Wall Street Journal fires new chair of Hong Kong Journalists Association

The chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association has been fired by her employer, the Wall Street Journal, weeks after being appointed as the head of the embattled union.

Selina Cheng said she was “appalled” that her first press conference as HKJA chair was to announce that she had been “fired for taking up this position in a press union”.

Cheng believes her termination was linked to her taking up the position at the HKJA on 22 June. Cheng said she was pressed by her employer not to stand for election for chair of the union, and was told that the role would be “incompatible with my employment at the Wall Street Journal”.

When she was fired on Wednesday, Cheng was told that it was due to restructuring. Cheng covered China’s automobiles and energy sectors for the WSJ.

Cheng said in a statement on Wednesday that the WSJ laid off several reporters from its Hong Kong bureau in early May, but she was kept on, with her reporting area highlighted as one of the biggest stories in Asia. The Guardian understands that the WSJ plans to move Cheng’s role out of Hong Kong.

The WSJ denies that there was any link between Cheng’s HKJA position and her termination. A spokesperson for Dow Jones, the WSJ’s parent company, said: “While we can confirm that we made some personnel changes today, we don’t 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.”

The HKJA is one of Hong Kong’s last remaining civil society groups after Beijing’s crackdown on freedoms in the city. It has been under increasing pressure and criticised by government officials in recent months. It has been described in Chinese state media as “a base for anti-China separatist forces”.

The HKJA said on Wednesday that it was “disappointed and outraged” by the WSJ’s decision.

“By pressuring employees not to take part in the HKJA, a key advocate for both local and international journalists working in Hong Kong, the WSJ risks hastening the decline of what space for independent journalism remains,” it said.

The HKJA said other potential candidates for board positions had been pressed by their employers to stand down.

Cheng said she was told by her editor that WSJ employees should not be seen as advocating for press freedom in “places like Hong Kong” because it could create a conflict of interest, given that the newspaper reports on incidents relating to press freedom in the city.

In May, the WSJ published an editorial about the global decline of press freedom, identifying China and Hong Kong in particular as dangerous places to be a journalist.

Cheng told the Guardian she was surprised at her treatment. “I saw what they’ve done to support and campaign for my colleague Evan Gershkovich and I deeply believed that the Journal was supporting media freedoms and the rights of journalists to operate safely,” Cheng said, referring to the WSJ reporter detained in Russia on spying charges that his employer says are politically motivated.

Hong Kong’s employment law protects the rights of workers to be a member or officer of a trade union. Cheng said that she was considering taking legal action against the WSJ.

Eric Lai, a research fellow at the Georgetown Centre for Asian Law, said Cheng’s dismissal “could amount to a form of anti-union discrimination in domestic and international legal terms … Sadly, [the] WSJ is enabling the further erosion of press freedom and trade union rights for journalists in Hong Kong”.

Hong Kong’s basic law also guarantees press freedom, but that has been in rapid decline in recent years. Between 2019, the year of the pro-democracy protests, and 2023, it dropped more than 60 places on Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.