Wall St. Journal Reporter Says She Was Fired Over Hong Kong Union Role

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Wall St. Journal Reporter Says She Was Fired Over Hong Kong Union Role

A Wall Street Journal reporter in Hong Kong said on Wednesday that she had been fired over her role as the leader of a journalists’ trade union that has come under ******* by the territory’s pro-Beijing leaders.

The reporter, Selina Cheng, who covered the rise of electric vehicles in China after joining the paper in 2022, was elected chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association in June. In a news conference on Wednesday, she said her dismissal called into question The Journal’s commitment to protecting media freedoms.

The paper’s top leaders, she said, were preventing employees “from advocating for freedoms The Journal’s reporters rely on to work, in a place where journalists and their rights are under threat.”

A spokesman for Dow Jones, the publisher of The Journal, said in a statement that it did not comment on individual personnel matters. It said that the newspaper “has been and continues to be a fierce and vocal advocate for press freedom in Hong Kong and around the world.”

Freedom of speech, once a hallmark of Hong Kong that separated it from the ******** mainland, has been curtailed since Beijing cracked down after huge antigovernment protests roiled the city in 2019.

Independent news outlets critical of the Hong Kong authorities have been raided and shuttered. Editors have been put behind bars during lengthy trials. A survey by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong found that

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While many civil society groups have dissolved under the crackdown, the journalists’ union has vowed to carry on even as it has been singled out repeatedly for public criticism by Hong Kong leaders who insinuated that it had an antigovernment bent. Most of the union’s members work at local news outlets, though it is open to any journalist in Hong Kong.

Days after Ms. Cheng was elected chair of the association in June, the

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, a state-run tabloid, published a lengthy

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describing the union’s new leaders as “absurd and disturbing” and calling them partners of “foreign anti-China forces.”

Ms. Cheng was described in the article as “attacking” national security legislation that asserted greater Beijing control over Hong Kong.

In her news conference on Wednesday, Ms. Cheng, a 32-year-old native of Hong Kong, said that her dismissal reflected a ***** that journalists in the city have come to know all too well.

“The ***** and unease the press in Hong Kong have been facing for years now has equally affected The Journal’s management, even though they’re far away on different continents,” she said.

Ms. Cheng also accused her former employer of a double standard in its advocacy of press freedom, noting its aggressive lobbying for the release of its reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been detained in Russia for more than a year.

The action against Ms. Cheng comes after a restructuring of The Journal’s operations in Hong Kong. In May, the paper ***** off two editors and four reporters in the city, with the company saying it was shifting its “center of gravity to Singapore” in Asia coverage.

While she survived the round of layoffs, Ms. Cheng said she was later told by the chief editor for the foreign desk that her job had been eliminated as part of the restructuring. In a memo after the layoffs in May, Emma Tucker, The Journal’s editor in chief, had listed Ms. Cheng’s beat, the auto industry in China, as among the paper’s most important in Asia.

Maya Wang, acting China director at Human Rights Watch, criticized The Journal’s treatment of Ms. Cheng.

“The Wall Street Journal’s decision to ***** Selina Cheng is outrageous and disappointing,” Ms. Wang said in a statement. “Media outlets should not contribute to the ******** and Hong Kong governments’ escalating campaign to erase press freedom in the city.”

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#Wall #Journal #Reporter #Fired #Hong #Kong #Union #Role

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