Hong Kong daily Ming Pao runs blank columns in protest at sacking of top editor
Three empty spaces feature in support of Keung Kwok-yuen, the newspaper’s recently sacked chief executive editor
Three columnists at the Chinese-language daily that sacked a top editor last week have submitted blank columns in protest at the move.
The empty column spaces were run in Ming Pao’s print edition on Sunday but included an editor’s note justifying the controversial dismissal, which has raised concerns about a perceived decline in press freedom in the city.
Keung Kwok-yuen, Ming Pao’s former chief executive editor, was abruptly fired last Wednesday to cut costs, according to management. But the paper’s staff union suspected the move was meant to punish “dissidents of editorial decisions”.
In its Sunday Life section, the paper ran blank columns by Audrey Eu Yuet-mee, founding leader of the Civic Party, and Eva Chan Sik-chee, a former Ming Pao journalist, with just headlines criticising the decision to sack Keung.
Veteran media personality Ng Chi-sum also left his column empty bar one line explaining his headline, which was quoted from a poem written by demonstrators at a 1976 Tiananmen protest in Beijing: “In my grief I hear demons shriek; I weep while wolves and jackals laugh.”
The Ming Pao Staff Association said editor-in-chief Chong Tien Siong had tried to block the move to run the blank columns.
The association said in a Facebook post that Chong, who had been on leave, returned to work suddenly on Saturday night, proposing not to feature the columns about an hour after the pages had been sent to print.
