Editorial stance and staff
The previous owners of the publication, Kerry Group's Robert Kuok and his family, are claimed to be inclined towards the Chinese government, and questions were raised over the paper's editorial independence and self-censorship.[62] The paper's editors nevertheless did assert their independence during Kuok's ownership. There have been concerns, denied by Kuok, over the forced departures, in rapid succession, of several staff and contributors who were considered critical of China's government or its supporters in Hong Kong. These included, in the mid-1990s, cartoonist Larry Feign, humour columnist Nury Vittachi, and numerous China-desk staff, namely 2000–01 editorial pages editor Danny Gittings, Beijing correspondent Jasper Becker and China pages editor Willy Lam.[72][73][74][75]
Not long after Kuok's purchase of the newspaper, and after running several cartoons about the culling of human body parts from Chinese prisoners, Larry Feign was abruptly dismissed and his satirical comic strip "Lily Wong" axed in 1995. His firing was defended as "cost cutting" but was widely viewed as political self-censorship in the face of the imminent handover of Hong Kong to the PRC.[76] In his book North Wind, Hong Kong author Nury Vittachi documented that then-editor Jonathan Fenby, who had joined from The Observer of London, suppressed letters querying the disappearance of the popular strip and then busied himself writing letters to international media that had covered the Feign case defending the sacking.[77][78][79] Vittachi explained his own departure from the journal in his book, linking it to the pressures he – and other contributors – faced from top management and editors to abstain from writing on topics that were deemed "sensitive", basically in denial of the free speech rights enshrined in the Hong Kong Basic Law and the one country, two systems policy.[80]
In 2000, Fenby was succeeded by Robert Keatley, a former Wall Street Journal journalist. After the paper ran a story by Willy Lam on its front page about a delegation of Hong Kong tycoons meeting with General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Jiang Zemin,[7] in which it was reported that business opportunities in China were being offered as a quid pro quo for the tycoons' political support, the Chinese Liaison Office raised objections of insensitivity as well as incurring the owner's wrath.[7] Kuok berated Keatley in his office and wrote a two-page letter, which Keatley published in the letters section of the paper. Kuok stepped down as group chairman that year.[7]
Editorial page editor Gittings complained that in January 2001, he was told to take a "realistic" view of editorial independence and ordered not to run extracts of the Tiananmen Papers, though ultimately was allowed, after protesting "strenuously", to do so. The editor stated that there had already been sufficient coverage.[81]
At the launch of a joint report published by the Hong Kong Journalists' Association and Article 19 in July 2001, the chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists' Association said: "More and more newspapers self-censor themselves because they are controlled by either a businessman with close ties to Beijing, or part of a large enterprise, which has financial interests over the border."[72]
Editor-in-chief Wang Xiangwei, appointed by the owner in 2012 after consultation with the Liaison Office, was criticised for his decision to reduce the paper's coverage of the death of Li Wangyang on 7 June 2012.[82] Wang, who had left the office for the day, reportedly returned to the paper after midnight to reverse the staff editors' decision to run a full story. The SCMP published a two-paragraph report inside the paper; other news media reported it prominently.[83] A senior staff member who sought to understand the decision circulated the resulting email exchanges, which indicate he received a stern rebuff from Wang.[84][85] Wang made a statement on 21 June, in which he said he understood the "huge responsibility to deliver news... [and]... the journalistic heritage we have inherited". and said that his decision not to pursue extensive coverage as the story broke was pending "more facts and details surrounding the circumstances of this case".[86] Wang admitted that his decision on Li Wangyang was a bad one in retrospect.[87]
Reporter Paul Mooney said that the Li Wangyang story was not an isolated incident: Wang Xiangwei has "long had a reputation as being a censor of the news... Talk to anyone on the China reporting team at the South China Morning Post and they'll tell you a story about how Wang has cut their stories, or asked them to do an uninteresting story that was favorable to [mainland] China." Mooney, whose contract with the paper was not renewed in May 2012 reportedly because of budgetary reasons, said he had won more journalism awards than anyone else in the news team, but that for seven months prior to his departure from the newspaper, Wang had marginalised him by blocking him from writing any China stories, and then reportedly hiring several new young reporters, many from mainland China, after he had been ousted.[88]
Despite the reported sentiments of the owners, the SCMP reported on commemorations of the Tiananmen Square Massacre at the time,[89] and ran an editorial criticising the one-child policy in 2013.[90] The SCMP published an interview with Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba and a member of the CCP, in which Ma defended late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's decision to crack down on pro-democracy student protests, saying it was "the most correct decision". The relevant remark was deleted not long after the article was published; the reporter responsible for the interview was suspended and later resigned. Alibaba said that Ma had been quoted "improperly" and demanded a rectification, but the editor-in-chief refused.[7][91] The New York Times stated that Alibaba is steering the newspaper into promoting the PRC's soft power, and several critical stories about China's current administration have been rewritten in an act of self-censorship by the top editors.[92] However, a few academics pointed out in 2013, 2016 and 2021 that there was a negative or discriminatory discourse present in SCMP's coverage of mainland Chinese people.
On 22 July 2017, SCMP published a commentary by Shirley Yam insinuating that Li Qianxin, a woman with an uncommon surname (estimated 300,000 in China), is the daughter of Li Zhanshu, a close ally of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping.[97] It also showed public records connecting Li Qianxin to a Singaporean investor named Chua Hwa Por. The piece was later removed by SCMP and replaced with a statement citing "multiple unverifiable insinuations".[98][99] Yam eventually resigned.[100]
Publication of interviews made under duress
In 2016, questions were raised about the relationship between the publication and Chinese authorities after the SCMP was able to secure an interview with
