Director of Hong Kong’s top journalists group says she lost her job at WSJ after refusing to give up her post

HONG KONG (AP) — The new chairwoman of Hong Kong’s top media trade group said Wednesday she lost her job at the Wall Street Journal after refusing her supervisor’s request to withdraw from the election for the top job.

At a news conference, journalist Selina Cheng said an editor told her her position was being eliminated due to restructuring. But she said the real reason for the cut was her boss’s request about three weeks ago that she withdraw from the election for president of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, a journalists’ union that also campaigns for press freedom.

She said her supervisor also asked her to leave the association’s board of directors, which she has served on since 2021. After she refused, she was told it “would be incompatible” with her job.

“I am dismayed that the first press conference I give as the new HKJA chairman is to announce that I have been fired for taking this job at a newspaper union,” said Cheng, who was elected the new chairman in June.

Dow Jones, which publishes the newspaper, confirmed on Wednesday that it had made “some personnel changes” but declined to comment on the names of those affected.

“The Wall Street Journal has been and continues to be a staunch and ardent defender of press freedom in Hong Kong and around the world,” he said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press.

Hong Kong journalists are working in an increasingly restricted space after drastic political changes in the city once considered a bastion of media freedom in Asia.

Since the introduction of a national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020, two local media outlets known for their critical coverage of the government, Apple Daily and Stand News, have been forced to close. closed after the arrest of their senior executivesincluding the publisher of Apple Daily Jimmy Lai.

In March, Hong Kong enacted another security law aimed at targeting, among other things, espionage, leaking state secrets and “collusion with external forces” to commit illegal acts. The legislation has sparked concerns among many journalists on a further decline in media freedom.

Less than a week after the law was signed into law, the U.S.-funded project Free Asia Radio announced the opening of its Hong Kong office had been closed due to security concerns related to the new law.

The Hong Kong Journalists Association has been criticized by local authorities and pro-Beijing media in recent years.

In June, Security Secretary Chris Tang said the association lacked legitimacy and accused it of supporting protesters in 2019.

The Wall Street Journal has also come under pressure from the government. Last July, it received three letters of complaint from Tang regarding its editorials and opinion pieces.

In May, the American media outlet told its staff that it was moving its “center of gravity” from Hong Kong to Singapore. The move led to the loss of some jobs in the Chinese financial hub. Cheng, who covered China’s auto and energy sectors, was not affected.

After she refused to withdraw from the HKJA election last month, she said, her supervisor told her that Wall Street Journal employees should not be seen as advocating for press freedom in “a place like Hong Kong” because such advocacy would create a conflict when the outlet reports on press freedom incidents in the city.

Cheng said the media outlet supported her colleague Evan Gershkovichwho was arrested in Russia on espionage accusations Which he, his employer and the US government vehemently deny.

“That’s why I’m deeply shocked that the newspaper’s editors are actively violating the human rights of their employees by preventing them from defending the press freedom that the Journal’s journalists rely on to do their jobs,” said Cheng, who worked as a video news assistant at The Associated Press in Hong Kong in 2014.

She said her former employer had a negative impact on the deterioration of press freedom in Hong Kong.

The HKJA said in a statement that The Wall Street Journal risked accelerating the decline of what remains of the space for independent journalism by pressuring its employees not to participate. Other elected members of the association’s board have also been pressured by their employers to resign, it said, without elaborating.

Hong Kong ranks 135th out of 180 countries and territories in the latest World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders.