Alibaba causes ripples with plans to purchase Hong Kong newspaper

Journalists at the South China Morning Post are having a rough week.

On Monday, the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba announced that it had agreed to acquire their employer, a staid, century-old broadsheet in Hong Kong that was once considered among the best English-language newspapers in Asia. Since then, a cloud of anxiety has settled over the newsroom, said one reporter, who requested anonymity to avoid reprisals from his higher-ups.

“People see this as a possible threat,” he said. “Because the South China Morning Post is kind of neutral at the moment. So a lot of people have been texting me, and asking, ‘Are you affected by this?’”

Many Hong Kong residents believe that their city’s media freedom is under siege. Although the former British colony enjoys civil liberties that are unthinkable in mainland China — an independent judiciary, an uncensored Internet, a relatively freewheeling press — many of its newspapers and broadcasters have been snapped up by Beijing-friendly tycoons in recent years. Local journalists often take pains to avoid topics that could damage their bosses’ business interests.

A mainland Chinese company acquiring the city’s most influential English-language newspaper pushes this dynamic into uncharted territory. After the announcement, Alibaba Executive Vice Chairman Joe Tsai said that while the company would not interfere with the newspaper’s editorial decisions, it hoped the deal would help offset “biased” Western media reports about China and would burnish the country’s reputation abroad.

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“Some have suggested that ownership by Alibaba will compromise the SCMP’s editorial independence,” he said in a statement. “This criticism reflects a bias of its own, as if to say newspaper owners must espouse certain views, while those that hold opposing views are ‘unfit.’”

Many of the newspaper’s best editorial workers have left in recent months, the reporter said, raising questions about the agreement’s implications for both the newspaper and Alibaba itself. (Alibaba also agreed to purchase all other media assets owned by the newspaper’s parent company, SCMP Group Ltd., including licenses to the Hong Kong editions of Esquire, Elle and Cosmopolitan.)

“The general impression for everybody is that what Joe Tsai said is not very reassuring,” he said. “And his explanations were a bit fake — or it’s not clear, actually, what he wanted to say. All we can do is just hope for the best.”

Experts say that by purchasing the Post, Alibaba may be putting itself in a bind: allow the newspaper to report freely, and risk alienating Beijing; censor its reports, and risk a firestorm of criticism in Hong Kong and overseas.

“One thing [Alibaba’s] going to get for sure is a long-running headache,” said Francis Moriarty, a longtime Hong Kong journalist and member of the local Foreign Correspondents’ Club’s Press Freedom Committee. “They’re going to get public relations difficulties that will dog them and not let go, both from inside the paper and from people outside who care about what the paper is becoming, and who will look for every nuance to see that they’re not bringing it in the direction they want.”

Alibaba “has had talks” to purchase Ming Pao, one of Hong Kong’s most respected -- and liberal -- Chinese-language newspapers, the Australian Financial Review reported Thursday, citing a source with “direct knowledge” of the deal. Although Alibaba quickly denied the claim, shares of Ming Pao’s parent company, Media Chinese International, surged as much as 37% following the report, according to the local news website RTHK.

Bob Christie, a spokesman for Alibaba, said in a phone interview that the company had not entered talks to purchase Ming Pao.

“We have not engaged in discussions in any way to acquire,” Christie said. “No offer, no conversations, no anything.”

The Ming Pao Staff Assn. said in a Facebook post that it was “extremely concerned” about the report. The association “will seek understanding from the company, and will report on the latest circumstances,” said the post.

If a deal is made, it would almost undoubtedly push Alibaba into even deeper controversy. In February, the newspaper’s former editor-in-chief, Kevin Lau, suffered a gruesome knife attack — repeatedly slashed in the back in broad daylight — days after he was removed from his post, sparking concerns that the city’s debate over media freedom had descended into violence.

This year, Reporters Without Borders ranked Hong Kong 70th among the world’s countries and territories for press freedom. In 2002, five years into Chinese rule, the city ranked 18th.

“I think credit should really go to the Ming Pao Staff Assn. in the wake of that incident,” Yuen Chan, a journalism professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong, said of the knife attack. “The editorial staff really organized themselves to be very vigilant, and made a very cautious, very visible effort to ensure that editorial standards and journalistic values were upheld at the paper. And I think overall they’ve done quite well.”

She added that Tsai’s comments about improving China’s image abroad made the Ming Pao news “a lot more alarming.”

“Self-censorship is a real problem in Hong Kong media now,” she said. “The fact that Ming Pao has this robust team of reporters who care about their jobs and their newspaper enough to set up a staff union, and to be really vigilant that nothing they do goes against journalistic principles — well, it would be a real shame if anything threatened that.”

Follow @JRKaiman on Twitter for news out of Asia.

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