JANUARY 23, 2015 7:01 AM January 23, 2015 7:01 am
Kevin Lau Chun-to in January 2014, after his dismissal as editor of the Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao.Credit Associated Press
Since the newspaper editor Kevin Lau Chun-to was attacked with a cleaver last year and left bleeding on a Hong Kong street, he has embodied fears that the city’s long tradition of journalistic independence is under assault.
Hong Kong journalists have warned that political and commercial pressures from mainland China are forcing the news media to compromise on coverage, and there remains a fear that, in extreme cases, journalists could be the target of physical attacks, as Mr. Lau was.
On Friday, Mr. Lau, still using crutches and hobbling almost a year after he was attacked, spoke about the future of the news media in Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s closer ties with mainland China came with great risks, he said, but he also expressed hope in the future of new forms of media and in the public’s commitment to press freedom.
“The integration of the Hong Kong and Chinese economies is happening very quickly,” the editor told an audience at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “If this trend continues, the economic pressure on the local media will be huge.”
As a counterbalance, he said, young journalists, new forms of media and public pressure could sustain Hong Kong’s lively news sector.
“We still have many high-quality, idealistic journalists, and they would unite to protect the freedom of the press if it’s under threat,” Mr. Lau said. “Society and the general public still care about press freedom. We saw a strong reaction from the public when there were threats to it in 2014.”
The most drastic example of those threats is arguably Mr. Lau.
Before his back and legs were slashed last February by an assailant who then fled on a motorbike driven by an accomplice, he had already been the focus of an uproar in Hong Kong’s news media world: He had been removed the month before from his job as chief editor of Ming Pao, a Chinese-language broadsheet in Hong Kong with a reputation for sober coverage.
The publishers of the newspaper denied that there were political motives behind his removal, and he has continued to work for the media group that owns Ming Pao. But Mr. Lau’s ouster prompted protests by journalists and others who maintained that he was shunted aside, in line with the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to tame independent news media outlets in the city.
