Hannah Wong cried when the Hong Kong government effectively forced the territory’s Apple Daily and Stand News out of business three years ago. Among the last news firms in the territory willing to criticize the government openly, many saw their end as a sign that the old Hong Kong was gone for good.
Today, the 35-year-old makeup artist says she has gone from reading the news every day to reducing her intake drastically to protect herself from despair.
Four years into a crackdown on dissent that has swept up democracy-leaning journalists, rights advocates and politicians in the territory, a lot of people are tuning out the news. It is a striking sign of change in a place that used to pulse with talk, from morning conversations over newspapers in bustling dim sum restaurants, to lively debates on social media throughout the day, to evening discussions at dinner tables.
Photo: AP
Wong says it is too hard to read the headlines, but avoiding them left her feeling more disconnected.
“There’s a loss of the sense of belonging to this place,” she said.
Since Beijing imposed a national security law in 2020, press freedom has narrowed.
In 2021, Apple Daily and Stand News closed down after the arrests of their top management. Hong Kong was ranked 135 out of 180 territories in Reporters Without Borders’ latest World Press Freedom Index, down from 80 in 2021.
On Thursday, two former editors of Stand News were convicted in the first sedition case involving media since the former British colony returned to China’s rule in 1997. The judge said their company became a tool for smearing the Beijing and Hong Kong governments during protests in 2019.
After the verdict, the Hong Kong government said that when journalists base their reporting on facts, there are no restrictions on press freedom.
Politics is one factor driving news avoidance, said Francis Lee (李立?), a professor of journalism and communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Early last year, a survey conducted by Lee’s team at the Center for Communication and Public Opinion Survey found that about four in 10 Cantonese-speaking adults in Hong Kong agreed or strongly agreed that they sometimes want to avoid news about the changing social or political environment in Hong Kong.
People who do not trust the government are more likely to tune out the news, such as democracy supporters who tend to view the territory’s recent changes negatively, Lee said.
When people perceive the news firms as unable to perform, they are also more inclined to avoid news, he said.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
In the East Room of the White House on a particularly frigid Saturday afternoon, US President Joe Biden bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 of the most famous names in politics, sports, entertainment, civil rights, LGBTQ+ advocacy and science. Former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton aroused a standing ovation from the crowd as she received her medal. Clinton was accompanied to the event by her husband, former US president Bill Clinton, daughter, Chelsea Clinton, and grandchildren. Democratic philanthropist George Soros and actor-director Denzel Washington were also awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor in a White House
Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia was expected to meet Argentine President Javier Milei yesterday on a regional tour to drum up support ahead of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s swearing-in for a third term. Venezuelan authorities have offered a reward of US$100,000 for information leading to the capture of Gonzalez Urrutia, who insists he beat Maduro at the polls in July last year and is recognized by the US as Venezuela’s “president-elect.” The 75-year-old fled to Spain in September after being threatened with arrest by Maduro’s government, but has pledged to return to his country to be sworn in as
RSS