The Foreign Correspondents' Club Hong Kong

FCC Hong Kong marks World Press Freedom Day

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong will mark World Press Freedom Day on 3 May by observing one minute’s silence at the Main Bar at 6pm, with remarks by Club President Eric Wishart honouring journalists killed in the line of duty.

According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a total of 13 journalists have so far been killed this year, with eight of the deaths confirmed by the CPJ as directly related to their work.

Three were from the Asia Pacific region: Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Philippines.

Closer to home, in Hong Kong, the FCC and our partner organisations, including the Hong Kong Journalists Association, have witnessed continued deterioration in the overall press and publishing environment.

The Club is a staunch defender of the fundamental principles of press freedom, media pluralism and journalistic independence.

On World Press Freedom Day, we call on governments around the world to respect freedom of speech, freedom of expression and to aggressively investigate crimes committed against journalists in the course of their work.

In Hong Kong, we call on Carrie Lam, the chief executive-elect, to implement her promise of enacting a freedom of information law and archives law.

The FCC event is part of a global day of action called by the International Association of Press Clubs, of which the FCC is a member.

‘Never a more exciting time to be a journalist’: Asia’s talent gathers for second FCC Journalism Conference

Some of the region’s most talented journalists shared tips and views on reporting in an era censorship, fake news and tweeting presidents during the FCC’s second journalism conference.

The day-long event saw panels and workshops tackling the everyday struggles of reporting from Hong Kong and China. Special guest Evan Osnos, staff writer at the New Yorker, joined via Skype to talk about the difficulties now faced by U.S. reporters writing about the Trump administration.

“I don’t think there’s a more exciting time to be a journalist,” said FCC president Eric Wishart as he closed the conference on April 29.

Left to right: Keith Richburg, Paul Mozur, Miguel Toran and Juliana Liu discuss the difficulties of covering China. Photo: FCC/Sarah Graham

Earlier in the day guests heard from top editors and reporters on the challenges of reporting the facts at a time when fake news was so prolific it could sway an election result.

Workshops focused on writing to length under pressure and how graphics are being increasingly used to effectively tell stories to an audience bombarded with facts from different multiple sources.

In the workshop for freelancers, tips were shared by a panel including FCC board member Kate Whitehead, Zach Coleman of Nikkei Asian Review, Mark Jones of Cedar Hong Kong, and freelancer Vaudine England.

“As a freelancer you should have a website and pay attention to your LinkedIn account,” said Whitehead, who added that she often uses the social network to find potential story leads.

England advised freelancers to “go to places where there aren’t staff correspondents. Laos, Vietnam… are places that aren’t covered.”

Coleman’s advice was to build relationships, and build a reputation for yourself as a freelancer.

Telling the Hong Kong story to the world was the subject of a later workshop featuring foreign correspondents from the Guardian, Reuters, Financial Times and Bloomberg. Anne Marie Roantree, Hong Kong Bureau Chief at Reuters, said that during Occupy Central in 2014, her team used spot news to tell a wider story about the protests, bringing those stories together for special report on Beijing tracking down activists.

Benjamin Haas of the Guardian said Hong Kong had appeal globally because “there’s a lot drama in Hong Kong that you don’t get in stories on mainland China”. Panel members agreed that covering investigative stories on corrupt business practices in Hong Kong was expensive and time consuming, with time being a luxury most reporters don’t have.

Similarly, the panel on covering China focused on how difficult it is to work in a country where the government refuses to give out basic information requested by journalists.

FCC president Eric Wishart said after the conference: “At a time when fake news and alternative facts seem to be dominating the discussion, the conference showed that journalism is stronger, more diverse and more vibrant than ever.

“And as we approach the 20th anniversary of the Hong Kong handover, the conference also confirmed the FCC’s role as a beacon of press freedom in an increasingly difficult and dangerous environment for journalists.”

Gary Liu: Messaging apps will overtake Facebook as primary news source

News publishing is on the cusp of a new era which will see articles primarily shared through messaging apps, the CEO of South China Morning Post has suggested.

Gary Liu, previously CEO of aggregate news site Digg, outlined the struggles facing news organisations as advertising and print revenues decline and social media sites like Facebook become primary sources of news for so many.

“People are now going to fewer sources. Right now Facebook is a leader in that,” he said. But he added: “The age of the app is moving on. People are going to messenger apps. We’re on the cusp of a new era.”

Gary Liu, CEO of South China Morning Post, gave conference guests a glimpse of the future: Photo: FCC/Sarah Graham

Liu, a former executive at music streaming service Spotify, also proclaimed the homepage dead, an opinion first floated by the New York Times in its innovation report published in 2014.

He said publishers needed to think about their content and its delivery in an entirely new way: “Publishers have to think about two different types of platform: discovery and consumption.”

He said 90% of people now visit messaging apps every day, adding that it will become the primary “discovery and consumption” platform for publishers.

Liu explained that since so many people get their news from social media – quoting a Reuters report that stated 46% of U.S. adults now consume their news on Facebook – publishers were “no longer a world where our product is the world’s best, most accurate narrative on what’s going on”.

He added: “We should look at this as golden opportunity for news.” Liu said that the digital age had brought storytelling with reach not previously available in human history and encouraged publishers to innovate.

“Our brands are at risk… 50% of U.S. adults don’t look at the publisher name,” he said.

Liu avoided talking in depth about his new role at the 115-year-old SCMP, which was bought by China tech giant Alibaba in late 2015 – a move which prompted fears it would adopt a pro-establishment stance. He said the company was “still trying to figure out what our transformation will look like”.

Journalists need to fact check more than ever to stamp out fake news, conference told

Journalists must “double down” on their jobs now more than ever to fight the tidal wave of fake news, the FCC Journalism Conference was told.

Verify your information, quote your sources and use data to ensure you become a trusted source was the message from the opening panel.

The cream of the region’s reporters and editors gathered to discuss the challenges facing news organisations with the rise of unverified news, much of which has been blamed as contributing to the recent election of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Left to right: Gerry Mullany, Eric Wishart and Jodi Schneider discuss the challenges of fake news. Photo: FCC/Sarah Graham

Introduced by moderator Eric Wishart, FCC President, Gerry Mullany of the New York Times joined Bloomberg’s Jodi Schneider; Simon Gardner of Reuters; and Yumiko Ono of the Wall Street Journal at the opening of the April 29 conference. They discussed how difficult it has become to report political developments under Trump’s administration.

Schneider said journalism was harder now “because the agenda is being set by Trump through tweets” and the way that Whitehouse press briefings were now being controlled. Those tweets can’t be ignored, she added, but it was important now more than ever to use data to verify them. She said research showed “where there’s no name attached to a quote people tend to disbelieve it” and said she hoped that in times of crisis people would go to the trusted sources for their news.

Mullany described attacks on the press by Trump as “very dangerous” but added that “there are so many fake news stories because there’s an audience for it”.

Social media was also highlighted as a vehicle for the spread of fake news. Ono said the Wall Street Journal was doing “a lot of soul-searching” in trying to discover who its audience is and what they want as the organisation tries to combat fake news.

Reuters’ Simon Gardner revealed the head teacher at a Hong Kong school he recently visited said the school was trying to teach pupils about fake news and the importance of verified news sources – he added: “I hope next year we’ll be talking about the death of fake news at this conference.”

The FCC’s second journalism conference kicked off with an interview with the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos, who has been covering Trump’s administration for the magazine. He talked about America’s white nationalist media and how it subjected him to antisemitic attacks.

He said he believed that before the Trump administration is out it will “make a serious effort to try to stifle the press”, but added that “there is an accountability… I think Donald Trump is in a much more precarious position…” than the administration thinks in a legal sense.

“Stay tuned,” he added.

Wall Street traders use transcendental meditation to ‘deal with challenges like a Ninja’

A growing number of stressed-out traders on Wall Street are turning to transcendental meditation in order to ‘deal with challenges like a Ninja’, according to an expert in the field.

Author and transcendental meditation teacher James G. Meade extolled the virtues of mindfulness at the April 24 club lunch. Photo: FCC/Sarah Millson

Author and transcendental meditation teacher James G. Meade told the April 24 club lunch that the biggest reason traders came to him for help was anxiety, with many working at least 18-hour days.

The solution, he said, was simple: two sessions of just 20 minutes each day had given many in the finance industry ‘an extremely effective antidote to stress’. Meade cited Ray Dalio, founder of investment firm Bridgewater Associates, who introduced transcendental meditation to his entire company. Dalio told Business Insider: “I did it because it’s the greatest gift I could give anyone — it brings about equanimity, creativity, and peace.”

Watch the club lunch here

Meade, author of books including The Answer to Cancer: Is Never Giving It a Chance to Start, said working on Wall Street was highly pressured, adding: “There’s no time for sleep. Transcendental meditation is instant deep rest at will. It’s a technology.”

He added: “We do make you peaceful, it’s extremely peaceful.

“It develops the mind and the emotions… We become more appreciative of other people. Also in the world of stock brokers… we have instances where they’ll say ‘my staff asked what are you doing that’s different? How come you’re coming out and talking to us, you’re friendly where you were not before?’ So actually people become nicer.”

Meade demonstrated how the ‘whole brain gets bathed in this alpha and the stress becomes less’. Using a video of a live transcendental meditation session, he showed the difference in brain waves once someone becomes relaxed.

Hollywood director David Lynch, Beach Boy Mike Love and outspoken radio DJ Howard Stern are all advocates of transcendental meditation, Meade said.

In pictures: The Hong Kong Riots of 1967

The 1967 riots of Hong Kong left 51 people dead and hundreds more injured. Although the initial outbreaks of violence followed labour disputes, the riots were soon driven by fighting between pro-communists and their sympathisers, and the establishment. As the FCC hosts a photographic exhibition looking back at the violent events, we publish some of those powerful images from Hong Kong’s bloodiest episode.

Obituary: Ian Stewart, foreign correspondent and ex-FCC president

Ian Stewart, father, grandfather, foreign correspondent, FCC president, author, China watcher, adventurer and authority on Southeast Asian politics and culture, passed away peacefully in Sydney recently.

Ian spent a total of 36 years working as a Foreign Correspondent and author in Southeast Asia and was a passionate believer in the free press and freedom of expression. He served two terms as the president of the Foreign Correspondent’s Club, Hong Kong, in 1963-1964 and 1971-1972. He was also president of the Foreign Correspondents Association of Singapore for three terms.

Born in Whangarei, New Zealand in 1928, he went to Auckland University before starting his career in journalism at the New Zealand Herald as a cadet. He then worked for both the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Herald before coming to Hong Kong as a stringer for Reuters 1954.

Ian was posted to Indonesia in 1955 where he meet his wife Truus The Tiang Nio and married her before quitting Reuters to return to Hong Kong to work as freelance writer in 1957. After another stint in Indonesia he joined the New York Times in 1959 and for the next 14 years reported on Mao Tse-tung’s China.

He and his family moved to Sydney in 1980 where he worked in public relations and publishing, while writing his own novels, a musical and two film scripts. Ian was the author of seven published novels and two historical works. His first novel, “The Peking Pay-off” was published in 1975 and his last, “ The lust of Comrade Lu”, in 2014.

Ian moved back to Asia in 1991, first to Singapore and then Kuala Lumpur, where he filed for The Australian, The Daily Telegraph (London), South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), with occasional radio spots for the ABC, BBC and Deutsche Welle until returning to Sydney in 2001.

Ian is well remembered by the older members of the FCC for his work as club president and his entertaining FCC Folk Night performances at Sutherland House in the 1970s. A fan of Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary and Woody Guthrie Ian wrote his own songs in a similar genre commenting on current events, colleagues and his work. The chorus below is typical of the lyrics that kept his performances lively, entertaining and very popular.

“We’re the China Watchers of Hong Kong

We’re never, never, never, never wrong.

We may sometimes not be right

But it’s just an oversight

And we’ll certainly correct it ere too long.”

Asylum seekers who helped Edward Snowden ‘degraded’ by Hong Kong authorities, says whistleblower’s lawyer

The asylum seekers that gave refuge to whistleblower Edward Snowden were targeted by the Hong Kong government after Oliver Stone’s film on the subject exposed them, according to Snowden’s lawyer.

Robert Tibbo told guests at the April 5 club lunch that even the families of those asylum seekers were questioned and harassed by police in Sri Lanka after the film Snowden was released. Similarly, Sri Lankan police followed the asylum seekers in Hong Kong, Tibbo said. The three were brought onto the stage at the FCC to applause from the audience as Tibbo revealed that an asylum application for the trio was currently with immigration authorities in Canada, his home country.

Watch Robert Tibbo’s talk

Tibbo, who is based in Hong Kong and represents asylum seekers in the city, was critical of the Hong Kong government for not protecting the refugees after they were revealed to have helped Snowden during his short stay in Hong Kong in 2013. He said: “I think the Hong Kong government wants my clients out of Hong Kong. It’s quite clear that the Hong Kong government has treated my clients in an inhumane and degrading way.”

The three refugees that gave Edward Snowden refuge in Hong Kong. Photo: Sarah Graham/FCC

In June 2013, former US government contractor Snowden released a swathe of secret documents revealing the extent of America’s mass surveillance of its own citizens. He immediately left the United States and came to Hong Kong, which doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the U.S.

Tibbo explained that after Snowden arrived in Hong Kong, contrary to popular belief, he was not a fugitive from justice because he had not committed a crime in the city and there was no extradition request from America at that time. Tibbo said that with the very real threat of Snowden being arrested – or renditioned – while in Hong Kong he decided the best way forward was to “hide Mr Snowden in plain sight”. So Snowden left the Mira Hotel where he had been secretly holed up and was given refuge by the city’s “marginalised” asylum seekers.

During his speech Tibbo played video clips from the Edward Snowden documentary, Citizen Four, in which he can be heard on the telephone discussing how to get Snowden to the Hong Kong branch of the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) to help protect him. Tibbo revealed that he remains own touch with Snowden, who is still in Russia and is working with the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Tibbo denied reports that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, had agreed to hand Snowden over to the new U.S. president Donald Trump.

‘Speak up against China’: North Korean defector Yeonmi Park’s tearful plea

A young woman who defected from North Korea made a tearful plea to FCC guests to help the “forgotten” people of her home country as she spoke at a club lunch on April 3.

Yeonmi Park recounted the ordeal that she endured as she escaped the dictatorship with her mother in 2007. The pair were trafficked into China where mother and daughter were sold into slavery. Ms Park has since written a book, In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom, on her escape, and gives talks around the world.

Ms Park, whose mother was in the audience as she spoke, gave an insight into life in North Korea, where the internet is banned and education is geared largely towards serving the “socialist paradise”. Children are taught to hate “American bastards”, and watching American movies can lead to incarceration in a prison camp, she said.

“I did not know what Africa was,” she said, adding: “I did not know we had many different races in the world.”

Yeonmi Park takes questions from the audience after an emotional talk on her escape from North Korea. Photo: Sarah Graham

When she finally escaped North Korea, she was forced to watch as her mother was raped by a trafficker. “We did not have sex education in North Korea… I lost my faith in humanity. She was raped instead of me.”

Eventually, her mother was sold for US$75, and Ms Park for $200 “because I was a virgin and I was younger”, she said. A year later mother and daughter were helped out of China to South Korea.

Watch Yeonmi Park recount her ordeal:

On her life today as a university student, Ms Park said: “I’m trying to be normal as much as possible but I will never be normal because I am from a different universe. I am here today even though I know I might get killed by Kim Jong-un. I am on his target list but human rights is something to care about, I will continue to talk about this.”

Having recounted her harrowing story, she fought back tears as she directly addressed the audience, and said: “The people of North Korea have been forgotten for 70 years… I am asking you to help them… Why doesn’t anyone do anything about North Korea?”

When asked by a guest what exactly could be done to help those in North Korea, she asked that people support the NGOs on the ground rescuing defectors in China. And she added: “Speak up against China.”

Journalists and diplomats: The challenges of reporting side by side from the front line

The close but often fraught relationship between journalists and diplomats on the front line of war was discussed by diplomat and author Dante Paradiso at the March 30 club lunch.

The two have very similar roles in that they are the bearers of first hand information on what is happening on the ground, he said. However, they are driven by two very different objectives: the journalist is part of a business model, whereas the diplomat is informing policy process.

Paradiso, author of The Embassy: A Story of War and Diplomacy, explained that while journalists are obviously keen to get breaking news out to their editors, then the world, this is often at odds with the way a diplomat – who is passing information to the government’s security services in order to make longer term strategy decisions in war torn areas – operates.

If you’re witnessing a human rights abuse or state-sponsored terrorism, your reporting can force decision-making.

But the relationship is also beneficial to both sides: “We exchange information… We can get messages out through the media, and the media can get headlines from us. There’s a transactional nature to these exchanges,” Paradiso said.

Dante Paradiso revealed the ups and downs in the relationship between journalist and diplomat in war zones. Photo: Sarah Graham

The continuous flow of information from both the press and people working the policy is vital. The exchange of information itself between the two can be imperative, he added. “If you’re witnessing a human rights abuse or state-sponsored terrorism, your reporting can force decision-making.”

He said in highly intense crises, for example bullets in the street, often journalists and diplomats work quite closely together. There was also an element of responsibility in keeping reporters safe, Paradiso said, “the ability to exchange information about physical safety”. This would often lead to shelter being provided for journalists in danger.

Drawing on experiences from Liberia, Afghanistan and other conflicts, Paradiso highlighted the need for operational safety versus the media’s need for breaking news. He told how in some circumstances the need to report what was happening at a particular moment could often put troops and journalists in danger. For example, the shelling of a U.S. compound is big news, he said, but in reporting this the enemy was being given confirmation that they’d hit their target, so could continue the attack.

Paradiso concluded that the dynamic between journalists and diplomats was incredibly important for physical transparency, safety and advocacy when it came to reporting the facts of events in war zones, both to news room editors and a the chain of command of a diplomat.