Hong Kong journalists have warned of a serious threat to press freedom in the city state after the abrupt dismissal of a senior newspaper editor who ran a powerful front-page story based on revelations from the Panama Papers.
Ming Pao, one of the city’s most prestigious papers, dismissed chief editor Keung Kwok-yuen on Wednesday, the same day the journalist filled the front page with revelations about Hong Kong celebrities, officials and businessmen.
The paper’s management said the sacking was a cost-cutting measure, but furious journalists accused the owners of a more sinister agenda.
Beijing has stepped up censorship of stories on the world’s biggest ever leak of documents, after relatives of some senior leaders were named among people who had used offshore companies to store their wealth.
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Photo:
Ming Pao staff holding signs which say ‘the truth is unclear’ outside the Hong Kong newspaper’s headquarters on Wednesday. Photograph: Anthony Kwan/Getty Images
As the traditional media business model crumbles, leading to massive layoffs in newsrooms—with investigative journalism teams often among the first casualties—collaboration is becoming indispensable. Networks with few actual employees but the ability to pool expertise and spread the expenses of costly investigative endeavors across a wide range of partners are making vast and complex investigations possible.
This week revealed a remarkable example of one such effort. About 100 media outlets around the world—including Suddeütsche Zeitung, the Guardian, BBC, Le Monde, German broadcasters NDR and WDR, theMiami Herald, Univision, and many others—began publishing reports exposing a sprawling worldwide system of offshore companies that enable financial secrecy.
Collectively known as the Panama Papers, the reports were based on a leak of over 11.5 million records—perhaps the largest data leak in history. Spanning 40 years, from 1977 through 2015, the leak provides an unprecedented window into the money that flows through the dark corners of the global financial system.
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