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Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam denies police media move amounts to suppression of city’s press
- In Facebook post chief executive defends new regulations governing city’s journalists
- Lam says system is ‘objective, open and non-discriminatory’
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Hong Kong’s leader has denied that the move by police to allow only government-recognised media access to restricted areas amounts to a suppression of press freedom.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor weighed in on the topic for the first time on Friday, two days after the force imposed its new media guidelines.
The rules effectively bar freelancers, student journalists and workers for unregistered online media from covering police press briefings, and entering cordoned-off areas such as those created during last year’s anti-government protests.
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Local media associations and seven of the city’s journalism schools have urged authorities to reverse the policy, and warned it posed a threat to press freedom.
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But in a Facebook post, Lam said the government’s established news and media information system, which was recently adopted by the force, was an “objective, open and non-discriminatory” service platform to define media representatives.
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