{"id":20526,"date":"2020-07-14T11:26:39","date_gmt":"2020-07-14T02:26:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/jul\/14\/hong-kongs-national-security-laws-are-designed-to-make-the-media-self-censor"},"modified":"2020-07-14T11:26:39","modified_gmt":"2020-07-14T02:26:39","slug":"hong-kongs-national-security-laws-are-designed-to-make-the-media-self-censor-tom-grundy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=20526","title":{"rendered":"Hong Kong&#8217;s national security laws are designed to make the media self-censor | Tom Grundy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The legislation imposed by China intends to make journalists tiptoe around ill-defined red lines. The need to hold power to account is growing<\/p>\n<p>Beijing\u2019s far-reaching security law was foisted on Hong Kong with breathtaking speed, sweeping aside guarantees of freedom of expression and freedom of the press overnight. Analogies of slow-boiling frogs and civil liberties suffering a \u201cdeath by a thousand cuts\u201d now feel redundant as independent media outlets scramble to future-proof themselves against vaguely worded legislation that carries a punishment of life imprisonment for crimes such as \u201csubversion\u201d and \u201ccollusion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I founded Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) as a response to dwindling press freedoms after cutting my teeth reporting on the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement. As a non-profit, it was the city\u2019s first crowdfunded outlet \u2013 transparent, impartial, governed by an ethical code and built to resist censorship. But it was all based on the free press guarantees in the city\u2019s mini-constitution.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/jul\/14\/hong-kongs-national-security-laws-are-designed-to-make-the-media-self-censor\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The legislation imposed by China intends to make journalists tiptoe around ill-defined red lines. The need to hold power to account is growingBeijing\u2019s far-reaching security law was foisted on Hong Kong with breathtaking speed, sweeping aside guarantee&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1447,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,48,238,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-hong-kong","category-media","category-press-freedom"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1447"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20526"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20527,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20526\/revisions\/20527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}