to place less emphasis on their role as activists in social movements and greater emphasis on professionalism. Mainstream and independent journalists may differ in their understanding of professionalism, especially regarding the ways in

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which news is presented, but they are agreed on the nature of their responsibility, which is to tell the truth. As more and more journalists cycle between mainstream and independent media outlets, whether actively or passively, they bring crucial experience and training to Hong Kong’s developing independent media outlets. The civil society that the social movements nourished has in turn nourished independent media. In the face of political suppression by the regime, independent journalists have become an indispensable part of the Hong Kong press corps. Their fate, as both journalists and the public are well aware, is closely tied to the freedom of the press in the city overall.

References Atton, C. (2007). Current issues in alternative media research. Sociology Compass, 1(1), 17–27. Bowman, S., & Willis, C. (2003). We media. How audiences are shaping the future of news and information, 66. Cater, A. (2019, September 24). “Not your playground”: Toronto vlogger slammed for violent Hong Kong protest video. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/ news/canada/toronto/toby-­gu-­hong-­kong-­1.5296008 Cheng, K. (2019, August 14). Hong Kong watchdog urges mainland Chinese reporters to show credentials clearly, after journalist accosted. Hong Kong Free Press. https://hongkongfp.com/2019/08/14/hong-­kong-­watchdog-­urges-­ mainland-­chinese-­reporters-­show-­credentials-­clearly-­journalist-­accosted/ Darbo, K. N., & Skjerdal, T. (2019). Blurred boundaries: Citizens journalists versus conventional journalists in Hong Kong. Global Media and China, 4(1), 111–124. Davidson, H. (2020, September 23). Hong Kong police tighten control on media with new accreditation rules. The Guardian. https://www. theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/23/hong-­k ong-­p olice-­t ightencontrol-­on-­media-­with-­new-­accreditation-­rules Fake reporters obstruct officers on duty: Hong Kong police. (2019, September 7). Xinhua. http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-­09/ 07/c_138373636.htm Farrell, H., & Drezner, D.  W. (2008). The power and politics of blogs. Public Choice, 134(1), 15–30. Fuchs, C. (2010). Alternative media as critical media. European Journal of Social Theory, 13(2), 173–192. Gingras, A. M. (2014). Media and democracy: An investigation on the role of journalist as mediator. World Political Science Review, 10(1), 63–86.

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Ip, I. C. (2009). New political power: The development of Hong Kong independent media. Journalism Studies, 99(4), 221–239. Johnston, J., & Wallace, A. (2017). Who is a journalist? Changing legal definitions in a de-territorialised media space. Digital Journalism, 5(7), 850–867. Knight, A., Geuze, C., & Gerlis, A. (2008). Who is a journalist. Journalism Studies, 9(1), 117–131. Luqiu, L.  R. (2018). Propaganda, media, and nationalism in mainland China and Hong Kong. Rowman & Littlefield. Negt, O., & Kluge, A. (1972). Public sphere and experience: Towards an analysis of the bourgeois and proletarian public sphere. University of Minnesota Press. Singer, J.  B. (2007). Contested autonomy: Professional and popular claims on journalistic norms. Journalism Studies, 8(1), 79–95. Soengas-Pérez, X. (2013). The role of the internet and social networks in the Arab uprisings: An alternative to official press censorship. Comunicar, 21(41), 147–155. Tam, V. (2016). Journalists’ common cause. Ming Pao. https://news.mingpao. com/ins/%E6%96%87%E6%91%98/article/20160403/s0002 2/1459647689735/%E3%80%90%E5%82%B3%E5%AA%92%E8%88%87%E7 %A4%BE%E6%9C%83%E3%80%91%E8%A8%98%E8%80%85%E7%9A%84%E5 %85%B1%E6%A5%AD%EF%BC%88%E6%96%87-­%E8%AD%9A%E8%95%99% E8%8A%B8%EF%BC%89 Tam, V. (2020). The darker the sky, the brighter the stars: The people and events of the anti-extradition bill movement. Breakthrough. Ugland, E., & Henderson, J. (2007). Who is a journalist and why does it matter? Disentangling the legal and ethical arguments. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 22(4), 241–261. Wang, C., & Li, Q. Y. (2019, September 6). Fake reporters attack HK police officers. Global Times. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1163862.shtml Wong, V. (2020, December 28). Chinese citizen journalist sentenced to 4 years for Covid reporting. The New  York Times. https://www.nytimes. com/2020/12/28/world/asia/china-­Zhang-­Zhan-­covid-­convicted.html Xi, J. P. (2018, April 20). Xi Jinping’s April 20 speech at the national cybersecurity and information work conference. New America. https://www.newamerica. org/cybersecurity-­initiative/digichina/blog/translation-­xi-­jinpings-­april-­20-­ speech-­national-­cybersecurity-­and-­informatization-­work-­conference/

CHAPTER 4

“We Covered Stories Mainstream Media Won’t”: Student Journalists on Covering the Protests

City Broadcasting Channel (CBC) has been one of the independent campus channels that broadcast from Hong Kong universities. As a central unit of the Student Union of City University of Hong Kong, CBC has been managed by an elected team of students. CBC’s Facebook page states that it, “as a multimedia channel, endeavors to deliver both on- and off-union information to students, ensuring their right of acknowledgment. This [channel] thus enables students to monitor CityU and union affairs as well as things happening in society.” Parco Wong, an undergraduate student in the School of Creative Media, and Long Tse, an undergraduate student of the Department of Public Policy, were elected as the president and vice president, respectively, of CBC with one-year terms beginning January 1, 2019. A few months later, on April 28, more than 120,000 people took part in street demonstrations in opposition to the amendment of Hong Kong’s Extradition Bill. In May, the protests moved from the streets to the Legislative Council, where pro-democracy legislators tried to prevent the amendments from reaching the next stage in the legislative process, which the government scheduled for June 12. The announcement met with a fierce backlash from citizens, some of whom circulated a series of petitions and called for public participation in a June 9 rally. That demonstration, in which more than a million citizens participated, is considered the first large-scale action of the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement, and it received widespread coverage in the international media (Chan, 2020). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. R. Luqiu, Covering the 2019 Hong Kong Protests, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82226-2_4

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As various sectors, including student organizations, were busy mobilizing the public to join the demonstration, Wong and Tse said in the interview that they felt a sense of déjà vu reminiscent of the period before the 2014 Umbrella Movement, when protesters had occupied Central, Hong Kong’s business area, for 79 days demanding universal suffrage. At that time, Wong and Tse had been middle school students, and they had participated in different ways. Wong became a student journalist, covering the scene and contributing to various media outlets, while Tse was driven by curiosity to watch from the sidelines as a bystander; and each had witnessed the first deployment of tear gas by the police against the pro-­ democracy movement since the handover of Hong Kong. Then, less than two years later, on February 8, 2016, Lunar New Year’s Eve, they had watched on television as protestors demonstrating in support of street hawkers’ rights in Mong Kok clashed with police, who responded with pepper spray, batons, and warning shots fired into the air, prompting protesters to hurl rocks and attempt to break through police lines. This so-­ called Fishball Revolution, the first officially declared riot since the British handover of Hong Kong, marked the start of post-Umbrella Movement phase of resistance (Lim, 2017). During the Fishball Revolution, Hong Kong’s mainstream media outlets condemned the violent nature of the protesters’ actions. On the other hand, those who were sympathetic toward the protesters assigned the responsibility for the violence to the government. Young people in particular supported the protesters’ resistance to police brutality, insisting that the understanding of violence that dominated public discourse in Hong Kong was insufficient to describe and account for the violence observed during the protests. Whereas the SAR government defined violence as a political tool as part of its effort to marginalize protesters and make them unsympathetic to the general population of Hong Kong, the young people who took part in these protests redefined it so as to construct a better understanding of themselves as (victimized) political figures (Lam-Knott, 2017). Wong and Tse said they had heard about the rally on June 9, 2019, from various student organizations and fellow students. Some students considered the event a last chance to launch a large-scale social movement and fight for democracy in Hong Kong, while others were concerned about what might happen during it. The two student journalists were left with the general impression that the students would not be as peaceful or reasonable as those who took part in the 2014 protests. Wong and Tse

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accordingly purchased, at their own expense, yellow reflective clothing to identify themselves and the other members of their team as journalists as well as protective helmets and masks, for they were especially concerned about the use of tear gas and pepper spray by the police. By contrast, at that point, few mainstream media outlets were providing protective gear for their frontline reporters. Thus, the definition of violence used by Hong Kong’s mainstream media outlets in earlier reporting led them, or at least their newsroom executives, to expect that the present march would proceed peacefully and, therefore, would not provoke a violent response from the police. In fact, when June 9 arrived, only small-scale clashes between the police and the protesters occurred. On June 12, the day scheduled for the Second Reading of the amendment to the Extradition Bill, many demonstrators surrounded the Legislative Council. Some clashed with the police, who were accused of using excessive force against them and obstructing reporters’ access to the scene; at one point, journalists were dispersed by officers with batons even though they had clearly identified themselves as members of the press (Hernandez et al., 2019). Wong and Tse considered with members of their team whether they should continue exposing student journalists to the risks on the front lines given that they lacked private medical insurance and professional training. After discussing various views of the issue, the team decided to continue reporting from the scene of the protests because “612 [the June 12 protest] is known to have many dark corners that journalists can’t cover, and the crowd is so large that we need to fill the gap.” Wong said in the interview. Many student journalists I interviewed asserted that they were reporting from the front lines in order to fill gaps in the coverage of the protests by professional journalists. As informant 16 said, “We Covered Stories Mainstream Media Won’t.” In fact, their presence was essential for the movement in 2019. Unlike in 2014, when the protesters focused on the Central and Mong Kok areas of Hong Kong, members of the leaderless Anti-Extradition Bill Movement adopted new tactics of “being water” and “blossoming everywhere,” the idea being to create flashpoints in as many areas as possible and, thereby, overwhelm police (“From ‘be water’ to ‘blossom everywhere’,” 2019). These tactics also made frontline news coverage more difficult. With a limited workforce, the news media outlets had to choose among locations where the protesters would gather, assuming that they learned the locations in advance. The lack of frontline reporters meant, in turn, a lack of documentation and oversight of the behavior

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of police and protesters, including abuses of power by officers. This was a case in which the presence of student journalists, in some ways, compensated for the shortcomings of the coverage by the mainstream media. As one informant 16 explained, when he saw mainstream journalists gathered on a certain street, he chose to go to another street. The student journalists saw their mission as more than reporting exclusive stories; rather, they aimed to provide a more complete record of events than that made available by mainstream media outlets so that the public would be better informed, and, of course, to assert the right of the media to monitor the powerful and prevent them from hiding in “dark corners.” Then, on October 1, 2019, a police officer in Tsuen Wan shot an 18-year-old secondary school student protester in the chest just three centimeters from his heart. The shooting marked the first time that a member of the Hong Kong police force had used a live round against a demonstrator in the nearly four months of protests and thus an escalation in the violence. The incident was captured by some journalists from online media and student media, and it divided the city. Supporters of the Anti-­ Extradition Bill Movement criticized police for what they viewed as excessive use of force, while supporters of the government insisted that police had responded appropriately and legally to the protesters’ violence since, they claimed, officers’ lives had been at risk (Ho, 2020). Another point of contention about the incident was whether the protester was given timely medical treatment after being shot. At a press conference, police spokespersons asserted that officers had administered medical treatment immediately after shooting the protester. Later, CBC posted footage on its Facebook page that its reporters had taken at the scene that was inconsistent with the police account, showing in particular that the officer responsible did not follow the guidelines and issue a warning before firing and that three minutes elapsed before police tended the wounded protester and five minutes before medical professionals arrived (CBC, 2019). Later, The New York Times analyzed footage from various online media and student media outlets and confirmed both that the police officer had not warned protesters before firing his weapon and that the wounded protester did not receive immediate first aid (Willis & Tiefenthaler, 2019). It is the responsibility of news media outlets to confront the police openly, provide perspectives that may conflict with the official versions of events, and monitor public power. Thus, the press is referred to as the “fourth estate,” to monitor and check a government’s legislative, executive, and judicial “estates.” The media outlets are inevitably critical of the

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government when serving in this capacity (Schultz, 1998). However, in Hong Kong, the capacity of mainstream media outlets to exercise the power of the fourth estate is limited by partial government censorship and self-censorship. Under such circumstances, other media, including student media, play a complementary role in bringing to light abuses and, thereby, discouraging future abuses. Another of the dark corners is the one in which, during the 2014 Umbrella Movement, pro-democratic activist Ken Tsang was beaten by seven Hong Kong Police officers after being arrested in a clearance operation. The beating was filmed at a distance by the mainstream Hong Kong broadcaster TVB, and the footage prompted outrage at the city’s police force. Eventually, five officers were convicted in association with the attack in a trial in which the video footage played an important role (“Court refuses appeal,” 2020). After the incident was reported on television and then disseminated through the Internet, public trust in the Hong Kong police immediately decreased. Nevertheless, many mainstream media outlets continued to downplay the incident, and, compared with consumers of other types of news, their audiences tended to consider the police more trustworthy. These findings demonstrate the partial censorship that has prevailed in Hong Kong, where public monitoring is restricted (Lee, 2016). After the original news story aired on TVB, the content was subsequently modified on the orders of the head of the newsroom, prompting more than 50 journalists and editors to sign an open letter criticizing the handling of the story by management and asserting that such media self-­ censorship is detrimental to the broader society in Hong Kong. In the aftermath, many of the journalists and editors who signed the letter were punished by the management (Hong Kong Journalists Association, 2014). When reporting on police brutality, student journalists tend to be less subject to institutional restrictions and pressures than mainstream journalists and to consider it more important to monitor the police than the protesters who are held liable for breaking the law. Monitoring is also important because police officers have not been subject to disciplinary action when they break the law. Thus, many of the key scenes during the various protest movements have been recorded by student journalists, providing the public with a perspective separate from the official version so that they can make their own judgments about the behavior of the police and the protesters. In social movements, as discussed, the role of the fourth estate is to report facts, provide information, and monitor those in power. In Hong Kong, the mainstream media outlets have been under

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direct and indirect government control since the handover in 1997 and thus subject to the partial censorship just mentioned, resulting in a tendency to highlight the violent scenes, support the government, and criticize protesters in their coverage of social movements (Lee, 2016). Likewise, mainstream media organizations were generally critical of the Umbrella Movement, so that its supporters started to seek information from online alternative media (Kwong, 2015). Hong Kong’s alternative media outlets, then, including the student media outlets that have emerged since the advent of social media, have not been subject to political and economic censorship and, for this reason, have become an integral part of the media landscape (Atkinson, 2010). Firsthand reporting from various perspectives makes it possible for members of the public to understand the dimensions of a movement. Regarding student media specifically, these outlets have always been seen as a force for social change. The contribution of alternative media outlets to public discourse generally includes not only the production of diverse content but also empowering consumers of news through education and heightened political awareness (Atton, 2002). For example, in the United States, student journalists are an especially important source of information for Latino communities (Alemán, 2011). Overall, from the women’s movement in the 1960s through the more recent gun control conversation, US students have effectively linked civic engagement with their role as student journalists (Graybeal & Sindik, 2012). Student media in Hong Kong form a hybrid system that includes both institutionalized outlets, with newsrooms resembling those of traditional media companies, and alternative outlets. The former exists within the Hong Kong education system; indeed, most primary and secondary schools have their own media organizations that operate under the guidance of school administrators and provide students with opportunities to learn the principles of journalism, acquire newsgathering skills, and improve their writing. Student media outlets in universities—in which, since the intent is to train future journalists, the news production process is similar to that of mainstream outlets—are either registered under the Local Newspaper Registration with the schools of journalism or operate within the context of student unions, usually under the Societies Ordinance. Outlets of the latter type tend to be involved in social movements; Hong Kong University’s Undergrad and The Chinese University of Hong Kong’s CU Student Press, for example, have long histories of social and political engagement (Chan, 2016). Also, in the aftermath of

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the 2014 Umbrella Movement and during the 2019 anti-ELAB protests, many student-run citizen media outlets formed. This hybrid model has proved to be well-suited to the integral role that student media outlets have come to play in Hong Kong’s media system. Thus, by providing information to audiences that have been ignored by the mainstream media, student media outlets have helped to compensate for the effects of political and economic censorship on journalism in Hong Kong, providing the public with an additional source of information that helps citizens to hold those in power accountable. In addition, as mentioned, because of its use in journalism schools, this model has been helping shape the future of journalism in Hong Kong. Unlike professional journalists, student journalists cover stories and produce content as unpaid volunteers. For many of them, covering a social movement represents a way to contribute in which they are adept (i.e., through writing or photography). This motivation raises the concern that these students may confuse the identities of protesters and journalists. Journalism students receive reminders from their teachers—both in and outside the classroom—that they need to behave professionally when they appear on the scene to cover a demonstration, which means keeping their distance from protesters and not engaging in such activities as shouting slogans or singing protest songs. The student-run media outlets also have in place rules that hold their members to these standards. As part of CBC’s recruitment process, candidates were asked during interviews to consider whether, while covering a protest, they would protect a police officer, a protester, or a friend being arrested, and those whose answers seemed inconsistent with the fundamental principles of journalism were not approved for membership. Indeed, CBC’s standards were more stringent than those of many professional news organizations in directing members not to participate in demonstrations even when they were not engaged in reporting, and the student channel withdrew some of its members’ press cards for violating this principle. Wong said that he and the members of his team had felt that they needed to prove that they could act professionally. Such efforts have not, however, led to official recognition for student journalists. Instead, as tensions between police and journalists grew at the protests, these journalists were the first to be treated as protesters by the police. Thus, in August 2019, police arrested a City University student journalist along with protesters who had allegedly entered and occupied the legislative chamber on July 1, criminally damaging the complex; they

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insisted that the student had not been engaged in journalistic work at the time (Chen, 2019). One month later, a journalism student from Hong Kong Baptist University was arrested by police who said that he had been accompanying the protesters, and, when they interrogated him, they had found a butter knife in his backpack. They dismissed the student’s explanation—that he had been using the knife to cut moon cakes for the Mid-­ Autumn Festival before coming to the scene to cover the breaking news—and detained him for 19 hours before releasing him on bail. The incident triggered a march by Baptist University students on campus demanding that the university condemn the police. The University Journalism Educators’ Union, at least, described the behavior of the officers as abuse of power and called on members of the law enforcement community not to treat young people harshly and to respect the work of student journalists (Zhong et al., 2019). There is a long-standing and well-publicized history of tension between journalists and police in Hong Kong. Law enforcement administrators and officers are responsible for maintaining order in society and often have the support of citizens, which can be undermined by negative press coverage. Accordingly, the police have long sought to communicate directly with the public and control media access to information about law enforcement activities (Carlson & Kashani, 2017; Gourley, 1954). However, despite the tension and animosity, both parties have traditionally recognized the need to work together (Feinberg 2002) because a healthy police–media relationship provides for transparency and visibility (Mawby, 1999). The appearance of many videos and photos documenting the excessive use of force by police officers triggered a huge public outcry against “black cops” (Lim, 2019). The Hong Kong government officially withdrew the Extradition Bill in October 2019, but the protests continued, with the issue of police brutality and abuse of force replacing the bill as the focus of the movement. This message found a broad audience: more than half of the respondents to a poll of the city’s population conducted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong indicated that they had no trust in the police force (Lam, 2019), while it had been considered Asia’s finest in the 1980s. Responding to the erosion in the authority of the police, the state media, through various channels, accused the reporters of covering demonstrations of being “black journalists” (Luqiu, 2020). The specific accusations included bias in filming police but not protesters committing acts of violence, obstructing officers’ attempts to control protesters or detain those suspected of criminal behavior, and failure to produce valid identification

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and, thus, concern about protesters posing as reporters. Such attacks by the state media fueled the police violence against journalists on the front lines so that, despite complaints from individual journalists as well as journalists’ unions and groups condemning the police for their undisciplined and unprofessional behavior, the situation did not improve (Sataline, 2019). A survey of the participants in 12 protest actions that took place in June and July 2019 found most of them to be young, university-educated, and passionate about the future of their city (Redden, 2019). As protesters and police clashed on university campuses, student reporters on the front lines continued to face arrest on suspicion of participating in what the authorities described as riots. After the police lockdown of Polytechnic University in November 2019, Wong and another CBC member were on campus with protesters who had retreated there from demonstrations elsewhere. When they tried to leave, his companion was detained for participating in a riot and held for nearly two days. Wong, on the other hand was fortunate, for the officers, after initially questioning his identity as a journalist, had released him. When a social movement begins, citizens may take on the role of journalist and document it voluntarily, which is a form of activism. This fact tends to be lost on student journalists, most of whom would reject being described as activists and prefer to see themselves as spectators separate from the demonstrations and the demonstrators. Self-aware or not, though, student journalists have been disrupting the monopoly of the mainstream media outlets in Hong Kong on social and political discourse with their stories and social media posts (Hamdy, 2009; Tilley & Cokley, 2008). Their impact is sufficient to merit study of how their relationships with protesters, especially those who are their peers, or classmates, or friends, affect their reporting. On July 1, 2020, the 23rd anniversary of the handover of sovereignty in Hong Kong, the national security law went into effect. The police rejected applications to hold a demonstration to mark the occasion, but many people still gathered in various parts of the city. At one of these gatherings, a police officer was overwhelmed by protesters while attempting to subdue one of them and stabbed by a protester who escaped. After the incident, photos taken at the scene taken by journalists were posted by a pro-government Facebook group that eventually revealed the protesters’ identities, and those suspected of committing the stabbing were arrested while attempting to flee to London (Lo, 2020). Many netizens faulted media outlets for not blurring the protesters’ faces in the photographs and

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thus betraying the movement. Others argued to the contrary that the responsibility of the journalists was to report the truth and remain neutral rather than to protect the protesters. CBC, for its part, blurred the faces of protesters in the content that it published from the beginning of the movement on social media, including photos and videos. Wong and Tse recalled that, when they were running for their posts in the CBC’s leadership in 2018, many students had raised the issue on how they would handle news content relating to a conflict at a protest. The reason for this concern was that, after the Mong Kok unrest and the Fishball Revolution in 2016, the police had identified those involved using footage from street cameras, police officers’ body cameras, news media, and social networks and then arrested 91 individuals for rioting, arson, illegal gathering, assaulting police, and/or destruction of property, of whom 64 were charged. Through discussion, the students reached a consensus that they would avoid recording actions by protesters that might violate the law or would blur the facial features of individuals in the footage or replace close-ups with wide-angle shots if necessary. During the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement, some local mainstream media outlets also took the initiative to blur the protesters’ faces, unlike during the 2014 and 2016 unrest. Also unlike during the previous demonstrations, the protesters frequently prevented reporters and passersby from taking photos at the scene out of concern that images of their faces would be used as evidence by the police, though by law in Hong Kong reporters have the right to take pictures in public places. Regarding the blurring of faces in images, the media outlets in Hong Kong generally did so in the case of individuals who were facing arrest or had been arrested— so as not to interfere with efforts to identify them or to influence the perceptions of jurors—as well as those who are especially vulnerable, such as minors and victims of sexual assault. There has been some public discussion regarding whether the media should protect the identity of protesters and debate among journalism scholars. Some have argued that the decision should remain contingent on whether antigovernment protesters are vulnerable. Others insist that the media must blur the faces of demonstrators to protect them from possible severe punishment since police enforcement is selective and the judicial system is biased (“Media blur the face,” 2019). In the midst of global protests in support of the Black Lives Matter Movement, there has been similar public debate in the United States about showing protestors’ faces. Since these protests target police

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brutality specifically, some protesters have expressed concern that law enforcement agencies could target protesters who appear in photos and videos. As in Hong Kong, from a legal perspective, media outlets are under no obligation to blur the faces of protesters; the issue, rather, is maintaining journalistic integrity without causing harm. The discussion, both among members of the public and within the press, became especially intense when the FBI publicly solicited photos of individuals suspected of having committed vandalism during the demonstrations and renewed concerns about increased surveillance of the public by US law enforcement agencies. In neither the United States nor Hong Kong is there a uniform standard of practice for the news media and journalists regarding this issue. Journalism scholars at least agree that media outlets have a responsibility to protect the vulnerable under the do-no-harm principle (Miller & Asbury, 2020). Further, since individuals require some measure of privacy to avoid manipulation by the state, journalists must be very careful not to intrude unduly when gathering information and to be sure that they are fulfilling a public need in publishing their stories (Hodges, 1994) and adhere to the aforementioned obligation to minimize harm as members of news organizations (Curd & May, 1984; Elliott, 1986). The liberal social contract of modern governments gave rise to principles of restraint, including the duty to minimize harm to vulnerable subjects of stories, such as minors and traumatized persons just discussed. When the obligation to report the truth conflicts with the obligation to minimize harm, journalists are compelled to prioritize one or the other (Ward, 2009). For the student journalists who covered the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement, the realization that protesters were at risk of prosecution if their participation in the demonstrations should be documented and published, the principles of restraint and minimizing harm were most important. On November 11, 2019, protesters launched a city-wide strike that prompted 11 universities to cancel classes. Students from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, City University, Baptist University, Polytechnic University, and the University of Hong Kong responded by blockading their campuses and nearby major roads. The police responded with tear gas, a first on Hong Kong campuses, which were turned into smoking battlefields (Sum et  al., 2019). Student reporters witnessed fellow students preparing barricades and making gasoline bombs in preparation for the onslaught of the campus police. These scenes and details were

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certainly newsworthy, but Wong said that, when he recognized classmates among the protesters, he had asked himself, Will I be taking pictures of these students to prove their guilt? This restrained my reporting. I try not to take close-ups to avoid exposing their identities. When I walked around the campus, some protesters would take off their masks to say hello. When I encounter such a situation, I get very anxious because I don’t want to know who is behind the mask, especially when I see what they are doing. In retrospect, I think I did not capture the details and did not report it fully. This is an important piece of university history, but I didn’t do my best to document it at the time. (Parco Wong)

Other student reporters saw things differently but reexamined their beliefs in light of the events that they witnessed. For informant 19, a journalism student, the main obligation of a journalist had always been to tell the public the truth. He said that many of the images of the scene that he had shot could not be used because of rules protecting protesters’ identities, which interfered with his ability to interact with members of the public. He preferred to focus on individuals rather than shooting panoramic images because he considered people to be the core of news stories, and he was frustrated that much of his work was not published. However, his thinking had changed completely after the siege at Polytechnic University. I still remember the tragic scene. After the police fired so much tear gas, I would describe the campus as a hell on earth, when everyone was surrounded by smoke. I saw a protester who had nothing, no goggles, no gas mask, nothing. He was struggling on the ground, begging for help, barely alive. I took pictures of it, but I won’t show them because he would definitely be convicted of rioting for it. My only hope is that, one day in the future, what I have documented will be made public. (Informant 19)

Scholars and members of the mainstream media naturally have distinct opinions regarding whether antigovernment protesters constitute a vulnerable group and, thus, whether the principle of minimizing harm applies. For student journalists, the issue is crystal clear, standing with unarmed civilians. If you agree that the responsibility of journalists is to protect the public’s right to know, then how can we talk about remaining objective? For me, my definition is that I am looking for the truth about an incident for a group of

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people who are in a vulnerable situation, which is already a premise that is not objective. A lot of media talk like this is actually a kind of packaging. What many media do is not objective and neutral. As a student journalist, my point of departure is simple: the protesters are citizens in a vulnerable position, and they have fewer channels to speak out than the government, so we need to report their voices. (Informant 21) The media should be in a monitoring role, as the fourth estate. And the definition of monitoring is the role of the media in monitoring public power. For example, in [the case of] police brutality, the police are the only group in society that can legally use violence, and the media need to monitor whether the police are acting illegally when they are enforcing the law. In a social movement, when the police and the protesters confront each other, the police always say, “Why don’t they shoot the protesters, only the police?” I think it is because the police break the law, and there is no one to hold them accountable, but when the protesters break the law, there is a law enforcement agency to deal with it, but there is no mechanism for the police to be checked. (Informant 25)

As mentioned earlier, student media outlets have in recent years attracted many Hong Kong citizens looking for more diverse information about the various social movements, thereby expanding their influence beyond campuses to the broader society. Before the movement began, CBC’s Facebook page had some 8000 likes; then, as the movement rapidly expanded, the number of likes correlated directly with the conflicts between police and the protesters and eventually exceeded 130,000. At the same time, CBC’s readership has come to include middle-aged professionals as well as students. The farewell Facebook post of Wong and Tse became the last update of CBC’s Facebook page: To all CBC readers, As the end of the year approaches, City Broadcasting Channel would like to thank all of our readers for their support over the past year. With the end of the Student Union year, our team will be stepping down. CBC will suspend updates until further notice. Over the past year, freedom of speech has been threatened by harsh laws. Simultaneously, the university has pressured the student union and student journalists to take administrative action against them. This year, several campus media members have resigned, and no student has run for office in the coming year, putting our students’ right to know at risk.

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Even so, we hope that all readers will continue to persevere and support CBC when it relaunches in the future. Finally, we wish you a happy New Year and goodbye! The 35th City University of Hong Kong Students’ Union Interim City Radio. December 31, 2020.

It is often assumed that student journalists enjoy full journalistic freedom on university campuses. However, studies of student journalists at US universities have identified penalties issued by administrators as the greatest threat to reporting on controversial topics—especially when the reporting may cast a university in a negative light—the particular concern being the potential for academic or career hurdles because of these penalties and the resulting self-censorship (Bobkowski & Belmas, 2017; Farquhar & Carey, 2019). In Hong Kong, pressure from universities has also resulted in self-censorship by student journalists, as was particularly evident in coverage of the most recent social movement. In the case of City University, after the editorial board of the Student Union reported that protesters had stormed the president’s office, the university issued an announcement criticizing the student journalists for simply reporting and not taking action to stop the protesters: The journalists, who claimed to be from the City University student organization, participated in entering the president’s office and filmed the entire illegal act but did not take any action to stop it. The university will investigate and reserves the right to pursue the matter.

The editorial board later issued a response pointing out that journalistic principles forbade intervening to stop the illegal behavior and that its members had been elected and thus enjoyed a popular mandate. The board went on to describe as an insult the administration’s use of the term “self-proclaimed journalist” and asked for an apology. Though the university did not punish the student journalists in this case, its strong opposition to their coverage had a chilling effect. Further, the lack of support from the university when a student journalist was injured or arrested by the police caused students to worry about the possible negative impact of their reporting on their education and future careers. In these ways, threats from a university, even in the absence of punishment, leads to self-­ censorship and discourages students from participating in student media

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activities. The fact that no student took over the CBC in 2020 is evidence of this phenomenon. Student journalists expect assistance from their universities, not only in terms of resources, such as reporting equipment, protective gear, and medical and legal aid, but also in terms of moral support. When, at the beginning of the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement, students asked the Baptist University to condemn the police and provide more protection for student journalists to exercise their reporting rights when one of their numbers was arrested, the administration offered support in the form of open letters calling on the police to respect student journalists. However, as the protests continued, and especially as the number of student arrests increased, students found that their schools did and were able to do little, especially after the judicial process was underway. I would like to close this chapter with a personal observation. As a member of the journalism faculty, I have felt very conflicted about the issues discussed here. On the one hand, it is the basic duty of journalists to cover news as it happens, and the protracted Anti-Extradition Bill Movement represented an opportunity for journalism students to gain valuable experience. On the other hand, these student journalists received no income for their work and had no private medical insurance but faced the risk of being injured, arrested, and prosecuted. So, in the end, I advised my students to stop covering the protests from the front lines and to report stories relevant to the movement instead, though I understood that fewer reporters on the ground meant fewer pairs of eyes to witness. My advice in this regard had nothing to do with the performance of the student journalists, who amply demonstrated their competence and integrity. When I offered it, I would also ask myself whether I was encouraging self-­ censorship, and I remain uncertain how I should advise students going forward when they consider reporting from potentially dangerous situations.

References Alemán, S. M. (2011). Chicana/o student journalists map out a Chicana/o journalism practice. Journalism Practice, 5(3), 332–349. Atkinson, J. D. (2010). Alternative media and politics of resistance: A communication perspective (Vol. 16). Peter Lang. Atton, C. (2002). Alternative media. Sage.

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Bobkowski, P. S., & Belmas, G. I. (2017). Mixed message media: Girls’ voices and civic engagement in student journalism. Girlhood Studies, 10(1), 89–106. Carlson, C., & Kashani, P. (2017). Mediated access: Police public information officers’ media management efforts, use of social media, handling of body camera footage and public records. GSTF Journal on Media & Communications, 3(2), 11–20. CBC. (2019). Full clip of shooting in Tsuen Wan on October 1. City Broadcast Channel. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1874870039326242 Chan, C.  P. (2016). Post-umbrella movement: Localism and radicalness of the Hong Kong student movement. Contemporary Chinese Political Economy and Strategic Relations: An International Journal, 2(2), 885–908. Chan, M. (2020, June 9). Hong Kong protest anniversary muted by weary and wary public. Nikkei Asia. https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Hong-­Kong-­ protests/Hong-­Kong-­protest-­anniversary-­muted-­by-­weary-­and-­wary-­public Chen, K. (2019, August 28). City U student journalist arrested for allegedly damaging Hong Kong legislature on July 1, police say. Hong Kong Free Press. https://hongkongfp.com/2019/08/28/city-­u-­student-­journalist-­arrested-­ allegedly-­damaging-­hong-­kong-­legislature-­july-­1-­police-­say/ Court refuses appeal for cops who beat Ken Tsang. (2020). RTHK. https://news. rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1519294-­20200407.htm Curd, M., & May, L. (1984). CSEP module series in applied ethics. Kendall/Hunt. Elliott, D. (1986). Responsible journalism. Sage. Farquhar, L. K., & Carey, M. C. (2019). Self-censorship among student journalists based on perceived threats and risks. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 74(3), 318–335. From “be water” to “blossom everywhere”: Hong Kong protesters evolve tactics. (2019, November 13). The Straits Times. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/ east-­asia/blossom-­everywhere-­hong-­kong-­protesters-­evolve-­tactics Gourley, D. (1954). Police public relations. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 291(1), 135–142. Graybeal, G., & Sindik, A. (2012). Journalism students and civic engagement: Is there still a connection? Community Journalism, 1(1), 29–46. Hamdy, N. (2009). Arab citizen journalism in action: Challenging mainstream media, authorities and media laws. Westminster Papers in Communication & Culture, 6(1) https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1. 1.465.1240&rep=rep1&type=pdf Hernandez, J. C., Marcolini, B., Willis, H., Jordan, D., Felling, M., May, T., & Chen, E. (2019, June 30). Did Hong Kong police abuse protestors? What videos show. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/30/ world/asia/did-­h ong-­k ong-­p olice-­a buse-­p rotesters-­w hat-­v ideos-­s how. html?auth=login-­email&login=email

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Ho, K. (2020). Teen shot by Hong Kong police with live round ‘disappointed and angry’ at legal aid rejection. Hong Kong Free Press. https://hongkongfp. com/2020/08/17/unarmed-­t een-­s hot-­b y-­h ong-­k ong-­p olice-­w ith-­l ive-­ round-­disappointed-­and-­angry-­at-­legal-­aid-­rejection/ Hodges, L. (1994). The journalist and privacy. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 9(4), 197–212. Hong Kong Journalists Association. (2014). Seven news unions throw their weight behind TVB journalists. https://www.hkja.org.hk/en/statements/ seven-­news-­unions-­throw-­their-­weight-­behind-­tvb-­journalists/ Kwong, Y. H. (2015). The dynamics of mainstream and internet alternative media in Hong Kong: A case study of the Umbrella Movement+. International Journal of China Studies, 6(3), 273. Lam, O. (2019, November 9). Surveys show majority of Hong Kong people have lost trust in the city’s police force. Global Voices. https://globalvoices. org/2019/11/09/surveys-­show-­majority-­of-­hong-­kong-­people-­have-­lost-­ trust-­in-­the-­citys-­police-­force/ Lam-Knott, S. (2017). Understanding protest “violence” in Hong Kong from the youth perspective. Asian Anthropology, 16(4), 279–298. Lee, F. L. F. (2016). News media as the public monitor in a large-scale protest campaign: The case of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement. Communication & Society, 38, 165–232. Lim, L. (2019). How Hong Kong slang terms for ‘police’ have evolved over time. South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp. c o m / m a g a z i n e s / p o s t -­m a g a z i n e / s h o r t -­r e a d s / a r t i c l e / 3 0 3 0 5 4 3 / how-­hong-­kong-­slang-­terms-­police-­have-­evolved Lim, T. W. (2017). The future of Hong Kong governance: The pro-independence legislators’ election fallout and Beijing’s political voice in Hong Kong. Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, 4(2), 343–353. Lo, C. (2020, July 2). Only 12 minutes to act: How Hong Kong police arrested man accused of stabbing officer just before he could fly to London. South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-­kong/politics/ article/3091457/hong-­kong-­police-­board-­plane-­arrest-­man-­over-­officer Luqiu, L. R. (2020). Female journalists covering the Hong Kong protests confront ambivalent sexism on the street and in the newsroom. Feminist Media Studies, 1–19. Mawby, R. (1999). Visibility, transparency and police-media relations. Policing and Society, 9(3), 263–286. Media blur the face to protect the vulnerable? Academics: It is difficult to have absolute criteria but “not to be a victimizer. (2019, July 7). Apple Daily. https://hk.appledaily.com/local/20190707/ QH3Q3JQXAYIGJEMBJFUXWQZBXE/

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Miller, E., & Asbury, N. (2020). Photographers are being called on to stop showing protesters’ faces. Should they? Poynter. https://www.poynter.org/ethics-­ trust/2020/should-­journalists-­show-­protesters-­faces/ Redden, E. (2019, August 16). Highly educated young people at core of Hong Kong protests. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/ news/2019/08/16/students-­and-­university-­educated-­young-­people-­play-­ central-­role-­hong-­kong-­protests Sataline, S. (2019, October). Hong Kong’s worsening press climate. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/international/ archive/2019/10/hong-­kong-­police-­are-­targeting-­press/599815/ Schultz, J. (1998). Reviving the fourth estate: Democracy, accountability and the media. Cambridge University Press. Sum, L. K., Magramo, K., & Ng, J. (2019, November 11). Tear gas fired on campuses for first time as student protesters battle police at Chinese University, Polytechnic University and University of Hong Kong. South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-­kong/politics/article/3037262/ tear-­gas-­fired-­campuses-­first-­time-­student-­protesters Tilley, E., & Cokley, J. (2008). Deconstructing the discourse of citizen journalism: Who says what and why it matters. Pacific Journalism Review, 14(1), 94–114. Ward, S.  J. (2009). Journalism ethics. In K.  Wahi-jorgensen & T.  Hanitzsch (Eds.), The Handbook of journalism studies (pp.  295–309). New York: Routledge. Willis, H., & Tiefenthaler, A. (2019, October 1). Hong Kong police shot a protester at point-blank range. We break down what happened. The New  York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/asia/100000006745719/ hong-­kong-­protester-­shot.html Zhong, R., Li, K., & Cheung, E. (2019, September 16). Student arrested during Hong Kong protests had a butter knife, University says. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/16/world/asia/boaz-­so-­hong-­kong-­ protest.html

CHAPTER 5

Working at State Media: Journalist or Propagandist

When the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949, the Communist Party’s press policy banned private newspapers. Therefore, two influential newspapers in mainland cities, Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po, relocated to Hong Kong. There, they became the external propaganda mouthpieces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under the control of the party’s Hong Kong and Macau Working Committee and publishers dispatched from Beijing (He, 2020). In 2016, the two newspapers merged to form the Hong Kong Dagong Wenhui Media Group under the direct control of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, which is an organ of the State Council of the PRC in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). After Hong Kong’s return to China in 1997, the control of the media by the central and local governments increased. The Shenzhen Press Group brought the Hong Kong Commercial Daily in 1999. Even earlier, in 1996, Phoenix Satellite Television was founded in Hong Kong by Liu Changle, a former People’s Liberation Army officer who was suspected of maintaining extensive links to the Chinese military (Ma, 2007). The CCP started waging an information war against the Anti-­ Extradition Bill Movement as soon as it began. The party’s propaganda outlets in Hong Kong worked to discredit the protests by characterizing them as violent and the product of foreign intervention. By selectively releasing information, party officials created and disseminated one-sided and even fictitious reports in which they dehumanized protesters and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. R. Luqiu, Covering the 2019 Hong Kong Protests, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82226-2_5

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opposition figures and portrayed them as enemies of the state. The Senate’s revised version of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 directed media outlets to engage in deliberate targeting of democracy activists and US diplomats, citing Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po specifically (“Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act,” 2019). Of the journalists employed by these official media organizations in Hong Kong, most have been residents of the city, though some have come from the mainland. In recent years, the effort has been made to recruit more young people from the mainland to come to Hong Kong to study and then to stay and work. The target audience for the state propaganda that these media outlets disseminate is, clearly, local readers in Hong Kong. To compete with other local media outlets operating in the city, the party outlets need to report news of interest to locals, for which purpose they employ journalists who understand Hong Kong society. Most of these journalists have received their training at local journalism schools, which is very different from the education received by journalism students on the mainland. The difference corresponds to disparities in the conception of the media: while mainland China defines news outlets as mouthpieces of the CCP, in Hong Kong, a social consensus has developed according to which the media serve as a “fourth estate” separate from the government and charged with monitoring public power. Many journalists employed by the official media outlets, irrespective of the political stance of their organizations, seek to uphold the ethics of the journalism profession in their daily reporting. The Anti-Extradition Bill Movement, however, has complicated such individual journalistic efforts with respect to the inherent contradiction between professional journalism and propaganda. The Chinese government has tended to view frontline reporters as a thorn in its side, being particularly dissatisfied with stories about abuses of power by Hong Kong police, which, according to officials, have undermined the capacity of police to maintain law and order. Hong Kong’s official media outlets, including Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po, have referred ominously to “black journalists” who condone violence and obstruct law enforcement. “The media is sick, the ‘yellow media’ and ‘black journalists’ create fake news, indulge riot and chaos in Hong Kong,” The headline of Ta Kung Pao reads, and claimed that 90% of Hong Kong media produce fake news, even worse than foreign media bias on China, and do not deserve the power of being the fourth estate (TaKungPao, 2019a). In addition to

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political pressure, frontline journalists have increasingly been the targets of physical and verbal assaults from police (Herrera, 2019). The physical danger that these reporters face is quite real. In one incident, for example, during coverage of the clearances of flash mob protests across Hong Kong in August 2019, a photographer was hit in the head with a tear gas canister, and a reporter from Ta Kung Pao was detained on suspicion of assaulting a police officer; other journalists present demanded an explanation, and he was released 20 minutes later. In an interview, the journalist said that he had been arrested by mistake when he had acted to prevent the police from stepping on the photographer and that officers had apologized to him (Tong, 2019). Later, at a police press conference, reporters protested by tapping their helmets with their pencils, and a representative of the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) read a strongly worded condemnation of the police for showing excessive force and impeding journalists’ coverage of newsworthy events and demanded that they respect the role of journalists and protect the freedom of the press. The coverage in Ta Kung Pao of the arrest of its own reporter consisted of just a few lines of description under the bland headline, “A reporter from Ta Kung Pao was taken to a police station? Just a mistake,” with no mention of the photographer being struck by a tear gas canister (TaKungPao, 2019b). In the aftermath of this incident, with police showing increasing violence toward frontline reporters, some of those attending a police press conference wore helmets emblazoned with slogans championing press freedom in silent protest, to which police officials responded by abruptly ending the conference and announcing that the remainder would be in the form of a webcast (Zhang et al., 2019). After the incident, the party-affiliated media outlets, again including Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po, criticized these “black journalists” and published large headshot photos of them and also falsely accused the HKJA of organizing the protest. As mouthpieces of the central government, the state media outlets had no choice but to take the incoherent position of defending the journalists’ right to cover news while at the same time defending the authority of the police. The helplessness felt by these journalists was evident during the interviews. On the front lines, they have been taking risks and putting in their best effort to record what they see while knowing that, in the end, only some of the information that they have recorded will appear in print, while much will remain unseen by the public because it is inconsistent with the perspective of their media organizations. Helen, who had been working

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for a state media outlet for more than 13 years, was among the interviewees who raised this issue. Over the years, there are many regrets, and the biggest regret is that many things cannot be reported. Like other journalists, we see the same things, we work equally hard, we work equally hard, but my story is short and shallow. I often feel sorry for my own efforts, but I can’t explain to others that I also work very hard, I also pay a lot. So, when I see the news I write, I feel [that I have been treated] very unfairly because I do as much as the reporters in other countries and local, but I can’t write good stories. I have to pick and choose what I can report base on the ideology of the company and follow the instructions of my boss. And my company never put Hong Kong news on the headlines, and always at the end of the newscast; this makes me feel very sad. Many reporters left the company because they feel frustrated, do not want to watch their own stories, and regret [their reporting]. (Helen)

During the Umbrella Movement, Helen’s employer offered little or no coverage of the protests, but, this time, Helen was on the streets almost every day. Her supervisor remained in the office watching his reporters’ live broadcasts, and her phone would ring whenever he saw scenes of clashes between the police and the protesters. He told her how to frame the story, which images to use, and, from beginning to end, shaped coverage in ways that highlighted the protesters’ negative impact on social stability. Helen described an illustrative incident. When protesters beat up police officers in Admiralty last year, the boss told us to use more police officers’ footage of being beaten up. He called me and said, “You can’t give too many images of the protesters; you have to give more police images, like when they are injured and in pain.” I was there for several days covering the airport, so we couldn’t use footage of protesters sitting quietly and singing. We had to pick footage of foreign tourists arguing with protesters because they couldn’t get into the terminal. When I started writing the story, I already knew what my company wanted. I would select the images according to this requirement, edit the video, and then [put it] on air. But, many times, after the broadcast, we would get calls from the Liaison Office of the Central Government criticizing us for not using enough images because they wanted more impactful scenes. They would call us directly and ask us to change the images. Then we would have to edit them again. In fact, I know that not only us but also the local media like TVB have received such calls. (Helen)

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Such interference by government agencies in the news media undermines the independence and freedom of the press and is standard practice for government departments at all levels in mainland China. Whereas Western journalism emphasizes the social function of the media in terms of monitoring public power, the CCP has always strictly regulated the mainland news media to ensure that reporting remains in line with its interests. In 2016, President Xi Jinping made clear that CCP- and government-­controlled media outlets constituted the key forum for propaganda, directing them to adhere to the prescribed political positions and adhere to party principles. The CCP has been especially concerned to efface any traces of Western journalistic professionalism from the Chinese press. Chinese news media outlets did experience a period of relatively lax control beginning in the 1980s with the advent of marketization. Among the noticeable changes that came about as a result were the tendency of media workers to see themselves less as staff members of the CCP and central government and more as public monitors of party and state institutions and officials. The influence of Western journalistic professionalism on media practitioners combined with market pressures produced a great deal of critical reporting that created space for press scrutiny of government power (Luther & Zhou, 2005; Pan & Chan, 2003). The practice of journalistic professionalism by organizations and individuals in the Chinese media gained legitimacy because it was tolerated by the central government, and, in turn, the rebuilding of the relationship between the state and the media influenced China’s democratization process (Lei & Lu, 2008). CCP leaders have repeatedly spoken of the importance of supervision by the press, at various times and in various documents, but the manner and extent to which the press has been allowed to supervise the workings of government power, and, thus, the space for media coverage, has varied over time from the handover of Hong Kong to Xi’s rise to power (Jing, 2004; Tong, 1988). Comparing the media policies of China and the Soviet Union, while Soviet media reform promoted democratic movements, China’s approach of giving the media a watchdog role involved more careful strategic calculations and more ambiguous, indeed, unrelentingly nuanced, guidance. Inevitably, the space for Chinese media to supervise power has evolved in step with changes in leadership and the party’s current priorities (Repnikova, 2017a). The emergence of investigative journalism in China from the 1980s to the late 1990s, then, was characteristic of a specific

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period of relatively relaxed restrictions on state media (Wang & Lee, 2014). By 2019, investigative journalism had become nearly extinct in China (Hsu, 2019) as a result of the central government’s reassertion of control over media outlets. Thus, by the 1990s, as part of China’s economic reforms, investigative journalism began to be institutionalized, and the national party media took the lead in practicing “supervision by public opinion” (Zhou, 2000). Many Chinese reporters at the time looked to the Western press to learn about such watchdog journalism. In 2003, soon after Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao came to power, the extensive reporting on the SARS pandemic by some journalists and news media outlets led to the hope that the Chinese press would be allowed to report the truth and serve the public interest. However, after SARS subsided, the government began to use legal, administrative, and extrajudicial means to tighten its control over the news media. Managers and editors have been sentenced to jail for corruption and government critics said the sentences appeared to be less about corruption than warning the media not to stray out of line, a punishment for their reporting on workers’ rights and SARS (Chan, 2010). The dissemination of positive propaganda has always been a core mission of the CCP; even in times of crisis, there has been no room for media practitioners to transcend the party’s ideological confines. President Xi Jinping has emphasized the CCP’s dominance over the news media, reversing the policy of his predecessors and eliminating the space for critical reporting (Klimeš & Marinelli, 2018; Repnikova, 2017b). He has gone so far as to insist that press supervision is consistent with positive propaganda concepts (“Xi Jinping stresses,” 2016), touching off considerable scholarly debate regarding the role of journalism in contemporary China (Cui, 2016). Although the CCP had always strictly regulated the news media— which, before marketization, was staffed by state cadres—in 1989, many journalists and editors with state media outlets took to the streets in support of the student democracy movement. After the movement was crushed in Tiananmen Square on June 4 of that year, the CCP began to reflect on its management of the press, and Jiang Zemin, then Secretary of the Party Central Committee, called for strengthening of the party’s leadership and legal sanctioning of any press activities that were inconsistent with the socialist system. As a result, in 1991, the Ministry of Propaganda enacted the Code of Professional Ethics for Chinese Journalists. In 2001, the ministry and the National Press and Publication Administration established a warning system for newspapers that violated the rules and

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regulations, requiring that the propaganda departments of CCP committees at all levels and the administrative departments involved with the press and publishing enforce it strictly. Officials stated that the purpose of this system was, among other things, to raise the awareness of those involved with the press that “newspapers are run by politicians” and to promote the loyalty of editors and journalists (“China establishes a warning system,” 2000). On the institutional level, the CCP has the power to make decisions on major issues, control the allocation of assets, prescreen content, and appoint and dismiss managers at all levels. At the individual level, a mandatory training system was introduced in 2002 to establish a Marxist view of journalism, with reporters and editors being required to attend classes and pass an examination. In 2005, the annual inspection system involving press cards was introduced, again requiring editors and journalists to pass an examination before applying for their cards through their organizations. Under this system, even when breaking news is being reported, the prohibitions and instructions from the Central Propaganda Department— including which news topics can and cannot be reported and in what ways and, at times, orders that journalists vacate the scene—can be quickly communicated to individual news outlets. The individuals in charge of the outlets are liable to punishment if the guidelines are not followed. To avoid mistakes and protect themselves, editors-in-chief and other top media managers exercise extensive self-censorship, reducing news coverage space and avoiding potentially sensitive issues. Punishments for journalists who violate the guidelines have included revocation of press cards and, in recent years, incarceration. Each Chinese news organization, accordingly, also has in place an internal warning and penalty mechanism for journalists and editors. As a consequence, journalists’ room to maneuver depends on whether media executives value and protect journalistic professionalism and are willing to take risks (Hassid, 2011). During the time, described above, when the market-oriented news media encouraged journalistic professionalism and exercised press supervision and, often, enjoyed commercial success, the authorities acknowledged their difficulties in controlling news coverage. Though these market-oriented media outlets did not enjoy full independence, their commercial success helped them to resist political pressure. However, with the onslaught of new media, the advertising revenues of the marketed media have plummeted, especially since 2012, thereby reducing their bargaining power with the government. At the same time, the financial support for

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party newspapers at all levels of government has undermined the marketed media outlets, which have been closing down one after another (Wang & Sparks, 2019). Journalists who valued professionalism had to leave the field. Those who remained accepted the role of CCP mouthpiece. The state and state-affiliated media outlets in Hong Kong are subject to the same institutional controls as those on the mainland, which extend to the appointment of senior personnel and allocation of assets. Nevertheless, they enjoy greater leeway in terms of content production because they reach a largely local readership and compete with other local outlets in an open society that allows such outlets to be privately owned. However, the inability to tailor content to the market, which the commercial media enjoy, has limited the popularity of the state-affiliated outlets in the Hong Kong market. Thus, for example, the respondents to the 2019 iteration of the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s triennial Poll Evaluation of Media Credibility (2019) ranked Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po lowest among the media outlets in the Hong Kong market. The biggest difference between state-owned and private media outlets, however, lies in the amount of control exercised by individual reporters and editors. In addition to making the final decision regarding where to place the content, the local media outlets employ many reporters in Hong Kong, most of whom graduated from local journalism schools, and some of whom have experience working for other news organizations. Unsurprisingly, most tend to be hired through recommendations and referrals rather than open recruitment. While the salaries are relatively low compared with those paid at other local commercial outlets, these positions are very stable, with the institutional culture in this respect resembling that of party newspapers in mainland China (Guo et al., 2013). The daily operation of these organizations’ newsrooms is, in most respects, no different from that of other commercial news outlets. However, journalists working for these organizations know that certain issues are off limits, such as the annual candlelight vigil in Victoria Park to commemorate the June 4 Tiananmen Massacre and some of the local oppositions, who are on the blacklist of CCP. The journalists interviewed for this study were already prepared to work within these strictures when they joined these organizations because, while working for the “pro-Beijing” media, they, of course, could not report on issues that the CCP did not want to be covered. However, all of the journalists interviewed, who had been on the front lines covering the 2019 protests, said that they no longer accepted the

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established positions of the media outlets that employed them but instead showed considerable unease and dissatisfaction with their positions. They knew that they could not influence what readers saw because others ultimately decided which images would be used and the angle from which the story would be reported. Nevertheless, they remained committed to doing their best on the front lines and behaving like the journalists that they considered themselves to be, and they kept trying to ensure that their reporting was as unbiased and complete as possible, as several of them observed. I shoot whatever I see on the scene, but I also know that some images will not be used. If it’s not violent enough, the editor won’t use it because it doesn’t fit the theme. But I’m on the front line. I don’t care about that because you don’t know how things will develop, so I will keep shooting, not selectively. I do not have a set position when I shoot, and how to deal with it afterward is beyond my control. It is the editor’s choice to use which photo, what to shoot, as long as there is a picture newsworthy, I will shoot. (Informant 10) Of course, there are many regrettable things because many pictures cannot be used and cannot be reported because of the company’s position. Objectivity is important, and we on the front line certainly should be as neutral as possible. We are on the front line between the police and the protesters, and we can see both sides of the story. We should analyze it objectively for the readers to understand the events and not take sides. But the company told us very clearly that we need to record the violent behavior of the protesters. By contrast, other violent behavior, such as the police abusing their power and blue ribbon [wearers; such ribbons were an emblem of pro-Beijing counter-protesters] attacking the protesters, is not seen because they are our own people. (Informant 17) I think it’s very unfair. We never mention why the protesters are storming and burning things but always what they are doing at that time. So, after watching our news, the audiences only see the protesters taking to the streets, but they don’t know why they are taking to the streets. They only know that protesters are violent, but they don’t know why they are violent. If you ask our viewers what the protesters’ demands are, they won’t know because all the news is about the moment. There is no context; it’s always about rushing around, the protesters doing damage. I interviewed many protesters, but, unfortunately, their voices would not be heard. That’s why

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some of my colleagues were chased by protesters, and I was treated very unkindly, but I found that I didn’t resent them. (Informant 18)

All of the interviewees were of the opinion that the media outlets that employed them failed to uphold professional journalism standards but asserted that they were willing to do so, and they attributed any unsatisfactory reporting on their part to their employers. Their statements indicated that these journalists had not reflected on or even realized their self-­ censorship. Often, such an attitude or lack of awareness serves to shift ethical responsibility from the individual journalist to the organization as a whole. Thus, for example, a study of journalists working for the Ethiopian state media found that, while some perceived a discrepancy between journalistic standards and their employer’s demands, they considered themselves justified when they failed to live up to journalistic standards because they were servants of a state institution and thus fell short of acting as journalists in the ideal sense of the word (Skjerdal, 2010). A similar attitude has been evident in many mainland Chinese journalists. Thus, a comparison of reporters working in mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong found that the former showed greater acceptance of censorship because they attributed it to the state’s absolute control of the Chinese media system and thus absolved themselves of responsibility for failing to meet professional and ethical journalistic standards (Lo et  al., 2005). However, though the Hong Kong journalists working for the Chinese state media outlets interviewed for this study also shifted their moral responsibility to their organizations, at the same time, they did not see their own organizations as part of the state apparatus and, therefore, did not see themselves as mouthpieces of the state. Rather, they considered themselves to be reporting for commercial media organizations. As one of the interviewees, Ken, said, “Take protests as an example: you can see that all media are biased; no media can do balanced reporting. They all have their own positions. This is a problem, and a problem that will never be solved.” This rationalization of state censorship allows journalists to overlook the destructive nature of state power over the press, in the first place by confusing the different positions of the private media and purveyors of government propaganda. News outlets naturally develop distinct positions in an open society in which a free press shares space with government propaganda, but the key consideration is whether the competition among the advocates of the various positions in the public arena is fair and equal.

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Second, the role of the individual in defending press freedom tends to be ignored. The central government’s slow erosion of press freedom in Hong Kong, reflected in the city’s declining press freedom rankings, has encouraged self-censorship by reporters, editors, and their organizations and, thereby, lowered the standards of journalism as it is practiced in Hong Kong and diminished the credibility of local media. By transferring their ethical responsibilities to their organizations, at least some media professionals have been able to remove the psychological barrier against violating professional standards in their daily journalistic practice. The work of paparazzi was once commonly featured on entertainment news in Hong Kong. Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po have continued to employ the services of these photographers for the purpose of monitoring opposition political figures, protesters, and dissidents, taking advantage of their status as journalists. These newspapers have also published the personal information of US diplomats, as a consequence of which the US State Department criticized China’s actions as thuggish and irresponsible (Brunnstrom, 2019). The Hong Kong Bill of Rights and Democracy Act passed by the US Congress in 2019, as mentioned, specifically named Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po and placed reporters for these newspapers on the entry visa watch list along with other Chinese officials and law enforcement officers who “suppress democracy and human rights.” The Wenhui Dagong Media Group issued a statement criticizing the US government for attempting to stifle press freedom and divert attention away from its version of the truth (TaKungPao, 2019c). Ta Kung Pao went so far as to criticize by name an 11-year-old Hong Kong student who had expressed concern about local issues after sending one of its reporters to pose as a teacher and social worker and enter the student’s home to obtain personal information from his family (TaKungPao, 2021). This weaponization of photographers and reporters involves clear violations of journalistic ethics. Criticisms of such actions are, however, premised on the notion that state-run media outlets are legitimate news organizations and, therefore, can be viewed usefully from the perspective of professional journalism. Such a perspective has a blind spot regarding the essential difference between news and propaganda: news reports focus on facts, while propaganda is only concerned with positions. As tools and mouthpieces of party propaganda, organizations such as Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po marshal selected and distorted facts in the service of the CCP’s positions. The employees of such organizations may call themselves journalists, but they

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fail to observe the standards of the profession in order to further the interests of the party. This neglect of the essential distinction between journalism and propaganda has enhanced the power of the CCP to control discussion in the public sphere in Hong Kong by both real and fake journalists. During the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement, the party’s propaganda targeted frontline journalists, the intent being to restrict their access to the demonstrations. The most effective way to exercise this kind of control was to assume the authority to determine who is a journalist, a determination that is made in free societies based on the industry’s professional standards. Thus, according to the requirements established by the Hong Kong Police Force in late 2020, citizen journalists and student journalists are not “real journalists” because they are not able to register with government-designated organizations. From the perspective of professional standards and ethics, however, the party mouthpieces employed by propaganda organizations are less worthy to be called journalists than the students and citizens engaged in real reporting. For journalists working in state-run media organizations, this is a painful issue, especially when they understand the need to take moral responsibility for their self-censorship. To round out this discussion, I depart from the scholar’s usual dispassionate, their-person perspective to close on a personal note. As a professional who has worked in this type of organization for more than 20 years, I have dealt with the issue of self-censorship, first by engaging in it unconsciously, then by ignoring it, then by denying it, and, finally, by admitting its role in my professional practice. When the news environment in mainland China was more relaxed, it was easier to ignore self-censorship because state-run media outlets operating in Hong Kong enjoyed greater freedom than their mainland counterparts. I remember that mainland journalists envied me because I was able to cover topics that they could not, though, in fact, there were topics forbidden to all of us. However, with the rapid tightening of the mainland news environment, state-run media in Hong Kong have inevitably been affected. Under such circumstances, the scope of self-censorship will continue to expand, as will the conflict between the role of reporters employed by the government and professional journalistic standards. Simply put, I must choose between propaganda and journalism. Shortly after her interview for this study, Helen decided to resign from her position with a state-run news organization and leave the journalism industry altogether. I certainly understood her decision and wasn’t

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surprised by it, for she alone of the interviewees gave the impression that she was finding it difficult to rationalize self-censorship with her role as a journalist. I myself, at this company, feel that it is really very unfair for the protesters. The reporter could see many things, and it was clear that only a small part of them could be broadcast. Although there was very little coverage of the Umbrella Movement, there was still some room to criticize the government for not doing a good job. From 2018 onwards—2020 was the most serious—and there is no room at all. It’s not just us, the pro-government media, but the entire Hong Kong media facing this problem. We talk with experts, and you will feel it’s very obvious. In the beginning, we were the only media outlet that received calls from the Liaison Office almost every day to arrange the next day’s news, how the news should be written, what to put on the headlines, what to do live, and how much space should be devoted to it. But I talked to other colleagues and found out that they also faced such problems in the past two years. They also received such calls. I think it is very serious. It’s really a Hong Kong-wide problem. (Helen)

With more and more journalists being forced to choose between journalism and propaganda, the departure of those, like Helen, who seek to adhere to journalistic ideals and professional standards is inevitable. Thus, among members of the mainland press, many veteran journalists have changed careers after having lived through the “golden age of mainland journalism” when the profession was respected and popular. As the next generation of journalists began taking positions in mainland news media outlets, massive changes were occurring in the industry from the external news environment to the internal culture of news organizations. Positive propaganda replaced press supervision, and the influence of Western journalistic values on Chinese journalists largely disappeared. Nevertheless, Xi Jinping has insisted that the roles of propagandist and journalist can coexist, and some scholars have argued the point from a theoretical perspective. The same transformation from news organizations to propaganda channels is observable in Hong Kong. It is occurring first in the state-­sponsored, pro-Beijing media outlets and will undoubtedly spread to the local press corps as a whole. Journalistic professionalism is slowly giving way to self-­ censorship as the norm. It is fitting to give Helen the last word here.

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In recent years, new young journalists come to an organization like ours and are obedient. They rely heavily on official information and follow the official line. For example, they will not use the figures announced by the protesters but will only report them when the police announce them. They are used to listening to the demands of their superiors in this company. A big problem with companies like ours is that, if this is their first job, they would be very obedient, but, if they have worked in other media before, they would have their own judgment. I understand—since it is the first job, of course, [they are] very obedient to the boss. The situation is getting worse because there are more and more young journalists in this company. (Helen)

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CHAPTER 6

Foreign Media Journalists: Bringing the Protests to the World

The months-long Anti-ELAB Movement was widely covered by media outlets from many countries. Indeed, among the protests staged around the world in 2019, those in Hong Kong received the most international attention, in no small part because the city has been the Asian hub of the global media industry (Chen, 2015). After the handover in 1997, Hong Kong guaranteed press freedom under the “one country, two systems” framework and thus became the preferred location for many foreign media outlets to cover China and Asia. In addition to The New York Times, major international media outlets such as Agence France-Presse (AFP), CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and the Financial Times have located their Asia-Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong. AFP, for example, has the news stories produced by its 26 bureaus in the Asia-Pacific region sent to Hong Kong, where they are edited and then distributed to clients worldwide. Hong Kong has been a particularly attractive destination for foreign journalists who report on China but are unable to obtain the work visas that the Chinese Foreign Ministry requires if they are to reside on the mainland. This arrangement worked to the detriment of the Chinese government in 2014, however, for several journalists familiar with China, but unable to obtain the visas, joined with their colleagues in Hong Kong to cover the Umbrella Movement in great detail. Foreign media coverage has been a part of social movements in Hong Kong from the riots of the 1960s to the annual July 1 march commemorating the handover (Lee & © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. R. Luqiu, Covering the 2019 Hong Kong Protests, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82226-2_6

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Chan, 2010, 2018). Reacting to the scrutiny of its attempts to control the protests, the Chinese government criticized Western media reports on the Umbrella Movement as biased and damaging to its image. During the 2019 protests, the government similarly accused Western media outlets of producing “fake news.” Foreign journalists reporting from the scene have been welcomed by protesters and also harassed by pro-government counter-­protesters. BBC reporter Stephen McDonell shared on Twitter his experience with a taxi driver who refused to charge the fare for taking him to the airport because he was grateful for the foreign media coverage, while pro-Beijing protesters hurled the “fake news” accusation at him as he reported live from a pro-police rally (“Pro-China Hong Kong protester,” 2019). When these foreign journalists shared their reports and observations on social media, the citizens of Hong Kong left many comments. Some expressed gratitude for the stories about their struggle for freedom; others questioned the accuracy of the journalists’ reports but tried to be helpful and even contributed to the journalists’ understanding of the movement (Zhang, 2019). Supporters of the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement were sensitive to the international media coverage in the belief that it influenced the international community’s response to their cause and the hope that it would increase international pressure on the Chinese government to accede to their demands. During the Umbrella Movement five years earlier, by contrast, the protesters did not deliberately seek international support. In order to appreciate the role of foreign media journalists in covering the protests, it is useful to distinguish three types. One type is foreign correspondents who were transferred from other countries and regions and local journalists employed in Hong Kong. Others, so-called parachute journalists, are dispatched by large media organizations temporarily to cover an international event in a foreign country (Hamilton & Jenner, 2004); the vast majority of those in Hong Kong do not speak Cantonese and do not know the city well and so rely on local freelance journalists with previous experience in the mainstream media for assistance. The third type of journalists includes locals and foreigners living in Hong Kong hired by media outlets for limited periods of time. Journalists reporting from overseas often have more autonomy than those covering domestic news. As Aldridge (1998) noted, “No doubt, the lionization of foreign correspondents is rooted in the guaranteed contact with the exotic, as well as their relative freedom of action” (p. 113). These

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reporters enjoy fewer organizational constraints and greater control over news production, but their autonomy is constrained by other factors, including professional values and norms and concern for their public image. Moreover, such correspondents must build an ad hoc newsgathering team in each new place that they land and thus are not lone editorial figures but instead the main actors amid a collection of fixers and local producers (Murrell, 2009). The media coverage of protests in any country results from dynamic interactions between journalists and protesters, and not all protests receive equal, or any, media attention. Simply put, protests that are characterized as newsworthy or that fit into the daily production procedures of media organizations are more likely to receive coverage. Moreover, when demonstrations involve arrests and violence, the media coverage tends to focus on the events on the ground rather than the issues that motivated the protests, often resulting in coverage that is favorable to the authorities and unfavorable to the protesters (McCarthy et al., 1996; Smith et al., 2001). Thus, mainstream media outlets, behaving as agents of social control, often disparage protesters and ridicule their claims, thereby encouraging the public to be critical of their movement and hesitant to identify with it (Chan & Lee, 1984; Hertog & McLeod, 1995; Lee, 2014). This form of social control is exercised variously through the management structure of newsrooms, the news production process, and journalistic norms (Glasser, 1992). Further, such factors as the ideology of media outlets, their political culture, and their location can predict whether a media outlet will apply the common protest paradigm in its reporting (Kilgo & Harlow, 2019; Shahin et al., 2016). Foreign media outlets may offer a more sympathetic view of protesters than domestic outlets and may be less likely to apply the pro-establishment protest paradigm. Thus, a comparison of the Mexican, US, and Canadian media showed that outlets in the latter two countries were largely sympathetic to demonstrations against the Mexican government and focused on the “war on drugs” and anticorruption themes in their coverage, while Mexican media outlets focused more on the disruption that the protests caused in the social order (Harlow et al., 2017). The reasons for this difference include the fact that the foreign media outlets were distant from the impact of the demonstrations and needed to provide readers with background information about corruption in Mexico. The foreign outlets also moved away from the protest paradigm, and therefore provided more thematic reporting, as their correspondents played an increasingly

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prominent role as “sense makers” amid the enormous amount of information available to news consumers, especially in times of protests. At the same time, since consumers of news usually have access to information from many sources, foreign correspondents seek to develop a unique angle on news stories, providing their readers with supplementary information and exclusive reporting from the field (Archetti, 2012). Informative in this context is a study of foreign correspondents’ usage of chat apps for newsgathering during political unrest in China and Hong Kong since the 2014 Umbrella Movement, when the use of chat apps in newsgathering became widespread. The findings demonstrate that the routinization of chat apps has resulted in more granular news narratives as foreign correspondents become better able to connect with local activists, bystanders, and global audiences during times of political unrest (Belair-­ Gagnon et al., 2017). The role of social media in reporting by foreign correspondents was recently explored by Luqiu and Lu (2021), who analyzed the tweets of foreign correspondents reporting on the 2019 Hong Kong protests. In particular, they drew attention to foreign correspondents’ expression of negative emotions—which professional norms prevented them from expressing in their stories for mainstream publications—in their criticisms of police brutality and the Chinese government’s heavy-handed tactics. In this sense, the foreign correspondents were not only observers but also advocates on behalf of the protesters, challenging through their reporting the authorities who sought to deprive Hong Kong’s citizens of their freedom and who treated them with great hostility. More importantly, the personal feelings shared by these reporters reflect the dramatic changes that have taken place in Hong Kong under the influence of Beijing, thus helping readers to understand why the demonstrations in Hong Kong, having remained peaceful for so long, became so violent and why some demonstrators chose to respond to the police with force. Indeed, from the perspective of pure self-interest, foreign correspondents have a natural inclination to be critical of both the Hong Kong and the mainland governments, as the following tweets show: This isn’t the Hong Kong I knew when I lived and worked here just a handful of years ago. Caught on camera, see for yourself. (@RamyInocencio, CBS News Asia)

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Shocking footage of #HongKong riot police charging into a subway station pursuing pro-democracy activists and firing into them at point blank range. I’ve seen police being provoked here but I’m speechless. Carrie Lam says no police inquiry needed they’re investigating themselves. (@StephenMcDonell, BBC)

Twitter also enabled foreign correspondents to share their interpretations of the protests. Such usage, by weakening the “walls” between news and opinion, extended their professional practice beyond the straightforward reporting of news, thereby rendering their coverage more transparent and intelligible to news consumers than it would otherwise be. Foreign correspondents’ sympathy toward protesters may increase news consumers’ trust in them and strengthen journalist–audience relationships (Feighery, 2011; Plaisance, 2007). The following tweets well illustrate this aspect of journalists’ social media use. You hear similar comments from pro-Beijing elites in HK, that HK people don’t trust the Chinese government, the extradition bill, etc., because they don’t understand them. It’s not politically acceptable to admit the reality that people here understand them quite well. (@austinramzy, New York Times) Heroics. Masked protesters carry Lady Liberty, a symbol of the enduring #HK protest movement, to the craggy summit of Lion Rock, where a thunderstorm and howling winds threaten to topple her. At dawn the weather clears and she can be seen from afar #HongKongProtests #AntiMaskLaw. (@Jamespomfret, Reuters) The “functional constituencies” are a rigged joke. It is a way of stopping the people of #HongKong choosing who governs them. Any genuinely progressive person should be able to see this. (@StephenMcDonnell, BBC)

Foreign journalists, then, have generally been sympathetic to antigovernment social movements, and this sympathy has helped them to transcend the pro-establishment protest paradigm in their reporting. Those interviewed for this study, however, indicated that personal factors, such as their understanding of social movements and constraints relating to their target audiences, often motivated them to focus their coverage on dynamic events and left them unable to investigate social movements in the depth that local reporters were able to bring to such stories. For example, a defining characteristic of the 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill Movement in

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Hong Kong was the lack of leaders, unlike the 2014 Umbrella Movement. The diffused nature of the 2019 protests posed a particular challenge for foreign journalists covering them because there were no dominant figures that they could quickly consult to provide their readers with an understanding of the movement from the inside. Thus, one of the interviewees for this study reported that editors at headquarters often requested coverage of individuals with whom readers in the home country were already familiar, even if they did not play significant roles in the movement: The Japanese media focuses on people who are easy for their readers to know, such as Agnes Chow and Benny Tai, because they were already familiar to Japanese readers during the Umbrella Movement. And Agnes has a lot of Japanese followers on social media because she knows Japanese. My approach is that, even if the editors may not be interested, I will record it first, but, eventually, they will take the international news perspective. For example, if a protester is arrested, if it’s not a well-known person, they don’t want it. (Informant 33)

Agnes Chow is one of a handful of activists and media figures in Hong Kong. In 2012, at the age of 15, Agnes Chow joined the movement opposing the effort by the Hong Kong government to impose a patriotic curriculum on the city’s schools. She became the spokesperson for Scholarism, the leading secondary school student group involved in this movement. Two years later, during the Umbrella Movement, Chow, together with Joshua Wong, urged secondary school students to go on strike and often appeared in the pages and broadcasts of international media. In 2016, Chow became one of the leaders of the political party Demosisto, which sought self-determination for Hong Kong. In 2018, she ran for the Legislative Council by-election, but her nomination was disqualified by the Hong Kong government. With the passage of the National Security Law, Demosisto disbanded. Chow’s love for anime and manga motivated her to teach herself Japanese, for which reason, as has been seen, she has frequently been interviewed on Japanese media outlets and has often posted about current events in Hong Kong on Twitter. In 2019, she held a press conference in Japan for the international press corps at which she asked the Japanese government for support. In 2019, she was named one of the 50 most influential people by Forbes Japan magazine, while the Japanese press dubbed her a “goddess of democracy.” In August 2020, after she was jailed under the National Security Law for her role in

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the 2019 protests, the hashtag “#freeAgnes” was the top trending tweet in Japan (Mahtani & Kashiwagi, 2020). Nevertheless, in December 2020, Chow was sentenced to 10 months in prison (Mahtani & Yu, 2020). Also informative in this context is the story of Benny Tai Yiu-ting, an associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong who became famous in 2013 for “Occupy Central with Love and Peace” initiative. It was a single-purpose civil disobedience campaign initiated by Benny Tai, Chan Kin-man, a former Sociology professor at Hong Kong Chinese University and Reverend Chu Yiu-ming. According to its manifesto, the campaign advocates for universal suffrage through dialogue, deliberation, civil referendum, and civil disobedience (Ng, 2014). The slogan was embraced by the Umbrella Movement the following year, as a result of which Benny Tai lost his university post and received a 16-month prison sentence. In January 2021, he was again arrested for violating the National Security Law after organizing an unofficial Legislative Council primary election (Mok, 2021). Media usually select key persons or crucial social movement organizations to approach and focus on to cut back on the work it has to do. However, if the media focuses on just a small portion of the people involved, the impression of a movement as a unitary movement neglects the diverse range of voices. The focus on young women in the social movements also reflects a social bias that social movements have nothing to do with women. Hence, the presence of young women is particularly newsworthy. Media attention on key figures can also become decoupled from the types of events that initially sparked their media attention, becoming spokes-organizations for their movements and receiving media attention for events and stories that they are not involved in (Seguin, 2016). Few editors of the foreign correspondents based in Hong Kong spoke Cantonese or read the local media or the forums and instant messaging platforms that played a significant role in the movement, such as Telegram and LIHKGH.  As a consequence, they were insensitive to subsequent developments, leaving their frontline reporters disappointed when they failed to approve follow-up stories that the reporters considered newsworthy. Thus, one of the interviewees for this study recalled: I usually tell my colleagues who don’t know much about Hong Kong if I think it’s worth covering before it becomes a big story. For example, when the song “The Glory to Hong Kong” first came out, I thought it was something that needed to be covered, and we had to do the story. But the editor

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would think that it’s just some people singing, [that] it doesn’t matter to the international readers; they don’t care. I think this is because these editors and journalists don’t know Hong Kong and the movement, and they don’t try to understand the details, so, when they use their experience and eyes to make judgments, they often miss some critical things. We ended up doing it all, but we missed it by a few days. At the beginning of my pitch, they thought it was just some people singing, until later [when] there was other international media coverage. Then, at our editorial meeting, they admitted that we should do it. (Informant 41)

“Glory to Hong Kong” gained worldwide fame as the anthem of the city’s pro-democracy protest movement. Released by some netizens on August 31, 2019, the song was first played on a loop by protesters outside the US consulate and then sung by protesters at the start of a football match between Hong Kong and Iran after they had booed the Chinese national anthem. The song soon became known worldwide as the unofficial anthem of the protesters, and the lyrics were translated into numerous languages and made available on international streaming platforms such as Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube. Played and sung countless times at protests and rallies, it became a crucial part of the unique form of demonstration known as “sing with you,” in which citizens gathered at venues such as shopping centers to show solidarity with the movement (Ho, 2020). The international media coverage of the Hong Kong protests has, naturally, attracted the attention of and prompted discussion among local consumers of news. An analysis by Ng (2019) of Korean media coverage, including the accounts of Korean journalists reporting from Hong Kong, over a period of three months found that the main explanation for the intensification of the demonstrations in Hong Kong was opposition to the Chinese government. Thus, this coverage focused on the Chinese government’s response and especially whether it would use force to suppress the movement. The Korean reporters, describing the movement as leaderless, turned to figures associated with the Umbrella Movement, such as Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow, in their coverage of the Anti-Extradition Bill demonstrations—thereby showing a lack of understanding of the notion of “leaderless.” Conversely, LIHKG, an online forum similar to Reddit, which has been a key platform in the protests where users post calls to action, the independent netizens who led the protests, and civic press conference hosted by masked protesters, did not appear in the coverage. Although Korea has a rich tradition of social movements, the reporters’

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coverage of the Hong Kong protesters nevertheless emphasized disruptions in the social order. The coverage of the movement’s vigilantism and uncooperative activities has been more damaging. There have also been distinctions in the coverage by English-language media outlets (Zhang, 2019). On the one hand, because of Hong Kong’s unique position with respect to Sino-US relations the attention of the US media tends to be drawn to the city’s role in trade conflicts and power relations between China and the United States. The extent of coverage of the Hong Kong movement was, accordingly, constrained by editors’ perceptions of the interests of the American public. The British media, on the other hand, showed greater attention to the protests, with both conservative and liberal outlets actively supporting the democracy movement. Their perspectives were, naturally, dominated by the bilateral relationship between China and Britain and, in particular, concern about the deterioration of Sino-British relations as a result. Many of the journalists interviewed for this study described the reporting by foreign media on the movement as lacking in depth and detail. They understood, though, that international news coverage must avoid becoming too specific for foreign readers to understand or to consider relevant. For most foreign media, English-language and otherwise, the primary concern regarding the Hong Kong demonstrations has been China. Without taking into consideration the perspective of the world’s largest country, even though Hong Kong is an international financial center, the news value of stories about it would be significantly reduced along with its presence on international news pages. The comments of two of the interviewees in particular address this issue: Our target audiences are not Hong Kong people, so we need to assume that they do not know much about Hong Kong, so many of the stories will not be so detailed, will be more generalized. In the end, the most important thing is to persuade senior editorial officers who decide which stories you can write and which stories you can’t write. When the demonstration stories are more popular, we pitch demonstration stories to senior editorial officers. If it is not related to the demonstration but related to the movement, it will be less easy to pitch. (Informant 44) I rarely have the opportunity to do investigative reporting because it is difficult when you are doing international news reporting in foreign media. The movement did attract international attention, and many journalists came to Hong Kong, and our company also added a lot of space to our

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coverage. I often found that people just wanted to report on the conflict and thought that the TV pictures or news photos would make the audience go “wow” rather than spending time to do some in-depth investigative reporting on events and people. So, although I am out covering every week, I don’t have the opportunity to go deeper into the story. Usually, the timeliness of the story will focus more on the conflict. Of course, I think this is normal for a news organization covering international news, but I certainly hope to report more on the content behind the scenes from my point of view. If I have some more space, it will be better. (Informant 45)

The foreign media that covered the Hong Kong protest movement invested resources differently. In addition to their existing full-time staff, the media outlets that made Hong Kong their Asia-Pacific headquarters temporarily hired local reporters during the protests to cover the various events independently and assist their full-time reporters with research, translation, and liaison interviews. Foreign media outlets with only a bureau or temporary team in Hong Kong that hired local reporters or locals as fixers and faced especially significant constraints on their coverage owing to the limited workforce. The lack of manpower was felt, for example, when the pro-democracy protesters stepped up their “blossom everywhere” strategy of roadblocks and vandalism across Hong Kong, resulting in some of the worst violence. Local reporters accessed many Telegram groups to monitor the real-­ time movement of the protesters while their back-end editorial colleagues simultaneously watched live broadcasts from various television stations and online media from various locations and deployed the frontline reporters accordingly. Foreign journalists without back-office support relied on fixers and their networks of contacts with local journalists when deciding where to cover a story. The constraints on access to information about the movement caused them to focus their coverage on large, pre-announced demonstrations and rallies, as a number of the interviewees for this study observed: In addition to the Telegram, [for] live stream[ing], we mainly rely on fellow journalists. Foreign media is usually slower because, in some events, the organizers will not notify the foreign media. We can only rely on local reporters and us to establish [that] a WhatsApp group [is] not to [be] miss[ed]. For example, if we want to cover the police press conference, we need to check with the local reporters, or they share time and locations in

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the WhatsApp group [so that] we will know …. The local reporters’ contact[s are] our critical source. (Informant 36) Covering the demonstration nine months, I always look at Facebook live, look at Apple Daily, Cable news, RTHK, and Stand News, with intuition to see the place most likely to [be the scene] of conflict between protesters and police …. Later, on Facebook, there is that kind of live streaming, that is, all the live media are put on a screen. I will select from it and then decide where to go. I don’t have any support from the back [office], and it’s all up to me to find information and [use] my judgment. (Informant 37) The editors don’t know Chinese, so it’s hard to rely on them. They only look at the screen, watch Facebook live, and then ask us if they should send us to a specific location to cover the story. But, usually, we make the decision. After all, we understand Hong Kong better than they do. I am a Hong Kong resident and have been a reporter in Hong Kong for many years, so I am more familiar with Hong Kong than the editors. (Informant 29)

For Hong Kong journalists working full-time but temporarily for foreign media outlets, the movement, which lasted for nearly a year, often presented new challenges with respect to their professional judgment. As residents of the city, they were often anxious to see more coverage of the protests by the organizations that employed them. At the same time, they were aware that the coverage of the protests in Hong Kong was competing for space with news from other parts of the world since, after all, any media outlet has more or less limited staff and content. Again, editors consider their readers’ needs when determining the importance of a story and make trade-offs, as one interviewee working for an international news agency observed: When the movement is on, of course, I would like to see a lot of coverage in the Hong Kong news every day, especially when the movement is at a low ebb, or when it becomes quieter. I still try to pitch some story ideas to my editors, even now. The fact that so many people have been arrested seems to be essential news, and it is even more important that the international ­community does not forget Hong Kong. But I also know that Hong Kong is only a small part of the international news for a news agency like ours. I have many colleagues who are reporting in war-torn places, and their stories are just as important and need more reader attention. I think it would be a lot easier for me to judge the news value if the movement wasn’t happening where I live. But, after all, this is my home, and this movement is different

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from 2014 in that it’s lasting longer, the repression from the government has become violent, the society has become torn, and it’s tough to stay out of it. (Informant 28)

The interviewees described as regrettable the paucity of in-depth and detailed coverage that would have given readers a more comprehensive understanding of the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement. Their hope was that the international community would appreciate the impact of the movement, the fight by the people living in the city for democracy, and the toll that Beijing’s repression was exacting on the protesters. In any case, the coverage by foreign media outlets indisputably provided a narrative different from that of China’s official political propaganda, so that the story told to the international community served in effect as counter-­ propaganda. Accordingly, the Chinese government was unhappy with the international media outlets and tried to influence their coverage through a series of measures such as denying visas to foreign journalists seeking to work in mainland China or Hong Kong. A comparative study of the coverage of the 2014 Umbrella Movement by China Daily and the Guardian showed that the influence of the protest paradigm remained evident in the reports of both outlets on the violent clashes that erupted during demonstrations, but not to the same extent. China Daily, on the one hand, based its coverage on facts but adhered to the protest paradigm when it came to describing the demonstrators as a group of perpetrators supported by foreign powers whose efforts were undermining Hong Kong society; thus, its stories emphasized the negative economic impact of the protests. The Guardian’s reporting, on the other hand, questioned the Chinese government’s policy, providing context for readers to understand the demonstrators’ behavior, including violent behavior, in their clashes with the police. Further, the coverage in China Daily relied solely on official statements and sources, including a constant barrage of criticism directed at Western societies for the purpose of delegitimizing the demonstrations by association and reducing their moral force. Such reliance on the authorities fits the framework of the protest paradigm, but The Guardian’s reporting, in addition to providing a wide range of information from official sources, informed readers about the demands of the protesters by covering the leading figures of the movement in a nonjudgmental manner. The distinction between these two outlets reflects the media’s ideology in terms of reporting the same protest

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movement under different media systems and the role of the media in different countries (Veneti et al., 2016). Through its official media channels, the Chinese government has gone into full gear in its efforts to justify its handling of the protests in Hong Kong. Its most blunt tactic has been describing the protesters as extremists and linking them with terrorist organizations. Since the significant English-language media in Hong Kong are already controlled by Beijing, the foreign media alone have the ability to counter the government’s massive propaganda machine and inform the international community about the facts (Hernandez, 2020). With the passage of the National Security Law, however, there is a concern that foreign media reporters working in Hong Kong may be prosecuted for covering events in the city. Two of the journalists interviewed for this study expressed such concerns: I’m not sure if I can still interview an activist who advocates independence in Hong Kong right now. Because I’m in Hong Kong and work for a foreign media outlet, I should exercise full freedom of the press. However, I’m not sure if I can include slogans that have been defined as violations of national security laws in my articles. But if I didn’t, it would mean self-­ censorship because these slogans, or people, are newsworthy and need to be reported. (Informant 60) Although I work in the foreign media, I still have family in the mainland, and I don’t know if my reporting on sensitive content and sensitive people will affect my return to mainland China. I’m also worried about my visa. I saw that several of my colleagues’ visas were delayed for so long, and I saw that some journalists did not get their visas, which, of course, made me worry. Luckily, my editor was very considerate and did not assign me sensitive stories. As a journalist, this is, of course, a very unpleasant feeling, but, from a practical point of view, this is a way of self-protection. (Informant 64)

Such concerns were once unnecessary for foreign journalists working in mainland China, where the most that could happen as a result of covering dissidents was revocation of or failure to obtain a work visa along with deportation from China, including, of course, Hong Kong. In September 2020, however, two Australian journalists in China were questioned by security officials before being rushed out of the country after a few days of protection at the embassy and consulate. This incident has caused foreign journalists in mainland China to consider the possibility that they may be imprisoned for their reporting, especially after Cheng Lei, another

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Australian citizen, working for China Central Television, was arrested and accused of having “endangered national security” by the Chinese government (Mao, 2021). In the past, the Chinese government has been unable to control foreign media directly and, therefore, imposed indirect censorship in the form of restrictions on foreign journalists in China. Its efforts in this regard have included naming and shaming, personal intimidation, refusing to renew work visas, and restricting access to official events such as the premier’s press conferences as well as travel to certain provinces (Jacobs, 2014). In order to remain in China and be granted permission to cover official events, some foreign journalists have been choosing not to report on topics that are considered sensitive by the Chinese government, as the quotations from the interviewees show. Some foreign media outlets also ask their reporters to refrain from touching on sensitive issues so as to avoid impeding their efforts to expand into the Chinese market. Under the “one country, two systems” arrangement, foreign journalists in Hong Kong were not subject to these constraints, but the Chinese government began cracking down on press freedom in Hong Kong even before the 2019 protests. Thus, for example, Victor Mallet, a reporter for the Financial Times, was denied renewal of his work visa by the Hong Kong government for hosting a luncheon speech given by Andy Chan, founding member and convenor of the Hong Kong National Party, as the vice-chairman of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. While the authorities gave no reason for their decision, both the Chinese and Hong Kong governments appear to have opposed the invitation of Chan, who was accused of advocating for Hong Kong’s independence (Lam et al., 2018). In the wake of the 2019 protests, delays and denials of work visas to foreign journalists based in Hong Kong have become the norm (Lau, 2020). Whether the aim of the Chinese government in this regard is to reduce the number of foreign journalists in Hong Kong, and thus coverage of the city’s news, or to send a message to foreign journalists, or both, remains to be seen.

References Aldridge, M. (1998). The tentative hell-raisers: Identity and mythology in contemporary UK press journalism. Media, Culture & Society, 20(1), 109–127. Archetti, C. (2012). Which future for foreign correspondence? London foreign correspondents in the age of global media. Journalism Studies, 13(5–6), 847–856.

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Belair-Gagnon, V., Agur, C., & Frisch, N. (2017). The changing physical and social environment of newsgathering: A case study of foreign correspondents using chat apps during unrest. Social Media + Society, 3(1). https://doi. org/10.1177/2056305117701163 Chan, J. M., & Lee, C. C. (1984). The journalistic paradigm on civil protests: A case study of Hong Kong. In A. Arno & W. Dissanayake (Eds.), The news media in national and international conflict (pp. 183–202). Westview Press. Chen, F. (2015, July 24). Why Hong Kong is the only Asian hub for global media. ejinsight. https://www.ejinsight.com/eji/article/id/1104520/20150724-­ why-­hong-­kong-­is-­the-­only-­asian-­hub-­for-­global-­media Feighery, G. (2011). Conversation and credibility: Broadening journalism criticism through public engagement. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 26(2), 158–175. Glasser, T. L. (1992). Objectivity precludes responsibility. In E. D. Cohen (Ed.), Philosophical issues in journalism (pp. 176–185). Oxford University Press. Hamilton, M.  V., & Jenner, E. (2004). Redefining foreign correspondence. Journalism, 5(3), 301–321. Harlow, S., Salaverría, R., Kilgo, D.  K., & García-Perdomo, V. (2017). Protest paradigm in multimedia: Social media sharing of coverage about the crime of Ayotzinapa, Mexico. Journal of Communication, 67(3), 328–349. Hernandez, J. C. (2020, May 23). China deploys propaganda machine to defend move against Hong Kong. New York Times. https://www.nytimes. com/2020/05/23/world/asia/china-­hong-­kong-­propaganda.html Hertog, J. K., & McLeod, D. M. (1995). Anarchists wreak havoc in downtown Minneapolis: A multi-level study of media coverage of radical protest. Journalism and Communication Monographs, 151. Ho, K. (2020, September 19). Protest anthem “Glory to Hong Kong” will survive despite tough new security law and ban in schools, composer says. Hong Kong Free Press. https://hongkongfp.com/2020/09/19/protest-­anthem-­glory-­to-­ hong-­kong-­will-­survive-­despite-­tough-­new-­security-­law-­and-­ban-­in-­schools-­ composer-­says/ Jacobs, A. (2014, September 15). Foreign journalists in China see decline in reporting conditions. cn.NYTimes.com. https://cn.nytimes.com/china/2014 0915/c15journalists/en-­us/ Kilgo, D. K., & Harlow, S. (2019). Protests, media coverage, and a hierarchy of social struggle. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 24(4), 508–530. Lam, J., Cheung, T., & Sum, L. K. (2018). Backlash as Hong Kong denies visa renewal for Financial Times journalist Victor Mallet. South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-­kong/politics/article/2167149/ hong-­kong-­denies-­visa-­renewal-­foreign-­journalist-­who-­chaired Lau, C. (2020, October 5). Delayed work visas for foreign journalists in Hong Kong “highly unusual,” says press body as it warns of damage to city’s reputation. South

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China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-­kong/politics/ article/3096358/delayed-­work-­visas-­foreign-­journalists-­hong-­kong-­highly Lee, F. L. (2014). Triggering the protest paradigm: Examining factors affecting news coverage of protests. International Journal of Communication, 8, 22. Lee, F. L., & Chan, J. M. (2010). Media, social mobilisation and mass protests in post-colonial Hong Kong: The power of a critical event. Routledge. Lee, F. L., & Chan, J. M. (2018). Media and protest logics in the digital era: The umbrella movement in Hong Kong. Oxford University Press. Luqiu, L. R., & Lu, S. (2021). Bounded or boundless: A case study of foreign correspondents’ use of twitter during the 2019 Hong Kong protests. Social Media+ Society, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305121990637 Mahtani, S., & Kashiwagi, A. (2020). Agnes Chow, revered in Japan as the ‘goddess of democracy,’ faces prison in Hong Kong. The Washington Post. https://www. washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/agnes-­chow-­hong-­kong-­democracy-­ japan/2020/11/29/541fb542-­2e4c-­11eb-­9dd6-­2d0179981719_story.html Mahtani, S., & Yu, T. (2020). Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow, Ivan Lam are sent to prison over Hong Kong democracy protests. The Washington Post. https:// www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/joshua-­w ong-­h ong-­k ong-­ a g n e s -­c h o w -­p r i s o n / 2 0 2 0 / 1 2 / 0 2 / 2 b 3 e 7 4 a e -­2 d 2 c -­1 1 e b -­9 d d 6 2d0179981719_story.html Mao, F. (2021, February 9). Cheng Lei: Why has an Australian TV anchor been detained by China? BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/ world-­australia-­53980706 McCarthy, J. D., McPhail, C., & Smith, J. (1996). Images of protest: Dimensions of selection bias in media coverage of Washington demonstrations, 1982 and 1991. American Sociological Review, 61(3), 478–499. Mok, D. (2021). Hong Kong opposition activists detained in mass national security law arrests have bail extended. South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-­k ong/politics/article/3121358/ hong-­kong-­opposition-­activists-­detained-­mass-­national Murrell, C. (2009). Fixers and foreign correspondents: News production and autonomy. Australian Journalism Review, 31(1), 5. Ng, C. (2019). Personal observation: The narrative and reporting angles of Korea Media on Hong Kong Anti-extradition bill movement. Medium. https://cyrusng.medium.com/%E5%80%8B%E4%BA%BA%E8%A7%8 0%E5%AF%9F-­% E9%9F%93%E5%9C%8B%E5%AA%92%E9%AB%94% E5%B0%B1%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF-­% E5%8F%8D%E9%80%81%E4 %B8%AD%E9%81%8B%E5%8B%95-­% E7%9A%84%E8%AB%96%E8% BF%B0%E5%8F%8A%E5%A0%B1%E5%B0%8E%E8%A7%92%E5%B A%A6-­%E4%BC%8D%E9%BA%92%E5%8C%A1-­9558319c9207

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Ng, K. C. (2014). What is Occupy Central? 10 key facts about Hong Kong’s pro-­ democracy movement. South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/ article/1604649/what-­occupy-­central-­10-­things-­you-­need-­know Plaisance, P. L. (2007). Transparency: An assessment of the Kantian roots of a key element in media ethics practice. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 22(2–3), 187–207. Pro-China Hong Kong protester calls BBC reporter “fake news” during broadcast. (2019, July 20). BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-­asia-­ 49058890 Seguin, C. (2016). Cascades of coverage: Dynamics of media attention to social movement organizations. Social Forces, 94(3), 997–1020. Shahin, S., Zheng, P., Sturm, H. A., & Fadnis, D. (2016). Protesting the paradigm: A comparative study of news coverage of protests in Brazil, China, and India. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 21(2), 143–164. Smith, J., McCarthy, J. D., McPhail, C., & Augustyn, B. (2001). From protest to agenda building: Description bias in media coverage of protest events in Washington, D.C. Social Forces, 79(4), 1397–1423. Veneti, A., Karadimitriou, A., & Poulakidakos, S. (2016). Media ecology and the politics of dissent: Representations of the Hong Kong protests in the Guardian and China Daily. Social Media+ Society, 2(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/ 2056305116662175 Zhang, Y. (2019, August 13). How international media cover the Hong Kong protests. The Initium. https://theinitium.com/article/20190813­international-­how-­global-­media-­cover-­hk-­protest/

CHAPTER 7

Stand News: Livestreaming Protests and Fighting Police Brutality

Online media have been an essential source of information in the anti-­ ELAB movement. In fact, from television to newspapers, traditional media are no longer the first choice of consumers of news in Hong Kong (CUHK, 2020). Among online media outlets, Stand News stands out because of its live broadcasting and the respect that audiences have for its journalists—as well as its unambiguous stance as an advocacy media outlet that does not shy away from mobilizing participation in social causes. For this reason, Stand News merits investigation as a case study of the role of journalists in the anti-ELAB movement. Late on the night of July 21, 2019, unprecedented violence occurred in Hong Kong when dozens of men clad in white T-shirts, whom witnesses suggested were Triad gangsters, stormed into Yuen Long subway station, forcing open closed entrances, brandishing metal rods, and indiscriminately attacking protesters returning home from a peaceful rally and other passengers not associated with the protests. The violence left dozens of protesters and bystanders injured, and police were late to arrive on the scene to stop the violent assault. This incident, now referred to as “7.21,” has come to be seen as a defining moment in the 2019 protests. According to a poll conducted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the police response eroded public trust and the overall image of the city’s police force (Centre for Communication and Public Opinion Survey, 2020). Citizens of Hong Kong were able to watch the entire attack as it was live streamed by journalists on Facebook and on other social media such © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. R. Luqiu, Covering the 2019 Hong Kong Protests, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82226-2_7

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as Twitter. The men in white also attacked these reporters. However, a year after the incident, the Hong Kong police began aggressively pushing an alternative narrative, with the senior officer claiming that the attack was not indiscriminate but rather a clash between two groups despite the overwhelming video evidence to the contrary. The police alleged that this evidence was “one-sided” and criticized journalists for providing misleading information while reporting live, singling out for criticism—but without naming names—a reporter who, they claimed, had worsened the situation by filming the incident before being attacked (Hui, 2020). As it happened, Stand News, an online media outlet in Hong Kong, was responsible for the live streaming targeted by the police. In fact, this was the only media outlet broadcasting live from the scene during the initial stages of the attack. An hour and four minutes of live cell phone footage supplemented with the reporter’s description of the scene show men in white attacking people indiscriminately, reporters being beaten and injured, and the police finally appearing as the men in white leave the scene. Responding to the police accusations, Stand News released a 25-minute transcript of the reporter’s live narration extending from her arrival at the scene and through the attack to the arrival of the police, declaring that “it is convenient for readers to relive the critical moment, and the public will judge the right and wrong” (Stand News, 2020). Formerly known as House News, the online media company Stand News emerged with the rise of social movements in Hong Kong, following the example of the Huffington Post in the United States. Its coverage has included politics, lifestyles, culture, and topical social issues presented in blogs and original content. On July 28, 2012, in response to a demonstration on the previous day, the official website of House News was launched to document a series of actions demanding that the government withdraw its Moral and National Education curriculum from Hong Kong schools. Opponents argued that the curriculum emphasized nationalism and pride in the People’s Republic of China and that the textbooks sponsored and published by the Hong Kong Education Bureau skirted the issue of human rights violations in mainland China and played up the economic achievements of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (Lau et  al., 2012). The government eventually announced that the curriculum was no longer mandatory, and the successful opposition to it had a profound impact on the Umbrella Movement two years later, in which secondary school student leaders played key roles, as well as, and more importantly, on a group

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of young students experiencing an introduction to civil society and a social movement in action (Wang, 2017). One of the earliest online media outlets in Hong Kong, House News had a well-defined mission with the slogan “My city, my view, my home” and was actively involved in the city’s social movements. In the month following the protests against the national education curriculum, during the 2012 Hong Kong Legislative Council elections, House News opened a special page dedicated to the topic. It also became one of the main platforms for the political mobilization of civil society before the 2014 Umbrella Movement. In a later column, one of the founders of House News, Simon Lau Sai Leung, discussed its starting point and philosophy. We do not believe in the so-called “right and wrong” of the local traditional media, which is actually full of value bias and a hidden agenda of hypocrisy. We believe that fairness and impartiality in the media exist in a broader social context. The media should have clear values and political stances so that the public is aware that it is free to choose the media that represent their beliefs in a pluralistic and competitive media market. It is no coincidence that we were born in July 2012 amid the “anti-national education movement” because it represents the beliefs of House News. Hong Kong should converge with universal values instead of transitioning to the “China model.” Hong Kong should continue to be an international city and refuse to be domesticated. (Lau, 2014)

In July 2014, however, House News suddenly announced its closure. Its other founder, Tony Tsoi, also a businessman, announced on Facebook that the closure had been motivated by fear, family concerns, and the fact that the site had been losing money. Shortly before Tsoi announcing the closure, I had a chance to have a chat with him and I asked him under what circumstances he would abandon the platform. Based on my own experience, running an advocacy website is not prevalent in the CCP’s eyes. No matter the founder is a Hong Kong resident or a mainlander. Living in Hong Kong does not mean being out of Beijing’s reach and entitled to have the right of freedom of speech, which should be protected by the Basic Law, under one country, two systems. I have run websites in mainland China about which I received numerous threats from officials, who eventually shut the sites down. In Hong Kong, Chinese officials do not have the authority to shut down websites or media outlets, but they, like officials in other authoritarian governments, have various means to threaten media owners and workers (Slavtcheva-Petkova, 2019). In February 2014, Kevin Lau Chun-to, the former editor-in-chief of the mainstream Hong

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Kong newspaper Ming Pao, was stabbed three times by an assailant on the street a month after having been dismissed from his post. Shortly before the assault, a crowd of some 1600 took to the streets to criticize his dismissal and other threats to freedom of the press in Hong Kong (Mullany, 2014). During that conversation, Tsoi made it very clear that, should the threats involve his family, he would not hesitate to abandon the media outlet. By the time House News announced its closure, the site had already reached 300,000 unique views per day, and its popularity on Facebook was on par with Hong Kong’s leading local newspapers, giving it influence comparable to that of the traditional mainstream media outlets. After the campaign against the Moral and National Education curriculum, Beijing also discovered the role of online media in Hong Kong’s political mobilization and started suppressing existing outlets and supporting the establishment of pro-­government outlets (Luqiu, 2017). Five months later, Stand News was launched from the same office that House News had occupied and with 11 of its staff of 16 having formerly worked at the earlier outlet. Having learned the lessons of House News, to avoid threats from the authorities because of a single shareholder, three founders established no individual shareholders but rather trusts without beneficiaries, and shares were not transferable and constituted an eightmember board of directors. As a nonprofit organization, Stand News has relied on crowdfunding for its operations. The founders chose this arrangement because they did not want the content that they produced to be influenced by revenue concerns or, more importantly, political threats against individuals. During the mobilization period from January 2013 to September 2014, the Umbrella Movement relied mainly on traditional media such as newspapers and television rather than the Internet, which nevertheless contributed a great deal of coverage (Lin, 2016). However, a few small online media outlets also participated in reporting on the movement. The study showed that these outlets, which were usually not widely read, enjoyed readership almost equal to that of mainstream outlets during the movement (Chang & Liu, 2016). Most mainstream media organizations adopted a stance critical of the movement and practiced self-censorship to avoid offending the Chinese government. As a consequence, many residents of Hong Kong began turning to the Internet for information and more sympathetic coverage of the movement from sources on social media and online. Together, Hong Kong’s online media outlets have created an alternative political space that has attracted in particular citizens who believe in universal values (Kwong, 2015). Researchers have identified

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four types of digital media activities in which protesters actively engaged during the movement that correlated with their degree of involvement: online expression, online debates, online explanatory activities, and mobile communication (Lee & Chan, 2016; Lee et al., 2017). After the Umbrella Movement, traditional media outlets, facing a steady loss of readers, noted the influence of online media and began to develop their own online content. Meanwhile, other online outlets with a range of political perspectives began to appear, and the news usage habits of the public began to change as a result. A survey conducted by Chinese University of Hong Kong during the Umbrella Movement found that consumers of news relied, in decreasing order, on television (52.3% of respondents), newspapers (27.3%), social media ranked (9.8%), and radio (7.8%) for coverage. Further, media preferences varied considerably across age groups and education levels. In particular, emerging online media and social media have become the favorite sources of news for young people, and differences in terms of opinions and knowledge across generations have been intensifying (So, 2014). The survey shows that, after the 2019 protests, the traditional media has lost its advantage in terms of providing information about the movement, and, as observed earlier, the public’s access to political information through various channels has become highly fragmented. Stand News attracted a large audience because it followed the movement through live streaming on Facebook with features, in-depth interviews, and satirical photography and offered sympathetic coverage of the protesters. Thus, a June 14 editorial declared, “We can proudly state our position that we are against the police. We are not targeting the police as individuals, but rather the police as the only law enforcement in Hong Kong that can legally use force against the public. The scrutiny and monitoring of police conduct and power is precisely the media’s greatest mission. We are firmly on the side of the egg (here refers to civilians) against the high wall (here refers to police)” (Stand News, 2019a). There is no standard definition of advocacy journalism; rather, the term refers in general to a style of reporting that includes the promotion of a particular political, social, or other cause. Advocacy journalists and news media outlets engage with stories as participants and interpreters with the goal of bringing about social change (Charles, 2019). Waisbord (2009) claimed that, since the news media are dependent on government or business investment in societies, all journalism is advocacy journalism. He pointed out that the profession has also developed in distinctive ways worldwide. In authoritarian states, journalists have often been on the side

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of freedom and human rights. In Europe, where market concerns have dominated news organizations, although some print journalists have traditionally embraced partisan positions, there is a clear differentiation between commentators and reporters. Objectivity is one of the core professional values of journalism, so advocacy journalism is criticized for not being neutral. Thus, there are many definitions and interpretations of advocacy journalism that correspond to various cultural and political contexts (Donsbach & Klett, 1993). News outlets that have openly voiced support directly for democratic movements, universal values, and universal suffrage have not suffered a loss of credibility among the citizens of Hong Kong. Thus, a comparison of a pair of polls conducted in early 2019 and again in early 2020 by the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Ming Pao asking respondents’ opinions of 15 local news organizations showed that the ranking of the five most-trusted remained unchanged (Lee, 2019, 2020). Moreover, Stand News moved from next-to-last in 2019 to sixth place in 2020, indicating that the social movement had increased readers’ trust in this outlet (Lee, 2020). The editor-in-chief of Stand News, Chung Pui-Kuen, recalled in the interview a conversation that is instructive in this regard. A colleague was on live streaming, and a protester asked him to stop, asking him which [media outlet] he was from. “A reporter from Stand News.” “Stand News, even more, should stop shooting. It’s one of our own.” My colleague responded, “I am not your people. I am a reporter.” (Chung Pui-Kuen)

Chung remembered this exchange clearly because, he said, he was always asking his journalists to be observers and not to intervene in the scenes about which they were reporting and to maintain appropriate professional relationships with the protesters. The sympathetic portrayal of demonstrators in the alternative media had led many of them to consider reporters their “brothers and sisters,” their “own people.” Such an attitude is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, this trust made it possible for Stand News reporters to interview protesters from across the spectrum of the movement, including those who advocated the use of violence and wanted to hide their identity; on the other hand, protesters or supporters of the movement often asked the outlet to remove articles or photos or to stop live broadcasting.

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The interview was conducted shortly after Stand News moved into new offices in an industrial building. Unlike most companies, no signboard at the entrance advertised the presence of Stand News; there was only a metal gate in front of the door. Chung was delighted with the larger location, observing that there had only been 14 employees at the beginning of the movement and now there were 40. The low rent charged for the space had freed up resources to hire more staff. In the early days of the movement, he further explained, when reporters had needed to do a great deal of live broadcasting, there had been a lack of in-depth coverage since they hadn’t had opportunities to craft long-form stories after returning to the office. Likewise, the live broadcasts were not conducive to in-depth communication with the protesters. The situation eventually improved for Stand News as the movement grew and donations increased, allowing for more staffing. In fact, live broadcasting from the scenes of the protests on social media was a major factor in expanding the influence of Stand News in the early days of the movement. The outlet’s most-watched broadcast was the one of the attack by the men in white at the Yuen Long Station on “7.21” 2019, with viewership of more than 5 million, and the clash between protesters and police outside the Legislative Council Building on June 9, 2019 drew more than 1.5 million viewership. Other alternative media outlets, such as HK01, the newspaper Apple Daily, the public broadcaster RTHK, and various student media also devoted an enormous amount of resources to live broadcasting rallies and clashes between demonstrators and police after the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement took to the streets in June 2019. Through these outlets, tens of thousands of viewers watched events unfold in real time and have been able to access them on demand afterward thanks to permanent archiving. Thus, some of the most important, shocking, horrific, and moving moments of the protests have been watched, examined, and relived repeatedly. This impression is corroborated by the results of the survey conducted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Ming Pao in August 2019 mentioned earlier, with respondents rating live broadcasting the most important for them among the various sources of information about the protests (Lee, 2019). Regarding the respondents’ political leanings, the supporters of democracy and localism relied more heavily on live broadcasts than supporters of the government. These live broadcasts ranged from press conferences by government and police officials to meetings between university presidents and students, but the coverage of the street demonstrations and clashes between protesters and police received the

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most attention. The results of the survey indicated that interest in the live broadcasts correlated with the belief that the police had used excessive force in their interactions with protesters. By contrast, a majority of those who considered live media coverage unimportant and relied instead on traditional media for information about the protests were of the opinion that it was the demonstrators who had used excessive force. Live broadcasting was also important during the Umbrella Movement in 2014, which was touched off by the first use of tear gas by police since the handover of Hong Kong by the British. Thus, the widely disseminated broadcasts of live images of police firing tear gas into crowds of peaceful protesters elicited equally widespread condemnation and increased the scope and size of the Umbrella Movement. Importantly, without editing, the live reporting also increased the autonomy of images and helped to avoid censorship by the management of the news outlets (Tang, 2015). Since the emergence of 24-hour television news channels, live news coverage has become commonplace. Similarly, with the popularity of social media and various mobile apps, television stations have also made it possible for viewers to stream content on their phones and computers. When a major news event occurs in Hong Kong, the quality of the live broadcast is determined by the location and number of live cameras, the number of reporters on the scene, and the live narrative. When an online media outlet is able to arrange live streaming from various locations, it must operate a control center to switch among the various feeds and multiple windows. Moreover, the cell phones used for live broadcasting by reporters from outlets such as Stand News provide much lower-quality footage than professional cameras. These considerations raise the question of why the live streaming by online media outlets such as Stand News were able to distinguish themselves from other outlets during the 2019 protests. First of all, in the live broadcasts by television channels, the division of responsibility between the reporters and photographers is clear, while online reporters do their own photography, leveraging the flexibility of mobile phones so that their live broadcasts tend to be more likely to catch critical moments. Moreover, online media outlets are not limited with respect to the length of their live broadcasts and do not need to interrupt them for advertising. Lastly and most importantly, online reporters have greater freedom in their live reporting than television reporters with respect to the use of language and the expression of emotions and even political opinions. As a result, the live streaming by Stand News created several star reporters popular with

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viewers who have drawn criticism from other media professionals because of their prominent roles in their own stories. When the movement began, Gwyneth Ho Kwai-lam was studying for her master’s degree in the Netherlands but took a part-time job with Stand News while in Hong Kong on summer break. Before she went abroad for study, she was a full-time journalist for House News and specializing in reporting on social movements. Ho became an Internet sensation recognized by the public for her live coverage of events at the Legislative Council on July 1, 2019. At the end of a large demonstration on that day, a group of protesters occupied the council chamber and, when the police demanded that they leave, four of them insisted on staying behind. Dozens of protesters who had already left the chambers then returned, risking arrest, in order to persuade the four to leave. Ho accompanied them into the Legislative Council and interviewed one who said that she was concerned that she would be unable to leave again by the deadline that police had set but was more afraid that she would not see her comrades again. Ho’s voice choked with emotion to the point that she found it difficult to describe the situation. In recognition of her sympathy for the movement, protesters and supporters took to calling her the “Stand sister.” Later, during a live broadcast of the Yuen Long incident on July 21, 2019, the mobs in white twice attacked Ho physically; beaten to the ground and screaming, she dropped her phone but continued broadcasting and left a deep impression on the public. Ho’s style of reporting, especially her expression of personal viewpoints during her reports, has found many admirers. However, as mentioned earlier, television reporters and other mainstream media journalists have criticized such reporting as unprofessional. Ho’s response to this criticism is that her approach, which has been rare in the Hong Kong news industry, based on filming and reporting with her cell phone, offers audiences an immersive experience and that reporters’ viewpoints help readers understand social movements. In the past, long-form reports on movements often lagged in terms of exposition and analysis because of the priority given to the narratives of the people involved and the superficial notion of objectivity caused by the journalists’ practice of quoting rather than making their own judgments—because long-­ form reporting of this kind often required a larger workforce to compare and balance the accounts of various parties to sort out a set of narratives. But, in the current pace of the movement, there is no such spare time.

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As a result, we have seen more and more journalists working for different news organizations begin to break away from the myth that “journalists must be invisible.” Feature reporters who used to rely on protesters’ statements to organize their stories have begun to be unafraid to add their own analysis and perspectives to their reporting. Some journalists working in the mainstream media have also started to try to account for their observations in public notes that are not captured on camera. (Gwyneth Ho)

As for the editor’s perspective, Chung said that he was not concerned about the issue of reporters becoming celebrities, which he described as an unintended consequence, and that his only concern was the ethics of the on-site reporting. Unlike in mainstream media outlets, it is up to the newsrooms of alternative outlets to decide whether to conduct a live broadcast, and Stand News’ policy was to leave the decision to the frontline reporters. Chung also found the personal style acceptable and did not think that such reporting would influence readers or mobilize them, even indirectly, to participate in a social movement. From his perspective, reporters’ personal viewpoints only served to reveal universal values, and their alleged support for the movement and the protesters was only a manifestation of universal suffrage and a more transparent and democratic Hong Kong. Acknowledging their own positions and agendas, alternative media outlets have remained attentive to social movements in Hong Kong, promoting social change through their news coverage. The reporters with House News and later Stand News have constantly monitored the ideas and opinions of the participants in these movements, to which the mainstream media outlets have given little consideration. As a result, when the Anti-­ Extradition Bill Movement occurred, many in Hong Kong were asking how their society had reached this point. Chung recalled, After the Mong Kok Unrest in 2016, we did a restructuring of our reporting. Why did it happen? What did the people involved think? How did the young protesters get to the point where they broke through and threw bricks at the police? We tried to restructure. We were curious to know, and we knew these questions were important. … We spent three weeks working on a nine-article feature series. I told my colleagues that we should do it quickly because other news media would do it, but there were only three of us. But after we finished it, we found that no other media outlet did it. Later, Ming Pao did, but not on such a large scale, one article per week, three articles. But their pace was slow; they didn’t interview the people as

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much as we did, and they didn’t present the details as much as we did. I was shocked at that time—isn’t it obviously worth doing? This should be done with maximum resources because it is a historical event that needs to be recorded, sorted out, and reflected on. After all, the first draft of history was written by us journalists. (Chung Pui-Kuen)

In the first month of the movement, the number of articles on Stand News decreased because, as mentioned earlier, the reporters had to conduct live broadcasting. Chung found the situation unsatisfactory and for this reason increased the size of the staff so as to assign some reporters to the live streaming and others to interviews and observe the protesters. After the restructuring, Stand News was able to present several live broadcasts and one or two feature articles daily, bringing readers into the center of the movement even late into the night. As Chung explained, Therefore, we have built up some connections so that we can do more in-­ depth work later on. For example, on a political spectrum, or a camp, we can continue to pay attention to the most courageous group and their ideas. I think our record in this area, especially to keep up with the rhythm of the movement, at the right time, to grasp the twists and turns, to produce special features, interviews, features—we are doing quite well. (Chung Pui-Kuen)

Editors like Chung had to figure out how to present the complexities of the movement and the disturbing facts relating to it in full. Following the escalation of the clashes between police and protesters, especially after the former opened fire on the latter, Stand News published in January 2020 a series of three articles titled “The Edge of Violence” that focused on the tendency for civil resistance to become violent. The report was based on an interview in October 2019 with a protester who had submitted an unsolicited article. The interviewee claimed to have been involved in an assault on police officers and to have plans to attack the police and build up a guerrilla organization. The article explaining the “Northern Irelandization” of Hong Kong included as well interviews with scholars worldwide, one of them a moderate Hong Kong academic who discussed the political ethics of the use of violence. Chung described the decision to run this series of articles as the most difficult that he had had to make regarding whether to publish a story. Apparently, the protester who was interviewed had contacted other news outlets, and his posts on various online forums were repeatedly deleted.

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Chung had to wrestle with the question of whether the media should let the public hear this kind of voice and report on a planned violation, thereby publicizing it in advance. In the end, he decided to publish it in the hope of making the public aware of the existence of this kind of thinking and to stimulate discussion of and reflection on the movement. The editorial board added a special foreword: Because of the significant social implications of the incident involving public interest and the direction of the protest movement, Standpoint News has decided to publish its interview and feature it in a special report to explore the ethical issues and political implications. We hope to present a more complete and reflective perspective to assist the public discussion and that readers will pay attention and read it together.

The article concluded “Editor’s Note: All related interviews and correspondence were destroyed after publication.” (Stand News, 2019b) Protesters and movement supporters came to see Stand News as one of the few local media outlets in Hong Kong that supported the movement. On June 8, 2019, Stand News changed the header on its Facebook page to include the words “Anti-Extradition to China and Anti-Defiance Law” on a yellow background; then, on July 28, the header changed to read “STAND WITH HK.” Because of their clear stance, both their readership and fundraising increased during the campaign, allowing for the increase in staff discussed earlier. The successful establishment of Stand News in 2019 following the shuttering of House News in 2014 because of its role in social mobilization in particular demonstrated the continued importance of advocacy journalism for social movements. Even journalists who do not see themselves as participants in a movement play a role as intermediaries between the movement and the general public. In this role, they directly influence public perceptions of movements and those who participate in them. The profession has established objectivity and neutrality as norms for journalists; but journalists must also defend freedom of expression and the right to monitor people in power in order to serve their function in society. The conflict appears irresolvable, for journalists are told both to maintain distance from protesters and to advocate for the freedom of expression that the protests support. Thus, Chung, in discussing his role as the editor of Stand News, spoke of “non-intervention in the movement” and insisted that “We are just documenters.” At the same time, he observed that “We have tendencies

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and opinions on certain issues” and “The traditional media’s boast of neutrality is self-defeating.” The contradiction is unmistakable. However, advocacy journalism that adheres to strict ethical guidelines produced by an organization with a known agenda may serve the public interest better than fragmented mainstream journalism driven by less obvious biases (Vine, 2017). Regarding the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement, the stance of Stand News, given the history of its staff with House News, was fairly obvious. The task of its reporters was to keep up with the rhythm of the movement and identify what protesters perceived to be the important nodes and problems and possible trends. In fact, though largely unwilling to acknowledge the fact, media outlets that focus on the public interest naturally play an activist role in the social movements that they cover (Napoli, 2007). The Anti-Extradition Bill Movement, therefore, shed light on both the indirect and direct control that the government exercised over Hong Kong’s traditional media outlets and demonstrated the importance, indeed necessity, of online media for the city’s consumers of local news. The birth of Stand News from the ashes of House News demonstrated that some space remained for online media in Hong Kong, for the authorities obviously found it much more difficult to control online outlets than traditional ones. As citizens increasingly look to independent media and grow accustomed to making donations to alternative media outlets as a form of political participation, crowdfunding is replacing advertising and providing for sustainable development. The online media presence that emerged following the Umbrella Movement and during the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement has included several small outlets with clear-cut positions. According to Chung, there has been no competition among them because there has been only one opponent: I think our biggest opponent is the regime and the biggest pressure is around the regime, or the regime’s approval, or the powerful people. The best state is to have a dozen small and medium-sized online media in Hong Kong, each with its own characteristics and viewpoints, to maintain a pluralistic ecology. Then it [alternative media] will not be so easily suppressed and killed. Hit one, and there is a second, there are a dozen—this is the best situation. … It’s just that, on the side of the egg (here refers to civilians), against the powers that be, Stand News is mentally prepared to close down again at any time; and, this time, it may face even more serious consequences than in

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2014. If the National Security Law is used to close company registrations, freeze funds, and shut down shops, no media outlet will be able to stand up to it. (Chung Pui-Kuen)

References Centre for Communication and Public Opinion Survey. (2020). Research report on public opinion during the Anti-Extradition Bill (Fugitive Offenders Bill) Movement in Hong Kong. The Chinese University of Hong Kong. http:// www.com.cuhk.edu.hk/ccpos/en/pdf/202005PublicOpinionSurveyRe port-­ENG.pdf Chang, T. K., & Liu, N. (2016). From keying to interpretative boundaries: Occupy central, commercial newspapers and independent media. Journal of Communication Research and Practice, 6(1), 45–77. Charles, M. (2019). Advocacy Journalism. The International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies, 1–5. Donsbach, W., & Klett, B. (1993). Subjective objectivity. How journalists in four countries define a key term of their profession. Gazette (Leiden, Netherlands), 51(1), 53–83. Hui, M. (2020). Hong Kong police are rewriting the history of an infamous thug attack on civilians. Quartz. https://qz.com/1896368/ hong-­kong-­police-­rewrite-­history-­of-­july-­21-­yuen-­long-­thug-­attack/ Kwong, Y. H. (2015). The dynamics of mainstream and internet alternative media in Hong Kong: A case study of the Umbrella Movement+. International Journal of China Studies, 6(3), 273. Lau, S., Nip, A., & Wan, A. (2012, September 9). Protest against national education to end after government climb down. South China Morning Post. https:// www.scmp.com/news/hong-­kong/article/1032535/protest-­against-­national-­ education-­end-­after-­government-­climbdown Lau, S.  L. (2014, August 4). The ethnography of ‘house news’. Independent Opinion @Common Wealth Magazine. https://opinion.cw.com.tw/blog/profile/270/article/1694 Lee, F. L. (2019, August 22). Live media: Public opinion judgment on the clash between police and citizens. Ming Pao. https://news.mingpao.com/ ins/%E6%96%87%E6%91%98/article/20190822/s00022/1566394633524/ %E5%AA%92%E9%AB%94%E7%9B%B4%E6%92%AD-­%E6%B0%91%E6%84 %8F%E5%B0%8D%E8%AD%A6%E6%B0%91%E8%A1%9D%E7%AA%81%E7% 9A%84%E5%88%A4%E6%96%B7%EF%BC%88%E6%96%87-­%E6%9D%8E%E 7%AB%8B%E5%B3%AF%EF%BC%89 Lee, F. L. (2020, March 29). How social movements affect people’s news usage habits. Stand News. https://www.thestandnews.com/politics/%E7%A4%BE

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%E6%9C%83%E9%81%8B%E5%8B%95%E5%A6%82%E4%BD%95%E5%BD% B1%E9%9F%BF%E5%B8%82%E6%B0%91%E7%9A%84%E6%96%B0%E8%81% 9E%E4%BD%BF%E7%94%A8%E7%BF%92%E6%85%A3/ Lee, F. L., & Chan, J. M. (2016). Digital media activities and mode of participation in a protest campaign: A study of the Umbrella Movement. Information, Communication & Society, 19(1), 4–22. Lee, F. L., Chen, H. T., & Chan, M. (2017). Social media use and university students’ participation in a large-scale protest campaign: The case of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement. Telematics and Informatics, 34(2), 457–469. Lin, Z. (2016). Traditional media, social media, and alternative media in Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement. Asian Politics & Policy, 8(2), 365–372. Luqiu, L.  R. (2017). The elephant in the room: media ownership and political participation in Hong Kong. Chinese Journal of Communication, 10(4), 360–376. Mullany, G. (2014, February 27). Hong Kong editor whose ouster stirred protests is slashed. The New  York Times. https://cn.nytimes.com/china/20140227/ c27hongkong/zh-­hant/dual/ Napoli, P. M. (2007). Public interest media activism and advocacy as a social movement: A review of the literature. Working paper, Donald McGannon Communication Research Center, Fordham University. Slavtcheva-Petkova, V. (2019). Fighting Putin and the Kremlin’s grip in neo-­ authoritarian Russia: The experience of liberal journalists. Journalism, 20(11), 1530–1546. So, C.  Y. K. (2014, October 16). Clement So: The generation divide of the media audience. Ming Pao. https://news.mingpao.com/ pns/%E8%A7%80%E9%BB%9E/article/20141016/s00012/141339677947 4/%E8%98%87%E9%91%B0%E6%A9%9F-­%E5%AA%92%E9%AB%94%E5%88 %86%E7%9C%BE%E7%9A%84%E4%B8%96%E4%BB%A3%E9%B4%BB%E6%B A%9D Stand News. (2019a). Why are we against the police? Stand News. https://www. thestandnews.com/politics/%E7%82%BA%E4%BD%95%E6%88%9 1%E5%80%91-­%E9%87%9D%E5%B0%8D-­%E8%AD%A6%E5%AF%9F/ Stand News. (2019b). The edge of violence. Stand News. https://www.thestandnews.com/politics/%E6%9A%B4%E5%8A%9B%E9%82%8A%E7%B7%A3-­1-­ %E5%B8%AB%E6%B3%95%E5%8C%97%E6%84%9B%E5%85%B1%E5%92%8C% E8%BB%8D-­%E9%A0%90%E5%91%8A%E5%8D%80%E9%81%B8%E5%89%8D% E4%BC%8F%E6%93%8A%E8%AD%A6%E5%93%A1-­%E5%89%8D%E7%B7%9A-­ v-­%E5%B0%8F%E9%9A%8A-­%E7%9A%84%E6%AD%A6%E8%A3%9D%E6%83 %B3%E5%83%8F/ Stand News. (2020, July 21). The police rewrote the 7.21 history, “Stand News” released the full transcript of the first half-hour narration of the 7.21 live feed with key information. Stand News. https://www.thestandnews.com/politics/

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% E 8 % A D % A 6 % E 5 % 9 C % 9 6 % E 6 % 9 4 % B 9 % E 5 % A F % A B -­7 -­2 1 -­ %E6%AD%B7%E5%8F%B2-­%E7%AB%8B%E5%A0%B4%E6%96%B0%E8%81 %9E-­%E7%99%BC%E4%BD%88-­7-­21-­%E7%9B%B4%E6%92%AD%E9%97%9C %E9%8D%B5%E9%A6%96%E5%8D%8A%E5%B0%8F%E6%99%82%E6%97%81 %E8%BF%B0%E6%96%87%E5%AD%97%E5%85%A8%E8%A8 %98%E9%8C%84/ Tang, G. (2015). Mobilization by images: TV screen and mediated instant grievances in the Umbrella Movement. Chinese Journal of Communication, 8(4), 338–355. The Chinese University of Hong Kong [CUHK]. (2020). Research report on public opinion during the anti-extradition bill (fugitive offenders bill) movement in Hong Kong. Centre for Communication and Public Opinion Survey. http:// www.com.cuhk.edu.hk/ccpos/en/pdf/202005PublicOpinionSurveyRe port-­ENG.pdf Vine, P. (2017). When is a journalist not a journalist? Negotiating a new form of advocacy journalism within the environmental movement. Pacific Journalism Review: Te Koakoa, 23(1), 43–54. Waisbord, S. (2009). Advocacy journalism in a global context. In K.  Wahl-­ Jorgensen & T.  Hanitzsch (Eds.), The handbook of journalism studies (pp. 371–385). Routledge. Wang, K. J. Y. (2017). Mobilizing resources to the square: Hong Kong’s Anti-­ Moral and National Education movement as precursor to the Umbrella Movement. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 20(2), 127–145.

CHAPTER 8

After the Movement and under the National Security Law

In June 2019, journalists wearing reflective clothing and protective gear shuttled between protesters and police to document the longest-running and most violent social movement in the city since its handover in 1997. The journalists were subjected to political pressure, violent attacks, and criticism and also, at times, received praise. On the ground, as violence escalated between protesters and police and the latter employed increasingly heavy-handed tactics in their dealings with frontline journalists, reporting became an ever more dangerous undertaking. Simultaneously, the political stance of the media outlets and constraints on reporting resources further complicated journalists’ efforts to document the facts on the ground. An accurate and comprehensive record of a social movement is necessary if the public is to make well-informed judgments and choices about it. As guardians of the truth, journalists seek to perform their duties without interference from either police or protesters. Local journalists in Hong Kong are no strangers to covering mass protests, for the city has a long history of civil disobedience. Its citizens have grown accustomed to an open society that cherishes the values of freedom, equality before the law, and the active exercise of inalienable rights. Therefore, protesting has come to be regarded as a regular channel for the expression of demands and criticism of the local and central government, including the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Every attempt by the authorities to change the way of life and the current system has led to massive street protests driven by the fear that Hong Kong will lose its © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. R. Luqiu, Covering the 2019 Hong Kong Protests, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82226-2_8

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unique character and come to resemble the great cities in mainland China, in which the beliefs associated with an open society are valued less or not at all. Hong Kong, then, has been recognized as a kind of world “protest capital,” and the local street demonstrations and rallies were for a long time peaceful, with the police adopting a fairly lenient crowd-control strategy. Thus, few local journalists had the experience of covering violent and dangerous police-civilian clashes until several years after the handover. In the postcolonial era, Hong Kong police used tear gas and water cannons against protesters for the first time during the 2005 World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference and deployed a tear gas canister for the first time against pro-democracy protesters in 2014, during the Umbrella Movement (Cheng & Chui, 2014). The use of force in the latter case especially drew criticism from local and international media sources, but the 79-day occupation movement was, by and large, peaceful, with police relying mainly on batons and pepper spray to disperse the crowds. By 2019, however, the front lines of the protests had become nearly as dangerous as a war zone. Thus, two-thirds of the 230 frontline reporters interviewed by the Public Health Research Service and the Chinese University School of Medicine said that they had been exposed to crowd control weapons used by police at least once a week in the period from June through October 2019, and an overwhelming majority (94%) reported health problems resulting from exposure to tear gas, pepper spray, and water cannons while covering the protests (Chan et al., 2019). A brief overview of the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement is useful to set the stage for a discussion of the various forms of violence and harassment suffered by journalists. The widespread demonstrations began in June 2019 and were characterized by increasingly violent clashes between the police and protesters, especially after the government issued a ban on the wearing of masks in early October. Hong Kong police reported having fired 10,000 tear gas canisters and 4800 rubber bullets from June to the end of November, to which the frontline reporters were exposed along with blasts from water cannons (Cheng, 2019). In addition, the attitudes of police have become increasingly authoritarian, with numerous attacks on, provocations of, and insults to frontline journalists from officers. On the other hand, journalists were also physically and verbally attacked by protesters of all political stripes while covering news on the ground. All this while, Beijing has been tightening its control over Hong Kong journalists and news organizations and giving its full support to the police in

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their efforts to “stop violence and control chaos” (Zhou, 2019). Still, media coverage, especially in the form of live broadcasts, has shed light on the crowd-control practices used by the police force and, as a result, seriously damaged its image. The state media, predictably, criticized reporters for pointing their cameras at the police, claiming that doing so encouraged the violence and labeling those who posed tough questions to officials “black journalists” and independent-minded frontline citizen and student reporters “fake journalists” (Luqiu, 2020). The journalists protested this treatment, in various ways making clear their demands that the government, and especially the police, respect their right to cover the news. In particular, on July 14, 2019, more than 1500 current and former media workers responded to the call of seven press unions and marched, clad in black, to protest the violent treatment of frontline reporters by police and demanded that the government establish an independent commission of inquiry to investigate thoroughly whether the mistreatment of journalists by police was the result of a coordinated effort. The journalists also criticized the SAR government for evading questions from reporters by releasing videos and statements rather than holding press conferences. On August 6, before a scheduled police press conference, the journalists present showed their displeasure with authorities by rapping their helmets with their pens, and a representative of the Hong Kong Journalists Association then read a declaration condemning the police for abuse of force. On September 18, members of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club stood in silence to protest the continued police restrictions on news coverage as well as the use of violence against journalists. The goal of such violence is, naturally, to create fear and silence them. In recent years, journalists covering ongoing protests worldwide have been experiencing increasing violence at the hands of both police and protesters. Law enforcement agencies seek to prevent reporters from recording any behavior that might be described as abuse of force, while protesters may be hostile to reporters who are critical of their movement. The United Nations has repeatedly issued warnings of the harassment, arrest, and even killing of journalists covering demonstrations, and violence against members of the press has become a global human rights issue (UNESCO, 2020). All of the journalists interviewed for this study reported having experienced varying degrees of violence at the hands of police officers on the front lines ranging from verbal insults and threats to physical harm and arrest. Nevertheless, they all also affirmed that they had always tried to

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cooperate with the police and follow their instructions and deliberately kept their distance to avoid confrontations whenever they sensed that officers were becoming hostile. Further, they described as unprofessional journalists who confronted the police on the scene or even provoked them while broadcasting live. However, some stressed that it was the duty of journalists to point their cameras at the police, arguing that, if no one monitored the police, they would act without restraint in their interactions with the public. A number of the interviewees also pointed out that the hostility of police toward journalists made it difficult for the latter to balance their stories owing to limitations on their access to the information and perspective provided by police. For example, I was there that night for the battle of No. 2 bridge at Chinese University of Hong Kong. That night, many journalists captured the protesters’ images defending [themselves against] the tear gas, which made the audience sympathize with the protesters and was very graphic. But, at the same time, another story should also be told: the president of Chinese University of Hong Kong, President [Rocky] Tuan, and the vice president came out to mediate between the protesters and the police. There was a temporary ceasefire agreement between the protesters and the police. When President Tuan said that he had contacted the police’s senior commander, the police were willing to stop the action, and the protesters agreed to retreat. However, when the protesters backed off, they found that the police had blocked [their path with] a water cannon truck. The demonstrators were very unhappy and felt that the police intended to use the water cannon to attack them. The police then yelled at the demonstrators that they did not trust the demonstrators and needed to use the water cannon to separate them from each other in case they attacked. These details were worth reporting. However, it is difficult for us to go to the police side and cover it from their point of view through interviews and observation. We could not stay in the middle, and we could only stay with the protesters. So, the final stories will be more from the protesters’ point of view. It’s hard to include the police’s point of view since we did not have access. There is nothing we can do about it. (Informant 67) Is it true that the police killed the protesters in the 831 Prince Edward Station incident, as many people believe? There are no third-party accounts from journalists. At the time, reporters wanted to follow the police down to the subway station to film their actions, but the police blocked the reporters. Some people would then argue that it was because the police killed the ­protesters that the reporters were not allowed to go down. But even though

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the scene was bloody, with images of police beating protesters, if reporters had been allowed to record it, they would have seen that the police did not kill anyone. So the rumors were created by the police themselves. ProBeijing and pro-establishment people say that the reporters are biased, but they don’t see that the police made it all up. (Informant 57)

The “Siege of CUHK” was one of the key incidents during the 2019 protests. It began when protesters disrupted traffic in support of a general strike on November 11, and other protesters on campus threw objects onto nearby railway tracks and highways. The police responded by shooting rubber bullets at students and launching volleys of tear gas onto the campus grounds. The police then stormed onto the campus to conduct arrests while the protesters tried to stop them by hurling petrol bombs. The university’s president and vice-chancellor, the aforementioned Rocky Tuan, tried to mediate between the students and the police. He negotiated a temporary ceasefire with the top police officials, but the police at the scene ignored the order and fired several tear gas canisters at the campus as Tuan looked on. As a consequence, the public discontent with the police escalated significantly (Hui, 2019). However, a year after the incident, a police officer who claimed to have been on the scene at the time said in an interview with a pro-Beijing newspaper that the police had only fired the tear gas because protesters behind Tuan were holding petrol bombs and throwing objects at the police and that there had been no intention to insult the president (“Police: Never intended to occupy the campus,” 2020). In any case, the conflict escalated into widespread protests across Hong Kong in an attempt to divert the attention of the police away from CUHK, in the course of which at least 70 students were injured. In another incident mentioned by the interviewees, on August 31, 2019, riot police officers and members of the Special Tactical Squad stormed the platform and train at Prince Edward Station, attacking passengers with batons and pepper spray. They denied that their aim at the station had been “to beat people up” and insisted that they had only used “appropriate force” to subdue protesters. A rumor then circulated on the Internet that police had beaten six people to death (Siu et  al., 2019). November 30, FactWire News Agency, an independent online outlet, interviewed and confirmed that the six people whom police had supposedly killed were, in fact, still alive. A year later, Police Commissioner Tang Ping-Keung, during an interview with a pro-Beijing media outlet, linked

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the August 31 incident to national security and denounced the spreading of rumors that people were killed at the Prince Edward Station …. Perhaps, over the past time, some people wanted to jeopardize our country or the security of Hong Kong, and there were organizations that incited many people to do something they usually don’t do—to spread some false ideas, or to say that there were rumors of deaths on 8.31. We believe that some unknown forces want to endanger the country or the security of Hong Kong. (“Police chief Chris Tang rejects damaging rumors,” 2020)

Despite the protests of press groups and journalists, there is no sign that the attitudes of the Hong Kong police regarding journalists have changed. On the contrary, the police have announced that the definition of “media representation” under the Police General Orders would now limit the number of journalists covering street demonstrations and that independent, student, and online reporters would no longer be recognized as journalists. Such a change is not surprising. The tightening of press coverage in Hong Kong was already apparent when Beijing’s state propaganda machine began targeting journalists shortly after the Anti-­ Extradition Bill Movement began. The Hong Kong police have repeatedly complained about “fake journalists,” claiming that protesters were hiding among members of the media disguised as one of them in order to attack the police. At the same time, pro-Beijing politicians and state media on mainland China have repeatedly called on the government to regulate Hong Kong journalists, requiring them to obtain the standard government-­ issued press cards to cover street demonstrations. While the SAR government has denied that centralized licensing will occur, the police practice has served as a substitute for such official accreditation schemes. It is the practice of totalitarian governments and in many authoritarian countries to vet journalists and issue press cards to those who are officially recognized. Under totalitarian rulers, journalists serve the state propaganda machine, being expected to promote official policies and to avoid sensitive content and textual taboos. Authoritarian regimes pursue a different strategy, controlling a small number of privately owned news media outlets through a licensing system. In 1970, the British Hong Kong government replaced its official press card system with media organizations that provided business cards to journalists in keeping with British policy and partly in response to the booming newspaper industry in Hong Kong.

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As an open, capitalist society, Hong Kong has supported a media system that differs fundamentally from that on mainland China. Thus, the role of Hong Kong’s journalists has not been that of mouthpieces serving as the communications department of the CCP and the government but rather that of a watchdog monitoring society, in particular the government, and promoting social progress. As a consequence of the police conduct, the public discontent with the police escalated significantly (Hui, 2019). Three of the interviewees for this study made this point. I was on the front lines reporting back to the office, and then, after the story [was] published, I would find that many of the facts I mentioned were not there, so the story would appear to the readers that the protesters were violent, but the protesters were violent in self-defense; the police acted first. This has happened too many times. Although I am well aware of my company’s political position—and, when I am out covering news, the interviewees know that I am from that media and often criticize us—I have always thought that I can at least remain objective and balanced in my news reporting. I am just reporting what I see, not commenting. But this movement has shown me that, as a journalist, it’s tough to do that, at least [at] my company, so, I think, we’re being criticized because we’re not doing the most basic thing in journalism: reporting the facts. (Informant 53) My boss made it very clear to us [what] to cover in the front line; if you see it is the police or pro-government demonstrators who are violent, pretend not to notice. I knew that, if I did, the company would not use the footage, so, when I saw such a scene, I stopped taking photos because I knew it was useless. Of course, as a journalist, I understand that this doesn’t seem right. I feel bad. I know I work in such a media [outlet that] it is impossible to monitor the government, but it should be fairer to report the facts—but it turns out that even this [I] cannot do. (Informant 16) I know that, every time I ask a tough question at [a] government press conference, the other side is not happy. Fortunately, my boss never blames me. But I also know that my supervisor helped me with a lot of pressure from her boss, our news department’s head. As a front-line reporter, I will say that I am at the bottom of the food chain, and I don’t feel much pressure, so I want to do what I can. But I also know that many journalists are not as lucky as I am because their supervisors do not take care of their subordinates in this way. In such a situation, you either leave or become obedient and stop asking the officials tough questions. (Informant 49)

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Since the handover, as documented throughout this book, Beijing has achieved control over the mainstream media in Hong Kong through direct and indirect means, such as ownership of media outlets, co-optation of the owners of such outlets, and economic pressure (Luqiu, 2017). However, the online media outlets that began to flourish in the aftermath of the Umbrella Movement have rendered Beijing’s traditional control tactics of targeting media owners and newsroom administrators ineffective. That is, since independent, online, and student journalists in Hong Kong do not work within the confines of a rigid structure, they are refractory to the CCP’s methods of controlling individuals through “units” and “communities” that have kept the press on a leash in mainland China. Besides, unlike mainland China, Hong Kong has a free and open Internet, so there is no way to block distribution channels. The CCP, faced with this challenge, could use its propaganda machine to smear journalists, thereby subjecting them to psychological pressure, but this tactic does not discourage those who are indifferent to or insulated from state propaganda from continuing to cover street demonstrations. Beijing’s only way to make a real difference in the reporting of news in Hong Kong is through the law enforcement powers of the police—which is why the city’s police officers treated journalists so harshly during the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement. In the aftermath of the movement, the oldest political satire program in Hong Kong, which ran on the public channel Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), was canceled after an episode included criticism of the police (Su, 2020a). Likewise, changes in the management of the news departments at the city’s two commercial television stations extended the government’s control over the news media. At the same time, market forces also continue to influence media outlets, including prompting them to adhere to professional standards in order to attract readers concerned about the credibility of the news that they consume. Therefore, control over one or two of the largest mainstream media outlets would be insufficient in itself to dominate the media environment in Hong Kong and shape public opinion; small and medium-sized commercial media outlets would simply fill the gap in the market. The same is true for the non-­ mainstream media outlets. Thus, the decline in public trust in the mainstream media following the 2014 Umbrella Movement has witnessed the development of online media. As a result, the documentation of the 2019 movement was more full and in-depth and included more perspectives. Beijing has naturally been concerned about these developments because

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control of the media is necessary to control public opinion and censorship is necessary for propaganda to be effective and, for these reasons it has engineered personnel changes in several media outlets—the high-profile punishment of journalists deemed troublesome by officials—and the redefinition by police of who is considered a journalist. The deterioration of press freedom environment in Hong Kong has been a profound personal experience for frontline journalists there and is reflected in their understanding of the principle of objectivity. Although every reporter whom I interviewed for this book affirmed that objectivity and neutrality are necessary and desirable professional ideals, nearly all indicated that these ideals were impossible to achieve in practice. Thus, some said that their organizations’ news agendas and framing of issues precluded objectivity by compelling them to make subjective choices during their reporting. The media in Hong Kong is so polarized now that it is impossible to be objective and neutral. Different media have their political positions, and, whether they support the government or the movement, they are no longer neutral. This will be reflected in the news coverage. For example, pro-­ government media do not report on police abuse of power, but, similarly, pro-movement media choose not to report on the bad behavior of protesters. (Informant 38) There are many media outlets in Hong Kong that claim to be neutral, but, basically, there are none. The media has its own bias. This, combined with the ownership of the media, can affect editorial independence. I think it is essential to be objective and neutral, but it is not allowed in practice. (Informant 23)

Further, despite journalists’ best efforts to remain objective and neutral, their values and understanding of issues have at least some impact on their coverage, as a number of the interviewees observed. I don’t think it’s possible to be completely objective and neutral. For example, if I think that journalists should monitor the government, I have already made a value choice. In my reporting, I will focus on monitoring the ­government rather than the general public. Then, in my reporting, the focus will be on monitoring the government, not the general public. Then, in the eyes of some readers who support the government, I am not objective and

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neutral. But that’s my understanding of what journalism is all about. (Informant 6) Absolute objectivity and neutrality are not possible. Everyone has their judgment, values, and positions [that], more or less, will have an impact. Not to talk about political positions, only to talk about the importance of a matter of sort. I think A is more important than B, but others will feel that B is more important. So, the process of judgment is already not objective. (Informant 59) When a social movement of this magnitude takes place in a place where you have lived for so many years, you will naturally have your own opinion. And when people’s views are so polarized, you will undoubtedly be affected. As a human being, what you see in the news during and after work hours will affect how you view this event. Suppose you are a pro-democracy person and work for a newspaper that supports the democratic movement. A group of pro-establishment legislators accused the protesters of being thugs. In that case, you will naturally feel that these people are talking nonsense and will reduce the coverage. Of course, we have to avoid that, but we can’t do it in practice. (Informant 20) I think objectivity is important, but, in practice, it is impossible to do exactly that. Many people rely on the media to receive information about what the media is reporting, and they don’t realize that there are many things they don’t see because they’re not there. They need to see it all to make a judgment, but the media can’t do that. (Informant 14)

In November 2020, I took part in an informal colloquium that helped to clarify this paradoxical situation for me. I am sharing it here as a supplement to the 70 interviews for this book. A journalist friend asked whether I would be willing to have a chat with some reporters just entering the field. “Many young journalists feel very frustrated, sometimes a little bit bewildered, especially after Beijing implanted national security law,” he explained, suggesting that, since the media environment in Hong Kong was coming to resemble the environment in mainland China, these reporters would benefit from hearing about some of my experiences as a veteran journalist with a specialty in Chinese politics. It was natural for journalists in Hong Kong to be concerned about the deterioration of freedom in the city and the personal risks involved with reporting there at this moment. A couple of months earlier, on August 11, 2020, six weeks after China imposed the National Security Law on Hong

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Kong, nearly 200 police officers had raided the offices of a prominent local independent newspaper, Apple Daily, and arrested the newspaper’s founder, the media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-Ying, for violating the law. Lai has been among the most outspoken critics of Beijing, and he was charged in December with foreign collusion, an offense that carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Though Apple Daily is operated as usual, and Jimmy Lai resigned as chairman of the newspaper’s publisher Next Digital as he awaits trial, the People’s Daily, the CCP party paper, published a commentary, in this case accusing the newspaper of being an opposition propaganda machine and, therefore, a political organization that has been endangering society (Su, 2020b). The gathering of nearly 30 journalists representing various types of media convened in the modest offices of an independent online media outlet located in an old walk-up building in Mong Kok. The attendees were already familiar with one another from their coverage of the 2019 protests and had gradually coalesced into a group that met every so often in order, in their words, to “warm up around the stove” and support each other through conversation. At first, they had discussed the movement and their work documenting its development; other discussions then focused on covering the street protests and covering the trials of protestors. This evening, everyone was in a somber mood, with many having just returned from covering the trial of a fellow journalist. That journalist, Choy Yuk-ling, a producer with the public broadcaster RTHK, had been arrested a few days earlier after investigating police misconduct during the 721 Yuen Long mob attacks in July 2019. The charge against her was making false statements in order to obtain information— specifically, vehicle license plate numbers—used in reporting that uncovered many details about the attacks. Police had received criticism for arriving at the scene late and standing by as armed thugs attacked commuters in and around the train station. Choy had coproduced a story that involved connecting the license plate numbers of cars seen at Yuen Long to individuals involved in the attack and these individuals, in turn, with influential pro-Beijing village committees. The story also pointed to suspected plainclothes police who had been present in Yuen Long before the attacks but had made no effort to interfere as individuals with weapons passed by them (Davidson, 2020). Choi was found guilty and convicted of two counts of violating the Road Ordinance by making false statements as to the purpose of her search. She was given fines totaling HK$6000 (Wong, 2021).

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It has always been standard practice for journalists in Hong Kong to consult public records during investigative reporting as part of their duty to monitor the government. However, without issuing an announcement of its action to the public, the Transport Department, in October 2019— that is, in the midst of the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement—altered the form used to request the vehicle registration data. The small change from “others, please specify” to “other related traffic and transport matters” meant that journalists were no longer able to access vehicle registration data in the way that Choy had for the story that had invited the ire of the authorities. In 2015, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data had implemented privacy protections for individuals according to which the purpose of an inquiry had to be stated on the form, but the policy exempted public-interest news-gathering activities, allowing reporters to consult public records to detect vote planting in elections, identify officials’ assets, and so on (Chan, 2019). Accordingly, the arrest of Choy for using this established resource shocked and angered journalist. While many observers expected that news gathering of this sort would become increasingly difficult as the government tightened its grip, no one thought that the authorities would begin taking journalists to court. Those who attended the meeting in Mong Kok in November 2020 were critical of the selective enforcement of such policies and statutes. Thus, reporters for the party’s media outlets in Hong Kong remained able to use the investigation method that had resulted in Choy’s prosecution. So as one journalist I interviewed and employed by a mainstream media outlet said, It’s too obvious that this is a warning to journalists to stop doing stories that monitor the government. The media she works for has decided not to search the license plate data in the future. Even if the court acquitted Choy … such a move [would] create a chilling effect. For my company, of course, I understand it does not want to get into trouble, so it can be expected that, in the future, the license plate and other public records, the company may not want us to search to prevent [us from] stepping on the trap. The company’s decision means that a lot of investigative reporting can’t be done because our reporting requires evidence, and a lot of key evidence is these public records. This will damage the ability of journalists to do investigative reporting. (Informant 55)

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People who care about press freedom in Hong Kong worried about the further deterioration of the media environment in the aftermath of the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement. In June 2020, one year after the protests began, there was a change of senior management in the newsroom of Now TV, the outlet that had ranked first in surveys of the credibility of news organizations during the protests. This shakeup was just the beginning. A few months later, a similar change took place at Cable News. One of the goals of such constitutive censorship is to control every aspect of news production, and one of the steps involves impeding journalists. These measures include placing the head of the news department, whom the Liaison Office—the central government agency in charge of Hong Kong affairs—trusts, in charge of determining the daily interview menu and maintaining close contact with the office. The Liaison Office hires young journalists who, lacking experience, tend to carry out instructions more faithfully than veteran journalists. The latter, however, are not allowed to cover their areas of expertise and are instead sent to cover trivial and irrelevant matters in an effort to encourage them to resign from their positions. In general, the central government has sought to reduce journalists’ autonomy and commitment to professionalism, again, so as to maintain control over the flow of information (Au, 2016). For Hong Kong journalists who have been educated in journalism programs that inculcate Western professional norms and have grown accustomed to a certain degree of freedom, the city has become unfamiliar, even unimaginable, under the National Security Law. To be sure, the authorities did not charge Choy specifically for violating the provisions of the National Security Law, and police insisted that their search of the offices of the building that houses Next Media, the parent company of Apple Daily, was not part of an effort to target individual media organizations. Nevertheless, the consumers of news about Hong Kong have reason to question whether journalists worthy of the name will continue to operate in the city given the increasing constraints on the content and targets of reporting under the National Security Law. In particular, Articles 9 and 10 empower the Hong Kong SAR government to “strengthen” its national security efforts by providing “guidance” and “supervision” of the media among other aspects of life in the city: Article 9 The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall strengthen its work on safeguarding national security and prevention of terrorist activities. The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall

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take necessary measures to strengthen public communication, guidance, supervision and regulation over matters concerning national security, including those relating to schools, universities, social organisations, the media, and the internet. Article 10 The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall promote national security education in schools and universities and through social organisations, the media, the internet and other means to raise the awareness of Hong Kong residents of national security and of the obligation to abide by the law. (“Full text: The Law of the People’s Republic on safeguarding national security,” 2020)

The National Security Law provides no details regarding its enforcement or exactly what constitutes an infraction, leaving journalists uncertain regarding the legal status of their daily work. Issues that remain unresolved include, for instance, whether the coverage of activists in exile overseas would be considered subversive and whether news stories about demonstrations can document protesters’ demands and slogans. As long as the government’s notion of “national security” remains vague, journalists and media outlets can be expected to engage in self-censorship. Thus, two of the interviewees for this study observed, Although the newspaper I work for will not censor the report, I’m going to do [the report], and I will wonder if the issue I’m going to do is going to violate the national security law. Would I be arrested or even imprisoned for doing this story? Of course I am afraid, but I also knew that the news value would be gone once I censored myself. So I can only resist self-censorship in fear. But I don’t know how long I can hold out. (Informant 65) Previously, interviews could be done as long as the protesters were assured that their identities would be protected, such as by using pseudonyms, voice and screen manipulation, and so on. But now it’s getting harder and harder to get interviews because the potential interviewees don’t trust the media to protect them, especially after seeing that the police searched the news media’s offices. This makes it more and more difficult for us to report. (Informant 5) I don’t know if I will be monitored by the police and forced to hand over my interview information because of my work, such as covering a sensitive person or doing a sensitive topic. In the past, when I was covering news in mainland China, I would encounter such situations. Still, since I am a Hong Kong citizen and work for the Hong Kong media, my main concern was how to send the interview information back to Hong Kong and how to

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protect the interviewees, while I, at worst, would be driven back to Hong Kong. But if I would encounter such a situation in Hong Kong, I honestly don’t know how I should react. (Informant 70)

Over the 2010s, the media landscape in Hong Kong underwent several significant changes associated especially with the worsening media business environment and the growth of digital media technologies. These changes have affected the cost–benefit calculations of media ownership and led to Beijing’s intervention in the Hong Kong media market, including the city’s digital media outlets. As a consequence, the internal tension within the political-economic system has shifted, opening up space for resistance by media practitioners and thus helping the media system as a whole to maintain a measure of autonomy (Lee, 2018). Simply put, the fundamental changes brought on by the enactment of the National Security Law are transforming a liberal media system into an authoritarian one. Though the private ownership of the news media outlets remains legal in Hong Kong, unlike mainland China, the National Security Law gives the government the power to control even private outlets, a situation very different from that in free societies with market economies. The government has stated that it has no plans to regulate journalists through a centralized press credential system like the one operating in mainland China, but the Hong Kong government does currently license foreign journalists through the work visa system described in Chap. 6. Similarly, the latest police measures define journalism so as to exclude many news gatherers in what amounts to a de facto licensing system. The government’s power to regulate the Internet on national security grounds under the National Security Law includes the authority to block specific online media sites. The first such action took place in January 2021, with Hong Kong Broadband Network blocking HKChronicles, a website that had published material mainly on the 2019 protests. The service provider stated that it was preventing its customers from accessing the site in order to be in compliance with a request by Hong Kong police made under the National Security Law (Yau, 2021). In such an environment, reporters may well ponder how they are to persevere. “I will do it until the newspaper closes down,” Jacky, an Apple Daily journalist who I met at Mong Kok gathering said this to me. During the 2019 protests, in addition to the violence that he encountered on the front lines, supporters of the government published his personal information on a website dedicated to “black journalists” and harassed and

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threatened him with anonymous phone calls. However, none of this affected him as much as witnessing more than 200 police officers entering his workplace. Like many of his colleagues, his first concern had been for the information that he had collected: “To protect interviewees is always my priority.” Having worked at Apple Daily, he could not hope to find a job in the mainstream media in Hong Kong. He told me that he had made his decision to join the staff of the newspaper in full awareness of this fact and had prepared mentally for the eventuality. When I said goodbye to him, I asked him about his plans, If the newspaper is gone, I can work for online media or community newspaper. I can also open a patron account to be an independent journalist. I frequently ask myself whether I want to be a journalist or not. So far, the answer is always yes. (Jack)

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China Daily. https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202007/01/ WS5efbd6f5a310834817256495.html Hui, M. (2019, November 12). Hong Kong police and students are fighting a war in one of the city’s top universities. Quartz. https://qz.com/1746924/ police-­students-­battle-­in-­chinese-­university-­of-­hong-­kong/ Lee, F. L. (2018). Changing political economy of the Hong Kong media. China Perspectives, 3, 9–18. Luqiu, L. R. (2017). The elephant in the room: Media ownership and political participation in Hong Kong. Chinese Journal of Communication, 10(4), 360–376. Luqiu, L. R. (2020). Female journalists covering the Hong Kong protests confront ambivalent sexism on the street and in the newsroom. Feminist Media Studies, 1–19. Police chief Chris Tang rejects damaging rumors about “death” in 831 train station chaos. (2020, August 31). Apple Daily. https://hk.appledaily.com/ news/20200831/HATC2PZCLRDWJIDACDBRPT6ROM/ Police: Never intended to occupy the campus operation only to retrieve the No. 2 bridge. (2020, November 10). Sing Tao Daily. https://www.singtao. ca/4598674/2020-­11-­10/news-­%E3%80%90%E4%B8%AD%E5%A4%A7%E9 %A2%A8%E6%9A%B4%E3%80%91%E8%AD%A6%EF%BC%9A%E5%BE%9E% E6%B2%92%E6%89%93%E7%AE%97%E6%94%BB%E4%BD%94%E6%A0%A1 %E5%9C%92+%E8%A1%8C%E5%8B%95%E5%8F%AA%E7%82%BA%E5%A5% AA%E5%9B%9E%E4%BA%8C%E8%99%9F%E6%A9%8B/?variant=zh-­hk Siu, P., Lum, A., & Low, Z. (2019, September 1). Chaos on Hong Kong’s MTR network as police chase protesters into station and arrest 63. South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-­kong/law-­and-­crime/ article/3025241/chaos-­hong-­kongs-­mtr-­network-­police-­chase-­protesters Su, D. (2020b, August 26). The Apple Daily is more poisonous than the Coronavirus. People’s Daily. https://wap.peopleapp.com/article/ 5885660/5804837 Su, X.  Q. (2020a, June 21). Curtain falls on Hong Kong’s oldest satirical TV show. AFP. https://hongkongfp.com/2020/06/21/curtain-­ falls-­on-­hong-­kongs-­oldest-­satirical-­tv-­show/ UNESCO. (2020). Safety to journalists covering protests: Preserving freedom of the press during times of turmoil. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/ pf0000374206 Wong, N. (2021, May 5). Hong Kong protests: former RTHK journalist Bao Choy to appeal conviction over database search, fearing lifelong regret if she gives up ‘pursuit of justice’. South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-­k ong/politics/article/3132377/ hong-­kong-­protests-­former-­r thk-­journalist-­bao-­choy-­appeal

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Yau, C. (2021, January 14). Hong Kong national security law: leading internet service providers admits blocking protest website at authorities ‘request. South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-­kong/law-­and-­ crime/article/3117792/hong-­kongs-­national-­security-­law-­leading-­internet Zhou, L. (2019). Xi Jinping again backs Hong Kong police use of force in stopping unrest. South China Moring Post. https://www. scmp.com/news/china/politics/ar ticle/3037811/xi-­j inping-­a gain-­ backs-­hong-­kong-­police-­use-­force-­stopping

Index

A Advocacy media, 16, 107 Anti-Extradition Bill Movement, 1, 3, 4, 7–9, 12, 14, 16, 39–41, 43, 48, 50, 55, 57, 58, 64, 65, 69, 73, 74, 84, 90, 93, 100, 113, 116, 119, 124, 128, 134, 135 Apple Daily, 13, 23, 99, 113, 133, 135, 137 C Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 13–16, 24, 73, 74, 77–80, 83, 84, 108, 109, 123, 129, 130, 133 Citizen journalists, 11, 14, 40, 47, 50–52, 84 F Foreign correspondents, 2, 9, 15, 90, 92, 93, 95 Freelancers, 11

H Hong Kong, 1–3, 6–8, 10, 11, 13–16, 22, 24–34, 39–52, 55–60, 62–65, 67, 68, 73–77, 80, 82–85, 89, 90, 92, 94–102, 107–119, 123–128, 130–132, 134–138 I Independent journalists, 13, 14, 40, 44, 46–48, 50–52 J Journalism, 3, 5, 6, 13–15, 25, 27, 29, 39–53, 60–62, 64, 66, 69, 74, 77–80, 82–85, 111, 118, 119, 129, 132, 135, 137 Journalists, 1–11, 13–16, 21, 22, 24–35, 39–53, 56–63, 65–69, 74–76, 78–80, 82–86, 89–91, 93, 96–102, 107, 111, 112, 115–118, 123–126, 128–137 Journalists’ autonomy, 5–6

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. R. Luqiu, Covering the 2019 Hong Kong Protests, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82226-2

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INDEX

M Media system, 11–16 N National Security Law, 11, 13, 16, 24, 94, 95, 101, 120, 123–138 News media, 2, 3, 6–8, 10, 24, 29, 32, 40, 42, 51, 57, 58, 64, 65, 77–79, 85, 111, 116, 128, 130, 136, 137 Newsroom, 3, 5, 6, 21–24, 30, 32–35, 50, 52, 57, 59, 60, 80, 91, 116, 130, 135 O Objectivity, 6, 7, 13, 15, 25–31, 115, 118, 131, 132 P Professional practice, 5, 31, 42, 84, 93 Protests, 1–11, 13, 15, 16, 21, 24, 25, 29, 33, 39, 40, 42–45, 47, 50, 52, 55–58, 61, 62, 64, 69, 73,

75, 76, 80, 82, 89–102, 107, 109, 111, 113, 114, 118, 123–125, 127, 128, 133, 135, 137 Public trust, 6, 24, 32, 59, 107, 130 R Radio and Television Hong Kong (RTHK), 12, 25, 26, 31, 99, 113, 130, 133 S Social media, 8, 9, 15, 26, 28–31, 44, 47, 60, 63, 64, 90, 92–94, 107, 110, 111, 113, 114 Stand News, 15, 31, 99, 107–120 State media, 2, 11, 12, 15, 16, 39, 62, 75, 76, 78, 82, 125, 128 Student media, 2, 58–61, 67, 68, 113 T Twitter, 2, 8, 9, 29–31, 90, 93, 94, 108