On July 7, The Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) released the 2022 Press Freedom Index, showing that the public and journalists’ ratings of Hong Kong press freedom hit a new low. The public’s rating stood at 41.4 out of 100. At the same time, journalists gave it a mere 25.7 out of 100, with over 90 percent of surveyed journalists believing that press freedom has regressed, and among the ten components of the Press Freedom Index, the public and journalists “hesitated to criticize the Beijing government” as being the area with the greatest constraint.
Since 2013, the HKJA has collaborated with the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute (PORI) to conduct the annual Press Freedom Index survey. In this year’s survey, PORI successfully interviewed 1,026 Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong residents aged 18 or above between March 6 and 20, 2023. The HKJA interviewed 249 journalists between March 9 and April 13, including reporters, translators, photojournalists, news editors, chief editors, and managing editors….