Wall Street Journal in press freedom row over dismissal of union leader

Taipei, Taiwan – The Wall Street Journal is embroiled in a controversy over press freedom after one of its reporters said she was fired for taking a leadership role in Hong Kong’s biggest media union amid deteriorating civil liberties in the Chinese territory.
Selina Cheng, who until this week covered China’s electric vehicle market for the US newspaper, said she was let go on Wednesday after being informed that her role was being made redundant due to restructuring.
Cheng said she believes the real reason she was fired was because she was elected president of the Hong Kong Journalists Association last month against the wishes of Wall Street Journal management.
Cheng said her editor asked her to withdraw from consideration shortly before the vote as the post would be “incompatible with her job”.
“The editor said employees of the Journal should not be seen as advocating for press freedom in a place like Hong Kong, even though they can in Western countries, where it is already established,” Cheng said in a statement on Wednesday.
“She acknowledged that Hong Kong’s press freedom is coming under severe challenges. She 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,” Cheng said.
Cheng said the newspaper’s position on Hong Kong conflicted with its actions elsewhere in the world, including Russia, where its reporter Evan Gershkovich has been detained since March 2023 on what his employer says are trumped-up charges.
Since Gershkovich’s arrest, the newspaper has vigorously advocated on his behalf and criticised threats to press freedom in Russia.
In a letter to the public in January, Editor in Chief Emma Tucker noted how the “Kremlin has clamped down severely on independent reporting, effectively turning journalism into a crime”.
The newspaper’s dismissal of Cheng has drawn criticism from journalists and rights activists.
“Words cannot describe how twisted & abhorrent this is, at a time when journalists around the world are being intimidated, detained & killed into silence. In awe of Selina’s bravery, strength & leadership,” Karen Hao, a former Wall Street Journal colleague of Cheng’s, said in a post on X.
Melissa Korn, who covers higher education for the Journal, said on X that Cheng’s dismissal was “extremely troubling and disappointing”.
Maya Wang, interim China director at Human Rights Watch, described Cheng’s firing as “outrageous, hypocritical and disappointing” and accused the newspaper of capitulating to Chinese government pressure.
Dow Jones, the publisher of The Journal, said in a statement that it had made “personnel changes” but would not comment on specific individuals.
“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 spokesperson said.
Once considered one of the freest media environments in Asia, Hong Kong has become an increasingly hostile environment for journalists since Beijing imposed national security legislation in response to mass antigovernment protests that rocked the city in 2019.
The Beijing-drafted national security law, newer home-grown national security legislation and a colonial-era sedition law have been used to arrest hundreds of pro-democracy legislators, activists and journalists.
Hong Kong placed 135 out of 180 countries and regions on Reporters Without Borders’ annual press freedom index this year, with the nonprofit citing growing political censorship, the closure of independent news outlets and the ongoing trials of media workers.
The HKJA, one of a dwindling number of independent civil society groups in Hong Kong, has come under increasing scrutiny from the government, including officials like security chief Chris Tang, who was critical of the club’s recent list of electoral candidates.
“Looking at [the list of candidates], it looks more like a foreign journalist association to me. Most of them are journalists from foreign media, some are freelancers, some are not even journalists and their organisations have engaged in political activities,” Tang claimed during a media conference in June.
The organisation has also been targeted by Chinese state media.
In an article last month, the nationalistic Global Times newspaper claimed, without evidence, that the union was “a base for anti-China separatist forces to disrupt Hong Kong, and a malignant tumor that harms the city’s safety and stability”.
The article singled out Cheng, then a member of HKJA’s executive committee, for writing “a number of articles attacking the National Security Law for Hong Kong and the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance for ‘suppressing human rights and freedoms’”.
Since 2020, The Wall Street Journal and other foreign news outlets have gradually moved staff and reporting roles out of Hong Kong to other cities in the region, including Singapore, Seoul and Taipei.
In May, the newspaper announced it would make major cuts to its Hong Kong office, once its Asia hub, shifting some of those roles to Singapore while eliminating others.
Cheng survived the initial round of cuts and was one of the few reporters chosen to remain in Hong Kong.
In her statement, Cheng said the newspaper’s chief editor of the foreign desk, Gordon Fairclough, flew from the United Kingdom to personally inform her of her dismissal.
Cheng said her firing is illegal under Hong Kong law, which protects workers from retaliation for joining a union.