Name of Project: Press freedom awareness Category: Editorial Sponsoring newspaper: South China Morning Post Address: Young Post, Morning Post Centre,

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1 Name of Project: Press freedom awareness Category: Editorial Sponsoring newspaper: South China Morning Post Address: Young Post, Morning Post Centre, 22 Dai Fat Street, Tai Po, New Territories, Hong Kong, SAR, China Project Director: Susan Ramsay, Editor, Young Post Contact: // Frequency: Daily paper Circulation as of May 2013: 30,000 for weekday Young Post (school edition with SCMP) and 81,827 for Sunday Young Post (distributed with Sunday Morning Post) Target audience: Hong Kong Secondary Students (age 12-19) Description: Drawing readers attention to the importance of press freedom, and associated issues

2 Press Freedom Awareness

3 Goal We wanted to know what proportion of our readers know about press freedom. We also wanted to increase their knowledge and understanding of press freedom, and the reasons it is essential. For one week, we provided them with information on, and news and facts about press freedom around the world, tailoring our usual columns to focus on this important issue.

4 TIMELINE Project We ran a week of stories based on World Press Freedom Day from April 29 to May 6. PROJECT AUDIENCE Our readers are Hong Kong secondary school students from a range of schools: local schools of Chinese-medium instruction where the level of English tends to be weak (although this is not the case across the board) local schools of English-medium instruction where the level of English, and also of general accomplishment, tends to be high (although, again, this is not universal) a small proportion of international schools, where English or another foreign language is the language of instruction.

5 Project Hong Kong is a very modern, free city, where we take a lot of things for granted. Most of our readers might assume that those freedoms extend to freedom of the press. However, in this year s Press Freedom Index, Hong Kong came 58 th. Inspired by Wan-Ifra s yearly coverage of Press Freedom Day, we decided to run a series of stories in different sections of our publication to highlight the importance of the event.

6 Print publication We ran stories every day of the week leading up to Press Freedom Day (the Wednesday was a non-publishing day) to expose as many of our readers as possible to the event. We dedicated the following sections to press freedom Hong Kong news items related to press freedom.

7 Print publication (cont.) Two Liberal Studies spreads; we cover a topic over three days every week to provide students with material for this compulsory HKDSE subject. Due to a public holiday, we only ran two during the project week. The world map; every Friday, we publish a wrap-up of news stories from around the world. To demonstrate the effects of censorship, we blacked out elements of some stories. We also included a box informing students how small a proportion of the world s population has access to a free press. The weekly Top 10 page where readers send in suggestions for a particular topic. Our mascot Dennis column, where he usually writes about topical issues, different cultures, special holidays, overseas trips.

8 Liberal studies We focused the first spread on the media s right to freedom of opinion and expression, using coverage of the death of Margaret Thatcher as an example. We explained principles of journalism, beat reporters, the defence of press freedom, and discussed who should be allowed the title of journalist. The second focused on censorship, conflicts of interest, and private ownership versus state ownership of news-gathering organisations.

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11 World map By blacking out parts of stories readers would be particularly interested in, we hoped to highlight the frustration, unfairness and lack of balance caused by censorship.

12 Top 10 and Dennis For our weekly Top 10 column, we asked readers to submit slogans for World Press Freedom Day. Our mascot Dennis entire column was censored.

13 Online survey We created an online survey consisting of six questions to find out just how much Hong Kong teenagers know about the news and press freedom.

14 Survey Sky boxes Facebook/Twitter Promotion

15 Development As all contributions were written by the team, no external contributions or partners were necessary.

16 Of the 100 responses, 92% said they read the news (fig.1); 44% said they got their news from newspapers/magazines, 28% from websites and 16% from social media (fig. 2). 92 per cent of students know what freedom of the press means, and 98 per cent believe it to be important Evaluation

17 Reactions I am writing to thank your publication for your recent articles on the press featured in the Liberal Studies section. I particularly enjoyed the piece on censorship. It generated a very interesting discussion amongst my Form Five students about what is and is not acceptable under the banner of censorship and introduced them to some new vocabulary. We enjoy reading your newspaper and consider it a highpoint of our English learning experience. - Amanda Chapman, CUHKFAA Chan Chun Ha Secondary School This is an insightful article which helps to develop students multiperspective thinking and definitely helps to develop the fundamental mindset for liberal studies. - Louise Chan, CLLC, Training Centre

18 Press freedom and media censorship aren't probably topics that the 15-year-olds (my students' age) care much about in Hong Kong, but with the media, besides school, being their major source of information these teens need to know about factors that might have a negative impact on the objectivity of news reporting. The two Liberal Studies reports by Young Post introduce principles of news reporting and at the same time alert the teens to the fact that different newspapers may approach the same issue from different perspectives and hence their views may vary greatly. The examples cited in the reports may not be familiar to Hong Kong teens; still, those more politically aware teens should be able to find local equivalents. - Maria Ng, English Panel Chair, Carmel Secondary School

19 Team and resources The whole Young Post team, including the editor, reporters and web editor, contributed to the project. Our project was to teach local students about press freedom, both locally and globally. Because of the subscription model of Young Post (subscriptions available through schools and at the beginning of the school year only), the project had no effect on sales.

20 About SCMP South China Morning Post is the flagship publication of the South China Morning Post Publishers Limited, which engages primarily in newspaper and magazine publishing. It is the leading English language newspaper in Hong Kong with a circulation of over 100,000 reaching affluent and influential readers. As part of South China Morning Post, Young Post is aimed at a younger student audience between 12 and 19 years of age. The majority of secondary school students in Hong Kong subscribe to Young Post. SCMP and Young Post offer their readers the most reliable English information on Greater China in its print and digital forms. The newspapers emphasise credibility, accountability, knowledge, truth and professionalism as the guiding principles.