Hong Kong ranked 37th out of 73 places in safety for journalists according to a new global index, outperforming South Korea and Indonesia but falling below Singapore and other European counterparts.
The Global Index on Journalists’ Safety, published on Thursday, also saw the city score better than the United States when it came to the physical safety of reporters, but scored lower in areas measuring digital and psychological well-being.
More than 30,000 journalists across 73 jurisdictions were surveyed between 2021 and 2024 for the joint initiative between the Worlds of Journalism Study research network and the University of Liverpool, in collaboration with Unesco.
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Respondents were asked a set of standardised questions about their financial, psychological, physical and digital safety in their operating environments. Additionally, data from the Unesco Observatory of Killed Journalists was used for the index.
In Hong Kong, 289 journalists were surveyed between September and October last year.
Overall, Hong Kong placed 37th in safety for journalists with a score of 79.17 out of 100, surpassing other East Asian jurisdictions, including Thailand (41st), South Korea (47th), Indonesia (49th), and the Philippines (70th).
Nepal and Singapore were the best performing jurisdictions in Asia, at 13th and 17th place respectively, while Taiwan was 36th.
Portugal was the top jurisdiction for journalists’ safety overall, while Norway, Germany, Czechia and Spain rounded out the top five.
Russia, mainland China, and most of the countries in Africa were not ranked.
Among the four categories analysed, Hong Kong achieved its highest score in physical safety, ranking 31st with 88.49. The category assessed the number of journalists killed, as well as arrests, detentions, and reporters’ concerns for their physical health.
The city outperformed the US, which ranked 48th, where assaults against journalists have significantly increased in recent years.
However, the city scored comparatively worse in areas related to psychological and digital safety.
Regarding psychological safety, which included questions related to threats affecting reporters’ mental well-being and actions aimed at delegitimising the profession, Hong Kong fell to 51st place.
In digital safety, which included threats to digital privacy such as surveillance or hacking, the city ranked 53rd.
The Post has contacted the Security Bureau for comment.
Francis Lee Lap-fung, a media scholar from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said that the city’s low score in psychological safety was likely to have stemmed from the recent use of subversion laws and the prosecution of the now-defunct Stand News and Apple Daily.
Lee, who served as the researcher for the city in the index, also noted the timing of the local survey coincided with the release of claims by the Hong Kong Journalists Association last year of an alleged “systemic” harassment of reporters, their family members and employers.
The undersecretary for security at the time said he was unaware of the claims and reiterated that the city was a place that followed the rule of law.
Lee further suggested that the emergence of alleged online and offline harassment could explain the low ranking of Hong Kong on the digital safety index
He added that Hong Kong journalists were less concerned about their physical safety, and that there had not been any murders of reporters in Hong Kong since the city’s return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
“Lengthy periods of pre-trial detention had become a ‘norm’ on cases directly related to national security concerns, but the number of journalists who actually experienced arrest and detention remains very small,” he said. “Hence Hong Kong fares better on physical safety.”
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