A transgendered woman claims she lost her job at a hair salon after being pestered by Next journalists
Social rights activists have reopened the issue of media ethics in Hong Kong after a woman who cross-dresses and is planning to have a sex-change operation says she lost her job after being stalked and photographed by journalists.
Louise Chan, 31, who has applied for sex reassignment surgery at Queen Mary Hospital, said reporters from the Chinese-language Next magazine sent her messages through ICQ, the computer chatroom, also pretending to be transgendered (someone who wants to be of the opposite sex).
When she declined a date, a magazine reporter pretended to be a customer at the hair salon where Ms Chan worked and secretly took pictures of her, she said. He then followed her for hours after work.
A subsequent article reproduced photographs of her dressed as a man that were taken from her website without permission.
The reporter called Ms Chan a couple of days before the article was published asking for her comments, but she was too shocked to say much. The article was published last week.
