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Although the rank of freedom of Hong Kong media is much higher than that of China, there are some exceptions to the general rule which states Hong Kong media are free whereas the mainland media are not free. On 6 June 12, a Attainment Square dissident, IL Wangling was found to commit suicide by hanging himself in the Human hospital without leaving any note. The suspect of Lie’s death evokes all Hong Kong media to report the news at length, and hence the reporter of South China Morning Post Alex Price ran a full story about Lie’s death.
However, Wang Examining, the newly appointed editor-in-chief of SCAMP, reduced it into a brief Just before the issue of newspaper without informing him. Price wondered the reason and emailed Wang, but Wang didn’t give any reasonable response and said Price knows what to do if he doesn’t like this. It is believed that self-censorship was practiced because Wang is mainland born, and is a member of the Jill Provincial CAP. Beijing has influence on the issue, and hence it makes people suspect the neutrality of SCAMP.
Another example to show Begging’s influence over the Hong Kong media is that a Shanghai column about the selection of Hong Kong Chief Executive was edited to totally different point of view from the columnist in order to show support to one of the candidates, Lung Chunk Yin, who regards as Pro-China candidate. The column was actually written by the columnist Luau You-sis whose column titled originally ‘Neither of them is the best candidate for the post of Chief Executive’ but then was changed to ‘Lung is better than Tong.
The original conclusion of the column is, it is no worth to support both of them, the fight between them doesn’t help their rule of Hong Kong but worsen and this only makes people getting bad feeling on politics. However, it was edited to the version that, it is no worth to support Tong; Lung is the one who can do better so look forward to his future. Although Shanghai repost the original one next day, the explanation of doing such thing as was unacceptable.
The last owner of Shanghai also has China background and hence it is believed that there is Begging’s influence to affect the freedom of media in Hong Kong. Comparing to Hong Kong, the situation in China may be worse that mainland media are mostly controlled by authority; however, some exceptions also exist and those costly happen on the media Internet. GHz Riffing, the founder of the website People’s Supervision which allows entities to expose the corruption of the authority, had uploaded a video of Lei Chemung, a Cocooning official, who was having sex with an 18-year-old lady and secretly recorded.
The official then lost his Job due to the muck-raking. Although the website had been once blocked and was unable to be searched via mainland website Baud, GHz believes it was because the website had suffer pressure from Lei personal instead of from authority as KHz’s website is now operate normally and GHz is still fee. Despite of the exposure of the corruption of the authority, KHz’s website and his account on social media Webb still working normally and are not controlled by the authority.
Another example is about Shah Habit, member of the Communist Party of China Committee of Lubing City’s Public Security Bureau, was accused of having amassed 192 houses in Hough and holding a false identity card by a local businessman Hung Junky. The documents about Chaos’s double IDs are also exposed on the Internet which evokes not only the citizens but also the authority to investigate the issue. Shah has been sacked after this exposure and the authorities had decided to investigate comprehensively the problems exposed on the Internet.
Same as the former example, although it exposes the corruption of authorities, the media haven’t been control by authorities to cover the exposure. Overall, I think the freedom for media of both Hong Kong and mainland starts shifting. It is a good beginning for authorities to loosen the control on mainland media, but to Hong Kong media, over-practicing self- censorship only makes Hong Kong citizens revolted to mainland authorities.