Monday, July 28, 2014
A group of bloggers has set up a Facebook page for people’s commentaries on politics and other issues following the sudden closure of House News, a pro-democracy news site with strong ties to media mogul Jimmy Lai Chee-ying.
Within 20 hours of it being set up on Saturday night, the House News Bloggers Group received more than 20,000 likes.
One of the netizens, Alan Lau, proposed that everyone should financially support the webpage if needed, while another, Chu Nabuo, said: “The freedom of expression and the press will never die.”
House News, a news website and blog founded in July 2012, was seen as pro-democracy.
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But on Saturday afternoon the website’s co-founder, Tony Tsoi Tung-ho, announced its closure, citing fear of political pressure and low advertising revenues.
“As a businessman who always travels between Hong Kong and the mainland, I need to admit that I am really scared every time I cross the border,” Tsoi said.
Tsoi also revealed that many pan- democrats have been followed, their histories investigated and their names smeared, creating an atmosphere of “white terror” that is spreading in society.
Tsoi is also one of the 10 professionals behind Occupy Central.
At the beginning, most of the capital for House News came from the “Financial Centre,” a joint project with Apple Daily, which involved several hundreds of thousands of dollars.
However, it’s schedule was reduced from five days a week to once per week. In January, Apple Daily revealed that its advertisements had been pulled because of its political stance. Apple Daily’s budget fell by 5 percent and House News lost its major funding.
Well-known cultural critic Leung Man-tao, another co-founder of House News, said it cost several million dollars a year to run the website and that Tsoi had been digging into his pockets to make up the shortfall.
The last post of House News, which announced its closure, received 22,000 likes and was shared over 10,000 times with more than 3,000 comments.
Most of the netizens said they felt helpless and ashamed though a few said they were happy it had closed down.
Beaky Ng said: “I really miss House News. I did not care about political news until House News appeared. You changed me.”
But Seatigerz Bak said: “House News is down. Congratulations!”
