The Asian American Journalists Association joins our Asia chapter in supporting HKJA Chairperson Selina Cheng after her dismissal from The Wall Street Journal. Read their full statement below.
The Asian American Journalists Association’s Asia Chapter stands in support of Selina Cheng, a former Wall Street Journal reporter in the Hong Kong Bureau who was recently terminated from her job after she rejected WSJ’s demand to step down from her position as the chairperson of the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA).
Ms. Cheng is a long-standing member of AAJA and a frequent contributor to AAJA’s endeavor to support and educate journalists in the Asia region.
According to Ms. Cheng, her dismissal followed her refusal to comply with her editor’s request to forfeit her leadership position at the HKJA, an organization that has fought valiantly for press freedom in Hong Kong in the past years. The WSJ has declined to comment but said that it “continues to advocate for press freedom in Hong Kong and globally.”
As journalism everywhere is under assault and many media outlets around the world are reducing workforce, AAJA-Asia calls on all media company leaders to conduct all restructuring efforts with fairness, transparency and sensitivity.
AAJA-Asia also reaffirms our commitment to the protection of press freedom everywhere. Journalists must be able join and lead press organisations that are committed to defending media freedom without facing intimidation or retaliation. As another WSJ journalist Evan Gershkovich is currently wrongfully jailed in Russia, we ask all news organizations, including the WSJ, to support their journalists in their advocacy for press freedom.