Selina Cheng, the newly elected Hong Kong Journalists Association chairwoman, has accused her former employer The Wall Street Journal of pressuring her to pull out of the union’s leadership race last month.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Cheng said she had been fired with immediate effect from the newspaper because of her participation in the union.
The American news outlet told the SCMP it would not comment on specific employees and maintained it was “a fierce and vocal advocate for press freedom in Hong Kong and around the world”.
Cheng said she was “appalled” and “deeply shocked” that senior editors at the newspaper “would actively violate their employees’ human rights”.
“The chief editor of The Wall Street Journal’s foreign desk, Gordon Fairclough, who is based in the UK, came to Hong Kong to deliver the message to me in person,” she said. “He said my job has been eliminated due to restructuring.”
The newspaper reportedly sacked six editorial staff members based in Hong Kong in early May in a restructuring scheme to focus more on the “biggest money stories” in Asia. According to Cheng, her editor in chief later underscored the importance of the electric vehicle market in mainland China, her focus, as one of the biggest stories in the region.
In the same month, it announced that it would shift its Asia headquarters from the city to Singapore.
Cheng also said that management at the paper had warned her against being “seen as advocating for press freedom in a place like Hong Kong”.
“It is obvious to me that the fear 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.
Cheng was already a member of the journalist group’s executive committee when she joined the news outlet in April 2022 to cover China’s automobile and energy markets.
She said her supervisor asked her to resign from the committee about three weeks ago, the day before the leadership race.
“I declined her requests and was immediately told it would be incompatible with my job,” she said.
“[My supervisor] said the Journal continues to report on incidents related to press freedom in the city, such as trials against the press, so having its employees advocating for it would create a conflict.”
She made a note that the newspaper was “not naive to threats against the press worldwide”, citing Evan Gershkovich, an American reporter for the Journal whom Russian authorities have detained since March 2023.
Dow Jones, which owns the newspaper, confirmed there were “some personnel changes” on Wednesday, but refused to provide further details.
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“The Wall Street Journal has been and continues to be a fierce and vocal advocate for press freedom in Hong Kong and around the world,” a spokesman said.
Cheng was voted chairwoman during the association’s election on June 22 and she assumed office on July 1.
She has not published any story on the newspaper’s website since winning the election.
On Wednesday, the Journalists Association said it was “disappointed and outraged” by Cheng’s dismissal.
“The Wall Street Journal has covered the state of press freedom in Hong Kong extensively,” a spokesman said.
The move would “risk hastening the decline of what space for independent journalism remains”, he added.
Global advocacy group Human Rights Watch called the dismissal “outrageous and disappointing” and said journalists working for foreign outlets in Hong Kong could not safely operate without fear.
Beijing in 2020 expelled a number of reporters from the Journal, as well as The New York Times and The Washington Post, amid an escalation of tensions with the United States.
